Just in case you needed a bit of orientation, we’re still catching up on the timeline where we paused at the coronation of little king Joash in Judah.
We went back a bit to cover details under the reigns of Ahaziah & Joram in Israel.
Chronicles is more focused on Judah while the books of Kings focus more on the northern kingdom of Israel.
So… there are 4 narratives in this chapter:
- The Shunammite Woman Part 2
- The Death of Ben-Hadad
- Quick Summary of Jehoram’s Reign
- The Succession of Ahaziah
It pays to be friends with a prophet.
This was the woman who made a room for Elisha and hosted him when he travelled through.
It sounds as if her elderly husband has passed away by this time. And Elisha warns her that Yahweh has called for a 7-year drought. So she packs up and moves to Philistine territory on the Mediterranean coast til the famine is over.
If you’ve ever experienced divine timing- a set up of events and meeting of people at exactly the right moment, you know what the Shunammite woman experienced once she came back after the famine. Only God can do that. While Gehazi is regaling the king with stories of Elisha’s exploits, in walks the very woman and her son. That’s Divine timing.
The Lord can do that for you too. Never underestimate His ability to cause your path to cross with an appointed person at the appointed time. So we can trust and obey His word, just like the Shunammite.
Hang on… side tangent coming in 3…2…1…
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Let me ask you this…
When did Yahweh stop controlling the weather? 🌤️🌩️☃️ Has He stopped?
Does He control it all the time? 🌪️
Or only sometimes? 🌧️
If only sometimes, then when? On what occasions? If people pray? Only if it’s judgment? Only if it’s nice weather? ☀️
Like- when it’s a glorious day and I’m out enjoying it, then obviously God is controlling the weather, but when the tornado sirens go off, I’m out on my porch rebuking Satan?
How does that work?
Who’s controlling it the rest of the time?
No one? Is it like a machine that just runs on its own? ⚙️
Are there other forces in the unseen realm that can affect the weather? 😈
What is “The Angel of the Waters” 💦 in Revelation 16:5? What do you suppose his job is? 🌊
What about the angel “who has authority over fire” 🔥 in Revelation 14:18?
In Revelation 7:1-4 there is a team of angels given power over the winds of earth. 🌬️💨And there are other angels who have been “given permission to damage the earth and sea.” 🌎 Do you suppose they are sitting around for all eternity just waiting for the events of Revelation 7? Or might they be commissioned and given authority to affect earth’s weather at other times? All the time?
You and I are in a period of huge transition in the way humans think about the world around us. Prior to the Enlightenment (late 1600s), people had a supernatural worldview. It may have been biblically informed (Yahweh, angels, evil spirits), or it may not (fairies, gods, elves, & goblins); but it was supernatural. Celestial events, weather, natural disasters, plagues and pestilences were all viewed through a lens of “some supernatural being is behind this.”
The Enlightenment changed all that.
Disease wasn’t caused by evil spirits anymore; it was microbes. Draught and famine weren’t Divine judgments, it was solar cycles, El Niño, or climate change. Science has an answer for everything. Only- it really doesn’t.
To borrow the illustration from Christian Mathematician, Dr. John Lennox- science can tell how a kettle of water is boiling (with great precision), but it cannot tell why a kettle is boiling. Which is, I’d like to make a cup of tea. ☕️
Humans, for about the past 300 years have thought that the scientific and supernatural worldviews were mutually exclusive. It’s the reason that a lot of people abandoned the Bible and embraced only what science and logic and reason could explain. There are still many in the scientific community that look down upon a supernatural worldview as something for uneducated, even primitive people. If you hold a Biblical worldview (which is supernatural), you’re immediately pegged as backward. Unenlightened. Or even holding back the progress of humankind.
But what if these worldviews are not mutually exclusive?
I think we are in the midst of a long pendulum swing back towards a more supernatural worldview. Why? Because science has utterly failed to give us meaning.
It simply cannot discover why the kettle is boiling.
It can only tell us how, but not why.
To find that, you have to talk to the one who put the kettle on. You have to communicate with the mind behind it.
And we desperately need meaning.
Who am I? Why am I here? What defines good and evil? Where am I going? What is the meaning of life? Science answers none of these. Science can tell us the how of our existence, with great precision. And it is profoundly useful in that way. But it cannot tell us the why.
I bring all this up because we read lines like this in the Bible:
“…for Yahweh has called for a famine, and it will come to the land for seven years.”
2 Kings 8:1 LEB
And, as believers, we read that and we see no problem with it. We drive by without noticing. It’s a familiar landscape. Yes. Of course Yahweh can cause a famine. I mean, Elijah said it wasn’t going to rain for 3 and a half years and it didn’t. God sent the plagues on Egypt. Yawn. 🥱
But in our daily conversations about the weather, even with other Christians, we generally deny that God is controlling the weather; especially when the weather kills people.
Also- if a person is sick or mentally deranged in the Gospels and Jesus casts out the demon that was behind the malady and the person is healed, we don’t even blink. But we do a 180 when it comes to sickness and mental illness today. We tend to think that it has nothing to do with the spiritual. The sick person only needs medical attention.
And to me, that feels very inconsistent. Perhaps even borderline hypocritical. Why is it ok for illness to be spiritual in the Bible but not now?
I’m not suggesting that every single illness- physical or mental- means that the afflicted person is demon possessed and we need to get out the holy water and a crucifix.
Heavens no. Nuance, people. Nuance.
But what I think we need to be at least open to consider is that it very well could be both.
I’m suggesting that we stop thinking:
- Spiritual attack 😈 OR a microbe 🦠
And start thinking:
- Spiritual attack WITH a microbe.
(Like- Professor Plum, in the Library WITH a knife) 👨🏻🏫📚🔪
Because if the second view is more complete, taking a round of antibiotics might be addressing only half the problem.
This 7-year draught that came to Israel- I’m sure it killed people. That’s why Elisha warned the Shunammite woman to leave.
But we recoil from this. And when we hear about devastating events that take the lives of people and destroy their homes, we immediately remove God as far from that as possible.
😰 “Uhhh… He was on vacation. In Tahiti. God had no idea that was happening and He nothing to do with it. God is good. He would never allow people to die. We live in a fallen world.”
We always play the fallen world card.
If you think God wouldn’t allow people to die, you haven’t been paying attention to the Book. Satan didn’t bring the flood of Noah. God did. And it was deadly.
Ya know who didn’t play the “We live in a fallen world” card? Elisha.
I think many people are more willing to believe that either Satan controls the weather, or no one controls the weather, or perhaps the weird climate manipulation companies that do cloud-seeding and experimental charging of the ionosphere- they might be controlling it. But not God. Unless it’s sunny and 72. Then He’s back at the helm.
And I want to challenge that view.
The Almighty is not out to lunch. He knows all about cloud-seeding and any other mad-scientist attempts (even well-intentioned ones) to manipulate weather. He knows exactly how man is impacting the weather and the planet. Far better than we do.
We’ve already seen a history of the LORD allowing humanity to do stupid and bad things and He still uses those actions to achieve His purpose; even when the people have no idea.
I also want to press on the very uncomfortable notion that- if people die in a flood or famine or something, that God was completely not involved.
Yup- He just took His hands off the controls of the universe for a minute. Maybe He went to the kitchen to make a sandwich. 🥪
We would never say that. But is that what we actually believe?
Where is God when bad things happen?
I think that question comes from a view of God that assumes that because He is good (and He is) that He cannot allow bad to happen and still be good. As if there was no way for His goodness to triumph over bad things after they happen; only before.
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Here’s a chair. You know what to do with it.
🌤️⛅️🌥️☁️🌧️⛈️🌧️☁️🌥️⛅️🌤️
Is it true that we live in a fallen world? Yup. Absolutely.
Is it true that it is the Thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy? Yes again. That’s not God’s M.O.
Is mankind allowed to do bad things that harm people and the planet? Yes again.
Could malevolent spiritual forces affect natural phenomena? Well- did Pharaoh’s magicians affect a certain level of natural phenomena? What about the False Prophet in Revelation?
I’m just suggesting that we think on this topic with more nuance and challenge ourselves- “Am I really thinking biblically about this?”
Because when the judgments of Revelation are let loose, people on earth are probably going to talk a LOT about “climate change,” climate catastrophe, solar cycles, plate tectonics, melting polar ice caps, and the negative impact of humans on the planet. (And those ideas might just be weaponized against humans “the parasite destroying the planet.” They already are.)
And will those observations be true from the “how” perspective of science? Probably so. But from Heaven’s “why” perspective, there are literally mighty angelic beings carrying out the decrees of God Almighty; controlling every creek and spring, guiding the grinding planetary plates, poking holes for magma to burst forth, holding back wind, unloading devastating hail, turning up the dial on the sun and more catastrophic events than we can imagine.
And the Bible isn’t wrong. There are supernatural beings involved in those phenomena. The science probably won’t be wrong about it either. Scientists will be measuring every molecule and degree to sub-atomic precision. The science just won’t go far enough in its explanation.
I invite you to consider the possibility that holding both of these (up-til-now) antagonistic worldviews in balance in your mind may help a LOT in understanding the world around you.
Actual photo of scientific and supernatural worldviews getting along…
To The Reader 