Psalm 74:9-11 We are given no signs from God; no prophets are left, and none of us knows how long this will be.  How long will the enemy mock you, God?   Will the foe revile your name forever?   Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?   Take it from the folds of your garment and destroy them!

Not only is it not difficult for the worldwide Church in the 21st Century AD to identify with Asaph’s situation in Psalm 74, but in many ways things are even more confusing for us.  Whether it be because of the ‘unstoppable’ severe persecution in the East, the Middle East and North Africa, or the internal error and apostasy that has infected the Church in the West, Bible-believing evangelical Christians are crying out along with Asaph: “How long will the enemy mock you, God?  Will the foe revile your name forever?  Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?  Take it from the folds of your garment and destroy them!”.

Perhaps from our post-Jesus, Gospel perspective we are less inclined to call for the ‘destruction’ of our enemies, but we long for failure of their powerful influence, or, better still, for their conversion!  And we know something Asaph didn’t know – Not only do we know that God’s right hand is all-powerful, we also know that he has ‘take[n] it from the folds of [his] garment’, and that at his right hand sits his sacrficed-risen-ascended conquering Son, Our Saviour!

And we do know that one day (soon?) he is coming back to earth in power as Saviour and Judge,

But, like Asaph, we don’t know “how long this will be”.  “I am not skilled to understand/ what God has willed,/ what God has planned,/ I only know at his right hand/ stands One who is my Saviour./  I take him at his word and deed:/ Christ died to save me: this I read,/ and in my heart I find a need/ of him to be my Saviour./  And was there then no other way/ for God to take?  I cannot say,/ I only bless him, day by day,/ who saved me through my Saviour./  That he would leave his place on high/ and come for sinful man to die;/ you count it strange?  So once did I/ before I knew my Saviour./  And O that he fulfilled might see/ the travail of his soul in me,/ and with his work contented be,/ as I with my dear Saviour./  Yes, living, dying: let me bring/ my strength, my solace from this spring:/ that he who lives to be my King/ once died to be my Saviour (Dorothy Greenwell).

“Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).

– Bruce Christian

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Bruce Christian