Unwalled Villages

"You will advance, coming on like a storm. You will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your hordes, and many peoples with you. Thus says the Lord God: On that day, thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme and say, 'I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates,' to seize spoil and carry of plunder....You will come up against my people Israel, like a cloud covering the land. In the latter days I will bring you against my land, that the nations may know me, when through you, O Gog, I vindicate my holiness before their eyes." Ezekiel 38:9-11,16

I think this passage in its entirety is one of the most thrilling sights of our God. There are two different aspects of this passage that point to the excellence of God. The first being the security of dwelling within Him. In that time it was extremely dangerous to live outside of a city with walls. Just like Jericho, the walls were tall and the gates were shut each night to keep out unwanted visitors or attackers. It's amazing to think that the people of God dwelled so securely within Him and that His authority reigned so heavily on the earth that they lived in the land of unwalled villages..the quiet people who dwell securely. God can do whatever He wants and He can choose to protect us against all reasonable conventional knowledge or He can choose to allow things to happen or even cause them if He deems it necessary. Can you imagine what the equivalence of that in our modern world would be? It'd be like America deciding to no longer have an army and getting rid of all security at airports or anywhere else. We hardly feel like we dwell securely with all of our infrared and nuclear devices pointed at everyone to strike at any moment. We're waiting on the next terrorist attack. Now I'm not saying that we should just put down the weapons and end all security, but think about how crazy you would think it if we did. I bet the other nations thought of Israel in a similar way, crazy. But yet, the Bible records the nations as knowing them as the people who dwell securely.

On that same note, it's extremely relevant to mention that the world's view of God is radically different today than it was in Bible times, particularly the old testament. Think about it. The people of Gog and the other nations surrounding Israel, including Babylon knew that the God of Israel was very powerful and existed in a very large way. On multiple occassions in the scriptures kings of other nations refer to the God of Israel with fear. It's sad in our world that the two sides are believers who know God exists and people who think the Christian God does not exist. I think that's due in large part to the Christian community losing the reverance and respect for God that he deserves. The church that I'm starting to go to in Charlotte, Calvary has a pastor who spoke similarly on Sunday. He said that the saddest thing about the Bible in modern times is not that it's been taken out of schools but that it's been taken out of churches and Christian homes. We often serve a God that fits our profile of a perfect god instead of the Almighty, reigning, omnipotent Creator that He is.

My second aspect speaks of how God brings about the destruction of Gog. In this part of Ezekiel God proclaims his prophecies against certain peoples and nations according to the wrong they have committed. It's interesting in chapter 38 as He speaks against Gog how He goes about coming to their destruction. He chooses to let them grow large, as large as a great horde. He lets many of the other nations join in with them to try and attack Israel to take all of their possessions. If I was Israel I would have been terrified of the large number of people coming to attack us. I would have doomed our village to certain destruction. I sit here wondering how many times some great obstactle that's really difficult has come on me and I've been terrified. That moment when you feel like everyone is ganging up on you; that moment when everything that could have gone wrong financially has and you're not sure how you're going to get by; that moment when all the pressure mounts and you have to make a really tough decision; those moments that in our minds will define out lives forever because that is when we decide to choose the human way and trust ourselves to pull us out and stay on top or choose to trust an unfailing God. I believe that God makes things so difficult when we live in our humanity that it forces us to live in our Godwardness. So instead of dooming our lives to destruction or acting like failures, he calls us to live on a plain that trusts Him so deeply that something like a very large army coming to destroy us would not even remotely take our faith or our trust off of His security and His safe dwelling.

What do you keep safe in your own humanity that in reality is much less protected because you haven't given it to the Protector? Where are you not dwelling securely? Where have you lost your knowledge of the greatness of God? The world doesn't need another savior; the world needs people that know the greatness, power and authority of an all-knowing God.