Build Spiritual Capital
“The world’s leaders think that this is a time in their relationship with America when the United States is so poorly led that they will be able to extract extraordinary concessions from the West—at unbelievably bargain rates.” Foreign Affairs, June 2023.
This is a testimony to the United States’ declining leadership in the world.
It seems that just about every day we read something that fits very well with events that ring a bell of biblical prophecy. They fit a pattern which has been laid out by God. The pattern falls under the general heading of curses.
In order to show mankind that God has a plan and purpose, He raised up a nation to be a living example of this plan. Israel was taken into Egypt by God and allowed to become enslaved. It was a type of living in this world and becoming a slave of sin.
Through Moses God then brought them out of slavery into freedom and into a relationship with Himself. He gave them His law as the basic underlying principle of life. They were to become living examples of God’s way of life. To underscore this example, He promised them rich blessings to demonstrate the true source of happiness – a relationship with God.
But this example needed checks and balances. Punishment for not obeying was just as much a part of their witness as blessings for obedience. The nation of Israel failed to be faithful to God and His way of life. So now we are in the penalty phase of Israel’s national example. It is during this phase that God will increasingly get the attention of the world.
“All nations would say, ‘Why has the Lord done this to the land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?’ Then people would say; because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 29:24-25).
It is not only an example, or witness, for the world, but also for God’s Church today. As Moses continued his address to Israel, he went on to say, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (verse 29). In a similar vein, the Apostle Paul wrote, “… the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints” (Colossians 1:26).
God has revealed the working of the Holy Spirit within members of the body to allow “His saints” to spiritually do all the words of this law. Thus, the national example originally intended for the physical nation of Israel becomes the example the body of Christ is to present to the world. “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world … that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:18,21).
However you want to slice it, we are in an important period of time. It involves the modern-day descendants of the nation of Israel, the spirit body – the Church – and the world becoming aware of, “… this glorious and awesome name, THE LORD YOUR GOD” (Deuteronomy 28:58).
Stay watchful, stay alert. Use God’s Spirit of wisdom and understanding to convert world events into spiritual capital in your life. They do connect, but we must be of a mind to do that.
Brian Orchard
