A German joke, opined Mark Twain, is no laughing matter. Nor, obviously, is the US election. The result will leave many elated, many miserable, many bewildered.
But there is one consolation for believers – whomever they wanted to win – and that is the biblical idea that God’s benevolent will is not thwarted by the behaviour of humans. In the 6th century BC the prophet Jeremiah wrote: “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord commanded it?” The ancient wisdom book of Proverbs notes that “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases”.
There are several examples where the Bible says God used unbelieving rulers, but the most notable are Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus.
Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon who sacked Jerusalem in 597 BC and led the Jews into captivity. Jeremiah is explicit that Nebuchadnezzar is working God’s will, to refocus his rebellious people’s attention on him. And, in turn, God humbled the cruel potentate by sending him insane, like “a beast of the field”, until he acknowledged God’s sovereignty in a humble prayer.
But Christians who support Donald Trump prefer to see in him the example of Cyrus, who conquered Babylon in 539 BC to form one of the largest empires of the ancient world – that is, an unbeliever but God’s man for the age.
Read the article by Barney Zwartz in The Brisbane Times.