The Hedge

“’Does Job fear God for nothing?’ Satan said. ‘Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has?  You have blessed the work of his hands’ “ (Job 21:9, 10).

Daniel to King Belshazzar in Babylonia, “Mene: God has  numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.  Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.  Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

 

   Paul, writing to the Roman church living under Caesar Nero in total moral decay, wrote: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God had established” (Romans 13:1).  To believe that God is really sovereign and in control of everyone of the near 200 governments of the world is to believe that God is in control. Being in control, it means that at times He builds hedges to protect people and nations, and at times He removes hedges and allow Satan to have his way, just as he did with Job at Satan’s  challenge. Job’s hedge was removed and God could not explain it to Job; to do so would have compromised his challenge with Satan.

   God had blessed the government of Babylonia with the Hebrew youth taking responsible positions in government. Along came Belshazzar, a grandson, and his drunken parties and lack of respect for anything moral, and God brought in “That very night Belshazzar of the Babyloninas was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom at the age o sixty-two” (Daniel 5:30).  God had appointed Babylonia to conquer the Hebrews and bring them to a place of submission.  Now Babylonia was brought low, and the Medes and Persians took over.  God is in control of nations as well as people.

    Four hundred years ago, Oñate and the Separatist Pilgrims brought to New Mexico and to New England a desire of a new land that would honor God.  They had different ideas about how to accomplish that, but it came together in what became the United States of America.  They come in the name of God and found an idea of pluralism in deism that opened this nation to be a home for religious diversity, and Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Church of England, and  a host of new Christian religions known at Primitive American religions learned to live side by side in harmony and peace. God built a hedge around this new nation, and it prospered as no nation in history.  This produced the most powerful military nation on earth, the number one industrial nation on earth, and then came the sexual revolution of  the 1960s, the secularist revolution of the next four decades, and the rejection of God and Jesus Christ in the public square of the first decade of the 21^st century, and it is being felt everywhere that the hedge has been taken away.  We are on the cusps of national disaster in our country.

   There is a lot of talk and words flying from the media as to what is happening in the world today, and what the answers are.  Job and his friends could not figure out what had happened to him when the hedge was removed.  Belshazzar did not have time to connect the dots as his drunken party turned into a massacre.  Right now the politicians are without a clue as to what is really happening in the United States.  Major non-profits are having to lay off a multitude of employees; our neighbor here in the Palms, Project Gold, has lost their government funding, as has, it appears, the Dream Center.  The face of America is changing since it appears that the hedge is down.  In fact, as you look around, the face of all the countries of the world are beginning to be affected by the shifting of the hedges of God from the north to the south and to Africa and Central and South America. I am concerned about news stories that have been available, and not on your TV or on the front pages of news magazines or newspapers this late summer and fall, and the busting to front page this past week, India.

   A headline in the Voice of the Martyrs December news magazine, “India is reeling from the worst anti-Christian violence the country has seen since their independence 60 years ago.  The violence in Orissa state began after the World Hindu Council leader Swamiji Laxmananandaa Saraswatsi  and four associates were killed  on August 23 or this year.  There is good evidence that Maoists killed the leader, and sought to blame it on the Muslims or Christians.  The Chinese Maoists that are always trying to cause trouble in India, they have a history of starting racial and religious wars to do their dirty work.  At any point, the radical Hindu militants have launched a 5 month war against Christians. This battle has raged and has basically gone unnoticed in the major press.  These attacks on Christians have raged in 12 districts of India and have killed hundreds of native Indian Christians; burned orphanages, leaving hundreds of children without a home.  They have been directly responsible for burning 730 homes and 95 churches.  The Indian Government has confirmed that 817 people suffered minor injury, with another 300 suffering major injuries.  Major Christian organizations  in the Western world have been sending financial help to feed the displaced. Voice of the Martyrs alone has provided help for 1,200 survivors.  A hundred and fifty other Christian groups are helping care and rebuild from the attacks. The attacks have not stopped. The world has not noticed. 

   A couple of weeks ago, India’s government was represented at the meeting on world economics in Washington D.C. Christian leaders here urged our government to speak to Indian leader about the fact that in the world’s largest democracy, with constitutional guarantees for freedom of religion,  the government has refused to send one policeman or military person to protect the all national Indian churches, orphanages, hospitals, and churches that have been burned, ramshacked, and destroyed.  There has been not one arrest in the murder of hundreds, injury to hundreds all Indian citizens.  Our government said and did nothing. India and the world just ignored the attack on legal Christians, their churches, orphanages, hospitals, and citizens. 

    I certainly do not speak with any authority from God on this subject, but I believe it is still a horrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. As Paul wrote in Hebrew 10:26-31: “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”  God still lifts hedges.  Consider the past week in India.

    This past week, Mumbai, the Indian financial center (their New York), was attacked by ten Pakistani militants that brought India to its knees.  The major international hotels, especially the luxury hotel
Taj Mahal Palace, and the main railway station, along with the Israeli headquarters, and other places were attacked in a precise method that took three days for the Indian military and police to clear the militants out.  From the one captured alive they learned that the group was a member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistani controlled Kashmir.  The leader blamed is Pakistani Yusuf Muzimmil.  My question is, did God hear the cries of His Indian children in their suffering at the hands of the militant Hindus, noticed that the democratic, government, against their own laws, were doing nothing about the attack on Christians attempting to live within the law, and lift his hedge from around the Indian nation?

    This is just another of the attacks against democracies by the militant Muslims on the order of the 9/11 attack on the twin towers, the railway bombings in England and Spain, the nightclub bombing in Bali, the attack on the USS Cole, and so many more by those that hate Jehovah God and the free people of the west.  Again, the sophisticated electronic warning devices of the Indian Government, the full security of the western world working together, and full security of a major port city was circumvented and the ten militants got in and got in control before any alarm was sounded.  They came not intending to bargain with hostages, but to gang style kill them in cold blood.  They killed westerners, including a New York Hebrew Rabbi and his wife; their 6 month old baby escaped in the arms of a friend that grabbed the baby and ran. No hostages escaped; they were all killed, and no bargaining happened, they were on a death mission; it took a major world power three days to put down ten militants. The hedge was not in  place. In fact, there is a lot to answer to.

   The United States militant watch National security and world security, had warned India in mid-October that terrorists might target luxury areas frequented by Westerners in Mumbai.  Washington Journal noted that Muzammil had been in touch with an Indian Muslim who was looking for an attack when he was arrested this year with detailed drawings of the Taj Mahal, the railway station, two of the top targets of last weeks attacks. 

   Since Mumbai is a major Arabian Sea port city just south of the border of Pakistan, it should be no surprise that the attack would come from the west and from the sea.   The ten gunmen were shown videos of the targets and area three months ago, and the attack had been mentioned in sporadic radio messages and cryptic internet messages.  Still they just waltzed in.

    Understand, they were well prepared.  They used Global Positioning Systems to get to Mumbai, they had BlackBerrys and several cell phones. They also used satellite telephones  to call voice-over–Internet protocol phone numbers, which are hard to trace.  They had CDs that contained high-resolution satellite images to rehearse the attacks so that when they got to Mumbai everything looked familiar. What a lot of folks in the world do not understand, these terrorists are as well equipped as our special forces and our CIA.  These are not back woods savages. 

   Star Trek and the interplanetary spaceship of TV fame, had a magnetic shield that they could put up that protected it from all enemy fire power.  If you are a Trekkie, or just watch TV, you are in the know about that magnetic shield that protected the starship Enterprise.  The hedge of God acts in the same way.  God, and his angels, often bring an impenetrable hedge about their family here on earth to protect them.  We find that, living a blameless and upright life, we find that prayer and special petition to God, and a people that are called by God’s  name and are abiding in  God’s will and laws, often are protected by a hedge that is much more real than the Starship Enterprise’s magnetic shield. 

   On the night of June 20, 1944, American Military forces are inching their way back toward Japan in the grueling war in the Pacific.  Supplies from the coast of California were reaching the forces, and they were island hoping step by step closer to the Imperial Island of Japan. A major player was our air attack planes that were carrier based.  The fleet was moving ever closer to the new island targets, and each few miles the ships could move to the Northwest allowed another Japanese held island to be attacked from the air. The problem, the sea was still full of Japanese subs and warships that were doing their best to stop the Northern move by American navy, Seabees, Army Engineers, and the Marines, and soldiers.  It was an inch by inch battle to regain all the islands and sea lanes lost in the early days of WWII. 

    Over 200 dive bombers had lifted off the Aircraft Carrier Lexington that afternoon, and after a successful bombing mission against the Japanese, they were on their way back in the dark, looking for a carrier that was in blackout mode to protect it from  the Japanese subs and attack battleships that were prevalent in this area.  The aircraft carrier and the support ships were sitting in the dark and nearly invisible to the Japanese fleet.  There were very small landing lights on the Aircraft carrier, and flying was 95% by the seat of your pants in those days and  Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher listened to several pilots that ditched because they ran out of fuel seeking the blacked out carrier. He knew he was in danger of losing all 200 pilots and aircraft if he did not do something radical and fast.  He prayed for a hedge by God, and endangered thousands of men and vessels to save the air force bombers that had made a good strike and needed help in finding the carrier.  He broke all rules and gave the now famous order, “Turn on all lights.”  Flood lights went on that were seen from 60 miles away, massive search lights, running lights.  The sky lighted up, and planes 50 -60 miles out homed in on the Lexington. The boys from that point on got home safely.

   Vice Admiral Marc and his TASK FORCE 58 broke all night time security, and made themselves easy targets to the enemy subs that did not seem to notice, and neither did the Japanese battleships just dozens of miles away. God had made a hedge about  Admiral Marc and his forces; the boys all came home safely.  One of the great advantages of walking in lock step with the Master is that our God still walks through the valley of the shadow of death, and his rod and staff is at battle ready, and we glide through without a scratch.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be back behind God’s hedge again?