“1
Chronicles 1—2; Hebrews 8; Amos 2; Psalm
145
Woe to
China. In this century she has butchered fifty million of her own people in the
name of equality. Proud and haughty, she maintains an official atheistic
stance, persecuting the church while that church, nurtured by the blood of the
martyrs, has in half a century multiplied fifty times.
Woe to
Russia. In the second decade of this century she embarked on a massive social
experiment that resulted in the deaths of more than forty million people. She
subjugated nation after nation, so certain was she that the tide of history was
on her side. She became excellent at producing “the revolutionary man,” but
could not produce the promised “new man” of Marxist thought, and so hid behind
illusions and lies until her economic incompetence brought her down.
Woe to
Germany. Privileged to serve as home to some of the greatest Reformers, she
became extraordinarily arrogant intellectually, and in this century started two
world wars that wreaked death and havoc, including the horrors of the Nazis, on
countless millions. Today she builds excellent BMWs but has a materialist soul,
worshiping nothing greater than the deutsche mark.
Woe to
Great Britain. At one time ruler of one-quarter of the world’s population;
inheritor of some of the greatest Christian thought and literature ever
produced, she became ever more proud and condescending to the nations she
colonized and the people she enslaved. Having repeatedly squandered a heritage
of the knowledge of God, she thrashes around directionless and degraded.
Woe to
Canada. She likes to think of herself as morally superior to her nearest
neighbor, while hiding under the U.S. military umbrella. Sliding toward a moral
abyss, her Supreme Court issues decisions that are as morally corrosive as any
in the Western world, while the English-French factionalism drives toward
enmity and breakup for want of courtesy and respect from both sides.
Woe
the United States. She prides herself on being the only world power left, but
never reflects on how God has brought low every world power in history. Her
cherished freedoms, so great a heritage, have increasingly become a façade to
hide and then defend the grossest immorality and selfishness. To the nation at
large, no issue, absolutely none, is more important than the state of the
economy.
This
is the reasoning of Amos. In
Amos 1, he circles around the pagan neighbors, articulating the judgment of
God. Here in Amos 2, he moves to Moab, Judah (“Canada”), and finally brings it
home to Israel. Israelite audiences would begin with smug contentment during
the early parts: how would they end up? And
understand: the sequence of my “Woes,” above, could have been rearranged to end
with any country—with your country.”
From—For
the Love of God—Volume 2, by D. A. Carson (Crossway Books, Wheaton IL;
1999)
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