Prophecy was and still is being regarded as a message from heaven when in reality it is a product of cause and effect. I have come to believe that God does not want us to stumble about in uncertainty. Jesus had this advice, “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3). Biblical prophecy to us is mostly hindsight based on cause and effect. In the same way, cause and effect aid us in projecting the future. Human actions and decisions have and still are the cause of success or failure. Thanks to Adam, failure or evil has outdistanced the good or what is right. The Creator attached His promises to conditions and to human behavior and work. God has endowed man with a conscience that can discern between good and evil (Romans 2:14-15). Adam knew that he had done wrong before the voice from heaven questioned him and so did Cain regarding the slaying of his brother Abel. When man makes a mistake, he does not need someone to remind him. He should, by now, have learned that his mistake would escalate and become unmanageable. There is nothing in this world that can be concealed or remain hidden (Matthew 10:26). The slightest transgression will result in tragic consequences. The same rule applies to doing what is right. Cause and effect produces either curses or blessings (Deuteronomy 27:12–28:68). Moses had based his prediction of his people’s demise on disobeying their God’s precepts as much as Adam did his. The laws designed by God, and even by godly individuals, were made to protect us and not to hurt us. But they must be used for man and not against man (Mark 2:27). Man-made laws both religious and secular that have protected certain interests have caused most of the turmoil in the world. Jews for Jews, Greeks for Greeks, Romans for Romans, Christians for Christians, Muslims for Muslims, Americans for Americans, Democrats for Democrats, Republicans for Republicans and the list goes on. Their protective regulations have divided, splintered and ended nations and religions and the U.S.A. is on course of self-destruction.
At the present, the world has a friend that is an enemy in disguise. We know it as socialism, as a brotherhood, and as a United Nations. Marx and Engel were not proposing that socialism was the only viable option for the world’s problems. Their intention was to warn inhuman capitalists, feudalists, imperialists, royalists, and religious absolutists of the consequences their profiteering and exploitation was causing. Socialism was the effect and not the answer to unjust causes. It has served its purpose and was a blessing for a time and now it is becoming the major cause of a world economic disaster. A system that stops sowing cannot reap. Such a system, when it is coupled with an ideology where a government or a God is the absolute provider and sustainer, then we have hung one foot over our own precipice. That is why Bible Prophecy is an eye-opener to what happens to an individual, a group and a nation that deliberately seeks to by pass principles like the Ten Commandments. According to the writers of the Bible, man’s problem began when man assumed to be “like a god” and set up his own images and idols to be worshipped by his followers. These man-made gods, both secular, and religious, have been the cause of most major conflicts in the world and the largest one is yet to come. Jesus, Himself, predicted that His aim to bring peace to the world would result by man using the sword to attain it. Even those that shall try to enter His kingdom shall resort to violence. Those that did and still do are not representing Jesus and His Heavenly Father that desires mercy rather than sacrifices.
God the Father, Jesus believed in was unlike anyone else of the gods in the history of mankind. What sets Jesus’ God a part is His love. It is as if God has reversed His attitude toward humanity. He is unlike the One that punished Adam’s family or Noah’s generation. He no longer orders His people to kill and plunder others like the Israelites did. The results of these early decisions did not improve relationships in the world because they were man’s interpretation as to who God was and what He wanted. God had not changed, nor did cause and effect. Man has changed and can change back. He can introduce goodness and love into cause that can alter the effects. In Genesis, God did place man in charge of his destiny and in Jesus, He has reaffirmed man’s role in his own redemption. Man can repent, forgive and love again. And it is such a changed person that God rewards with grace and love. It is God that reciprocates and not man. It is man that must take the initial step toward becoming a better person; that is if he wants to make the world a better place to live in. The choice rests entirely with man, and not with God. God is good and what He made was good; but what it has become was caused by human actions and decisions.
Man chose idols over God, the Creator. Israel chose Saul and David over Yahweh. The Jewish leaders chose Caesar over Christ, the sword over the word or principles. We continue to want leaders to do for us that we do not want to do for ourselves. Israel wanted a king to go to war for them and protect them. It did not dawn on them that they would end up protecting the king and his riches. He would demand their love to a degree that there was none left for themselves and their loved ones. The same principle is at work among us today. Whenever a government becomes too big, it also becomes unsustainable. The same rule applies to individuals that acquire and take on more than one can manage or even deserve. It is a violation of the law of greed that has been the unsustainable culprit in the world. The religious and the secular parties have been infected with this incurable cancer. Many Christians have been led to believe that God loves unconditionally and that God saves man by grace and not by human works. It has been asserted, with much persuasion, that man is getting something for nothing. It is true that God has provided the seed, but before man can harvest he must plant it, weed it and water it and give it time to become grain for bread. Faith will not sustain man without works that can produce a harvest. It is not just the Bible but history too judges man not by what he believed, but by what he has done. Cause and effect are at work in saint and sinner.
Scientists are working on our genes in the hope that they can produce non-violent humans. Why waste time and money when all we have to do is brainwash people into believing that they can have things for nothing. I was nine when the Russians traded us to the Germans and they led us to believe that Hitler was almost like Jesus and Germany would last a thousand years. Six years later, the things Hitler did led to his and Germany’s fall. No one is exempt from cause and effect. Everything is predictable, even faith without works. We are known by what we produce. “Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16-20). “Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Jesus did not say that man could survive without bread, but that he needed principles by which he earned it. The two need each other. Love cannot live without bread, neither can bread without love. The prophetic message, even without the Bible, was and still is, the one that is able and does not earn his bread will not eat nor will anybody remain to feed him. I shall trace cause and effect and show where it has taken and is taking humanity.
Stop and Think - Rev Dr. Daniel Kolke 