In 1 Peter 4:17 we read that “judgement must begin at the house of God, and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?” It is therefore a clear Scriptural principle that where judgement comes on societies and nations generally, the Lord usually has special purposes of chastisement in order to humble and purify His Church. At the most, these purposes can only be partly understood by us here and therefore it is the duty of each professing Christian to search out the reasons why God may be sending afflictions upon us individually and collectively. In some cases, expressions of Divine displeasure may come upon us generally because the wider society we live in is ripe for judgement. Nevertheless, at the same time, there may be more specific reasons, and our duty is to seek grace to search out and confess all our sins before the Lord as individuals, families and as a branch of the visible Church.
In many ways, we must consider the period that the Church of Christ has passed through in recent months, due to the coronavirus pandemic, as one of unprecedented chastisement. Never since the Reformation have Protestant Churches throughout the world had to cease conducting public worship for so long a period, not even during times of war and persecution or through the ravages of other diseases. Never has the preaching of the gospel in public assemblies and the remembrance of the death of Christ been interdicted to such a universal and far-reaching extent.
While the Church has agreed that this cessation has been necessary to preserve lives, this does not alter the fact that it is a solemn judgment that has struck at the very heart of our work and witness and should make us all tremble “lest a worse thing come” upon us. If the staff of bread were broken, it would be clear that God’s anger was upon us as a people, as much as when disease sweeps multitudes into eternity. But when breaking the bread of life in public has stopped for many months among us, should we not all seriously lay to heart – both preachers and people – why this has come upon us? “Shall a trumpet be blown in the city and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?” (Amos 3:6).
In a sermon on Amos 6:9 preached in Glasgow after a time of hardship in the city, Andrew Gray warned his people that the Lord might send more severe and imperceptible visitations of judgement upon them if they neglected to hear His rod at that time. He warned them against silent rods – “when ye shall not know nor understand the language of them”; a silent God – “when ye shall cry to Him and He shall not hear you”; silent ordinances – “which shall not speak unto you”; silent mercies – “so that all the good things He doth unto you, ye shall not know their language”; silent conscience – “when ye shall not be reproved by it when ye sin, but God shall give you leave to fall and depart and not return”; silent commands, silent threatenings and silent promises – “that is, ye shall never know what the promises call for, what the threatenings call for, nor what the commands call for; when He shall chastise you in the dark and there shall be none to deliver you, and when there shall be none to plead your cause, but a sin-revenging God entering the list with you”. Such warnings from a faithful minister of a previous generation ought not to fall on deaf ears in our own midst at such a time as this. AWM