GOD’S FOUR SORE JUDGEMENTS (Part 2 of 4)

5.  Pestilence

19 Or if I SEND a pestilence into that land, and pour out MY fury upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast:

20 Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness (Ezekiel 14:19-20).

What we read as “pestilence” in the King James Version is rendered in other translations as “plague,” as “epidemic,” as “deadly disease.”  Of course, this would be another source of multiple deaths, of widespread infectious and contagious deaths; death that enters a house without knocking on the door; death beyond normal control, that begets other deaths, spreading itself, like cholera, Ebola, HIV/AIDS, meningitis, bird flu, cow pox, monkeypox, bubonic, influenza, and so on; pestilence on divine assignment, ‘sent’ by the Almighty, as an expression of “MY fury.”  But, can – or should – a loving God get into such boundless “fury” with puny mortals?  Ask the Jews.

Again, it will be possible to intellectually explain the plague away as a consequent health hazard from the general deteriorating environmental conditions since the beasts and the sword.  After all, the Spanish Flu or Great Influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 seemed connected to the First World War (1914-1918) at the tail of which the influenza broke out.  Like then, the ‘experts’ will attribute the pestilence to the several unattended decomposing carcasses of infected and killed humans and animals washing off into drinking wells; they will attribute it to the endless heaps of putrefying rubbish and their numberless populations of rodents and roaches shuttling between those dumps and unfortunate homes; they will blame it on the worsening morbid conditions of the overcrowded refugee camps from where the pestilence will sometimes choose to break out, like a brutal suicide bomber choosing a crowded marketplace for ‘maximum impact.’

In the circumstances, governments will seek medical messiahs such as the World Health Organisation, and citizens will rather die stretched on clinical sheets in overcrowded hospital floors than lie before the abandoned altar of a transgressed God crying for mercy.  That will make the next phase of Judgment inevitable: The Omnibus Basket of all Four Sore Judgments!  Not every time have a people under divine judgment realized where their trouble is coming from, especially when there seems to be logical explanations for why things are as they are.  That is the ‘sense’ that sometimes opens the door to every next judgment.

Why do all four judgments involve death? Does death represent divine judgment?  Sometimes, Yes.  God declares in Ezekiel 18:4, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” in other words, sin and death.  Also, according to Romans 5:12-19, death entered the world through sin; again, death connected with sin.  There is certainly a relationship between sin and some kinds of death, especially death that involves so many persons within a limited time in a limited space.  Everyone will die someday if Jesus tarries, but some deaths make strange headlines.  All death is not divine judgment, but death that becomes consecutive or persistent in a given community within a given brief time might be pointing to something more.

6.  Famine, Beast, Sword, Pestilence

For thus saith the Lord GOD; How much more when I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast? (Ezekiel 14:21).

Any one of these four judgments is bad enough, how much more the combination of all!  God Himself wonders to us, “How much more…?” … a pervading merciless hunger, plus prowling armed bandits, plus an outbreak of a merciless war, plus a spectral epidemic… every hungry person grappling with the famine by preying on the other, carrying a sickly little child and escaping armed gangs, tending an infected dying wife or mother while father is away at some unknown battlefront in a land ravaged by disease in shared squalors… danger and death gaping from every open door… who has been fortunate to escape the death of war dies the death of pestilence; who survives the pestilence falls into the jaws of a wild beast; who seems too famished, too wasted, too bony to appeal to the beasts is abandoned to be slowly devoured by the merciless hunger… famine, beasts, sword, pestilence… fear, uncertainty, anxiety… ruined buildings, deserted ghostly cities… trouble and sorrow everywhere…  God’s four sore judgments… and that time seems not very far…

7.  The Remnants

22 Yet, behold, therein shall be left a remnant that shall be brought forth, both sons and daughters: behold, they shall come forth unto you, and ye shall see their way and their doings: and ye shall be comforted concerning the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, even concerning all that I have brought upon it.

23 And they shall comfort you, when ye see their ways and their doings: and ye shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done in it, saith the Lord GOD (Ezekiel 14:22-23).

God could be so vexed as to send any of the four sore judgments, or all four at the same time, but He will remember His remnants, those who have separated themselves unto Him in the midst of the iniquities for which He has had to punish the people.  From Job 5:19-24 comes the following assurance (notice the “troubles” and their sequence):

            19          He shall deliver thee in six TROUBLES: yea, in seven there shall no evil tough thee.

            20          In FAMINE he shall redeem thee from death; and in war from the power of the SWORD.

 21          Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue: neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh.

22          At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh: neither shalt thou be afraid of the BEASTS of the earth.

23          For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field: and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.

24          And thou shalt know that thy tabernacle shall be in peace; and thou shalt visit thy habitation, and shalt not sin.

In Ezekiel 14:12-14, 15-16, 17-18, 10-20, God promises repeatedly that if He were so vexed with a land as to send any or all four terrors upon it, He would not forget the righteous men in it, even though their righteousness would save themselves alone; no child, no wife on their ticket.  In the last two verses of the chapter, God makes His pledge further about the righteous remnants:

Yet, behold, therein shall be left a remnant that shall be brought forth unto you… and ye shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done… (Ezekiel 14:22-23).

Are you among the remnant few?  Does your lifestyle say so, or merely your ‘positive confessions’?

It is consoling to hear God promising that there will be remnants preserved through the ferocious and grisly scourge, but that is not so attractive when the sore judgments could have been averted before they had run their deadly course.  How elegantly will a remnant walk through discarded streets and decomposing carcasses, headed for a promised house of comfort?  What melodies will they raise in bombed-out buildings with spiky metals next to graveyards of numberless relations?  How happily will they sing in a chair next to another vacant chair where their father could have been sitting?  How many alabaster boxes will they break to overcome the stench of yesterday’s putrefactions?  The promise of Remnants is only second best, like the garments of animal skin over the nakedness of a fallen race exiting the glorious Eden.  Better if the judgments had never been forced to come…

From The Preacher’s diary,

May 5, 1994.