Revelation 14:7 says, "Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come;"
I don't mean a reverence, or an awe of the Lord. I mean a terrifying and paralyzing fear.
It's time that modern day Christianity, for all it's depictions of God as a love sick teenage boyfriend, returns to the understanding that we should absolutely fear God.
Proverbs says, "By mercy and truth iniquity is purged, and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil."
We fear the long lasting consequences of sin that come from a just God, and it's the harsh reality of that discipline and correction that contrasts with the momentary pleasures of sin that keep us from it.
Christ says in Matthew, "And fear not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him that is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." For it is God who is the arbiter of justice and judgment, and Him who decrees our sentence of eternal life or eternal separation from Him.
Christ again depicts the Father in the parable of the talents as a "hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed." Another parable illustrates the just and righteous nature of God and his impatience with evil, wherein Luke it is told that, "he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?'" to which we see that Christ is our advocate who replies, "leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down."
For all our modern day talk of the wonders of artificial intelligence and its knowledge, it pales in comparison to the omniscient entity of God who created our entire natural universe, who created all space, time and matter and all dimensions outside of that, and Himself has existed for endless eternities past and will continue on forever more. Yet even in all this vastness of the universe, it is said that "not a sparrow falls apart from His will."
When conversing with Job, God says in chapter 38,
"Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’? Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this. What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth? Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?"
Even before all this, at the start of the story of Job we see Satan presenting himself to God in heaven to give an account of what he is doing on the Earth. We need to understand that Satan does not show up because he wants to, or does so of his own free will.
He presents himself to God and gives an account of his actions because he has to. He is under the authority of the almighty even in his rebellion.
Not a single act occurs outside the permission of God, for God is in complete and absolute control. For Satans role in this world, it can certainly be said that the depiction of the battle of good and evil is a complete fabrication. It is more accurately - Good which in it's complete dominance and control of evil, allows evil to exists only for the sake of the good that will come from it.
If we truly understand how powerful, and utterly terrifying the one that Daniel described as the "ancient of days" is, our fear would lead us to reverence, and from sin.
It would give us an understanding of how precious that shed blood of Christ is, that atoned for our wretched sin and made us right in the eyes of a just, righteous and almighty God.
It would remind us that it was the Fathers plan all along, to save us through Christ and his work on the cross; the plan of salvation having been made before the foundations of the earth were even laid.
It is this fear, this awfully terrifying and paralyzing knowledge of the true nature of God, that in fact leads us to some small sliver of an understanding of his immense love for us.
So I tell you, in a time where God is thought of as a genie, or some impersonal being that can be persuaded to do our bidding - we ought to know fear.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jozef Lalka is a former Infantryman with the Canadian Armed Forces and founder of War Doll.
Since releasing from the military, Jozef has devoted his life to the scriptural motivation of the warrior culture, and the mentorship of the next generation. Jozef works as a graphic designer, photographer and videographer while pursing a passion for current global conflicts and how they relate to historical events.