This has been percolating for a while, but it is not a feel-good message. Recently, I opened to 2 Kings 22-23, about King Josiah. In the eighteenth year of his reign, the forgotten book of the Law of Moses was found in the temple and brought to the king. He read the book, tore his royal robes in the traditional sign of distress, and then sent messengers to the prophetess Huldah to inquire of God. She told him in response (quoting from The Message):
"GOD's word, the God of Israel: tell the man who sent you here that I'm on my way to bring the doom of judgment on this place and this people. Every word written in the book read by the king of Judah will happen. And why? Because they've deserted me and taken up with other gods, made me thoroughly angry by setting up their god-making businesses. My anger is white-hot against this place and nobody is going to put it out.
"And also tell the king of Judah, since he sent you to ask God for direction: tell him this, GOD's comment on what he read in the book: 'Because you took seriously the doom of judgment I spoke against this place and people, and because you tore your robe in dismay and weeping before me, I'm taking you seriously. You'll have a quiet death and be buried in peace. You won't be around to see the doom that I'm going to bring upon this place.' " The men took her message back to the king.
The king acted immediately, assembling all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. Then the king proceeded to The Temple of GOD, bringing everyone in his train-- priests and prophets and people ranging from the famous to the unknown. Then he read out publicly everything written in the Book of the Covenant that was found in The Temple of GOD. The king stood by the pillar and before GOD solemnly committed them all to the covenant: to follow GOD believingly and obediently; to follow his instructions, heart and soul, on what to believe and do; to put into practice the entire covenant, all that was written in the book. The people stood in affirmation; their commitment was unanimous.
After that, the king radically cleaned house. He purged the land of the worship of the pagan gods of the surrounding nations:
He removed all the articles in the temple made for the gods Baal and Asherah and burned them, along with the Asherah pole and the chariots dedicated to the sun god.
He removed the priests from office who were offering incense to foreign gods and the celestial bodies, and he executed the priests making sacrifices to the foreign gods at the various high places. Then he defiled those altars by burning human bones on them.
He destroyed the Topheth, the iron furnace where people would burn their babies alive in the Phoenician tradition, as human sacrifices to Molech. According to www.helpmewithbiblestudy.org,"Molech had the head of a bull with two horns and a body of a man. The idol's stomach was hollow and was the furnace for the fires used during the sacrifice. When hot enough, the infant was placed in the arms of the idol." Then the drums would pound to drown out the screams of the baby. They referred to it as "making their child pass through the fire," to soften the horror of it.
Anyone who has worked in a bureaucracy knows how difficult it is to enact institutional change. The whole establishment fights you, even (especially?) if you're at the top. But this dude was motivated! And he got it done. But now we come to what I find to be the scary part. Verses 26-27 tell us (reading again from The Message):
But despite Josiah, GOD's hot anger did not cool; the raging anger ignited by Manasseh burned unchecked. And GOD, not swerving in his judgment, gave sentence: "I'll remove Judah from my presence in the same way I removed Israel. I'll turn my back on this city, Jerusalem, that I chose, and even from this Temple of which I said, 'My Name lives here.' "
Even after all Josiah's reforms, God STILL brought judgment on Judah, albeit a generation later-- just at the prophetess Huldah told Josiah.
While I was writing this verse in my journal, God showed me a scene from a steel foundry. Two giant buckets of molten steel were being heated and filled. They appeared to be about 20' high, and were side by side. I sensed that they were almost full. It was ALMOST TIME for them to be poured out-- but not just yet. But what does this mean, exactly? I believe it is a reference to Isaiah 48:10, quoted from The Message:
Do you see what I've done?
I've refined you, but not without fire.
I've tested you like silver in the furnace of affliction.
I believe that God is warning that a refining fire is coming. God is planning to put us in what the Bible refers to as the "Furnace of Affliction." But what will that look like, and how much time do we have? In Jewish history, as recorded throughout the Bible, God used war as both judgment and a refining process for his people. I believe it will be the same for us. As for the timing, the next day I was at the grocery store and looking at all the food. Every shelf was stocked. It was an abundance. While I was looking at the shelves and mentally going through my grocery list, my thoughts went back to the vision of the steel mill. God then spoke to my heart and said,
"Seven Years of Plenty."
This was a clear reference to Pharaoh's dreams, in Genesis 40. God gave Pharaoh, king of Egypt, two dreams-- back to back. In the first dream, he saw seven fat cows come up out of the river Nile. Then he saw seven scrawny cows come up out of the river. The emaciated cows ate up the fat ones. But the skinny cows looked just as famished as before, and then Pharaoh awoke. In the second dream, he saw seven ears of corn on one stalk, and they were ripe and full. Perfection. But then he saw seven more ears of corn appear. These were shriveled and nasty looking, but they ate up the good ears. Pharaoh woke up, and called for his magicians to interpret the dreams, but they could not. Joseph was called up out of prison, and he interpreted the dreams for Pharaoh.
Joseph said to Pharaoh, "Pharaoh's two dreams both mean the same thing. God is telling Pharaoh what he is going to do. The seven healthy cows are seven years, and the seven healthy ears of grain are seven years-- they're the same dream. The seven sick and ugly cows that followed them up are seven years and the seven scrawny ears of grain dried out by the east wind are the same-- seven years of famine.
"The meaning is what I said earlier: God is letting Pharaoh in on what he is going to do. Seven years of plenty are on their way throughout Egypt. But on their heels will come seven years of famine, leaving no trace of the Egyptian plenty. As the country is emptied by famine, there won't be even a scrap left of the previous plenty-- the famine will be total. The fact that Pharaoh dreamed the same dream twice emphasizes God's determination to do this and do it soon..."
I believe the combination of the furnace vision and the reference to Pharaoh's dreams suggest that a period of refining is coming-- yes, even to America-- and that it will take the form of war and famine. And I believe it is coming soon. I have been opening my Bible at random lately, and frequently find myself staring at Zephaniah 1:7 in The Message:
"Quiet now!
Reverent Silence before me, GOD, the Master!
Time's up. My Judgment Day is near:
The Holy Day is all set, the invited guests made holy."
So what should be our response? King Josiah and his people responded by repenting and cleansing the land of idol worship, and God delayed the coming judgment. But what do we here in America have to repent of? What idols do we worship?
We don't use an iron statue of Molech to burn babies alive on. Oh no, we are far too civilized for that! (We prefer to burn them in their mother's bodies, where we don't have to listen to their cries of pain.) We burn them with chemicals, or dismember them alive in a dilation and extraction procedure. Or in the case of partial-birth abortion (now banned in the US but still practiced elsewhere), we stick scissors in the soft spot on the skull right as the baby is crowning, and we suck their brains out. We scientifically and efficiently murder our unwanted children before they take their first breath. Civilized, we are. Oh yes! Isn't the sacrifice of innocents on the altar of Convenience worthy of our repentance? I'm sure we can find additional things to repent of if we put our minds to it, but abortion strikes me as an obvious place to start.
Besides repentance, what can we do? Micah 6:8 tells us, quoting from The New International Version:
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
The above passage addresses our relations with others (to act justly and love mercy) and with God (to walk humbly.) How about we pray together and ask God what needs to change in our lives in the areas of Justice and Mercy and walking humbly in His presence?
Finally, just as God warned Pharaoh of a coming famine so that he would make provision ahead of time, I believe God is giving the same warning to us today. War and famine are coming. But where are we on the timeline of the "seven years of plenty?" I really don't know. My impression was that the buckets were almost full and ready to be poured out.
The big three killers in the world are War, Famine, and Disease. They go together. They are holding hands! War leads to starvation and compromised sanitation because crops can't get harvested and the infrastructure providing clean water gets physically destroyed, or becomes inoperable due to attacks on the power grid. Starvation leads to weakened immune systems and greater susceptibility to disease spread through contaminated water. That's the usual order. War, then famine, then pestilence. This is what's coming. War and scarcity are on the horizon; I'm certain of it. But I believe God is giving us a little more time to prepare. The Furnace of Affliction is almost full, but there is still time to prepare.
Repent and get ready.
For those interested, you can find my book "101 God Thoughts: A Spiritual Journey from Covid to Cancer" on Amazon in paperback, kindle, and audiobook formats.
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