More Than Life and Death
As the world slid toward World War II, churches in Germany were placed in a soul-searching situation. Hitler’s National Socialism was a blatant and brutal attempt to formulate the future of Germany and the world without God, and to found it on human strength alone. The most prominent figure in the establishment church at that time was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He saw clearly that “Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilisation might survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilisation,” he said, adding, “I know which of those alternatives I must choose, but I cannot make that choice in security.”
The Gestapo arrested him on April 5, 1943. He refused to recant and defied their relentless threats of torture and the arrest of his parents, sister and fiancée by openly admitting that, as a Christian, he was an implacable enemy of National Socialism and its totalitarian demands on all citizens. He paid for it with his life. On April 9, 1945, the Nazis hanged him in the Flossenburg concentration camp on the orders of Himmler, just a few days before the Allied forces liberated the camp.
Such has been the experience of the covenant people of God at regular intervals throughout history.
In 874 BC, Ahab became king of Israel, and his pagan wife, Jezebel, who was a sworn enemy of God, began a relentless campaign against God’s people and their faith. The prophet Elijah set up a showdown on Mount Carmel in an endeavour to call Israel back to the love of God and loyalty to His commandments. After a stunning victory over the heathen priests of Baal, Elijah fled in discouragement under the threat of death from Jezebel. In agony of soul, he cried to God, “The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” In response, God gave the assurance, “I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:14, 18).
These 7000 faithful in Israel who had remained faithful to God at that time were what the Bible calls “the remnant” in Israel—the ones whose love of God and loyalty to Him stood firm during testing times, in a similar way to Bonhoeffer.
In Daniel chapter three another similar experience is recorded. Nebuchadnezzar, the despotic king of Babylon, had conquered Jerusalem and deported most of its inhabitants back to his homeland. Infuriated by the implications of a revelation he had received from the god of the Hebrew captives—that his totalitarian empire would one day pass into the hands of another—Nebuchadnezzar set up a golden image (whose dimensions were recorded in multiples of six—60 cubits high and six cubits wide) and commanded everyone in his empire to bow down and worship it under the threat of a death decree. Like the churchgoers in Germany at the time of Hitler, everybody except three Hebrew young men capitulated. The love that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had for God and their loyalty to Him and His commandments forbade such action. In response to the king’s command, they said, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” (Daniel 3:16-18).
Unlike Bonhoeffer—and there’s a lesson in this too—the three men survived the wrath of a God-hating nation and it’s megalomaniac tyrant. God preserved this remnant through their fiery time of trouble and delivered them in such a way that His name and cause were vindicated.
The New Testament takes this concept of remnancy and gives it two remarkable applications. First, talking about the nation of Israel, the apostle Paul said, “Don’t you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me’? And what was God’s answer to him? ‘I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’ So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace” (Romans 11:2-5).
In this passage Paul is describing those Jewish people who withstood the malevolent pogrom of the religious hierarchy against anyone in their nation who accepted Jesus as Messiah; he calls them a “remnant” (verse 5). These courageous people “did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Revelation 12:11), but put their love of Jesus and loyalty to His commandments above any death threat. Like Bonhoeffer, many of them paid the supreme price for their faith.
The book of Revelation takes the example of the three Hebrew worthies of Daniel 3 as an example of remnancy just prior to Christ’s second coming.
Describing a religio-political coalition at the culmination of history similar in nature and practice to Babylon of old, God reveals that he “ordered them to set up an image in honour of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.
“He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no-one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666” (Revelation 13:14-18).
The “Bonhoeffers” of that time will stand true to Jesus against the dragon that “was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Revelation 12:17). Like the remnant of all ages, their mission will be to proclaim the gospel, but this time in its ultimate setting—“to every nation, tribe, language and people” (Revelation 14:6).
God tests the love and loyalty of His people in every age, but in this climactic setting, the call is to the gospel in the context of our impending judgment, and our origins as created beings of Christ, embodied to us in loyalty to the fourth commandment. He said in a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water” (Revelation 14:7).
In the current political struggles of totalitarian nations locked in life-and-death ideological battles, we witness a scenario with the potential to usher in that last struggle between the gospel of Christ and its enemies. It will take people with the strength of character, the integrity and fortitude of Bonhoeffer to stand when that time arrives.
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