A word worth reading, this time from a Catholic perspective…..
AS I prayed this morning, I sensed the Lord offering a tremendous gift to this generation: complete absolution.
If this generation would just turn to me, I would overlook all her sins, even those of abortion, cloning, pornography and materialism. I would wipe away their sins as far as the east is from the west, if only this generation would turn back to me…
God is offering the very depths of His Mercy to us. It is because, I believe, we are on the threshold of His Justice.
In my travels across the United States, words have been growing in my heart during the past few weeks: The wrath of God. (Because of the urgency and at times difficulty people have in understanding this subject, my reflections today are slightly longer. I want to be faithful not only to the meaning of these words, but also to their context.) Our modern, tolerant, politically correct culture detests such words… “an Old Testament concept,” we like to say. Yes, it is true, God is slow to anger and rich in mercy. But that’s exactly the point. He is slow to anger, but eventually He can and does become angry. The reason is that Justice demands it.
Read on here.
The Age To Come 
I appreciate what Mark is saying here, but it seems to me that trying to discern God’s plans for the immediate future is a dodgy business.
A century ago, for example, God seemed to be smiling on European civilization generally: the steam engine and (brand-new) internal combustion motors, electricity, a rapidly rising standard of living, progressive Christians in the US confident that as alcohol prohibition spread across the country they could conquer the Last Great Obstacle to a Godly society on earth. Then came the utterly unprecedented bloody horror of the Great War.
The dime-store pacifism and naive hopes of the ’20s — and radio! Depression. Another and even bloodier World War, accompanied by industrialized genocide — evil on a scale beyond all human comprehension. The Cold War. The Yangtze River choked with victims of the Cultural Revolution. The Nuclear Threat. Thinking the Unthinkable.
Now we have had the Green Revolution, the Internet Revolution, and the unbelievable successes of evangelism in Africa and Asia. China finally discovering that it can feed its billion souls by exporting Kids Meal toys. And the hideous apostasy of our terribly, terribly advanced post-Christian culture in the West, accompanied by the Islamic demographic invasion.
So I personally couldn’t possibly pretend to have a clue about God’s attitude towards all this; the good news and bad news seems so mixed and ambiguous every morning that the prophet’s job looks pretty shaky to me. All I can hang onto is what He’s told me to do (and not to do). Maybe we should all just sit down for a moment and reread the Book of Job…
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You know, hanging on to that is not such a bad place to be….
As to God timing, or actions, you are right, we do not know. A day as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day. However, we are given to understand the signs of the times, and I perceive that is what Mark is doing. Now, there are prophets, and then there are prophets… However Mark seems a pretty level-headed one, albeit with some Catholic bits that set my Protestant flags waving 😉
So, I agree, whatever will happen will probably be nothing like we might imagine. However, that’s not so much the point at the moment, the main thing is to be sober, awake, aware of the signs of the times, and to prepare. As you say, many disasters come when everything looked just so rosy. Here in Alberta we get told how good everything is, and how it will stay that way. I wonder how it is we define good. Certainly not how the Lord defines it IMHO.
Anyway, I ramble on. Suffice to say, my perception is that what wll come will be the best of times, and the worst of times, at the same time, very much depending on where we are with God. Thought like, as you say with Job, God is certainly going to be doing His own thing for His own reasons and we’ll remain seeing through a glass dimly. Far better simply to Hang on to Him…..
Anyway, really enough rambles!
Blessings,
Peter
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Excellent comments Craig and Peter.
One of the hazards of preaching the Gospel is that at times one can cross the line from grace into wrath. I wonder whether it is our awareness that the world is becoming more and more lawless, that might cause us to stray over into the wrath area.
In dealing with my own family, when things seem to get out of control, I tend to be more merciless and less patient and kind. It’s because I feel helpless to change them and know that there will be consequences. Although God’s judgment will come eventually, He is still sitting on His throne of grace.
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Peter, I have been feeling Gods heart grieving over the state of the west and the church in the west. Grief will give way to wrath eventually if there is no repentance.
May souls turn to Christ while it is yet a day of grace for salvation, it seems though the time is growing short.
Blessings to you all!
Susan
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I can’t tell the future and I neither know when the end will be or how it will come. I did once but I confused myself and now I am like the wicked of Daniel 12:10. However, as the Book of Daniel is generally understood today I can safely say that as according to 12:9 this is “the time of the end” which as we all know is similar to the days of Noah and the two infamous cities of the plains.
A general falling away seems to have taken place since the 1900’s and we have lost much of the certainty that the believers of that time had. The Rev. Lewis Carroll tried to warn us through his Alice novels or at about the same time Monsignor Benson in his Lord of the World novel. I am sure that there were others but the point is that as we are dumbed down we have lost sight of the goal and believe that these good times will last forever under the reign of our reinvented Jesus.
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cumby – thanks for the encouragement! 🙂 It seems to me that our anger is often suspect, but of the anger of God no-one can complain. His anger comes from holiness and justice, and love – ours, well, often less so.The wrath of God is just one component of holiness, in fact it is one and the same part of grace and of love – though it often difficult to see it I think.
So, our anger, very suspect, as you say it can descend into something pretty bad. But Gods anger is something entirely different – and I think a healthy awareness of this is important and often very effective; I’m thinking of the reaction to Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God that Jonathan Edwards preached. There is a place for this, as there is a place for grace IMHO.
Susan – Now is the Day of the Lord – seek Him while He may be found!! May it be that he will send us chastisement that leads to repentance, and not destruction….
white rabbit – yes, and the sign that we are deluded is that we beleive these times are good – but like the Bible says we are blind, poor, pitiful and naked. The only problem is we do not know it, we are like the Emperor with no clothes, amongst many other Emperors with no clothes.
Blessings on you all,
Peter
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