God's Work with Planet Earth

In the last few posts I’ve been exploring what happened after Israel as a nation went from having prophets and judges with no incentive to act selfishly, to kings as leaders who definitely had many incentives to rule for their own interests. We’ve seen how Satan and his fallen angels posed as false gods and managed to seduce the kings with power, sex, wealth, and pride. And the people followed their kings.

But we also saw how God kept showing the truth, countering the dark forces, giving people a chance to choose – the same chance we have today. It’s also amazing and inspiring to see God’s mercy in forgiving, reconciling and restoring people like David, Solomon, and Manasseh who made horrible mistakes.

Warnings and Prophecy Materialize

God had made conditional promises that if the people would follow Him, He would bless them and make them a great nation. If they didn’t follow him, other nations would conquer and subject them, because they had rejected God and His protection and blessings.

We see the history of the nation of Israel from Genesis to Esther. This is what happened and how God was involved. Then the books of poetry from Job to Song of Solomon, and finally the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi. These prophets lived during the history we see in the books of 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles, and they include many warnings from God to the kings and people of Israel and Judah.

The “End of Kings” for Israel came when these warnings went unheeded, and they committed abominations worse than the Canaanites God drove out when He brought them out of Egypt. Assyria finally came and destroyed Samaria, and took the people captive and resettled them in other countries. This happened in 722 BC.

The “End of Kings” for Judah came later, and they were given more time because they reformed from idolatry more often, though inconsistently, than their neighbor, Israel. Babylon conquered Assyria and then subdued Judah three times, the third time destroying Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple. This happened in 586 BC.

The prophets kept telling the rulers that this was punishment from God (He allowed the other nations to conquer them) because they had ignored God’s warnings to repent, and they should submit and accept this correction. But they stubbornly resisted, causing Nebuchadnezzar to come back that third time, and lay waste to the city and the temple (the first two times he simply breached the walls and took prisoners).

While Israel has been referred to as the “Lost Ten Tribes”, Judah was allowed to come back from Babylon and resettle and rebuild in Jerusalem after the prophesied 70 years of captivity. But for the next 450 years, they were under the control of Medo-Persia, then Greece, then Rome by the time Jesus was born.

Before any of this happened, when Israel and Judah were still independent kingdoms, Isaiah wrote about the Messiah:

“For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings.” Isaiah 7:16

No more kings. And for the last 2,500 years, Israel has not had a king or monarch.

The Unfaithful Bride

God’s people and His church are symbolized by a woman, both in the Old Testament and the New. In Hebrew custom, if a husband divorced his wife, he would send her back to her father’s house, where she had come from. So it’s interesting that God sent Abraham’s rebellious descendants back to the same land that He had called Abraham to leave nearly 1,500 years earlier.

The whole chapter of Ezekiel 16 God is speaking to Israel as if she were His unfaithful wife. And God speaks this way through the prophet Jeremiah also.

“Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?
Yet My people have forgotten Me days without number.” Jeremiah 2:32

“Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also.” Jeremiah 3:8

God is comparing Israel and Judah (technically all Israel, but a divided one) to an unfaithful wife, bound by covenant to the true God, but committing adultery with false gods.

Comparing Stage 1 & Stage 2

In this blog, I’m working my way through “God’s Work with Plant Earth, in Five Stages”. We’re still in Stage 2, but I want to recap what’s happened so far because the parallels or similarities are interesting. In Stage 1:

• God created the world and humans, intending that they have and know and do only GOOD
• The first humans trusted a deceiver, distrusted their Creator, and fell into sin, receiving the “knowledge of evil” and experiencing its consequences
• Seth’s descendants, called the “sons of God”, worshiped and obeyed Him, guided by His Spirit and holy angels (Romans 8:14)
• Cain’s descendants followed his example, chose their own ways, and did not follow God. They were further deceived by fallen angels to fill the earth with violence, until the human race was on a collision course with extinction (Genesis 6:13)

In Stage 2, God caused a global Flood to cleanse the earth of all the evil and violence, and give humanity another chance.

• Noah’s descendants from his son’s Shem, Japheth, and Ham, began to repopulate the earth, carrying with them a knowledge of the world before the Flood
• Some of them banded together in a large city (Babel), defying God and His command to spread out and form communities all over the earth. So He made one language into many, pushing them to disperse and follow His will without destroying them
• Two groups again emerged, those with faith and trust in God, and those who followed their own ways (or things taught to them by demons)
• God made promises to Abraham to bless “all the families of the earth” through his descendants, and give them a promised land (Two examples being the Messiah/Jesus and the scriptures in the Bibles we have today, all of which came through Abraham’s descendants)
• God eventually delivered Jacob aka Israel’s descendants from slavery in pagan Egypt and began to remind them of His ways
• Israel violated every single command God gave, to the point of becoming even more wicked and depraved than the Canaanites they had displaced.
• God allowed them to experience the consequences of perversion and evil, until they lived in a society with no justice where no one was safe.
• After repeated rebellion for nearly 1,000 years, Israel and Judah were conquered by Assyria and Babylon

Always a Remnant

Throughout all history, while most people have followed “the flesh” and “carnal” desires, driven by selfishness and pride, a small group have obeyed God and died with faith in His promises. From Adam all the way down to sincere, Bible-grounded Christians today, there’s always been people who loved their Creator, and who will be resurrected at Jesus’ Second Coming.

Final Fulfillment

I am jumping ahead to Stage 4 and 5 for a moment, because there is a connection where kings and rulers are concerned. These stages in God’s Work with Planet Earth have not happened yet, but the Bible gives us a lot of information about them, and it hasn’t been wrong yet.

“And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.” Daniel 2:44

“these kings” references the divided kingdoms of iron and clay at the end of time. Strong and weak nations, and they don’t bond together into one world empire. Verses 42, 43.

Who’s setting up this future kingdom? Men? No, it’s God Himself.

So there’s no more kings and this will be a theocracy (a nation ruled by God and not a human leader)? Yes and no. Let me try to summarize:

• Jesus at His Second Coming is called “King of Kings, Lord of Lords” (Revelation 17:14, 19:16)
• Daniel saw Jesus “coming in the clouds of heaven”, and “That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him”, and that His kingdom would never pass away (Daniel 7:13-14)
• Jesus Himself stated that the Father had given all judgement to the Son (John 5:22)
• Isaiah described all nations flowing to “the Lord’s house”, which was raised above the mountains. His law will go out from the New Jerusalem, and “He shall judge between the nations”. There will be no more wars. (Isaiah 2:2-4)

“which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” Ephesians 1:20-21

Since Jesus is God, yes it’s a theocracy. But Christ the Son of God was born as Jesus the Son of Man (a human), so our world will have a human king.

There are literally hundreds of prophetic details in the Old Testament that Jesus fulfilled in the 33 years He was in this world. So it’s only logical and reasonable that if all these prophecies came true (along with many others), those that are still in our future will also come true. Jesus’ future Kingdom is how all of sin’s damage and sorrow will be undone. He will replace all earthly rulers and kingdoms when He comes.

But we’ll get to that in later stages. Here in Stage 2, as the Jews are hauled off to Babylon as prisoners, among them are some remarkable young men who experienced some very difficult tests. We’ll take a look at them next post.