FIVE HUSBANDS AND TWO MEN: Christian Divorce and Re-Marriage? (Part 16 of 18)

33.   What God has Joined Together

In this chapter, we shall consider some compelling true-life stories, and questions to which we shall together seek answers.  The Pharisees approached Jesus, “tempting him” with the question of whether a husband could divorce the wife “for every cause.”  Jesus concluded His answer by saying to them, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Genesis 1:27; 2:24; Matthew 19:3-6).

The expression, “What therefore God hath joined together,” indicates clearly that God joins together.  The word “what,” however, serves the function of exclusion, technically separating and excluding the “what” from the others.  In other words, the fact that God joins together does not mean that He is responsible for everything joined together.  “What God has joined together” suggests that there is also ‘what’ He did not or has not joined together.

There are three forces that may administer a joining together: God, Satan, and humans.  The command to not undo what God has done should apply only to “what” He joined together, not to “what” He did not join together.  There are many ‘joined’ situations where God was not involved.

To the extent that Satan usually counterfeits whatever God does; to the extent that there are not only holy “angels of God” (John 1:51) but Satan also transforms or counterfeits himself “into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14), it should be no surprise that Satan also ‘joins together,’ through lusts, infatuations, witchcraft manipulations, and other means.  Not only God and Satan but humans also ‘join together,’ through ethnic or denominational sentiments, through traditions, lusts, greed, stupidity, and more (1 Samuel 18:21; 2 Kings 8:18, 26-27; Numbers 25:1; 31:16).  If a joining together did not follow God’s pattern and precepts, He could not have been the agent of it.  Man No. 6 in the Samaritan Story is a good example.  There was a ‘togetherness,’ but God was not in it, as far as Jesus was concerned.

One does not claim here to be providing answers to all questions about marriage.  Each marriage is unique, and one answer does not usually fit all cases, as we have seen in how differently Paul addressed his “cases,” and how differently Jesus also did, in Judea and in Samaria.  That is not to say that the Bible should be selectively applied; it is merely to say that we cannot make a general application of specific rules.  For example, the fact that Jesus told one rich man to go sell all that he had and return to follow Him does not mean that He is literally saying the same thing to every rich man (Matthew 19:21).  That said, I present the following true-life stories to which I want us to consider reasonable answers.

A pastor I know, told the following story.  A faithful brother in church got manipulated by the dark forces into marriage with an agent from the marine kingdom.  Their first meeting was strangely ‘innocently’ ‘circumstantial,’ their deviant steps being remotely ‘ordered’ by the assigned devils, in the reversed order of Psalm 37:23.

Emotions got soon fired up.  They agreed to be married.  However, when his pastor asked to meet her, she refused for them to see him.  The pastor was a man of prayer and fire.  The brother married her all the same.  Love was blindly on fire.  Then his life began to go downhill.  After ten years of marriage, she confessed to him that she was from the occult marine kingdom, sent to ruin and kill him because they had seen his star and known that he would be great.  All her other colleagues on similar assignments had been able to kill their husbands, but she had not succeeded, so she was going to be the one to die.  Divine boomerang.

Mercy preserved that man despite his naivety and backsliding.  She died.  He could not tell his shock to anyone, not even to their children, but to the same pastor from whom they had fled.  During those ten years, I am sure that she went with him to church, some churches; they did family devotion together, sometimes … but she was an agent, from an opposite kingdom.  To all appearances, she was ‘a Christian’ except, perhaps, that she was “not very strong, and could improve with time,” as some loving folks might have excused her.

From hindsight, can we properly say that it was God who joined that brother and that woman together?  Can we say that everything ‘joined together’ was joined together by God, merely by the fact of the joining together?  Should the instructions for what God has joined together apply also to what He did not join together?  Can we apply the rights of God to what is not of God?  Paul asks, “what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? … And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” (2 Corinthians 6:14-16).   The next question would be, can we always tell what God did not join together?

A case in the Old Testament story of the demonised King Saul is a very apt illustration of devils and men scheming to ‘join together’ an agenda, and God stepping in thereafter to technically put it asunder.  By 1 Samuel 16:14, the Spirit of God had departed from the backslidden king, and an “evil spirit” had taken him over.  His actions thereafter were much directed by the evil force that had possessed him.  For example, many times, out of jealousy, he sought to kill David, the anointed of the Lord.

By the Spirit of God, David prophesied with a sweet harp in his hands.  Possessed with an evil spirit, Saul also prophesied in that palace ‘congregation,’ but with a murderous javelin in his hand.  King Saul was significantly and eloquently religious, but demonically so.  He was lavish and regal, but demonised.  He was very physically attractive (1 Samuel 9:2), plus all the honours of a king, compared to the rustic shepherd boy with the harp.  Whoever lacked discernment and looked more at the religious words from Saul’s lips than also at the deadly javelin in his hand, or considered more the gold he wore than the devil in his soul, was bound to be fooled in that majestic congregation.  Whoever judged him only by the right words he spoke than also by the wrong tools he held, was going to be in danger (1 Samuel 18:10-11).  It is the tragedy of those who never wait to match words with deeds; who are moved by the words of the mouth without also checking the works of the hand; who get carried away with flamboyant leaves and never wait to see and judge trees also by their fruits (Matthew 7:20-21; Mark 11:13-14, 21; 7:6).

It was in that demonised state that Saul exposed a dark agenda against David; an agenda cooked in the coven of the haters of God.  The plot was clear: “to make David fall,” through ‘generously’ gifting his daughter to that rising star; to “give him her” with the one agenda that she “be a snare to him” (v. 21).  It was a glamorous gesture, but it was a dangerous gift.  A colourful pretty princess was being sent into the life of the shepherd boy, but her allegiance would be to an outside interest; she was going to be with him but not for him; she would fight against him for the interest of an outside patron who was not only “afraid of David” but was “David’s enemy continually” – an enemy for life.  Does that not describe the devil? (v.29).  It was a battle, not with swords and spears or slings and stones, as David was used to, but with kisses and smiles.  Her sponsors knew her mission; he did not.  The Bible says that “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it” (Proverbs 10:22).  This was going to be the opposite in every respect.

The two were going to be ‘joined together,’ but by a dark and malicious imperial interest.  She had been commissioned by an adversarial throne.  Through their crystal balls and satanic mirrors, we may say, they “saw” David’s present and future; they “saw and knew that the LORD was with David” and that he would be king.  They were determined to do everything to frustrate that atmosphere of God that David carried, to frustrate the glorious future that they “saw” coming for the young man.   How did they ‘see’ it?  Ask them.

There were two opposite camps; two kingdoms at conflict: David, the man that “the LORD was with him,” on one side, and King Saul, the one from whom the Lord “was departed” (v.12), on the other.  It was a conflict between two cosmic forces represented by humans on each side.  A woman was in the game.  David was the prize, at all possible costs.

The woman in question did not hate David; she “loved David,” but that love had a strange ‘attachment’ to it (v.20).  Those odd connections “pleased” Saul, but we cannot say that it also pleased God.  David usually consulted God on the steps he should take.  In this matter, there was such hurry and subtle pressure on him, with so many prestigious attractions, we are not told if he consulted God; but he consulted with other men who, unfortunately, were agents embedded in his space by the same wicked forces that were out to get him.

The nefarious network to destroy David was elaborate, involving the fronting ‘cordial’ domestic “servants” of Saul that no one would suspect, and the ferocious foreign Philistines whom everyone knew as enemies; it intricately involved internal ‘friends’ and external foes.  The servants were the ‘middlemen’; the ‘telephone line’ between both parties.  They claimed to be neutral, but they worked for David’s Enemy, ultimately “to make David fall” (v.25).  What a wicked agenda!

The plan was clear: “to make David fall,” not to lift him up, take him higher, make him stronger, richer, healthier, or holier.  It was “to make David fall,” not to promote him, edify him, inspire him, revive him.  In everything that Saul did, in the crafty domestic whispers meticulously engineered for David’s ‘coincidental’ ears, that was the aim: “to make David fall,” to make him less, to crash him from his dreaded upward climb.

Now, tell me, does that sound like the agenda of God?  According to Genesis 2:18, God ‘makes’ and ‘sends’ a wife as a helper or “help meet” to the man.  If that be so, can a spouse specifically commissioned by supernatural forces to pull the other down be called a helper from God?  Could such a pretty, wealthy girl (or boy) intended to destroy the upcoming Psalmist of God have been an angel from God, or an agent from Hell?  Does such a ‘joining together’ originate from God?  Is that scenario just an ancient, Bible truth; or still a modern reality and possibility?

The package seemed very appealing.  David, “a poor man,” was going to become “a king’s son.”  Wow!  It was not “a light thing” at all (v.23).  It was very attractive, with so much to get out of the deal: royalty, prestige, class, elevation, status; but he did not know that it was all “a snare” – a trap.  It seemed to offer so much, but it was going to cost much more – even his very life.  It offered something, but it was going to take everything.  Emotions were fired up and quickly connected.  The girl was in love, and “it pleased David well,” too (v.26).  Already emotionally entangled in that, David could not see the red flags anymore, especially the element of concealment and secrecy; for they communed with him “secretly” (v.22).   Darkness always fears the light.  Secret society.  Secret meetings.  Clandestine and encrypted communications.  Hidden plans.  He also could not discern the suspicious element of hurry with which everything was being pursued.  That was also a red flag, but he had lost the verse in the Bible that says, “he that believeth shall not make haste” (Isaiah 28:16).  He had become an unbeliever of a kind.

The day eventually came when she unleashed herself upon David, challenging rather than supporting his essential ministry as worshipper of God (2 Samuel 6:20-23).  Then, God stepped in to frustrate the plot against the innocent and undiscerning young man, stamping her with irreversible and perpetual barrenness, and by that process ensuring that that Jezebel did not birth a worse-than-herself ‘Athaliah’ upon the throne of Israel.  Heaven technically instituted an ‘asunderness.’  Mercy spoke for David despite his naivety.  May mercy speak for you, too. Amen.

So many similar true-life accounts are rushing at me now.  There was a man in my city who woke up one night to use the bathroom, then saw that the woman he had been sleeping with was a big fish, a literal fish in the bed.  With her fishy eyes glistening, she threatened to kill him if he dared to speak out about what he had discovered.  I live in a coastal city.  After many traumatic days, he ran into a Christian meeting, seeking God’s help.  He confessed his woes.  The power of God broke her spell over his life.  He went back to his abandoned wife and children after eleven months of bewitched romance.  When he and the pastor (a man with whom I have held several prayer retreats) went to see the house where he lived with the fish-woman for many months, the house was no more there.  Mystery.   But tell me, if you were that man, or his family, and I said to you, “God hates divorce,” would you give me a kiss or hate me for allegedly wishing you death?  Maybe that’s an extreme example.  Let’s take another.

We have lately been lamenting a good man whose terrible wife killed him, but not with a gun or a knife.  She starved him at home, and when he fled for food to his hotel, she pursued him there to harass him before his staff, often brutally verbally assaulting him and the staff, and sometimes threatening to hit him in the face, in the presence of everyone, even though she looked as skinny as if the wind could carry her away – and he was a bulky mass.  Sometimes the workers stood up to defend their boss from the merciless tigress.  There were times, as told by an insider, when he collapsed from her assaults, and she walked away mindlessly while his staff scampered to resuscitate and nurse him up again from the sudden crisis.

If she acted that way in public, they wondered, how did she treat him at home?  He got so depressed from the accumulated assaults, he died of a sudden heart attack.  His workers lamented him.  The obituary said that he died.  The wife got busy planning his burial.  Insiders knew who killed that good husband.  His staff wished that he had been bold enough and stood up for his peace …

Not too long ago, a beautiful sister was sent early to heaven by her beastly husband, who lives on.   She wouldn’t cry out, for shame that it could dent her name and ministry, as well as the image of her great church.  Her sweet voice having now been silenced, the church goes on, her place taken by another, and now the many regrets over her untimely grave; belated regrets about what might have been done differently.

Many years ago, my pastor told of a Muslim group in a western Nigeria city.  They plotted against a young woman who often came to preach to them at their mechanic shop.  One of them decided to feign conversion and follow her to church, then marry her and torment her.  One day, that man ‘repented’ and joined her church.  He got very active in the church.  Sometime later, he told the pastor that he wanted to marry her.  He did.  The morning after their wedding, when she woke up for them to pray, she saw him on the Islamic prayer mat, facing the east.  She was shocked.  He hushed her and announced the agenda to which she had become a victim, then he added, “Wives, submit to your husbands.”  He tormented her very violently, very brutally, and sent her early to heaven.  It was much later that the man got truly born again and confessed to his wicked agenda, but then he had ‘martyred’ her, maybe to join her afterwards in Paradise.   If she knew better, at least she might have fled and lived (Matthew 10:23; Proverbs), but she and the entire church were victims both of their spiritual blindness and a desperation to be married; victims of an imbalanced theology; victims of a religious posture that idolised the (‘graven’) ‘image’ of a ‘great’ church that must not be soiled, rather than the name of the Lord.  Idolatry comes in various guises.

A few months ago, social media in Nigeria carried the story of a woman who had cut off her husband’s penis.  When the police asked her why she did it, she said, in her crude pidgin English, that it was because he didn’t give her sex, but he slept with other women.  In the video, the man sat sprawled with his legs ajar, pitifully showing the bloodied vacant spot where his thing used to be.  Should he forgive that woman?  Yes, else his soul would be damned.  But would you advise him, as an expression of his godly forgiveness, to keep staying with that wife, because no man should put asunder what God had joined together?  I didn’t hear your answer.

Were there signs that might have indicated to the man that his wife could get so vicious?  Did he receive and respond to those early warning signs?  If he had taken an early step, would he have been damaged for life in that way?

If by some miracle his organ grew back, wouldn’t it be a sign of commendable devotion to God for him to reconcile with that wife?  As a further expression of his commitment to the word of God, after reconciliation, shouldn’t he take her back home?  Should he have any reason to fear that she might cut it off again, or maybe even cut off his head and offer it to herself on a charger, like the head of John the Baptist?  Should anyone separate what God has joined together?

There is usually an Ark, but it doesn’t stay open forever (Genesis 7:16; Matthew 25:10).  Those who fail to flee their city when death threatens, despite the warning of the Master (Matthew 10:23); those who, when they shall “see the abomination of desolation,” ignore the signs and the warning to depart their cherished Judaea and “flee into the mountains,” shall have their days sadly shortened by that abomination that causes desolation (Matthew 24:15-22).

Samson saw the signs of Delilah’s cruel capabilities, but he was too enchanted with love and too bewitched with the sorcery of Delilah to flee for life (Judges 16:4-17, 23-24).  He kept her and he kept ‘his ministry,’ recording consecutive successes over outside enemies attracted only by her presence with him in the house.  In the end, after she had done her paid assignment, we do not find her by the side of her blinded, groping husband.  The love songs ceased suddenly.  She had gone away with her fat pay (v.5).   It is said that Samson loved her, but nowhere is it said that she loved him, too (vv. 4, 15).  Had Samson acted early on the warning signs, he would have lived better and longer.  In the end, there was ministry no more when there was man no more to do the ministry.  The abrupt end of the man became the sudden termination of the ‘ministry.’

In these matters, there have been private experiences in which God dealt with someone in a unique way.  For instance, a divorced woman told of her remarkable encounter in which God warned her to not remarry, or she would be damned.  God knew why He said that to her, but He did not say it to Joyce Meyer in her second marriage after she had fled her abusive first marriage; He did not say it to John Hagee about his present wife from a second marriage; He did not say it to Isik Abla who fled her first marriage in Turkey when her Muslim husband had put a knife to her throat, then had a second divorce from the drug lord from whom she had hoped for love, before her third marriage with the man who supports her worldwide ministry to millions, with remarkable testimonies of angelic encounters and heavenly visitations; He did not say it to Kenneth Copeland or Richard Roberts (and you probably know others more).  Furthermore, a pastor told what a remarkable encounter he had, in which God showed him whom he was going to marry, after he had had a sad divorce.

Maybe it was God who spoke to each of those with their opposite encounters; maybe not.  That is why no personal experience is a Bible, and specific cases may not be generalised as if every message to someone is always a message to everyone.  A true encounter would validate the Bible, but it is not superior to or a substitute for the Bible.  Where an experience properly lines up with the Bible, it deserves attention.  Where it does not, it deserves caution even when the characters involved might be notable international preachers.  That is to say that we are impelled in these matters to be as the Berean Christians, to receive the word “with all readiness of mind” rather than with traditional biases, and to search the scriptures properly, whether those things be so (Acts 17:11).

It is said that what God has joined together no man should put asunder (Mark 10:9).  Unfortunately, many folks, especially Christians, have used such scriptures and the unwholesome interpretation of them as a basis for misbehaviour, sometimes such gross misbehaviour as an unbeliever would never dare in their marriage, or even they themselves would never have dared if their partner were an unbeliever.  Armed by such unwholesome perspectives to the scriptures, and persuaded therefore that their partner could never divorce them no matter what happened, they are emboldened to misbehave.  To such manipulators of truth, a message of this kind would be sadly disappointing.

How does one decide or discern what God joined together?  That will be a story for another book.  Furthermore, besides everything said so far, if that Bible passage is interpreted to mean that WHATEVER has been ‘joined together’ should never be helped apart, it would be a contradiction to Paul’s position that a situation of strong disagreement between the parties can result in an acceptable apartness between them, and that infidelity could provide a valid cause for divorce, according to Jesus.  The fault is not in the scriptures but in our misconceptions and misinterpretations.

Like Lucifer when “iniquity was found” in him, even what was originally ‘joined together’ by God, when it loses the ‘God’ element in it, can lose its right of place in the paradise of God (Ezekiel 28:15).  The God-glue that ‘joins together’ is not in itself everlasting.  The union has to be intentionally preserved by the parties for it to remain active.  ‘Once saved’ does not mean ‘forever saved,’ and ‘once married’ is not ‘forever married’ where the ‘gluing’ conditions have been violated.

Undoubtedly, while some readers would be thankfully liberated by such light as has been presented here, there would certainly be those to whom this message would be distressing, not because they fault the scriptural validity of the illuminations it offers, but because it is shocking newness.  Others still might tag it “controversial,” not because it is, but because it offers uncommon and unpopular pathways.   That is to be expected when fresh truth confronts rigid old views.  Welcome to the experience: learning new truths, relearning known truths, and unlearning errors and half-truths.  What God has joined together may not be put asunder, but Satan also joins together; men do, too; and what God did not join together let not men continue to force together.

From The Preacher’s diary,

 July 20, 2021. 

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