God’s Message:
Think Differently! Could God be using this time of massive disruption to gain our attention? Just what is God telling you? by Victor Kubik
T
he Covid-19 crisis and ensuing problems have disrupted the entire world. One cannot help but wonder if what we have gone through is on some level a message from God. If so, what is He saying? Throughout time, God has spoken to people through prophets, visions, angels and other messengers. And He has also spoken to mankind through the events we go through. A time of calamity wakes us up to reality and motivates us to think more clearly. In the current period of trouble, we need to grasp that God is indeed speaking to us, and that His message is clear.
alex-machado-unsplash and Shaun Venish
Drawing lessons from unexpected tragedies
Jesus Christ made use of certain crises of His time to draw a lesson about the unexpected. In Luke 13 He referred to two contemporary tragedies to make an important point. The first one concerned worshippers from Galilee massacred at the Jerusalem temple on the orders of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. The other event was a building collapse that killed a number of people. Notice the account in Luke 13:1-5: “About this time Jesus was informed that Pilate had murdered some people from Galilee as they were offering sacrifices at the Temple. ‘Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?’ Jesus asked. ‘Is that why they suffered? Not at all! And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God. And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too’” (New Living Translation, emphasis added throughout). The Greek word translated “repent” here is metanoeo, which means to change one’s mind—to think differently. Jesus is telling us that unless we experience a major change of direction in our minds, hearts and lives, we could perish like the victims caught up unexpectedly in these two catastrophic incidents. It’s a sobering lesson for today, when an epidemic has unexpectedly cut short the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and millions are out of work, with society reeling.
of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent [change your thinking—think differently], and believe in the gospel’” (Mark 1:14-15). Repentance—thinking, acting and living differently— became the primary message of the early Church: “Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:38-39). This message continued in subsequent sermons: “Repent therefore and be converted [change the direction of your life], that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19-20). The New Testament word for the act of repenting, metanoeo, is complemented by the Old Testament Hebrew word shuv. This word is commonly translated as “turn,” and often carries the sense of “turn back,” “go back” or “return.” It occurs more than 1,000 times in the Old Testament. The plea from God to man throughout the Bible is to turn to Him and to turn away from evil. When you understand that God is calling out to man to think, act and live differently, you will understand one of the great purposes of life. You will also come to see why our world is filled with suffering and sorrow. The story of the Bible is a chronicle of man’s corrupt thinking and its consequences and God’s message to change our thinking and be freed from the enslaving grip of evil. Disturbing history of wrong thinking and tragic results
In the Garden of Eden our first human parents were given a choice between the fruit of two different trees. Taking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would bring death. Tempted by the evil serpent, Adam and Eve disobeyed their Creator and were subsequently barred from the tree of life. We have all followed in the same error and penalty: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). God’s plea to man throughout the Bible For the next 1,600 years man’s pattern of thinking became One of the chief themes of the Bible is repentance. Jesus Christ’s worse and worse: “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness ministry began with: “Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the B Tm a g a z i n e . o r g
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July-August 2020
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