Shaking Down The Old Creation
Jeff Treder
 
 

If you have ever experienced a major earthquake, or even a medium one, you know how disorienting and unnerving it is, along with plain scary. Once when I was a young man I was reading in our living room when I heard a loud rumbling like a freight train bearing down on us, and then I felt the rumbling, and everything was swaying and shaking. I grabbed the chair arms and looked out the window, where the posts supporting the porch roof were waving like saplings in a whipping wind. It was all over in less than a minute, but that was over forty years ago and I remember it vividly. It was not a major quake.

In Hebrews 12 the author, quoting Haggai 2:6, warns that God is once again going to shake the earth, even as He did when He gave the law to His people at Mt. Sinai (see Ex.19:16-18, Judges 5:4-5). This time, however, the shaking will be much greater: the heavens also will be shaken, and everything in this creation that has not been redeemed into the kingdom of God will be destroyed. This teaching is confirmed in 2Peter 3:10-13 and Rev.21:1. The shaking begins as a warning and continues on until the old creation is totally destroyed.

Other Old Testament prophets besides Haggai voiced the same warning. Isaiah 2:6-22 graphically describes the Day of the Lord, when all human pride and arrogance will be brought low, and

Men will flee to caves in the rocks
and to holes in the ground
from dread of the Lord
and the splendor of His majesty,
when He rises to shake the earth. Joel gives a similar picture of the Day of the Lord (3:14-16), and the apostle John was shown the same calamitous event: "Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?'" (Rev.6:15-17) What's so wrong with the creation as it exists today, that God should be moved to destroy it? As He was creating it, He repeatedly pronounced it "very good" (Gen.1:4-31). The problem, of course, is us. We fell into sin and began corrupting God's good creation, beginning with what was nearest to hand, our own selves, body and soul. James describes this process by which our mind first dwells on evil desires, then "after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death." (1:13-15) We stake out some territory, beginning with our own self, and claim it for our own; as a poet put it, "I am the captain of my soul." In doing so we leave God's covering and open our soul to our soul's enemy, Satan, who laughs at our delusion as he fans our pride, greed, lust, anger, and all the rest.

Having defiled ourselves, we proceed to defile everything we touch. Thus we have defiled God's good institution of the family with adultery, divorce, child abuse, incest, homosexuality, and young girls having babies with only a guess as to who the absent father is. We have defiled the relations between people groups; tribes, nations, races; until the whole human society is torn by inter-tribal warfare (often brutal and genocidal), the poison of racial bigotry, and international rivalry, hostility, and terrorism.

Having been given a divine mandate of stewardship over the earth (Gen.1:26-28), we have turned our energies to exploiting, ravaging, and polluting it. Earth's rain forests are crucial to maintaining climactic stability, but we are burning them at such a rate that we are already experiencing freakish weather patterns; record floods, snowfalls, droughts, heat waves, tornadoes, and the like; and if we keep it up, look for worse to come. The burning of forests and fossil fuels has released so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that global warming is now a measurable fact, with the twelve warmest years in the twentieth century occurring since 1982. Many regions of the earth are severely polluted by agricultural chemicals, industrial and other toxic wastes, and nuclear radiation; and there are more Chernobyls out there waiting to happen. If, even in Paul's day, the whole creation was groaning for release from its bondage to our corruption (Rom.8:18-23), what is it doing today?

(By the way, when non-Christians accuse us of extreme arrogance, or worse, for believing that the fate of the whole universe depends on what we do on this one small planet, I think our best response is: Sorry, but that's what the Bible teaches, and I believe the Bible is the true word of God. Besides, it shows that He values creatures made in His image more highly than zillions of stars and galaxies.)

Whatever we touch and claim for our own, we defile. And God permits it. But not much longer.

Haggai prophesied all this very plainly. In chapter 2, God declares that He will shake the whole creation and all the nations, and then "the desired of all nations will come," and the Lord will fill His house with greater glory than ever before. He calls on His people to repent of defiling what is holy, and in verse 18 He tells them to focus on the foundation of His temple, who (we now know) is Jesus Christ (1Cor.3:11, Eph.2:20). Because this prophecy is quoted in Hebrews 12 in a passage about events preceding the second coming of Christ, we can be sure that Haggai 2 also refers to the second coming.

How can we recognize this divine shaking? The main thing to look for is when our self-generated problems have grown beyond our ability to cope and they threaten to destroy us. We should keep an eye on the ravages of drug abuse, AIDS and other virulent diseases, racial and ethnic hostilities, global economic upheavals (as in the former Soviet Union and in East Asia, and probably going global when the y2k bug bites), nuclear proliferation (especially with the Russian military in chaos and resentful over its desperate poverty), increasingly violent terrorism (using chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons), China throwing its weight around, increasing worldwide disparity between rich and poor people (sparking a variety of dangerous consequences), and mounting damage from our degradation of the natural environment. At this point, the Lord is simply shaking things, so that what is overgrown begins to topple from its own weight, what is out of balance begins to fly out of control, and what is rotten begins to fall apart.

Watch also for an increasing spirit of repentance among God's people; deep, anguished repentance, with confession of sin and restitution. This too is a result of the divine shaking, as Joel 2 shows us, where the shaking is due to the Lord's mighty army marching to bring judgment on Israel, and He calls on His wayward people to repent before it is too late.

The shaking will intensify until everything we have built up in our pride and all our corruption of God's creation is finally and utterly destroyed. Nothing that is not His can remain in His presence.

Scripture tells us that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (Prov.9:10) Many Christians have wondered, secretly or aloud, how that ancient teaching applies in this age of grace. If we haven't found out yet, we will before long. The holy fear the Bible speaks of rises within us when we become aware that God Himself, in His absolute holiness, is near to us and drawing nearer. This fear and the deep repentance it produces are the first signs of true revival. It has always been this way. In Ezra's day, the word of the Lord came to rebuke His people, and Ezra reports:

"When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat down appalled. Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles." (Ezra 9:3-4) The Lord says: "This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at My word." (Isa.66:2) Now more than ever, we who enjoy the indescribable blessing of knowing the God of Israel ought to shake in our shoes and tremble at His word. He is calling us, in this "last of the last days," to heartbroken repentance from all our pride and self-regard, all our meanness and divisiveness, all our contribution to the prevailing corruption. Even beyond that, He is calling us to "identificational repentance," a concept which John Dawson expounds in his powerful book, Healing America's Wounds (Regal Books, 1994). Here is the idea: we look around in our society and see every variety of flagrant evil; political corruption, economic injustice, racial bigotry, vile pornography, child abuse, Satan worship, the abortion holocaust, and on and on. Strongly tempted though we are to judge and condemn this evil like good righteous Pharisees, Dawson urges us to do virtually the opposite. We must recognize that "there but for the grace of God go I"; and we must recognize that we ourselves have harbored hatred, greed, lust, and bigotry in our own heart, and only God's unmerited grace has kept us from falling into gross sin; or saved us out of it, depending. Recognizing this, we can sincerely identify with the pornographer, the neo-Nazi bigot, the drug baron, the abortionist, or the child molester. And having made the identification, what else can we do but cry out to God for mercy, forgiveness, and healing. Such prayers, earnest and heartfelt, have heart-changing power, our own heart first and then the hearts of those we are identifying with and interceding for.

Nothing else, not Supreme Court rulings or Congressional legislation or daytime talk shows, can heal our feverish society. Only God can. Using us, His chosen instruments. Us, praying, fasting, interceding. Asking forgiveness of anyone we have wronged. Bringing reconciliation. Coming together to seek His face and worship Him. Spreading the good news: Jesus is coming, the earth shakes at His approach, but it's not yet too late.

Jeff Treder
treder@televar.com
 
 

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