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by Kevin Pauley
"If you are not careful to obey all the words of this law, which are written in this scroll, by fearing this glorious and awesome name--Yahweh, your God-- He will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses. He will afflict you again with all the diseases of Egypt, which you dreaded, and they will cling to you. The LORD will also inflict you with every sickness and plague not recorded in the book of this law, until you are destroyed.” - Deuteronomy 28:58-61 HCSB
Today’s prophetic passage warns that our care should be to obey all the Scriptures, not simply the most popular passages. Further, this obedience should be motivated by a respectful fear of Yahweh’s name.
Interestingly, God gave these scourges seven separate characteristics, each of which we see clearly in today’s struggles. God predicted the plagues would be multigenerational, severe, lasting, terrible, chronic, “clinging” and new.
Failure to comply will have consequences not only to us, but to our descendants. If confession, repentance and restitution is not evidenced, it will eventually result in our nation’s destruction. God will not allow us to discover the cures until the nation is destroyed and this will happen regardless of the size of the nation’s population or the state of its medical science.
The promise to leave a remnant repeats a promise previously made to Israel that their destruction would never be total. Such a promise was never made to the Gentile nations so we may not be sure that such a limitation applies to us.
Shall we see if this promise has actually been fulfilled?
When our ancestors were huddling in stone piles in Europe, Africa had huge cultured cities. There was a time when Africa was the home of the largest Christian presence on Earth. Didn’t the famed St. Augustine minister in Africa? However, the nations on that pitiful continent forsook the ways of God and by and large returned to the polytheistic, animistic ways of their ancestors. What consequence has this wrought?
- Three thousand Africans, mostly children, die every day of mosquito bites.
- Nine thousand people die every day of a preventable, treatable disease like AIDS.
- Over the last twenty years more than twenty million people have died from AIDS.
- Twenty five million people live with HIV on the continent of Africa.
- Most African women today are widows caring for children that are not their own. After slaying millions of Africans, HIV/AIDS has left more than fourteen million orphans.
- In many countries so many adults have died of AIDS, Malaria and Hepatitis that nearly 60% of the population is under the age of 14.
No nation is above this principle or so mighty as to resist the hand of God. We must mend our ways and humbly return to our God before the same fate befalls us.
Kevin Pauley is a pastor and writer. He lives in Illinois with his wife, Lynn, their five children and two dogs. His internet address is Berea.
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