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The Battle for the Soul — 1

Rev 12: 1 – 9

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 11 Jun, 2006

THERE IS a spiritual, a religious dimension, to world trends; there is a three–way tussle for hearts and minds; and we need to be aware of it and must seek to respond to it.

Have you noticed that there is a lot of franchising going on because of globalisation? McDonalds is a global franchise. Pizza Hut is a global franchise. Reaganism and Thatcherism constitute a globally franchised economic theory — economic rationalism.

Did you realise that Al–Qaeda is also a franchise, setting up terror outlets throughout the world?

The old James Bond or Austin Powers image of terror in the movies is passé. The world is no longer threatened by some evil genius, watching the Hollywood sign from his lair in a cavern under some island. No one demands all power in the world by threatening to blow up the US. Our world no longer runs by central coordination and control.

So what is a megalomaniac to do?

He franchises.

And that’s what Bin Laden has done.

He might hide in a cavern in the Afghan hills. But he plans for mini Al-Qaedas in every country. These groups know what the policy is, they know the corporate style, the company logos and so on. They all follow the same style with the same aims.

Bin Laden doesn’t tells them what to do. They tell him their plan, and he decides if the plan fits in with the total aims of Al-Qaeda. If it fits, he funds it; if not, he doesn’t.

We live in a world of globalised franchising, and the forces that battle for our hearts and minds are increasingly globalised, too.

Today I want us to look at the three major forces which battle for souls, battle for our heart–loyalty today.

I don’t know if there are defined terms for these forces, but one is secular religion, one is anti–Christ religion, and one is Christianity.

Some thinkers talk of a clash of civilisations between Islam and the West. Everyone says that that is a wrong perspective, but people still return to it. There is something about it.

It is not just Islam versus the West. It is a three-way tussle, and both Islam and the West are small parts of the big picture.

Usama Bin Laden franchises his brand of Islam. Of course, most Muslims are good people who hate what Bin Laden stands for. But Usama is just one part of anti–Christ religion.

I talked about people wanting to blow up the US, and the US is the strongest proponent of secular religion today, but it is only part of that whole thrust.

In many parts of the world, Catholicism is the most visible representative of Christianity; but we all know that Christianity is much more than Catholicism.

Let’s think about the world, not as the Islamic bloc and the Western bloc. Let’s think about the world as an ideological soup, not very well mixed, so that there are lumps in different places. There are some biggish lumps of Christianity in some places, like certain areas of Africa. There are biggish lumps of Islam in the Middle East and of Hinduism in India and of Buddhism in South–East Asia. There is a lot of secularism in the Western world.

A badly mixed soup of ideology. And the Bible gives us guidelines for living in such a world.

In our first passage, we read about Elijah and Ahab.

In that passage we only read about those two men, together with Ahab’s servant, Obadiah. There is a third player who hasn’t really come to the fore, and that is Jezebel. In verse 13, Obadiah says,

¹³ Haven’t you heard, my lord, what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the LORD? I hid a hundred of the LORD’s prophets in two caves, fifty in each, and supplied them with food and water.

Jezebel has led an aggressive anti–Yahweh campaign, and has killed whatever Yahwist prophets she can find, She is determined to overthrow the worship of the living God and to substitute worship of Phoenician gods.

It’s interesting that these people have names that speak about the people they are.

Elijah’s name means, “Yahweh is God”. Obadiah’s name means, “Servant of Yahweh.” Jezebel’s name may refer to the false Ba’al as being God, or it may mean “barren’ or “sterile”. And Ahab means “Uncle.”

There are two whose names are clearly oriented to Yahweh, the Lord God; there are two whose names are not at all God–oriented.

And that is pretty much the kinds of people they are.

Think about it. Don’t our names often reflect the attitudes and the thoughts of the families we come from? So it isn’t unusual to find someone whose name reflects his or her personality and interests.

So pagan, barren Jezebel set out to wipe out Yahweh from the land of Israel.

Any Old Testament scholar will tell you that the 9th Century BC was a critical time for Israel, when the nation nearly abandoned Yahweh. And one of the key players in preventing that from happening was Elijah.

Elijah was the man of God with the guts and the gall to confront the evil in the land.

He was not an easy person. He felt alone and abandoned a lot of the time. But he would not give up. There was even a time when he felt so defeated that he wanted to die, but he still didn’t give up.

I like Elijah. I can understand him.

But when both Jezebel and Elijah thought that the worship of God in Israel was on its last legs, neither of them was really aware that people like good old Obadiah were hiding and protecting the LORD’s prophets.

Key men in re–establishing the faith of Yahweh were being concealed around the country, ready to restart the worship of the true and living God.

But there was a third player, and that was Ahab.

And Ahab stood for nothing. He was not for Yahweh, and he really didn’t care all that much for Jezebel’s Ba‘al, either. He stood for himself. We read,

Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him. ³¹ He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him. ³² He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria. ³³ Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than did all the kings of Israel before him.

He worshipped his wife’s god, Ba’al; he worshipped the fertility goddess, Asherah, and he had no real interest in anything that didn’t serve his own interests.

At one time he decided that he liked the vineyard belonging to his neighbour, Naboth, and tried to buy it from him. Naboth refused to sell, and Ahab went into such a sulk that he made himself ill. So his wife trumped up a charge of blasphemy against Naboth and had him stoned to death, and Ahab took over the land.

They are an evil couple.

And in our world, we face similar situations.

We face anti–God religion. There are plenty of religions vehemently opposed to Yahweh, the God of the Bible. Some kill to try to weed out the memory of the LORD. Think of Grahame Staines in India, murdered by a Hindu mob together with his little boys. Think of those Christian school girls murdered by Muslim militias in Ambon last year.

And we Christians face a dreadful choice when such religion takes up arms against us. Do we turn the other cheek when someone else’s life is at stake? Or do we declare a justified war? Those are the only options available, and we have to admit that any war means that we have lost already.

But never forget that religion which destroys, religion which counters words by wielding swords is counterfeit religion. There is nothing of the true and living God in it. Our God is love. That is his character. It is his basic attribute. Where love is missing, so is God.

We face anti–God religion throughout our world.

But don’t forget Ahab. He aided and abetted Jezebel, but he himself was scarcely a religious model.

For Ahab, politics was it.

I may sound anti–US right now, but that’s not my point.

The fact is that the US is the greatest exporter of secular religion in our day.

How does this happen? Bush is an active Methodist. More people in the US describe themselves as Christian than anywhere else in the world. Conservative Christians encourage each other to vote for the Republicans.

But Christian is as Christian does, and the US is into exporting what it calls, “Democracy” — not Christianity.

The fact is that a Christian President — even on who was particularly competent and particularly bright — would be unable to promote Christianity, and rightly so. And George Bush is scarcely a model of competence or intellectual achievement.

How does a President whose advisers include Jews and secularists implement a truly Christian program? How does a President charged to represent his entire electorate — of all religions and none -— pursue Christian goals? He can’t!

I don’t accuse the President’s advisers of being unworthy or evil; I am merely saying that the compromises that our system of Government requires mean that it is hard for any religion to be openly supported.

That’s why soft policies like anti–abortion and anti–condom and anti–gay marriage are pushed while nothing is done about injustice in the workplace, and the abuse of people on suspicion that they may be terrorists is condoned.

The moral thrust is lowest acceptable denominator.

That means that the US is really incapable of speaking for Christianity. And, in its place, it uses its evangelistic energy to promote the religion of democracy: so–called democracy.

But traditional democracy was rooted in a Judaeo–Christian world–view, and that is lost.

In its place, the US exports an ideology of democracy based on the power of the person with the biggest gang.

And we, and Britain, and many other nations, have gone along with that idea.

It’s not because our leaders are opposed to Christianity; it’s because they have lost sight of the big picture.

They forget that

^{PROV 14:34} Righteousness exalts a nation,

but sin is a disgrace to any people.

They neglect the Word of God which says,

^{AMOS 5:24} But let justice roll on like a river,

righteousness like a never-failing stream!

There is never a restriction on doing right. No good law prevents justice.

No Government should make laws to establish any particular religion. As the early Baptist, John Smythe, said,

“... the magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with religion, or matters of conscience, to force or compel men to this or that form of religion, or doctrine: but to leave Christian religion free, to every man’s conscience...for Christ only is the king, and lawgiver of the church and conscience (James 4:12)”

But we must think about where these trends place today’s Christian.

It means that we are under constant bombardment.

There is a strong force for secularism in our society. You only have to read the Letters sections of Newspapers, or check the on–line blogs to see how anti–christian it all is.

Then there are strong religious forces which stand opposed to Christ. You can’t say very much in public in criticism of other religions, because that is religious vilification; but a person can say anything against Christianity, and it doesn‘t count.

But here is where the vision of John comes into play.

^{REV 12:1} A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. ² She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. ³ Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. ⁴ His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. ⁵ She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. ⁶ The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

Look at the promise!

It isn’t too hard to understand that the woman stands for God’s people, the church; and that the male child who shall rule the nations stands for Jesus.

Nor is it too hard to see this enormous dragon as a symbol of powers opposed to Christ. The power over the heavens speaks of spiritual power, the crowns speak of the earthly rulers under his authority. And it is an authority poised to swallow up the Lord Jesus at his most vulnerable.

But Jesus is lifted up to God, and the woman is protected in a desert place!

^{PS 2:1} Why do the nations conspire

and the peoples plot in vain?

² The kings of the earth take their stand

and the rulers gather together

against the LORD

and against his Anointed One.

³ “Let us break their chains,” they say,

“and throw off their fetters.”

⁴ The One enthroned in heaven laughs;

the Lord scoffs at them.

Many forces are arrayed against God, but they will not succeed. We may face desert experiences, but we will not be destroyed. And the Lord Jesus, the One who rose from the dead, will never be destroyed, because he is victorious over death and the grave.

Let’s give thanks to our victorious God!

AMEN!

© Peter R. Green 2006. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)