[ED. NOTE: This article is adapted from an article published in the SDA Dentist, Spring, 1970.]
THE now generation possesses all of the cultural accouterments of antiquity. A rock festival reveals the savage beat of equatorial Africa, the mystical introspection of an Oriental opium den or a Chapultepec temple, the dishevelment of a Borneo aborigine, the sexual promiscuity in a Palestinal grove, and the dress of a New Guinea highlander.
We have come full circle, the Rolling Stones have rolled us back to the Stone Age. The Roaring Twenties, the Aimless Thirties, the Militant Forties, and the Indolent Fifties finally bore their baleful fruit in the Sick Sixties. The now generation is the product of our own hand.
The Babel of sound and scene of this neoheathenism is a prophetic sepulchral announcement to the seventies that all man-made gods are dead!
The gods of liberalism are dead, choked by their own ambiguities. The gods of conservatism are dead, strangled by their legalistic red tape. The gods of fundamentalism are dead, vaporized by their own narcissism. The gods of materialism are dead, exsanguined by the leeches of desire. The gods of organizationalism are dead, crushed by their own neoplastic overgrowth. And the gods of ecumenicalism are dead, suffocated by sentimental compromise.
Babylon Is Fallen!
Such is the message of Revelation 14:8, "Babylon is fallen." Neither man nor his gods have been able to solve man's problems. The present great copout is primafacie evidence of the moribund condition of human devisings. There is no confidence in man or his works. Wherein, therefore, is God, in whom to have confidence?
For such an hour and for such a question there must be a meaningful answer. Could it be that God has planned for the final generation to give the lie to the now generation? While Revelation 14 reveals the death of all anthropomorphic gods, it also reveals the ultimate confidence of a generation in the living God (verses 4, 12).
Can God Be Trusted?
Today's question asks, Is there a God worthy of our confidence? Such a Being declares Himself throughout Scripture and presents His credentials to this generation in Revelation 14:6, 7. The real God is One who not only can create but who has love and power sufficient to reclaim the lost with energy, and will enough to sustain the compliant (Rom. 1:16). Such a declaration of God's identity and purpose has not been limited to this generation. God, from the beginning, has declared Himself the "I AM;" the Originator and Sustainer of all. He boldly asserts that He will put His law within our hearts (Heb. 8:10). He presents the final generation as the ultimate evidence of this power. Even as the heavens declare the glory of God so will this generation.
These theomorphic men, that is, those who reflect the image of God in mind, purpose, and character, are the evidence upon which the real God will finally rest His case. So confident is He in His cause that He is willing to be judged by the universe on the soundness of the reconstituted hearts and minds of His subjects. Such a proposition reveals either a monumental ego or infinite love, patience, and power. One is compelled to look at the record and see how this God has fared in His announced task.
No Need for God?
Upon outlining the blueprint of His intentions, the children of Israel declared themselves capable of achieving God's work without His help, yet forty days later we find them dancing around the golden calf in an orgy of bestial passion. From such an ignoble beginning one might anticipate less reliance upon blueprints and more reliance upon the Architect. One might look for great strides in godliness in a people rightly filled with self-distrust though surrounded by the beneficence and benevolence of a compassionate God in a land flowing with milk and honey. Yet, of the end of this civilization it is written they did worse than their fathers (Jer. 7:26- 31).
In the days when God sought to demonstrate His intention for the human heart, He found man so engrossed in patterns as to ignore the Patternmaker. So enamored had they become with their own handiwork, and so resentful of God's demonstration, that they took that Holy Being and nailed Him to a tree and hung Him be tween heaven and earth for all men to see.
Only the genius of divinity could in one scene expose man's arrogance while revealing God's condescension, to so starkly contrast our hate with His love, our weakness with His power, our sin with His righteousness. God was dead and that at our own hand.
Provision for Primitive Godliness
However, in this scene there is hope, not despair, for the One who once hung upon a tree now stands at the right hand of the throne of God, a risen Saviour. The premise of the resurrection is the prerogative God exercises in creating new hearts within His compliant subjects. Behold what manner of love hath God that we might be called the sons of God. The real God, we must conclude, is One who has been despised and rejected of men. A God not made, but slain, by man. A God, who, with infinite patience and love has revealed before men in all ages creative, redemptive, and sanctifying power. This God has in this age given us the ultimate cumulative revelation of Himself in Christ Jesus in order that we might become the ultimate recipients of His cumulative grace. Here, then, is a God worthy of our confidence.
In a call to primitive culture, the now generation is heaping contempt upon the icons of the establishment and exposing the necrotic state of man-made gods. The real God, in turn, is declaring His intent for the human heart and calling for a final display of primitive godliness. What a tragedy indeed it would be if God's chosen people were so busy congratulating them selves on their wealth, so absorbed in the patterns and blueprints of salvation, as to ignore the Patternmaker and Architect standing at the door knocking.
In the midst of a replay of the orgies and passions of antiquity, the real God is ready to stand before all men, and call to those who are tired of erector-set theology and blueprint holiness to place their confidence in the real God. May we in that day respond, It is time for Thee, O Lord, to work.
To such respondents the Lord will do a quick work in the earth. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
