NON-OBSERVATIONS: THE HISTORY OF SMALL THINGS
“I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace” (Rom. 11:4)
“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts…. For who hath despised the day of small things?” (Zech. 4)?” (Zech. 4)
“From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life” (Jn.6)
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This is perhaps the greatest "offense" of all in the Kingdom where nothing really ever happens. 7000? And these 7000 were such shamblers that even Elijah was surprised they existed. "Are there few that be saved?" Not much to observe here. Elijah thought God would finally put his foot down and deal with rebellion in the manner of the sons of Boanerges--"fire from heaven"--that's the way to improve their mind. Instead, he is given his last mandate at the foot of Mt. Sinai, not in the form of the first giving of the law (“I exceedingly fear and tremble,” Moses said back then) , but contrary to all expectations in the form of a "still small voice," for “by a prophet (the preaching of the Word of God) was Israel preserved” (God demonstrated this power when he humbled Nineveh by the preaching of Jonah). Imagine what he could do if he went back to Samaria with wind, fire and earthquake in his tool-bag. Raising the dead, Jesus tells the rich man, adds nothing to Moses and the Prophets. Elijah had hoped that the fire on Mt. Carmel would turn the tide. It made wicked Jezebel worse. God was in the 7000. The 7000 had been there all along, barely observable, like a “cup of water,” or the widow’s two mites, “the quiet in the land.” Of such is the kingdom of God. Of all the “offenses” which cause men to “stumble at the Word” this must be the worst: that the host of God is never more than a flock of sheep shambling through history, “pulling down strongholds.” But no sooner does the Spirit of God break out but men cast about seeking to make the church presentable to the world, with high, ear tickling, striving about words, monstrous buildings, men in robes sitting at Caesar's table--and soon the Temple is right back where it was:”the king’s chapel.” But here God is already laying the foundation for the Church of Antioch on a “street called Straight'' in Damascus (Google it) , for both Elijah and Elisha will now be a constant presence in Syria, which is perhaps why the captive “little maid” in Naaman the leper’s household doesn’t seem all that homesick. Ahab’s very lucrative “streets in Damascus” would have required a Jewish presence, and Jews were never without their synagogues--which became the hard drives unto which God downloaded his Word. At Pentecost they were in place, and the Hebrew Bible had been downloaded into Greek language and culture, the Iphone or App of the ancient world (Greek was to language what the Iphone is to a regular phone, and even more so--an avalanche that swept all before it, utterly irresistible), fed to the world via Roman hardware: an almost worldwide web of roads, law and order. But Elijah, like the disciples after, could see no further than a Jewish kingdom, and 7000 were the equivalent of a widow’s mite within that framework.
600,000 men came out of Egypt over 600 years ago, and now there are only 7000 believers to be found in all the 10 northern tribes of Israel? Now compare the 7000 to the entire population of the world at that time. By any estimate, this is the day of small returns. And God uses the number as proof that the march of the Kingdom of God through history is on schedule. But Elijah had his eye on the small dial of the clock, which is why the Kingdom never seems to happen. If six day Creation was like the Big Bang, the re-Creation is akin to Evolution (the world sees Creation as Evolution, and false prophets build huge temples and recreate the Kingdom of God in a two hour show every Sunday, rock band and all). The angels sang and shouted for joy at the first, only to now be made to endure the martyrs’ unceasing cry of “how long” in God’s presence over the never-ending second. Lamech was tired at age 182, and had 595 years to go, the last 95 watching Noah built his boat. Reading Pliny the Elder (he was a close friend of Emporer Titus) I came across a sentiment I had never heard before: that God cannot give himself one of the greatest gifts he bestows on mankind--release from the cares of life in death. This from a man who had everything. A lifespan of 969 years would have made his hair stand on end. Yet there is not one scholar on the face of the earth who knows what to do with the numbers in Genesis 5 other than what they are. Every trick has been tried and none have taken hold. The last man in Genesis dies at 110. It's hard to know how Lamech can see "comfort" in Noah's work, but I doubt he would have seen anything beyond 110 years as a bonus.
“It’s not the things I don't understand in the Bible that scare me,” Mark Twain said, “it’s the things I do.”
An excavating contractor, newly divorced, stopped by several weeks ago, and, not long into the conversation said, “well, I’m not going to live the rest of my life alone.” “You think the Bible is true?” I asked. He was non-committal, in a “who knows what it says” way. Really, I said, what would keep a person like yourself, obviously a captain of industry, from just taking a cue from Nature, and bestride the world in the manner of alpha males: take what you want and don’t let middle class morality keep you from realizing your potential. The coyotes around here don’t feel the slightest guilt when they attack my sheep. Religion is what keeps the poor from killing the rich, Napoleon said. The notion of morality was invented by the herd of weaklings to keep the strong from preying on them. But why would a person like yourself, knowing this, be encumbered by it. Take for instance, I said, cemeteries. A wolf looks at them and clucks, “a lot of food going to waste.” How is it that humans dump their dead into the sea knowing that they’ll be consumed by the fishes, but waste these resources on land? If you’re a true Naturalist, I said, your greatest contribution to Nature would be to blow up all the hospitals and pharmacies to rid Nature of the survival of the weakest. He eyed the distance to the gate, but I was between him and his truck. In Germany, I said, almost half the Catholics are afraid to take communion because they can’t shake the teachings of their fathers that remarriage is a “state of continuing and perpetual adultery” (look up Vatican website). Their priests tell them not to worry about such ancient superstitions, but they do, and keep asking the Pope to find a way out of their dilemma. Every attempt has failed. If you can find a solution here, I said, you would become a billionaire. But you yourself are not bothered by this? If you have found a solution, I said, you owe it to these people to show them a way out. He said, "I have a lot to think about when I get back home."
A man once stopped me in the street and blurted out: “I’m confused, I need to remarry, but the Bible says I can’t” (every preacher in the city told him he could). “You’re frustrated, Les,” I said, “not confused. For you want something the Bible denies you, and you’re confused because your preachers tell you to do something the Bible condemns.”
I asked another contractor why he doesn’t believe the Bible. All the interpretations, all the translations and all the different religions, he said. What really did it for him though were the rich trappings of his Catholic church in Florida. Why would that bother you, I asked. Jesus was poor, he said. Who told you that? I asked. Because it's in the Gospels. And why would you think the Bible is true there, I asked. Indeed.
People who look to be “offended” will find enough rope on almost any page of the Bible with which to hang themselves. Twain, Hitler, Churchill could enlighten you very quickly, because the chief offense of Cross is the plain offense of the Scripture throughout: it’s almost the exact opposite of everything you see in the real world: nothing in Babylon makes sense in the Jerusalem that is from above. Consequently, when unconverted man reads the Scripture he finds ample fodder for “wresting.” Long before Darwin, the preacher Enoch, who could point to Adam himself sitting in the pew (contemporary 308 years), had to endure the “hard speeches” of the ungodly. The great offense of the Scripture are not the numbers, the science, the seeming inconsistencies, but the ideas of the plain narrative there for all to see and to “wrest:”
The Fall happened almost immediately after Creation (before Cain was conceived). Which means God lost control of His invention before it had a chance to get going.
All the misery of the world (crime, cancer, cruelty) is due to one bite of an apple.
God is having to constantly restart the game to keep from losing (I do this playing chess with my computer). In the end He turns defeat into victory by converting utter failure into a rescue mission: the entire population destroyed, but 8 souls saved in the Flood, to be followed by half and less (four plucked from the fires of Sodom and Gomorrah). How is it that God Himself, “striving with man,” is left to console Himself with 8 souls for his labors. This is the actual, non-debatable aspect of the Bible that Twain talks about.
God allows Job to be caught up in a boxing match between Himself and Satan and basically tells Job it’s business as usual for a Christian, without as much as a hint as to the true nature of Job’s suffering.
Jesus allowed a good man “he loved” to perish for “lack of one thing.” God so loved the world, but is able to save only a Remnant.
The few that are “the Elect” according to predestination are told to “strive to enter into the narrow gate.” Does God cause them to strive by giving them the gift of grace? So instead of “striving with man,” why not give him the grace to strive in a different direction.
So now we have the Remnant as a catchall for all previous failures. “Election” proves that God was always in control, and that all that God wanted to be saved, notwithstanding “striving,” will, in the end, be saved.
“Will ye also go away?” Jesus asks, as if to say, “you either take it or leave it, because no more explanations are forthcoming.” “Where to,” Peter says. Besides, we see the larger picture which explains everything. God strives and God elects. Nothing anyone was written to reconcile the two is worth repeating. It's in the category of "how could God not have a beginning. God did not endow men with the capacity to think on that level. The majority of humans will perish and yet God will be seen as merciful.
The second year here on my acreage was a very wet one. In the Spring when I would bring my flock home from the slough after a day in the rain, one two week old lamb would come up and just stand in front of me. I scooped him up, tucked him into my shabby coat with his neck draped around mine, closed the zipper and proceeded through the mud, up the hill, through another small slough, and finally to their cozy barn. Ever so often, I should unzip my coat to see if he was still alive only to find a bright shining brown eye looking at me--he thought he had won the lottery. For all he knew we were both going over a cliff together. Every day for a week he would come up for his free ride. It made my day. Explain that again, the lambs would later say in their cozy nests. You say you didn’t have to trudge through all that dreck, and that you were steaming warm the whole time? You say the old man gave you a break--for sheep often see the shepherd as “an hard man.” Lets just say, my cup ran over. Then they were content, for a lamb’s cup always runs over, and that in the "presence of their enemies." There's no way to explain that. And all the lambs, having supped well, and snug in their warm barn while the coyotes howled hungrily without, knew that though they themselves walked through the valley of the shadow, "goodness and mercy" had followed them home. When ordinary people read the Bible, they say, “That’s it, I know whom I have believed.” All a lamb needs is a shepherd to be happy. Like Peter seems to say, we don't understand it any better than they do, but you have it figured out, and that's enough.