“The Lord is righteous, He is in her midst, He will do no unrighteousness. Every morning He brings His justice to light; He never fails, but the unjust knows no shame.” Zephaniah 3:5.
“I have cut off nations, their fortresses are devastated; I have made their streets desolate, with none passing by. Their cities are destroyed; there is no one, no inhabitant.” Zephaniah 3:6.
Verse 5 above, is shown to maintain context. It was covered in the last post on 7-12-24. By telling the Jews that He was in their midst God is showing that He always had an internal witness within Jerusalem.
We now turn to Zephaniah 3:6 wherein God speaks through the prophet to remind those in Jerusalem and throughout Judah of the external witness to His power and righteous indignation.
“I have cut off nations, their fortresses are devastated; I have made their streets desolate, with none passing by. Their cities are destroyed; there is no one, no inhabitant.” Zephaniah 3:6.
There are folks who can walk across a cemetery, stepping over grave after grave, reading the epitaphs as they go and noting the ages at death, 35, 67, 98, 17, 23, even 0. Yet they will walk away without realizing their own mortality.
Each person is going to live forever. Yet that is not what the gravestones tell us. There is a terminus and all of us will spend more time dead than we ever will alive.
If the gravestones could speak out, they would all say one thing, “Choose wisely.”
“The voice said, ‘Cry out!’ And he said, ‘What shall I cry?’ ‘All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.’” Isaiah 40:6-8.
“Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah” Psalm 39:4-5.
“When with rebukes You correct man for iniquity, You make his beauty melt away like a moth; surely every man is vapor. Selah” Psalm 39:11.
“…you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.” James 4:14.
The word Selah in a psalm means either pause, as in a musical pause because the psalms were sung, or it means, stop and consider what you have just read, think about it.
Just as men ignore the words of the gravestones so they ignore the words of history. This is why history is either ignored in schools today or twisted. Children without a sense of history are cast adrift with no purpose, no heritage, and no sense of mortality.
As a result of this lack of history men do not realize the following about God.
“Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket, and are counted as the small dust on the scales; look, He lifts up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon [the forest] is not sufficient to burn, nor its beasts sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless.” Isaiah 40:15-17.
Nations mean nothing to God; it is the individuals within those nations that God cares about. God has placed each person who ever lived in the best nation at the best time in history for them to learn of Him.
“THAT IS CRAZY!” Yes, it is, how can anyone be saved out of Babylon, Nineveh, communist countries, darkest Africa suffocating in voo doo wielded by demon possessed witch doctors, plus about 1400 years of murderously intolerant Islam, it seems impossible.
Yet they are, or God would not have done it this way. Think of Nineveh, and then read the book of Jonah.
Think of Babylon then remember that Nebuchadnezzar took thousands of Jews, including the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel, back to that city. Many of them would have told the Babylonians about the one and true God.
Missionaries who have gone into Africa and preached the gospel were often approached by villagers who told them that they knew there had to be something like this out there; they just did not know His name, Jesus.
There have been stories of Muslims in their own countries who have had dreams of Jesus telling them of Himself.
Places where God has no witness, and all Christians have been killed or driven out of many areas in the Middle East, He sends His Spirit to be a witness. God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
It is the works of Satan and his stooges, evil men that make so many of the world’s countries antagonistic to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“As it is written: There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God.” Romans 3:10-11.
“…there is none who does good, no, not one.” Romans 3:12b.
Satan and his knee-jerk puppets the liberals and atheists are attempting to eradicate Christians from America as they have done in other countries.
These people want to turn our land into a heathen third world country, worse yet they would like to fill the void with Islam.
Islam is the religion that mutilates women’s genitals and considers them little more than chattel enslaving them to men who dominate them their entire lives.
Islam is the religion that beats a teenage girl to death for being raped while on her way to the restroom.
There is a mercy in Islam that says that a person will go to paradise if they die a virgin. So, when a virgin is sentenced to death for some reason, the imams rape her to make sure she goes to hell.
Islam is a religion that kills unbelievers if they will not convert, or they just kill unbelievers. Do you really believe that terrorism is the result of a few radicals?
No, it is the teaching of Islam that authorizes the horrific acts they commit throughout Europe including murder and random rapes.
Islam is the “religion of peace” that godless men want to import into America.
“Has a nation changed its gods, which are not gods? But My people have changed their Glory for what does not profit. Be astonished, O heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid; be very desolate, says the Lord. For My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns – broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Jeremiah 2:11-13.
“Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.” Isaiah 45:22.
The Tyrannical City, Part 4A taken from godisrevealed.com posted on 4-12-17, updated on 7-15-24 ck.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission, all rights reserved.