Rev. Kit B. Billings
September 4, 2005
Scripture
Gen. 7:1-7,16a-21
Ps. 78:32-38,47-50
Matthew 5:43-48
Heavenly Secrets n. 3425
It is frequently said in the Word that Jehovah or the Lord
is angry, is wrathful, destroys, and casts into hell; when yet He is never
angry, and still less does He cast anyone into hell. The former is of the sense of the letter, but the latter is of
the internal sense; and these appear opposed, but this is because the man is in
what is opposed. In the same way the
Lord appears as a sun to the angels who are in heaven, and thence as vernal
warmth, and as light at dawn; but to the infernals He appears as something quite
opaque, and thence as wintry cold, and as midnight darkness. Consequently to the angels He appears in
love and charity, but to the infernals in hatred and enmity; thus to the latter
according to the sense of the letter--that He is angry, is wrathful, destroys,
and casts into hell. When things are
being treated of in the Word that are contrary to the Divine, it is inevitable
that they should be presented in accordance with the appearance.
This has been a terrible
week for Americans, especially people living in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama,
after Hurricane Katrina ripped into the Gulf Coast U.S. states south of
us. One of thousands of examples of
people who have suffered the worst calamities was of a man named Harvey Jackson, of Biloxi, Mississippi. Harvey told a CNN affiliate that he believed
his wife was killed after she was ripped from his grasp when their home split
in half. “She told me, 'You can't hold
me, ... take care of the kids and the grandkids," he said, sobbing. And then she apparently died in the
wreckage.
This
is but one of thousands of terrifying stories about Americans living in the
wealthiest and most powerful countries in history who suffered greatly in some
unnecessary way this week. Clearly, as
9/11 reminded us, as well as many tragedies that befall our country every year,
we (like all people around the globe) are not immune to destruction. Mother Nature can indeed howl down upon any
one of us tomorrow, next week, next year.
There are still thousands of people today down there in terrible plight,
who really need our deep and extensive prayers today. I’d like to talk briefly this morning about what we can learn and
not learn from Hurricane Katrina. Does
this deadly and enormous storm teach us something about God being a wrathful
and punishing Lord? Or does it reveal
something else to us?
There
are many in our world that read and interpret the Bible only in a literalistic
fashion, which creates some very unfortunate problems. Those who read it this way believe literally
all those passages that say that God can sometimes lose His patience and
steadfast love for us, and then He gets angry, wrathful, punishing and
condemning, able to destroy human life.
This is what has spawned hundreds of thousands of “fire and brimstone” sermons—perhaps
you’ve heard one once or twice. Do you
believe that an ever-loving God, our Divine Father…our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ…would create a storm like Katrina to get some point across to us…that He
would wantonly kill and terrorize His own children?
Well,
this I can say for certain—I do not! To
believe such things is to be getting extremely confused about the real nature
of love, about the real nature of God.
One
of the many reasons I chose to become a New Church Christian is because ours is
one of the few churches around that preaches unequivocally that the Lord
Jehovah, our Lord and Redeemer Jesus, never gets angry and never
destroys human life out of such anger or wrath. Why? Because anger and
wrath are finite human emotions. They
stem from impatience, non-mercy, and revenge.
Anger desires to strike back, to destroy, and bring evil upon
others. Divine Love and mercy and
goodness, however, only want to help, heal, support, bless and strengthen.
Our teachings have many
passages that bring forth the full nature of God and His Divine Love and
Wisdom. In reality, the Lord is
goodness itself; He is mercy itself, peace itself, and love itself. In Apocalypse Explained paragraph 726
we read: “The love of God reaches and extends, not only to men and things that
are good, but also to men and things that are evil; consequently, not only to
men and things in heaven, but to men and things also in Hell. For God is everywhere, and from eternity to
eternity, the same.” (emphasis mine)
It was out of this awesome and infinite universal love and goodness,
which is God’s very nature, that God-incarnate our Lord Jesus spoke so
powerfully yet gently that day so long ago, “But I tell you: Love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons and your Father in
heaven. He causes his sun to rise on
the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly
Father is perfect.” (Mtt. 5:44-48 selections)
Furthermore, we read in Heavenly Secrets n.
245:
Jehovah God or the Lord never curses anyone, is never
angry with anyone, never leads anyone into temptation, and never punishes, let
alone curses anybody. It is the devil's
crew who do such things. Such things
cannot possibly come from the fountain of mercy, peace, and goodness. The reason why here and elsewhere in the
Word it is said that Jehovah God not only turns His face away, is angry,
punishes, and tempts, but also slays and even curses, is that people may
believe that the Lord rules over and disposes every single thing in the whole
world, including evil itself, punishments, and temptations. And after people have grasped this very
general concept, they may then learn in what ways He rules and disposes, and
how He converts into good the evil inherent in punishment and the evil inherent
in temptation. In teaching and learning
the Word very general concepts have to come first; and therefore the sense of
the letter is full of such general concepts.
Adding
to this, our teachings reveal that in the days the Bible was being written,
there were times when the writers themselves encountered God seeming to slay,
condemn and punish people in wrathfulness.
The outward appearance is that God must be angry and punishing…right? However, something else is really going
on. The truth is that when human beings
choose to be evil, sometimes the Lord permits (or allows)
that the furry and anger of the demonic spirits being welcomed by our evil be
allowed to have the field for a time.
Indeed, if the Lord did not allow humanity’s evil, greed and struggles
with intensely stormy false forms of thinking to surface and have release in
many ways, they would build up, fester and ultimately destroy us all. Unfortunately, the truth is that humanity in
general has fallen greatly in love with evils of many kinds (beginning
thousands of years ago), such as deeply wanting to reject belief and faith in
God as the supreme Being and Lord of life, or the importance of a universal
love of all mankind (instead of wanting to control and dominate others for one’s
benefit). Thus, Hell was created long,
long ago, in part out of a dangerous “flood” of false forms of thinking imaged
symbolically in the story of Noah and the Ark.
And with Hell’s creation by twisted human beings, its own influx of
harmful energy was born. And it is
Hell’s force and inflowing energies that create diseases of all kinds, not to
mention many poisonous animals and plants, as well as destructive weather
patterns, like………hurricanes.
It
is true that the core or the essence of every human being is God’s home, thus
we are nothing but good down deep inside.
This is why when people are brave enough to go way down deep
inside of their being, all they find is love.
But we are a many-leveled creature.
We have a natural degree of heart and mind too, and that level of us is
highly susceptible to the influx of energy from Hell. Why, I suspect that some of the nice folks we know (perhaps even
ourselves) if put into extremely desperate and hostile situations like those
down south in New Orleans might encounter our “ugly” side. It can happen quite easily. And the Lord needs us to be willing to see
and acknowledge whatever ugly, hurtful and destructive things are whirling
about within our own natural mind. And
this is partially what we can learn from the deadly forces in nature. They exist, in part, to remind us that
humanity still has major issues with Hell, and that most of us, if not all of
us, have much more spiritual regeneration to traverse with the Lord’s great
help. They exist also to remind us of
the pure and simple goal of hellish spirits and forces, which is to destroy,
especially anything good that has to do with God. They remind us that we, as a planet of human beings, are better
off when these dark forces are allowed to leak out into creation in various
ways, rather than have them grow and fester down deep within our natural
subconscious minds like some form of “psychological gang green”!
We
may take some refuge in the truth that the Lord and His goodness is ultimately
in charge of the universe, of all life everywhere, and He will always make sure
that His love and goodness shall in the final analysis lead in creation. And this is why, along with the
cooperativeness with so many millions of people around our globe right now
(especially those willing to get their whole bodies in the middle of harms way
down south in New Orleans), we see and hear and feel the Lord’s lovingkindness
and passion to help and protect starting to win the day on our American Gulf
coastal regions. But things are still
very desperate, and there is a long, long way to go before order and
restoration return down there. I
believe that folks like you and I can help them out in two major ways: first, if we are able, we can give
monetarily to one of many good support agencies like the American Red Cross or
Church World Service. Also, we can pray
for them (extensively)…for prayer is powerful.
Right now, I’d like to invite you to join with me in some extensive
prayer work. Will you join with me
please?
Let us pray together in
the Lord’s mighty love…