Nothing of Time Will Matter

July 21

"Look among the nations and watch— Be utterly astounded! I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you. For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter nation which marches through the breadth of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs.

“They are terrible and dreadful; their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and more fierce than evening wolves. Their chargers charge ahead; their cavalry comes from afar; they fly as the eagle that hastens to eat.

“They all come for violence; their faces are set like the east wind. They gather captives like sand. They scoff at kings, and princes are scorned by them. They deride every stronghold, for they heap up earthen mounds and seize them. Then his mind changes, and he transgresses; he commits offense, ascribing his power to his god," Habakkuk 1:5-11.

God tells Habakkuk that he is not going to believe what He is about to tell him. He says He is already at work to deliver him and punish the sinners around him. Then He tells the prophet that He is sending the ferocious, bloody, terrifying Chaldeans to conquer Judah!

This was not what Habakkuk expected as an answer to his prayers for his people. How could their deliverance into the the hand of these barbaric and godless people effect God’s will? Habakkuk must have disdained the concept that God would punish Israel through this godless and ruthless enemy. From what Habakkuk understood of God, this made no sense. How could a loving God punish His chosen people by the hand of the vile and unbelieving Chaldeans?

God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform, but the lack of man’s understanding does not mean that there is not method to what the Holy One is doing in our midst. At times, it seems God is going in a confusing or even wrong direction, but that is merely our erroneous perception of what He’s doing. We will ultimately discover that He has been following a purposeful plan all along.

The main thing that prevents our grasp of what God is doing is that our perception is temporal while His purposes are eternal. As Derek Prince, a great expounder of the Word of God once said, “God will never sacrifice one moment of eternity for all of time.”

God will allow every scheme of man, every purpose of humankind, every achievement of technology, every accomplishment of man’s great mind to fall apart so in the process of their collapse man might find Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. And when man has found Him—when he truly understands his need of Jesus—nothing of time will matter.