God intervenes with judgment

It is clear (to those with faith) that God has intervened in judgment, and promises to do so further. We must look in more detail at some aspects of this topic.

For me it is a maxim that whatever God does, whether in blessing or in judgment, He does within the same framework of divine love. God does not get tetchy or irritable, as we humans do. His anger will be as much a response of love as His praising. So we must look for the love principle whenever we consider His judgments on individuals or groups.

The first recorded act of judgment was the expulsion from the Garden of Eden - and access to the Tree of Life - of Adam and Eve. No longer would their life be the ease of the garden, but the toil and labour of a natural environment more resistant than before. The 'thorns and thistles' would keep the human race well occupied - a judgment of love for a race now possessed of the 'knowledge of good and evil' through their own disobedience. It's all in Genesis chapter 3.

The love principle behind this judgment is quite evident: man in total leisure would have little restraint on his capacity for inventing evil things to occupy himself with; but being forced to work hard for survival would ensure that he would be compelled to concentrate on productive activities. And history is full of examples of just how far astray men can go when leisure (or power) gives them this freedom from the survival incentive.

The next act of judgment comes many generations later, and the record begins in Genesis chapter 6. God saw 'that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually'. This is the backdrop to the flood from which Noah and his family were given prior warning and the means to survive.

Any one who has read 'The Genesis Flood' by Whitcomb and Morris (1961) will know that we are dealing here with history as well as myth. The means by which the flood was delivered was the canopy of cloud that had hitherto covered the planet. The canopy was released as precipitation, and the physical evidence of this is thoroughly established by scientific observation.

Before the flood, the lifespan of humans was reckoned in the several hundreds of years. After the protective canopy was removed, the sun could now penetrate the earth's atmosphere more directly. Light refraction from the sun now occurred for the first ever time. The rainbow was the symbolic headline of what God had done, the sign He gave that such a flood could never happen again. The canopy was no longer there.

The protective canopy was no longer protecting mankind from the ageing process directly connected with how the sun's rays affect us physically. The ozone layer still provides a lesser degree of protection. Now men lived till just over a hundred (Abraham and Moses, for instance) but before long the average span came down to seventy years. This reduction in the lifespan of a race whose imagination 'was only evil continually' was (I venture to suggest) the main purpose of the flood. God modified the living conditions of the planet to put a limit on how evil a man could become. It was a judgment of love.

Obviously the thoughts on this page are very slightly presented, for such a massive conclusion. I have not presented the whole case, intentionally, but rather given a starting point for personal research and reflection. The principle is what I want to establish, because there is a further - and final - intervention promised (or threatened, depending on where one stands in relation to the Lord of Life). We are told on the best possible authority that 'heaven and earth will pass away' (Matthew 24 v. 34). It will be just like in the days of Noah (v. 38), a human race totally oblivious of the judgment about to descend. Some will be removed, some will not (v. 40-1). The result is described in awesome terms: 'the heavens will pass away with a loud noise ... the elements will be dissolved with fire ... the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up.' (2 Peter 3 v. 10)

But all this will not be an act of revenge, but of love. The final termination of the kingdom of evil will be delayed until that evil has reached such a peak that not to intervene would be callous. Then the God of love will destroy one universe to replace it with a 'new heaven and a new earth' (Revelation 21 v. 1).

I am fully aware that this whole topic is a minefield. Many sects have been founded on the basis of a claim to predict the precise moment of God's final intervention. The warnings our Lord gave (read the whole two chapters Matthew 24 and 25) were that there would be such deceptions, often with compelling 'signs and wonders', that many false prophets would arise. I do not wish to add to any such speculations regarding timing. But I do want to spell out the essential message: God is a God of Love; God does intervene in judgment; God does so to limit evil, and ultimately - in a final intervention - to destroy it.