As many nonreligious folks are now seeing, we need more than mere men who can temporarily help us. We need a God who can eternally save us.
As many nonreligious folks are now seeing through tearful eyes, we need more than mere men who can temporarily help us. We need a God who can eternally save us.
Imagine you’re a Jew living in Jerusalem in 696 B.C. A few decades earlier, under the reign of King Ahaz, you saw your land torn apart by evil. While you were never the most observant Jew and didn’t offer up your sacrifices as often as the Law of Moses required, it was obvious to you that the gods Ahaz had gone after were idols of wickedness and destruction. You heard how your king had sacrificed his own sons as a burnt offering to the false god Baal, and you saw how many of your people followed his example, believing the vicious lie that the stench of their children’s charred flesh could somehow grant them peace. You watched your neighbors being carried away on raids by foreigners as a sign of God’s judgment against the king’s idolatry. Even though you didn’t go up to Solomon’s temple anymore, you still felt anger and humiliation as Ahaz stripped and boarded up the house of God in his war against Him.
But then, everything changed when Ahaz’s son Hezekiah arrived. Immediately after taking the throne, he ordered the temple to be reopened and cleansed. He fixed the doors of God’s house and ordered the priests to rid the temple of all the pagan rot Ahaz had brought in and to restore proper worship. And while you still didn’t feel compelled to bring your animals to the priests that they might splatter the blood on the altar, you still recognized things were infinitely better with a king who followed the ways of David than the ways of Ahaz. Things were purer and more peaceful. Hezekiah had ended the days of madness.
Then Hezekiah died, and his son Mannasseh immediately brought back the wickedness of his grandfather Ahaz. He rebuilt the pagan altars his father tore down, redefiled the temple, and reemboldened those who wanted to pollute the land with filth and violence. And when you once again began to smell the stench of infant flesh on the garments of the king, you started to realize you need something greater than a hero whose most glorious accomplishments could quickly be buried under an avalanche of wickedness. You needed rescue from the God whose glory the temple could not fully contain. You need something greater than a king who can die.
It seems many non- or not-so-religious people have begun to realize something similar in response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
