The Working of God in History

The Book of Revelation is about an apocalypse. There are several books that deal with this topic—some of them are part of the Christian scriptures and others did not make the canon. The first one to be written was Daniel. Others include 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, the Shepherd of Hermes, and the Apocalypse of Peter.

These books share many similar themes. They prophesize that the end of history is near, and that there will be a final judgment where the good are saved and the evil will burn. These books were all written during times of distress and persecution (see Revelation 1: 9 and 2: 10) for the purpose of encouraging the faithful. It may not look like God controls history, but he does. Keep the faith, and God will soon intervene to reward you. All of the above books make this claim about God controlling history, and none of their predictions have come true. God must be controlling history in ways that humans cannot see or understand.

In the Jewish scriptures, God acts in ways that most honest people would find to be repugnant. In leading his people out of Egypt, God shatters the enemy, crunching his foes, devouring them like stubble (Exodus 15: 3-8, see also my book on Evangelical Christianity). A similar view is found in the book of Joshua. The central theme of Joshua is holy war. God leads his people in battle. In that role, God destroys towns and murders innocent women and children. His wrath kills everyone. This is a story about ethnic cleansing. God’s actions are comparable to Slobodan Milosevic. If this is the way God acts, I want nothing to do with him.

Again, let me return to the Jewish scriptures. It is a central article of Jewish belief that God acts in history. God acted to make a covenant with Israel, gave his people Law at Sinai, guided them out of Egypt, led them in battle to conqueror the land of Canaan, and established a monarchy to rule a united Israel. The question I have is why did God stop acting on behalf of his people? Israel as a united state ceased to function following the death of Solomon three thousand years ago. God’s chosen people suffered colonial oppression beginning with the invasion of Assyria in 721 BCE, a condition which continued virtually without interruption until the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Had the allies not intervened in World War 11, Hitler would have succeeded in exterminating God’s chosen people. I find it hard to understand how any Jew or Christian can accept the central premise of the Jewish scriptures that God acts in history.

Let me conclude this blog with a story that illustrates the belief of many Christians that God continues to act in history. Ten years ago my wife and I were driving from Colorado to our home in the mountains of North Carolina. At a gasoline stop in rural Tennessee, I picked up a local newspaper. It contained an amazing story. A week prior to our arriving, a tornado had ripped through a nearby town in the middle of the night. A young couple awoke the next morning after the tornado and could not find their two year old son. The section of their trailer where their son slept had been destroyed by the tornado. After a two hour search of the surrounding area, they found their son in his bassinette lodged in the branches of a tree virtually unharmed. The minister of their church proclaimed on the following Sunday that a miracle had taken place, that God had entered history to save that two year old boy. In proclaiming this miracle, the minister forgot to mention that the tornado killed five people in the town. Do you want to believe in a God that picks and chooses in that way?

Christians maintain their belief that God acts in history by crediting God with all the good that happens and finding another explanation for the bad things that happen. The claims of God acting in history in the Jewish and Christian scriptures are deeply flawed. The failure of the expectation of God to intervene to save Christian saints described in the Book of Revelation lends further credence to this point of view.