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2 Kings 19:20, 35-36  Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria. … … That night the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp.  When the people got up the next morning – there were all the dead bodies!  So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew.  He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.

It is well worth taking the time to read the whole of 2 Kings 19, and Isaiah’s account of the same thing in Isaiah 37:14-38.  I remember learning the whole of Lord Byron’s poem, ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’, in Primary School, and it made such an impression on me that I still get goosebumps when I recite it to myself!  (So why not take time now to Google it and see if you too get goosebumps!).

Hezekiah’s situation was so desperate that earnest, heartfelt prayer was his only option – and his God responded in a powerful, supernatural way!  I think our situation today, as we try to proclaim God’s revealed truth to a generation that is determined to take this freedom from us, and seems to be getting ‘runs on the board’ in the exercise of its power, is such that earnest, heartfelt prayer is our only option.

Let us all unite our hearts and lay the daily newspaper before our sovereign God, as Hezekiah did with Sennacherib’s boastful, triumphal letter (verse 14), and plead with him for help in our battle to make known the glorious, liberating Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to our dying, self-destroying world.

– Bruce Christian