The Fear of GodScripture: Rev 18:4 “And I heard another voice from heaven saying, "Come
out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her
plagues."
(NKJV) Today
I want to share with you “the fear of God”. On 2nd
May 2008 tropical cyclone
Nargis hit the coast of Myanmar and devastated large
parts of the low-lying Irrawaddy delta. Winds exceeding 190 kilometres
per hour ripped through the Myanmar’s biggest city Yangon for more than
ten hours. Homes were flattened, more sturdy structures damaged, trees uprooted
and power lines downed. In rural parts of the country up to 95 per cent of
homes were wiped off the face of the earth. As many as 100,000 people are
feared dead in Myanmar (formerly Burma). More than 1 million people are
believed to now be homeless. Families have been separated, entire villages
remain submerged, and food and clean water are in short supply where available
at all. Now sewage and floating bodies threaten to spread diseases &
epidemic. Ten
days later, in the afternoon of 12th May 2008, an earthquake measuring 7.9 on
the Richter scale hit Sichuan Province, a mountainous region in Western China.
As at 23rd May 2008, Chinese Cabinet spokesman Guo
Weimin told a news conference that the number of dead
rose to 51,151 and nearly 300,000 wounded, 32,666 missing. The disaster left 5
million people homeless and leveled more than 80 percent of the buildings in
some remote towns and villages near the epicenter. In bigger cities entire
apartment blocks collapsed or are too dangerous to live in because of damage
and worries about aftershocks. The government is also grappling with official
estimates of more than 4,000 children orphaned by the quake. A
couple of days ago, at the advice of a friend in Taiwan, I checked up and found
that Myanmar, Sichuan and Tibet are Buddhist hard lands. Mount Emei in Sichuan province is one of the 4 sacred Buddhist
sites, and has a Buddhist history of over 1,500 years. We may ask, is this
God’s judgment? My Father
God, I have no doubt, His heart is crying out to those who are suffering right
now in Myanmar and Sichuan. He is a
Father of compassion and love. In
John 10:10, the Lord says, “The
thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come
that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
(NKJV) Under the dominion of Satan,
there is destruction and death, under the dominion of our Lord Jesus Christ,
there is life and life in abundance.
As I
ponder over these catastrophic events, the Lord directs my heart and spirit to
Revelation Chapter 18. Chapter 18
speaks of the utter, sudden and complete destruction of the spiritual
Babylon. In Chapter 17, the Bible
refers the spiritual Babylon as a woman, there were "her
fornication;" "MOTHER OF HARLOTS;" "the kings of the earth
have committed fornication with her;" "the abundance of her
delicacies;". The Bible tells us in 1 John 2:15 that
we are not to love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of
the Father is not in him. In 1 John
2:16-17, the Bible says, “For all
that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes , and the pride of life — is not of the Father
but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he
who does the will of God abides forever.” (NKJV) I
believe that God, through these catastrophic devastating events is giving us a wakeup
call, "Come out of her, my people,
lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues." In
the Bible a pure women is often used as a symbol to represent God’s pure
and true church. A harlot woman represents an impure, false church under the
dominion of the Anti-Christ, the Devil.
Revelation 18:4, God the Father is calling us to come out of the
spiritual Babylon. I see the
spiritual Babylon as representing the spiritual dominion in our lives of the
love for the things of the world described in 1 John 2:15-17. Are we, Christians, still enticed by the
things of the world? Are we still
living a Christian life with one foot in the world and the other in the Kingdom
of God? Are we still flirting with
the harlot spiritual Babylon? Why
are we still not able to completely NOT love the world and come out of it
wholly? I believe that we have to confront ourselves honestly and search our
soul - have we taken for granted “the Fear of God”. We charismatic
Christians yearn for a return to the raw intensity of the early
church—the angelic visitations, power encounters, prophecies, miracles
and mass conversions and missionary adventures. We call it the revival. Yet, we tend to forget that the same
people who experienced tongues on the day of Pentecost, and then witnessed the
healing of a lame beggar in Jerusalem, also watched in horror as Ananias and Sapphira — two influential but compromising church
members — dropped dead because God’s presence was so strong. When
their bodies were carried away, the Bible says, “great
fear came upon the people” in Acts chapter 5. Do we
want that level of God’s presence? The fear that came on the early church
is also called a “sense of awe” in Acts 2:43. We often downplay the fear of God by
saying that it really means “reverence.” But the Greek word used in
Acts 5:11 and Acts 2:43 is “phobos”,
which can be translated “exceeding dread, alarm or terror.” In
the midst of these catastrophic devastating events happening in the month of
May 2008, I personally perceived an urgent call by God on my life to examine my
state of condition in my Christian walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, am I still
flirting with Babylon? Do I take John 10:10 for granted? Have I any regards to
the judgment of God as revealed in the day of Pentecost on Ananias and Sapphira? Do I
think that since Sabah is not in the earthquake zone and since Sabah is the
land below the wind, no cyclone will hit Sabah and therefore there is nothing
to fear? I was reminded in 1996,
who would believe a storm would hit Keningau, one of
the Western interior town in Sabah and caused death to the hundreds and vast
destruction? God is our only safe haven, shelter and sanctuary. As my
heart turns to the suffering people in Myanmar and Sichuan, I pray that God
will visit us afresh and put in our hearts the fear of God, that we should not
take it for granted and will heed His call to “come out of her”, be
holy as He is holy. Ronny Cham |
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