Continuing the important theme of reading and declaring God’s judgments in history, here is an important argument for why Christians must recover an understanding of why it must be done.
Now one of the essential aspects of all divine judgment will be the blowing away of all human rationalizations. Everyone who pretended in the course of their sinning that what they were doing was not really sinning will have that sham revealed for what it is.
Now here is the argument I want to present. If those who argue against the possibility of Christians declaring God’s judgments (during the course of history) are correct, then judgment of any nation at the end of history will be an impossibility. If we cannot know or understand the process by which God sifts nations in history, then we have a ready defense at the moment of final sifting. Spoken by a nation, “We had no way of knowing what You as God were requiring of us” is either true or false. If it is true, then it can be pleaded at the day of judgment. If it is false, then it cannot be pleaded now.
Of course, judgments against nations should not be trivialized (“911 happened because of lousy reffing at the Super Bowl”) or linked up with narrow partisan agendas (“Katrina happened because of the failure of House Bill #3174, a bill funding Pork Barrel Memorial Parkway”). Learning to do this right will be difficult. But to say that a particular skill (that must be relearned) is very difficult is an argument for starting now, and not an argument for dithering.
Two more comments. Culturally engaged Christians (God bless them, at least as far as they go) tend to want to be involved politically, and not prophetically. That is because when you are engaged politically, the worst that can happen is that you lose an election and life in the opposition goes on as usual. But when you are engaged prophetically, the preached judgments of God are a major part of the confrontation, and persecution of the prophets is usually a standard part of the response. And we would rather lose elections and go back to our places than be dragged outside the city and stoned.
And last, for those who want to pursue this further, as lots of us should, an outstanding book to read would be God’s Judgments by Steven Keillor. First rate stuff, and really important. As he deals with American history, I don’t agree with all of his calls, but he makes them all carefully and responsibily. This is just the kind of thing that culturally-engaged Christians have to learn if we are to get out of the Enlightenment-philosophy-grid that has been set up for us to operate in, and get back into the redemptive history of the world, over which Jesus Christ is Lord and Master.
Put another way, “worldview” in the way most Christians take it is far too static. A worldview that explains everything except what is going on is not really explaining anything. A static worldview approach to history is like teaching everybody phonics but never giving them a story to read.