The article quotes one Satanist, Dex Desjardins, explaining that their “Opening ceremony did have the ripping up of a Bible as a symbol of oppression, especially oppression of LGBTQ folk and women, and also the BIPOC community, and pretty much anybody who’s grown up with religious trauma, which is a tremendous number of our members.”
When I read those words I couldn’t help but recall the incident in Jeremiah 36, when king Jehoiakim was sent a message from the Lord by Jeremiah the prophet and written out by Jeremiah’s friend, Baruch. The king’s reaction was but a precursor of today’s Satanist.
The Lord had instructed Jeremiah to “Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day. It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin,” verses 2-3.
Like the Bible in general, it was a message warning of God’s wrath against sin and the offer of mercy and forgiveness to the repentant. That is, in essence, the summary of the Bible’s contents.
Jeremiah, being in prison because of his faithful preaching of God’s Word, said to his fellow-labourer, Baruch, “Therefore go thou, and read in the roll, which thou hast written from my mouth, the words of the LORD in the ears of the people in the LORD’S house upon the fasting day: and also thou shalt read them in the ears of all Judah that come out of their cities. It may be they will present their supplication before the LORD, and will return every one from his evil way: for great is the anger and the fury that the LORD hath pronounced against this people,” verses 6-7.
It is clear that the desire of the prophet was the well-being of his nation by setting before them the warning of wrath and the merciful offer of the Lord.
The reading of God’s Word reaches the ears of the princes, verse 10-15, and eventually it came to the notice of the king, verses 19-22. What the king heard angered him greatly and he reacted to God’s word in a most evil fashion. “And it came to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth,” Jeremiah 36:23.
It is to be noted that he did not listen to all of God’s message. Giving a fair hearing to God’s Word is not the habit of the worldling. Rather, they reject it with only a slight, if any, understanding of what it is they are rejecting! The BBC news story indicates that men and women today would still seek to destroy God’s Word, foolishly thinking that to rend it in pieces and to burn it to ashes, as did king Jehoiakim, effectively silences it and nullifies what God has said!
The conclusion of the chapter 36 tells a very different ending!
Let us learn:
1. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Word of God and that Word therefore cannot be destroyed.
“The Word of God” is one of the glorious titles of the Son of God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God,” John 1:1-2. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth,” John 1:14. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life,” 1 John 1:1. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him,” John 1:18.
The Lord Jesus is God’s message unto sinful men. Thus he says of Himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me,” John 14:6.
Our Bible is the God-inspired record of what Christ, the living Word, would say to men! As the Shorter Catechism question/answer 3 states: What do the Scriptures principally teach? The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.
What we have in our Bibles is eternally preserved in Heaven. “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven,” Psalm 119:89.
The Saviour said of His Word: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away,” Matthew 24:35. All that is written in the Bible, its promises, its warnings, its threatenings, its revelations, cannot be destroyed or disannulled, for the Saviour also said: “The scripture cannot be broken,” John 10:35.
Tearing pages out of a Bible is an exercise in utter futility for it still remains. The pages they tear out today are copies of the pages that evil men have torn out countless times before, and still they are there for those of a similar ilk to repeat their fruitless efforts to be rid of God’s truth!
“Last eve I paused beside the blacksmith’s door,
And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime;
Then looking in, I saw upon the floor,
Old hammers, worn with beating years of time.
“‘How many anvils have you had,’ said I,
‘To wear and batter all these hammers so?’
‘Just one,’ said he, and then with twinkling eye,
‘The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.’
“And so, I thought, the Anvil of God’s Word
For ages skeptic blows have beat upon;
Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard,
The Anvil is unharmed, the hammers gone.”
2. The futility of Jehoiakim’s action is seen in that God repeated His message!
“Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned. And thou shalt say to Jehoiakim king of Judah, Thus saith the LORD; Thou hast burned this roll, saying, Why hast thou written therein, saying, The king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy this land, and shall cause to cease from thence man and beast? Therefore thus saith the LORD of Jehoiakim king of Judah; He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost. And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them; but they hearkened not. Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah; who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like words,” Jeremiah 36:28-32.
Having rejected mercy, Jehoiakim hears words of utter destruction. His folly would bring out punishment upon him at the hands of the king of Babylon, God’s instrument of judgment against rebellious Judah. The rise of murder-supporting Sinn Fein is explained by what happened to erring Judah back in the year 588BC!
The humiliation of Ulster is of her own making for she, like Judah of old, has forsaken the Lord and embraced instead the gods of ecumenism and popery.
Friends, there really is nothing new under the sun.
Shame marked the end of this rejector of God’s Word. “Jehoiakim king of Judah . . . his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost.,” verse 30. God will have all to see the fearful consequences of blaspheming Him and rejecting His Word. The body of this most foolish man will lie unburied for all to see the end of the defier of God.
His folly was reaped by his offspring. The first two commandments state: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments,” Exodus 20:3-6.
It is not that the Lord punishes the children for the sins of the fathers but rather sinful fathers raise their children to walk in their sins and so the punishment due to the sins of their fathers, falls also on their offspring! Thus the Lord says to Jehoiakim: “Therefore thus saith the LORD of Jehoiakim king of Judah; He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David,” verse 30.
What misery sinful parents bequeath to their children!
3. The Lord does more than repeat His former words of wrath, He adds more! “ . . . there were added besides unto them many like words,” 32.
Continuance in sin but multiplies our guilt and our culpability! Rebellion begets but more wrath and judgment yet men will not heed this simple truth, instead in their folly they seek by defiance to escape the inescapable wrath of God. This demented mindset dominates the rebellious even to the very gates of hell. Nothing demonstrates this better than the cries of Antichrist’s soldiers as wrath from God breaks forth upon them!
“And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” Revelation 6:12-17.
It is in that same spirit of blind delusion that Jehoiakim cut up and tore up Jeremiah’ roll and it is in the same spirit of blind folly that today’s Satanists put forth their feeble hands against the truth of God.
We say with Moses of old: “O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” Deuteronomy 32:29.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)