Don’t Take a Knee, Run Up the Score!
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘<The Israelites will proclaim,> “The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in His love He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”’ (Zephaniah 3:17)
Well before Jesus came in His 1st coming in 4 BC (which should be ‘Before Christ’ but there have been adjustments to align the calendar better with known events; Jesus lived from 4 BC to 29 AD), Israel was divided into two kingdoms, Judah and Israel. Zephaniah was a prophet (perhaps a little earlier or with Jeremiah) in this time frame, around 650-630 BC, when Josiah was King of Judah, and was instrumental in being Josiah’s ‘champion’ in restoring the worship of Yahweh (God) in his kingdom and removing other false gods from worship (at least officially).
The Book of Zephaniah is one of two flavors. The first two-thirds of his book are warnings (Chapters 1, 2, and 3:1-8) against the sins Israelites (and its non-Jewish neighbors) are committing and the Judgement of God that they will face. Then in the remaining verses in Chapter 3, Zephaniah provides the Israelites will cheer and be joyful as they turn away from the sinful acts and go back to worshipping the Lord, with a slight prophetic hint of Jesus being provided to be their King and Savior, as well as their return from Babylonian exile that will begin (after the fall of Jerusalem) in 586-585 BC.
The people of Israel of those days could be compared to people of this world today. They had forgotten God and began to worship false gods, which permeated Israel and Judah. Though Josiah and Zephaniah tried to forestall the inevitable, Jerusalem and Judah collapsed and became subjugated. Zephaniah through His prophecies knew this outcome would happen, yet worked with Josiah to attempt to reverse the attitudes of the people. Old ‘Zeph’ did not simply give up, nor did he in his writings show signs that he was giving up the fight.
We can fast forward to today and foresee the inevitable. We look and see events unfold in front of us that look a lot like what we have read about in Revelation or Daniel in End Times prophecies. For some, this is a call to simply ‘play out the clock’ and await the Rapture to come before the Tribulation period. (This is a ‘golden parachute’ train-of-thought theology that may not happen the way many think it will.)
Zephaniah (and Josiah) did not have this mindset, and it is very likely that many Israelites turned back to God due to their efforts before the exile occurred. We need to be of this same mindset; if you see the End Times are fast approaching, are you looking at those around you who do not Jesus and thinking, ‘it’s too late for them’, or ‘I’m all good, they’ll have to find out for themselves’? Or, are we thinking like ‘Zeph’ and Josiah and thinking, ‘How many can I witness to before I have to go’?
We need to be more like Zephaniah; we need to attempt to restore God’s Word as preeminent in the US, before it is too late. We need to stand up and be for God rather than ‘take a knee’ in the ‘Victory formation’. If we move forward, we can ‘run up the score’ (and try to provide the Word to many others) before the final whistle (or trumpet in this case) sounds!
