There’s a fascinating story in the Old Testament. In the book of Ezra.
God’s people—vulnerable, exiled, weak—had been granted permission by none other than King Cyrus to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. And they had; a band of about forty thousand of them.
In an outpouring akin to that of their ancestors leaving Egypt, the Israelites were not only given “silver articles, gold, goods, livestock, and valuables (in addition to all that was given as a freewill offering)” by their Persian neighbors (Ez 1:6), along with the restoration of all the temple articles that had been confiscated from the previous temple by Nebuchadnezzar (1:7), but they also gave abundantly: freewill offerings (2:68); gold coins, silver, priestly garments (2:69); money to the stonecutters and artisans; and food, drink and oil to those who brought cedar wood from Lebanon (3:7).
When the temple foundation had been completed, “they sang with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord: ‘For He is good, His faithful love to Israel endures forever.’”
Ezra 3:11a-13 | Then all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord because the foundation of the Lord’s house had been laid. But many of the older priests, Levites, and family leaders, who had seen the first temple, wept loudly when they saw the foundation of this house, but many others shouted joyfully. The people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shouting from that of the weeping, because the people were shouting so loudly. And the sound was heard far away.
I feel there’s a lot of “weeping over the temple” happening in my time.
In many ways, it’s easy for me to identify with the young generation of Israelites who braved the return to their old homeland. They had not known Israel or the temple in its former glory. All they had ever known was the land of Persia, and many of its ways and customs.
It was a very vulnerable time, full of uncertainty over the future and fears in the present. Their enemies were many: Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel and the rest of his colleagues; later Tattenai the governor of the region west of the Euphrates River and Shethar-bozenai, and their colleagues; as well as the other hostile surrounding nations such as Moab and Edom. They were even being framed as the bad guys: their enemies wrote the King a letter, painting them as rebellious citizens and a threat to the crown (Ez 4).
It was a very depressing time. God’s people had no king; no power in the socio-political realm of the day. They had been scattered, and those who had kept their heritage were given trouble by those who had intermarried—the Samaritans (Ez 4:10, Neh 4:2). Their weakness was despised and mocked.
As a conservative Christian young person in America, there are many similarities I feel I could draw. Some days it feels God’s people have all but become scattered and assimilated into our surrounding pagan culture. It seems we have no power in the socio-political realm of our day. It seems our enemies are many—it seems many want to frame us as the bad guys: as intolerant, narrow-minded fundamentalists who stand against progress in the drive for “equality” and “rights” around the world, rather than standing for truth.
And my generation hasn’t even seen the “Old Temple!” We haven’t seen moral America in all its glory. We haven’t seen America when, say, men worked hard and enjoyed doing so. We haven’t seen the sexually-modest America, the Bible-believing America, the praying America, the economically-sound America, etc.
But perhaps the hardest development to take is the “weeping over the temple.” Most conservative leaders have lived long enough to have seen the golden days of the church in the generations past.
And when the present is worse than the past, frankly, it’s hard to have an optimistic outlook on the future.
There seems to be a spirit of pessimism that has crept into the conservative church to the point where anyone who hopes for a better future a) has their head in the sand, b) is unwise to give people false hope, c) just needs to wait about ten years or so before they have to put their foot in their mouth, or d) is downright immoral and unspiritual for hoping to avoid suffering in this world.
Furthermore, it’s easy to pine back to the days of the “Old Temple.” Back to the good-ol’-days, the days of strength in the church, the days of religious freedom and political honor.
But even though the past may have been better than the present, it is the past.
And even though the present may be weak and may get worse (though it doesn’t have to), it still is the present.
And I find myself, from the view of my generation, asking, “What happened to hope?”
I find myself asking more and more, not, “What can we find wrong about this time and generation” (of which, admittedly, there is much to find!), but “What can we find that is good about this time and generation?” Where can we see God working? What sense of hope is He giving us now for the future?
Is there anything about which we can “shout joyfully,” even in the midst of great sorrow over the faded past?
Because my generation desperately needs hope. We cannot live on pessimism alone.
In her autobiography Children of the Storm, Natasha Vins tells the story of the life of hardship and persecution her family endured in Russia during the 50s, 60s and 70s. At one point during her early teens, her father Georgi is captured and placed in prison. Things could not look bleaker. Russia is showing no signs of relenting its heavy domination of Christians, and Natasha’s father isn’t sure if he will ever know life outside prison walls again. Additionally, conditions in prison are horrible—they are dirty, and prisoners are often beaten. Georgi’s father was martyred in a similar prison for his faith.
Rather than assuming her son will suffer the same fate as her husband, Georgi’s mother Babushka writes to him in prison:
Your path is difficult. I know that you have times of loneliness, when you feel you could fall down under the heaviness of your cross. Do not despair even then, but remember that the sun is always shining behind the cloud! You are still young, and Lord willing, will live through it and even forget these hardships. Only valuable lessons learned in prison will remain with you for the rest of your life.
Dear Georgi, take courage! You will not even notice how fast the years of imprisonment will fly by and your term will be over. You will come home to us and once again experience the joy of freedom. May God protect you! Let us put our trust in Him, because our breath and life are in His hands.
And he did.
Not only was he miraculously deported to America along with his family, but they had only been in America a few years before God broke open the doors of Russia to allow its people freedom to read and possess the Bible, and they were granted access to go back and visit their homeland, bringing the gospel once again to familiar soil.
It strikes me that the Christians who seem to have the most hope for the earthly future are those who suffer the most in the present. Perhaps the reason we are so fearful of the future is because we really haven’t suffered at all. If so, that is something for which we can be divinely grateful.
But Josiah, you say, that’s all very well and good, and it’s nice that you want to keep a positive outlook on life, but are there really things to be hopeful about, or is it all just wishful thinking? We’re surrounded daily by bad news—scary headlines and negative statistics. Isn’t there a time when optimism must give way to realism?
Like the foundation of the new temple, they may seem small and insignificant in the light of the “Old Temple,” but let me share some ways in which I think we have seen God at work in our present generation:
- The fall of the Soviet Union and subsequent increase of freedom in Russia. Sometimes I wonder if we recognize the gravity of this. When we are tempted to think we have it bad here in America, we ought to try having lived in Communist Russia. Like Nazi Germany, during it's prime the Soviet Union was heralded as the significant of doom for our time, notorious for its persecution of Christians and the nuclear threat it posed to the West. Yet in 1991, around the time many in my generation were born, the unthinkable happened. The Soviet Union fell. Since then, there has been a steady growth in both the orthodox and evangelical churches of Russia.
- The surprising emergence of the church in Africa. At the start of the twentieth century, Christians in Africa numbered roughly 8 million. Today there are almost 400 million Christians, many of them evangelical, and the church is growing. In addition, the African bishops have been some of the most outspoken proponents in favor of traditional gender roles and marriage.
- The steady growth of the church in South America. The story in Latin and South American is much the same, with the growth of the church expected to exceed 600 million Christians in ten years.
- The explosion of the church in China. Though Christians in China have endured much persecution under perhaps what is gradually becoming the last Communist stronghold, the growth of the church is overwhelming, increasing at such a rate that if it continues, China may be the most Christian nation in fifteen years. Ironically, the Bible-printing business appears to be doing better in China than about anywhere else.
- The subtle change in opinion on abortion in America. Since 1973, what is probably America’s deepest present moral evil, the sacrifice of our children on the altar of convenience, has deeply stained this nation's hands with innocent blood. But Christian conservatives do seem to be winning small victories like this one and this one. In addition, Christian Blunt’s thorough fifteen-year survey appears to show pro-life support increasing in about every category. New technological advances in medicine, such as ultrasound, have generally had a positive, pro-life effect on mothers by allowing them to see their own children in the womb.
- The stubborn culture-changing ability of the church. “You’re on the wrong side of history,” is common charge leveled against the evangelical church today. Yet I can hardly think of a time when the church wasn’t on the “wrong side” of history! In the early centuries, post-Christ, the Roman Empire was the “right side” of history, and Christianity was most definitely on the “wrong side.” During the dark ages, the “wrong side” of history on which to be was to stand against many of the corrupt popes. Indeed, the popes considered the reformers of the sixteenth century to be on the “wrong side” of history, while the reformers themselves considered the Anabaptists to be on the “wrong side” of history! At the start of the twentieth century, supernatural/theological liberalism was considered the “future” of the church, yet over a full century has shown that not to be the case. Over and over again, against seemingly insurmountable odds, the church has quietly changed culture. The church does it's best work when it has something more to offer the world than simply an echo of the culture around it.
- The use of the internet to spread the gospel. It’s easy to bemoan the evils of the internet, the increased ease of access to pornography and other types of visual evils. It’s easy to fear the changes technology brings. It’s easy to fear teenagers and their twiddling thumbs. But technology has been vastly used of God to tell the world about His Son to people previously unreached.
- The increasing doubt over evolution as fact. Darwin’s macro-evolution theory has been harmful to our understanding of creation ex nihilo in Genesis, and has caused much doubt about who man is and what his responsibilities are before God. But there is some scientific, growing dissent of Darwin’s theory, with good reasons to do so. In addition, there is this recently passed law, in Tennessee of all places, which encourages submitting Darwin’s theories to the same critical thinking that other origin theories must endure, which could be the beginning of a shift in thinking on evolution in American schools.
Is there much to fear in our generation? Sure, there always is. Will the future present challenges to God’s people? Most likely.
Will the church overcome them? Most certainly (Mat 16:18). Our God is a God Who rebuilds temples; Our God is a God Who brings beauty from ashes and dust.
So I ask, am I foolish to hope? Even if my world turns upside down and we are plunged into the greatest disaster the world has ever known, would I then have been wrong in hoping for a better future? Would I have been unwise? Is it ever unwise to hope? Or would it have been better for me to have spent what is now the present in depression, even despair, over the many negative indicators in our world? Would that have better “prepared” me for life in the future?
Like Babushka, I will not be denied the prerogative to desire, even expect, better things ahead, even if it seems all indicators scream otherwise.
What happened to our hope?
Haggai 2:1-9 | On the twenty-first day of the seventh month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: “Speak to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, to Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people. Ask them, ‘Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? But now be strong, Zerubbabel,’ declares the Lord. ‘Be strong, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the Lord, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear. This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”
Agreed. Good article.
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