Page 119 - Pentateuch - Student Textbook

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our world today. Yes, people do what they want to do. God honors their wills and choices. To be a
human is a serious matter. Yet YHWH remains sovereign. He can use Satan’s intended evil or a human’s
intentions as either judgment or as warning or as grace or as all of these and more at the same time.
Humans can have one purpose in mind for an action. Satan can have another or the same purpose in
mind. Yet God in his sovereign wisdom, power, righteousness, and love can have multiple reasons for
that same action. We can hardly know the full story, but we can thoughtfully extend how God has
worked in the past to faintly grasp what he might be doing today.

So then, was this all-ruling Christ building His church on September 11? I answer
with questions that are not merely hypothetical. What if Christ saw the planes heading
for the destruction of thousands and the upheaval of nations? What if, at the same
time, He saw 200 million Hindu untouchables in India, the Dalits? What if He saw that
His centuries-long work of dislodging them from Hindu bondage was about to come to
consummation in our day and they were contemplating embracing Islam or possibly
Christianity or Buddhism? And what if He foresaw that this Islam-related terror against
civilians in New York would have a mass effect of tilting millions of Dalits away from
Islam toward Christ? What if He withheld His power from stopping the terrorists
because (along with ten thousand other hope-filled effects) He had a view to the
everlasting life of millions of untouchables in India? And if not this, perhaps my
grandchildren will tell a better story of sovereign grace, which only time reveals.
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In some ways we have come a long way from the ban in ancient Israel. Yet in other ways our reflection
on this one-time command teaches us much about how God works in this world throughout history. Our
holy YHWH is serious about loving people. He is also serious about judging people who reject his love.
His people are no longer involved in judging others in such an active way, but each can marvel and
ponder when judgment happens, hoping that such warnings will draw many more people to Him.

129 Much has been written about the tragedy that occurred in Rwanda. Some have suggested the
influence of demons. Evidence is cited about a prophetess named Little Pebbles who foresaw the
coming of Christ on Easter Sunday in 1992. See Peter Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow
We will Be Killed with our Families (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1998), 78-79.
130 John Piper, Pierced by the Word (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2003), 104-105.

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