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CHAPTER EIGHT

KING HEZEKIAH: A WONDER AND A WARNING

VIABLE, TRIED: HE SIGHED, and was

SIGHTED

AND NOT SLIGHTED BY THE LORD

Hezekiah

Introduction and Modern Parallels

His life and strength lay in the Lord, not man, and His criterion was God and not culture, while his intractability was for the truth, and not for tradition, phases or cults of the time.

Not that he was perfect: alas he seems to have made two monumental errors; but for all that, first, he learned his lessons in rather a spectacular way, on the re-run if you want to put it that way, and secondly, he was heard because trembling before God, he took in vital seriousness his condition before God, and sought Him not in petulance or pride, but in humility and passion.

Before him, you had one of the most devious, spiritually picaresque rather than picturesque kings, moving things in the temple, in and out, including an idol from a nation whom the Lord had given him to defeat. In a time of magnificent and prodigious offer from the Lord in a tempest of events, he did not even accept the wonder offered; but in this, how does he differ from those today who turn down the Saviour, Jesus Christ, whose offer is still spectacular, the personal knowledge of God and His presence as living Father and defence (Psalm 7:10, I John 1:7-2:2).

For all that, his nation had had a long past of relying on the Lord, as does this one, at least in part, as seen in the pre-amble to the Constitution of our land, in which it is avowed that the union making the country one was wrought in dependence on Almighty God. Would that at the national level it were still so, instead of the deadness of atheism, asserting its truth while denying in its model that there is any, and various relativities, asserting themselves without any more truth option than the atheist, leaving Einstein behind in making morals relative, and God an absentee or irrelevant. Founding themselves on themselves, what can they do, whether it be in theory or in practice, but fail. Their failures mock the nation.

At least, we have not made special peace with any alien religion, as did Obama, whose government we now hear appears to be accepting the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt, as a virtually secular organisation^*1 while thrusting billions towards the land. It has relied on an Islamic nation, Pakistan, in its Afghan war, and now is apparently sure that it has been betrayed, forces contrary to its own, being succoured by an arm of that very nation in that very war!

The Obama creed, that he is an active and deep Christian who nevertheless calls in a congratulatory speech, the Koran a holy book, though it denies all that is the unique and glorious historical and religious testimony of Jesus Christ, and is sure war with Islam is out of the question (as it might be from a religious point of view, since force in the interests of religion is forbidden by Christ), even though it is conceivable at the political level that a Muslim group could declare war on the USA: it is a nullification of what is ostensibly most holy.

It has led and does lead to a vast wastage of US resources, treachery and false reliance, loss of citizens in betrayals, and has a further aspect.

Thus President Obama's idea that the USA is not a Christian nation, though true legally, and most true in terms of much current legislation, is far from true in terms of other considerations, such as its history from the first in many items, its law structure, its interest in an absolute justice, personal liberty and the absence of force in compelling conversion. This has been far from true in the Islamic case.

To let all this evaporate is unwise, whether in current historical trend or in speech by a President.

Had he declared,

While the USA is not a formally Christian country, having been specifically founded with a clear endeavour to enable liberty to worship freely, putting on its coins, in God we trust, it has nevertheless had a vast involvement with the religion of Jesus Christ, and it is this which makes us a very reluctant nation to do anything by mere force to overcome any particular religion. If of course we are as a nation ever attacked by a group, whatever its religion, we shall defend our shores and people against that ...

if, I say, he had declared this, it would have been more fitting, faithful, a more descriptive utterance and more prudent. Stripping the God and Father of Jesus Christ so categorically from the nation is to ask that any remnant of relief from the forces of ruin, be disregarded. If God, despite this, continues much mercy in view of the prayers of millions of its people, that would be mercy indeed. He is not easily provoked, but this new aggregation of national inter-religiousness reminds of the day of King Ahaz in ancient Israel, a sovereign who did not ACTUALLY put his trust in the Lord when confronted with challenge to his nation, and did not ACTUALLY respond with faith as King, when meeting this challenge, so that in the name of the Lord, who was giving the offer and making the challenge, Isaiah declared, "Is it a small thing for you to weary man, but will you weary my God also!" (Isaiah 7:13).

While we tremble therefore for America, though the Lord is most merciful and ready to hear repentance, we are thankful that after King Ahaz in ancient Israel, there came a complete contrast - or one almost complete. It was the reign of King Hezekiah; blessed be God, for it had a bountiful supply of that desirable initiative, the thrust, the goodness and mercy in major matters, the large-hearted faith and fervent reform, the trust in crisis and the willingness to wait on the living God, whose word is found to act faithfully and always in one place only, that of the Bible...

Had Hezekiah all of such initiative then ? In general character, it seems so, but it was not entirely without blemish, though its nature is indisputable. There is little perfect in this world, the form and fashion of which is passing away as Paul declares (I Corinthians 7:31), and the whole creation groans (Romans 8), while it waits the manifestation in completion of the children of God, which comes with the resurrection; for though now we know Him, then the distinctness becomes perfect, sins no more test faith and failure is found no more even the hearts of the people of the Lord. Some characters however have a tang, a thrust, an orientation, a flow which it is hard to miss, even if cultures amiss make for a lessening of sight!

THE REFORMS OF HEZEKIAH

It is, in fact, always lovely to see one who, when young, is projected into responsibility or authority and uses it with zeal for established truth, with an individual energy and imagination, clearing away misconception without removing right conception with it! Hezekiah restored the temple, abominably misused by what one might almost think of as a religious clown, King Ahaz, the preceding king. He had even imported implements of idolatry into it, but these Hezekiah purged, while bringing back the due and true workers to their just, temple toil. For one so young, to hear his balanced but virile challenge, in speaking to the Levites, is a joy.

"Hear me, Levites! he said (II Chronicles 29:5ff.).

"Now sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house of the LORD God of your fathers,
and carry out the rubbish from the holy place.
For our fathers have trespassed and done evil in the eyes of the LORD our God;
they have forsaken Him,
have turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the LORD,
and turned their backs on Him...
Therefore the wrath of the LORD fell
upon Judah and Jerusalem ... "

He proceeded to make a covenant with the Lord, based on His ways and His word to them, which did not change. It reminds one of that other great reforming King, Jehoshaphat, who in speaking to the judges of Israel, declared this:

"Take heed to what you are doing,
for you do not judge for man but for the LORD,
who is with you in the judgment. Now therefore, let the fear of the LORD
be upon you; take care and do it,
for there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, no partiality, nor taking of bribes."

Such judges and such judgment now in the courts of major democracies could only improve them past all recognition; for what is hidden from the mind by false ideology, does not reach the thought in application! and false ideology is common like mice, in all classes of the nations, there being alas, far more than three blind mice. You do not avoid that corruption which is through confusion, just by being a doctor, or a politician ... or a judge! The USSR, in its blind devotion to a false and foolish ideology, provided a national exhibit of what also applies personally and individually to some extent outside itself, and beyond such monstrosities of relativistically minded countries.

Such are absolutist in power, ludicrously combined with relativity in practice^*2. In other words, these become a role model for ruin, avoiding restraint; and elements reflecting this kind of autocratic corruption and subjection can be seen arising in other lands, often lusting to control the minds of students from their brooding cultural clutches, propagandising with their superficial clichés and unveiled, unverified academic passions.

Contrary to such degradation was the tenor of King Hezekiah, for positive vigour went beyond formal noises, and mere poises. "My sons, do not be negligent now, for the LORD has chosen you to stand before Him, to serve Him ..." we find in II Chronicles 29:11. Such was the energetic, dutiful, responsible tenor of things.

Thus they cleansed out the inner part of the Temple, corresponding then, in symbolic form, to removing false doctrine, leaving free the teaching which the symbols implied. This was then. In more recent times, parallel is such work as was done in reformation, though alas this too can go astray. Thus alas, in the case of the PC of Australia, the Church of my forefathers, with whose Constitution itself I find myself in a blessed harmony, there has been a movement simply from one Sadducaic extreme, irrational and ruthless assault on the Bible, one which cost me dear enough, though by divine grace, I triumphed over it at length, to the its very opposite. This is the Pharisaic type of thing, rich in tradition, in undue reliance on the mind of man, readily making void the word of God^*3.

This is a half-way measure which does not really work, being substitution rather than evacuation. They moved from multiply and loosely attacking the Bible, to adding blinkers through which it is to be seen. The word of God, however, must stand free from trade-in, beautiful in holiness, operative without direction.

Hezekiah was thorough. He superintended this temple cleansing to remove rubbish, but also to re-sanctify what was good and cast aside (II Chronicles 29:19). How easy it is to remove the evil and not restore the good, as in the case of the man in the parable of Christ, who certainly got rid of one devil, but not having his 'house' inhabited now by the Lord, was soon under the dominion of 7 worse ones! (Luke 11:26).

By King Hezekiah, temple sacrifice was restored in its due measure, bespeaking in our own terms, a restoration of the primacy of the Cross of Christ (as in Galatians 6:14), in which as Colossians 1 tells us, is the attestation which God provided, as He pursued His good pleasure for having ALL reconciled to Himself, yes those in heaven and on earth. God must be seen as He is and NEVER by theology's pretences and pretensions, never altered in depiction of His justice, authority, truth or love by one iota. It is like a great painting by Titian: who would dare alter it. When it is the very portrait of God, who indeed! Yet... they do^*4.

The Contrast in the Northern Israel with the South
The Grand Mercies of Hezekiah

Further, the musical glories were restored to the Temple, as when Psalm-singing restrictions^*5 are lifted (though there is GOOD reason to avoid musical tantrums passing as sacred, and woeful doctrine, sometimes enshrined in hymns!). Having then had restoration, consecration and covenant brought back as far as he could, the King went on to a vast Passover of thanksgiving, and this had more significance. At about this time, the kingdom to the North was being ruined by Sennacherib so thoroughly that it would become in time that alien seeming land, Samaria, with its own religions. It is this that figures so clearly in the New Testament. These things being so, Hezekiah was quick, large-heartedly and with revivalist zeal, to invite any from that realm to join in the Passover (II Chronicles 30:6-8).

"Now do not be stiff-necked, as your fathers were,
but yield yourselves to the LORD, and enter His sanctuary,
which He has sanctified forever and service the LORD you God,
that the fierceness of His wrath may turn away from you," he exhorted.

He sought them out with messengers: runners going throughout all Judah and Israel, they sent letters to them, so that they should find compassion from the Lord (II Chronicles 30:9). To one and to all went the message of restoration and reform, in his realm, in the fallen North! This was a prelude to modern evangelism. Nevertheless, in parts of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the messengers were mocked. This had long been the way of it in that sector, stiff-necked rejection while wallowing in the ways of their neighbours, preferring man to God. Thus it formed part of its indictment when it failed, felled by an invader, and being overturned, collapsed (II Kings 17). Increasingly weak, unreliable, dishonoured, falling and rising kings had disadorned Israel to the North (I Kings 15, 17) until its corpse was scattered by the conqueror, its people displaced and replaced. What a calamity was that!

In the book of Kings, however, we see that not only did Judah have a continuing place to exhibit to the world the wonders of the Lord through its continuing history, but in contemporary contrast, there rose like a tower, Hezekiah's reign, a better testimony. Judah therefore continued unsubdued, listed alive when death struck the other! While the wandering North went, the southern sector, the nation now called Judah, with Jerusalem and the drastically restored temple in it, that stayed! Yet it was menaced and multiply challenged for all that, but God in Hezekiah's day, relieved it.

As to Hezekiah, we read at the end of the recitation, in II Chronicles 32:20:

"Thus Hezekiah did throughout all Judah,
and he did what was good and right and true before the LORD his God."

What a testimony! However, many a challenge would come in its time, and even in Hezekiah's day there was a series of enticements, perils and deliverances, requiring the utmost vigilance, with reliance on the Lord and ardent petition. That, it is to live!

The Sudden Challenge and the Initial Failure

It is so easy when success smiles upon you as if it had no other countenance, and care embraces you as if it were your spouse, lest the sun should ever cease to shine, or clouds were unknown, to be unready, caught by the sudden smart of the pugnacious whip, as someone, something lunges with hope of your overthrow, failure or fall. It is easy when all flows smoothly, to act as if you were specially made for just such a destiny. Hezekiah seems to have been no exception to this danger. Thus when the King of Assyria, a great nation like Russia or England of old, loomed near, not only with impudent threat, but with the force that overthrew the segment of Israel to the North, the King of Judah was quick to speak yieldingly.

He gave carte blanche most unwisely, saying to the potential invader: Whatever you ask, I will give! Whether this was done as a delaying tactic, or was simply a dashing word in preference to surrender, it was done! The demands of the imperious but soon to be doomed Assyrian King, Sennacherib were for so much gold and silver that the King stripped parts of the Temple to satiate the invader's lust, and took from the treasury of the Lord instead of taking from the treasury of HIS strength!

This failure was a needless weakening, and so in parallel, is that now in Australia, where billions are borrowed to create vast debt with an atheistically governed nation, China - though on one report it has more Christians in it than members of the Communist Party. Yet is this not as if to try out the maxim that the debtor is servant to the lender! Is the independence of this, our land, so zealously fought for in the past, now to be made servile by the rash dependence on such a nation!

Was money to be squandered in eminently questioned rush to deal with new constructions so that amazing rorts occurred and ill-considered works were done, at least one authority expressing the judgment that by that time, the national financial crisis was in substance, past! Is scurrying and hurrying of this order, is debt of this kind to be indulged in as if responsibility were null and impetus were all!

When one does not trust in the Lord, haste, pure haste, it is this which can mark down wisdom; and though the boom in exports from Australia to China in staggeringly good terms of trade, has provided much to hide the mess, the land has been not a little sacrificed. However, he who believes in Him, will not make haste! (Isaiah 28:16). There is a sort of leadership which, like Hezekiah, rests in the Lord, and is not readily turned from the days of being linked to those ready for fighting on the beaches, to these of fighting for funds from potential enemies. Passion unknown today can flower tomorrow.

One might ask, But did not Hezekiah pay such funds to Assyria, in immediate response ? or was it protracted ? No, he quickly ceased, wise man!. Already however it diminished the nation, in testimony, in spirit, as an example of waiting on the Lord, making it appear feckless and without the God of all resource and power.

Thus, in this case, this was but the beginning, or near it; and the entirely contrary force of real faith did not fail to operate, with a speed and a vigour both elemental, fearful only of the Lord, and entirely effectual! The result ? in the end, not only did the Lord give a triumph that still echoes, to Hezekiah, but a crushing to his enemies that left wounds which would become fatal to their invasive king. Yet the victory for Judah, for all that, was NOT specifically through the works which Hezekiah prudently drew up, in determined defence of the nation, including stopping the springs and brook that ran through the land, saying, Why give the assailant water!

Double Deliverance in War:

The Divine Response and Its Powerful Prevailing

Triumph did not come from the built up fortifications on a national scale (II Chronicles 32:5). It came through the explicit and vast action of the Lord Himself, responding to faith and cry alike (II Kings 19:35-37, Isaiah 37:21ff.), not only predicting but performing with transforming power, both at once and later! As to Hezekiah, from whatever early trembling he suffered, there was given him a heart of courage and trust in his King. Indeed, said Hezekiah,

"Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid, nor dismayed
before the king of Assyria, nor before all the multitude that is with him;
for there are more with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh;
but with us is the LORD our God, to help us and to fight our battles."

Total and divine deliverance was the divine grant to the enquiring, trusting king.

Soon, we will review great things, but also some failures in Hezekiah's reign: yet now keep these words in the text above, in heart and mind, as you face conflict and outface sin and fear; for if you know the Lord, He will act (Isaiah 64:4-5), Himself unchanged, over-arching in splendour, undertaking in grace.

When therefore Sennacherib, the canny and boastful Assyrian King, in due course,

	insatiable,
	sent hostile messengers to Jerusalem and laid siege against Lachish, like a gobbling Hitler, when Europe seemed paralysed for a time,
	and his servants put out propaganda like that of Communist given to the returning defeated soldiers in 1917,
	the Assyrian monarch enticing with spurious promises while ready to attack with furious and demented dynamic:

Israel was in no small degree both disciplined and ready to act.

Land, cried the propagandists to the people of the land (Isaiah 36:17), land will be given you and you will have an gracious independence under us, so trust us! Do not speak in Hebrew, cried the Jewish officials! but the potential invader would not hear. They spoke but the more, and sought to influence the heart and fighting spirit of the people. This is the easier when in polytheism or atheism a nation rots, far from reason and free of objectively oriented faith in the God of all power and pity^*6. Not so at this time was Judah however, and its luscious enticements did not fall to the invader.

Sennacherib's envoy, Rabshakeh, continued his facile psychological warfare in boastful assurance. The people were too disciplined to answer, and let the King seek the Lord instead! Indeed, if the people would give a pledge to the Assyrian King, such was his much vaunted strength that he would give them 2000 horses, if they could find riders for them! So he snarled and sought to snare by the pure bombast of speech and the present of means. Such indebtedness would then be theirs! such glamour of agreement. But they did not, and were as those who do not hear (II Kings 18:36).

Hezekiah was quick to pick up the fatal weakness in these boastings. To be sure, the twisted lies of those who wish to subvert a people, whether from within or from outside, were well represented. It was made to appear in the envoys' shouting to the people, that Hezekiah would have offended God by having reduced the number of places for worship, and concentrated in Jerusalem; but in their lying disorder, they were unaware that this was precisely as the Lord has stipulated from the first (cf. SMR p. 823), and was a purgative instrument from multiple corruptions (II Kings 18:4).

Such places, high places, resembled sects spoiling the land in various sites for spurious worships of sundry false gods and inventions of human imagination. From their messages and gods, it was as if the true and living God alone were unbearable, though He had borne Israel as an eagle her young, on her wings, and taught them to fly (Deuteronomy 32:11,17).

Not falling for this ferment of deceit, therefore, the people were awaiting the King's action. To the Temple he went, and laid bare the taunting challenge before the Lord (II Kings 19); and he sent for the prophet Isaiah. His words were both humble and intense:

"This day is a day of trouble and rebuke and blasphemy, for the children have come to birth, but there is no strength to bring them forth. It may be that the LORD our God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to reproach the living God and will rebuke the words which the LORD your God has heard. Therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left."

Fresh from typical deviousness, then, the propaganda minister, like Dr Goebbels with Hitler, Rabshakeh nevertheless, returning to Lachish found the Assyrian King to be pre-occupied with an apparently unexpected attack. That monarch, intent to deceive, then sent letters with messengers (II Kings 19) in order to increase his rampaging against Israel. Look, his words sounded, look at all the other kingdoms, and which of them has been able to stand before the Assyrian! He listed some. But his appalling error came earlier when he wildly cried (II Chronicles 8:35),

"Who among all the gods of these nations have delivered their countries from my hand that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand ?"

By directly comparing the power of the Lord with the power of hand-made, man-manufactured gods, he went past the sins of Jerusalem to the purity of God, and invited a deliverance directly from Himself, for the sake of His protectorate, Judah!

Isaiah came forth, then, with the Lord's own response.

"Don't be afraid of the words which you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me. Surely I will send a spirit upon him, and he will hear a rumour and return to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land."

How beautiful in composure is the Lord further response as found in Isaiah 37:22ff., which included these words:

"The virgin, the daughter of Zion, has despised you, laughed you to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head behind your back!
Whom have you reproached and blasphemed ?
Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted up your eyes on high. Against the Holy One of Israel.
By your servants you have reproached the Lord ... "

Other nations fell, being without the Lord, and

"therefore their inhabitants had little power; they were dismayed and confounded ....because your rage against Me and your tumult
have come up to My ears, therefore I will put My hook in your nose,
and My bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way which you came."

In this way, the matter was divinely reviewed, and action followed.

So Sennacherib went back, overwhelmed by a divine onset which slew his army (II Kings 19:35ff.), in defeat from his seeming days of dynamic, inglorious. Indeed, he came in due course to be slain by his own sons in his own temple, thus fulfilling, as always, the word of the Lord both in things mighty and small, in detail and in this case, in duress.

Hezekiah had done wisely and well, achieving discipline beforehand, both in things religious and martial, and following and not prescribing to the Lord, but hastening to hear and to obey. Thus he at length became not only ready, but a regal servant waiting on the King of Kings, finding in His covenant to the nation, a reply both in word and indeed, worthy of regality!

Many were the gifts to Hezekiah and to the LORD in Jerusalem, following this. The king's name was exalted, Hezekiah was in danger of sharing some of that glory. Soon the king would become close to the earth itself.

Has such a thing stricken the USA in its last 60 years or so ? and is this a warning to others, as biblical principles are aborted, immorality becomes the consort, relativity rules and has itself no rules. Whether it be the EU, with an unknown "common destiny," or alas our own land, where irreligion seems increasingly to be established, such is the flow. Sickness, like debt, tries ... and Hezekiah was lifted out of it through faith in the Lord; but later alas, he slipped towards multiculturalism, and his nation with him. Being 'great' is exceedingly dangerous. Consider this verse which has been published on the Web as the work of a 15 year old American.

"New Pledge of Allegiance"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule
For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd.
If scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.
Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That's no offense; it's a freedom scene..
The law is specific, the law is precise.
Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.
For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all..
In silence alone we must meditate,
God's name is prohibited by the state.
We're allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks...
They've outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.
We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the 'unwed daddy,' our Senior King.
It's 'inappropriate' to teach right from wrong,
We're taught that such 'judgments' do not belong..
We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles..
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.
It's scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school's a mess.
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!
Amen

The Glorious Deliverance in Personal Life

Later, sickness struck. It seemed calamitous, for death threatened; and he was challenged with the word through the prophet Isaiah, to set his house in order, before the very face of death. Then the sickness of his soul itself became acute. Mortality rumbled, for he said (from Isaiah 38),

"I am deprived of the remainder of my years ...
My life span is gone, taken from me like a shepherd's tent ...
My eyes from looking upward.
O LORD, I am oppressed; undertake for me."

"Remember now, O LORD, I pray," his words soared from the depths, "how I walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart ..." and he wept bitterly. Isaiah the prophet was commissioned by the Lord to give the king this message.

"I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears;
surely I will add to your days fifteen years.
I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria
and I will defend this city."

In his day, therefore, no more could the Assyrian king parade and penetrate, the city being for that period inviolate. Thus the sickness and the solution from the Lord were both jointly covered, and He did more than the king might even have hoped (Ephesians 3:20). Such is the Lord who knows how to satisfy the lean, and be gracious past the bounds of thought.

If possible, more amazing yet was the Lord's procedure. Telling Hezekiah to put a lump of figs on the boil, He healed with this simple act of obedience, the flesh, in a way parallel to that of Naaman's healing (II Kings 5). But He even gave a sign to Hezekiah that indeed his health would be restored, and in II Chronicles we read how this matter proceeded.

Isaiah when asked what sign the Lord would give concerning his healing, was told that he might ask the Lord either to have the sun-dial shadow go forward or backward by 10 degrees. Nothing if not valiant, the King spoke his mind, that going forward was not so impressive as backwards, contrary to normal direction, and thus for this he asked! It duly happened, and he became well; for with the Lord, this or that intervention, which science could seek to discover afterwards in attestation, just as one might seek to find who left a cake on the door-step, is all in the province of His mind, for His brilliance of technology and scope of action is unlimited, and He can do things hard to find out, as a parent with a child who, if he knows his juvenile place, should not be unduly surprised at a work beyond his current powers! In one sense, he should expect it!

But what lay behind some of this drama ? It was that having been SUCH a reformer, and done such merciful things with such drive and address, and having been delivered by miraculous means from the tyranny of Assyria, which had even desolated the northern kingdom, Hezekiah was misled into the pollution of "pride in his heart" (II Chronicles 32:26), But now they humbled themselves, the King and those with him, and the Lord was pleased to deliver them entirely. How easy it is to be delivered and then to think or act as if THAT mercy in some way elevates oneself and not the Lord! However there is cure as we see here, and the Lord is quick to see sincerity and to cover past in present humbling, when faith cries.

The Personal Test of the King

Strong were the testings of Hezekiah; yet the testings of the King were not yet complete. The end of each life is written beforehand and the counsel of the Lord is clear from the first (Ephesians 1:4,11, Isaiah 46:10),and He works all things after the counsel of His own will. Through faith, great gifts can manage great tests, and may be met by them!. Now we learn that God, in order to put on display all that was in Hezekiah's heart (II Chronicles 32:31), withdrew from the normal intimacy of fellowship, and alas, how suddenly did Hezekiah fall! If the mechanics put a new engine in your car, or lavishly look after the existing one, one would hope that it would then perform well under test; but if for some reason, it had to go on a desert journey, one would still hope that with routine maintenance, it might be able to sustain a reasonable force, just as a kindly cared for saint might show his fortitude, under testing trial.

Grievous therefore was the failure to discern, to be watchful which the King now displayed, almost as if he were one King, and the King of Babylon were another, and between the two of these, both potentates, naturally, there should be fellowship and sincere greetings. Not so is the prince of this world! (cf. John 14:30, and II Chron. 19). He CANNOT be trusted at all!

If then Hezekiah had been prone at one phase to pride of heart, though this was soon corrected, now he seemed to become subject to slackness of spirit, thus teaching us to be vigilant at ALL times, and to abide in the cherished Lord with a closeness which does not depend on feeling, though His sacred presence be treasured. When therefore the greetings and kindly seeming word from the King of Babylon came through his messengers, Hezekiah appears to have acted blindly, like a pilot flying into a vast cloud of unknown temperature, contents and electrical perils, without consultation or consideration.

Thus, friendly overtures came from Babylon, and so the King in Judah unwound his wealth, to show it, and to show the temple with its gold and vast treasures to Babylon's emissaries, as if the same Lord were over Babylon and Judah; but it was not so. The difference was not gradational but operational, not in degree but in kind, and more than that, it was between the one God who is living and eternal, and gods made by man's mind.

HENCE when Isaiah asked him concerning the matter, the King, apparently still in the grip of laxity, freely noted that he had shown them ALL! Appalling to cast pearls before swine (that is, in this instance, things of spiritual significance freely and without counsel before those whose heart is subject to another sovereign who blinds, or passion which paralyses), and to act in fellowship with what is not in and of the Lord, as some do with the World Council of Churches, which attests many religious approaches, far from the Bible. Such laxity is not readily removed. In the case of Hezekiah, it took the word from the Lord through Isaiah to bring the King back to reality!

Was he to have fellowship as if to incorporate with the followers and users of idols, foisting transgression as if truth! Did not II Chronicles 19 show the folly of this in the earlier day of Jehoshaphat! Was he to help the wicked and show kinship with those who hate the Lord ? That was the challenge to King Jehoshaphat. Was that lesson now to be ignored ?

It was not a mere matter of being kind, but of sharing the plan and purpose of life with such, as Jehoshaphat had just done! Hezekiah temporarily fell into the same diggings! This even now, many even of those who use the name of Christ, do on a vast scale including themselves with organisations with counter-scriptural notions or coverage or membership; and indeed, some seek to do this with virtually anything bearing the name of a Church, even if it denies the word of God at will, contrary to Romans 16:17.

It was wrong, is wrong and led to the rebuke from Isaiah, that although Hezekiah's own life-time would be free of the approaching calamity, yet that would come. As some children bear openly and wholly some fault in a parent, to their ruin, so a nation can slowly become prey to the wolves of subversion which gnaw at its vitals, as now is the case in Australia, where change from the past often national impact of founding faith, appears almost a passion, not to refine, but to reject. Thus the much vaunted 'multi-culturalism' in Australia is pushed to mean that instead of carefully becoming more tolerant in non-essentials, people are rather to adapt to everything and become nothing, making a foundation-free nullity, founded on nothing but naȉveté, and asking eloquently to come to nothing.

Back to base, however, let us consider some of the ingredients of Hezekiah's folly in gullibility, one that led on directly to the invasion of the nation.

PRINCIPLES OF POLLUTION

1) Firstly, he had tended to become one of the world, and if this was chiefly in his unconscious attitude, one great among the great, it was still a weakness that could be exploited, like an unattended wound. Want to be a friend of this world ? then become an enemy of God (James 4:4).

2) Secondly, he was enmembered among the mighty, valiant king of deliverance; and it is so easy when the LORD delivers you, to allow, like some moon, the radiance of His release to attach to yourself. Daniel knew the answer to that: it is NOT, he told the king in giving the supernatural answer to the king's incredible request to interpret a dream that he did not disclose: this is NOT from any special wisdom above all men that I have, but it is God who has delivered us.

Thus when the mighty king of Babylon sent messengers to say how happy he was that dear King Hezekiah was so much better after his trial of sickness, Hezekiah is not on record as saying, Yes, the Lord God of Israel, compassionate, covenantally faithful, fearless in mighty, strong in consolation, has healed me direct. It was not because of any peculiar might in me, or for any particular reward, but of His own free will He resolved so to act, and we, as recipients, boast in Him. Had he done so, there would have been a testimony of power and purity, an implicit challenge to the Babylonian culture of many gods, and imperial power which is glad to use them. Hezekiah could have distinctively honoured the Lord for the healing, and so exalted Him. As it was, Hezekiah opened up the temple, it would seem almost as an act of fellowship with spiritual aliens, allowing the lust for gold and glory to seize them the more!

3) He had become a significant sovereign, and thus filled with wealth and praise, could afford a more lenient, even more lax and perhaps more leisurely style, as if the battle between good and evil, God and no-god, glory and shame, godliness and unspirituality, biblical truth and alien propaganda has in some way come to a lull; but it never comes to that, nor will it till Christ the Messiah returns to rule. If there are special times of testing which we must all face, as Hezekiah both politically and personally had been required to face, yet all of life is testing, since we are born aliens, in need of covenantal acceptance, born without mercy (Ephesians 2:12), in need of being brought near by the sacrifices of God, focussed and finalised in the Cross of the Messiah, who came in His time.

Indeed, even when we have personal peace with our glorious Saviour, unlike all the kings of the earth, who tend to love dominion with its power, yet many a test, trial, even tribulation may come from slanderers as well as those more directly manipulating the sword, detractors, deviants from grace, the worldly wise who seek to combine purity with worldly policy, as when creation becomes too much to be faithfully attested, in biblical terms, and they 'accommodate culture' as if God were socially subject to duress. We are to be ready, not thus to betray our Lord. HIS Lordship is one of grace, of giving, of covering sin and enabling spiritual life as it should be: and it is THUS that He acted to redeem. As it declares in Romans 14:9, "For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living.

Again, in Romans 15:3,

"For even Christ did not please Himself, but as it is written,
'The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on Me."

The practical and continual realisation of the Lordship of THIS Christ, and not some conglomerate of wilful autonomy, liberal intrusion, humanist desire or arrogant power exposes this: the two are irreconcilable, as traitors to government, as miscreants to their Creator, as wilful adulterers to marriage, whatever form they may adopt in their speech.

So Hezekiah fell in this international episode, played out in Jerusalem, at the very architectural hearth of the Lord! This was to the grief of Isaiah, to whom he revealed almost like a babbling child, seemingly without contrition or realisation, how he had brought the Babylonian emissaries in their 'purely social' visit, to behold ALL of the great wonders of the Temple. Accordingly, in reply to Isaiah's simple question, "What have they seen ? " , the King replied, "They have seen all that is in my house; there is nothing among my treasures that I have not shown them."

The naïve reply of this King, who after all had interrupted the ruthless anti-God measures of the treacherous King Ahaz, a dissembler, and whose son Manasseh was to become an even more evil masterpiece of wanton betrayal than that, was a warning to the churches of today. Once you sit on a slide, do you reach for the brakes ?

" 'Behold the days are coming when all that is in your house, and what your fathers have accumulated until this day, shall be carried to Babylon, nothing shall be left, ' says the Lord."

How many churches have been carried away to the symbolic Babylon as shown in Revelation 17, and how many are asking for their eminent candle-sticks - supposedly to help them shed forth the distinctive light of Christ into the world - to be taken away as in Revelation 2:5.The judgment from Isaiah became worse as it went on, but this suffices for our present purpose; for indeed the personal side to come, and the desolation of the souls of the children thus caught up in the falling and failing testimony, is a sombre addition.

THE DRIFT DANGER OF THE KING
AND THE ARREST OF THE LORD

Indeed, in Australia, the absence of God, the diversion from the Lord, the teaching of contrariness with compulsion seems to have become near to a national creed in political promptings and sickness. It is wonderful to be free ? Yes, try dropping over a cliff, and under gravity for a time, you can freely roam in space. In fact, freedom is impossible except within the bounds of what one is, of the One who has created this marvel, and what He has designed. In this case, THAT is magnificent liberty, even to become children of God on the basis of truth in the sphere of love; but it is not autonomy, to make of yourself some fabricated god with fabricated heart that moves in self-fashioned universes of thought, and contrives to blast, belittle and even storm at creation, while desecrating what has been given.

Creation-phobia, like anti-Semitism, now ploughing many a mind in this land, is intolerance of God, intransigence against His word (Hebrews 11:1ff., Colossians 1:15) and insurrection against logic (cf. SMR, TMR). The USA to be, once warred on Britain, but this is war on God, to make a declaration of independence, like a sheep out on the highway.

You can do it. It has results, just as is the case when you use your fountain pen to dislodge dirt in a crevice. It is possible but pointless. You cannot write legibly in that way for a time, and merely so abuse the whole point of your life. And for what do you surrender this ? Merely for arbitrary wilfulness, proud passion or incontinent aspiration ? To have a heart lifted up is arrogant; but it is also actionable, since to seek to move above its bounds is merely to await the crash as it jars to earth. We are already gifted with scope, that each one might become a child of God. If that appears insufficient, it can only be because a certain godlike autonomy beckons, whether this be for one's own pride, or in some kind of fear and social conformity, or other distortion; but in the end, where one goes, that is the point for ascertaining direction of flow.

Hezekiah therefore, even in his weaknesses has a vast lesson for each and all of us; just as in his purposeful actions so numerous, his example is stimulating for good things. Avoid laxity, listlessness, formalism, greatness, soaking in the spirit of this world, an enervating bath, seduction by culture and conformity to kingdoms, as if your religion were an addition to your life, not its source, and your King were one of the assembled great ones of the earth, and not their coming Judge (as in Daniel 2).

Rejoice moreover, that just as Hezekiah, for all his failure, was yet kept by the Lord, by the power of God to salvation (I Peter 1:3-8), so that not in his day did the foretold national ruin occur, just as God in His grace promised through the prophet Isaiah, so now is each of His people kept by the power of God through faith to salvation reserved in heaven. Hezekiah serves as a warning but in this as a challenging comfort as well. Just as the fear of the Lord is clean, challenging, desirable, like purging fire, blessed with His splendour while surging into His wonder, giving Him the glory which is His due, so is His mercy a benediction which satisfies the longing soul, like the head of a mountain, balmed and anointed with a covering cloud. With us who believe, however, it is not cloud but Christ who covers (Romans 5:1-12, John 5:24). He is able to arrest ruin and by grace secure spiritual life for ever.

HIS cover was wrought on earth, on a Cross with one post pointing to His source in heaven, and one to His course on earth, so that satisfying the one (Romans 4:25 - 5:1), He reached out to the other (John 6:44). HE would have all (Col. 1:19ff.); so ensure that you would have Him, not as a weighed financial enterprise, but as a life reality to face, the Redeemer who is ruin to sin and grants eternal life (John 5:24). Pity for ruin is beautiful; ruin is not!

NOTES

From YNET NEWS we have this.

US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday that Egypt’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement was "a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam."

Clapper, who heads the organization commanding 16 American intelligence and investigation agencies, told the committee that the Muslim Brotherhood "have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt, et cetera….. There is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally.”

In an endeavour to be historically correct, Wikepedia makes this assessment:

The Muslim Brotherhood is a fundamentalist^[42] Sunni transnational movement and the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states.^[43] The world's oldest and largest Islamic political group,^[43] it was founded in 1928, in Egypt by the schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna.

The Brotherhood's stated goal is to instill the Qur'an and sunnah as the "sole reference point for ... ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community ... and state".^[44] Since its inception in 1928 the movement has officially opposed violent means to achieve its goals,^[45]^[46] with some exceptions such as in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or to overthrow secular Ba'athist rule in Syria (see Hama massacre). This position has been questioned, particularly by the Egyptian government, which accused the group of a campaign of killings in Egypt after World War II.^[47]

The Muslim Brotherhood was banned in Egypt during the previous Mubarak's regime, and members was being arrested for their participation in it.^[48] As a means of circumventing the ban, supporters run for office as independents.^[49]. Now they have their own political party called Freedom and Justice Party (Egypt).

Encyclopedia Britannica speaks in a parallel mode.

Ḥasan al-Bannāʾ. It advocated a return to the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīth as guidelines for a healthy, modern Islāmic society. The brotherhood spread rapidly throughout Egypt, the Sudan, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, and North Africa.

After 1938 the Muslim Brotherhood began to politicize its outlook. It demanded purity of the Islāmic world and rejected westernization, secularization, and modernization. The brotherhood organized a terrorist arm, and when the Egyptian government seemed to weaken in the mid-1940s, the brotherhood posed a threat to the monarchy and the ruling Wafd Party. With the advent of the revolutionary regime in Egypt in 1952, the brotherhood retreated underground. An attempt to assassinate Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser in Alexandria on Oct. 26, 1954, led to the Muslim Brotherhood's forcible suppression. Six of its leaders were tried and executed for treason, and many others were imprisoned. In the 1960s and '70s the brotherhood's activities remained largely clandestine.

In the 1980s the Muslim Brotherhood experienced a renewal as part of the general upsurge of religious activity in Islāmic countries. The brotherhood's new adherents aimed to reorganize society and government according to Islāmic doctrines, and they were vehemently anti-Western. An uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in the Syrian city of Ḥamāh in February 1982 was crushed by the government of Ḥafiz al-Assad at a cost of thousands of lives. The brotherhood revived in Egypt and Jordan in the same period, and beginning in the late 1980s it emerged to compete in legislative elections in those countries.

"Muslim Brotherhood." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2008 Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008.

As a body devoted to anti-secularisation and pursuing its ideas with varied and vigorous methods, it becomes ill-suited to the title of largely secular. If the politicising of its outlook means anything, and if it be true that it organised a terrorist arm, and wishes to re-organise government according to Islamic doctrines, being vehemently anti-Western, then the concept of its being largely secular seems not only largely illusory, but dangerously superficial. True an organisation can change, as can rainbows in superficial measures; but the general principles do not so readily change.

If the USA,

	having trusted with incredible unwisdom in the Pakistani government as a co-operative in the war in Afghanistan,
	so to assault the enemies who toppled its towers in New York,
	one now seen as a matter of no small betrayal by many, even to the top level of the army,
	now wishes to make further subjugations to what becomes a totalitarian force of compulsion,
	whether or not it be democratically elected in due time:

what then ?

In this way, it seems in danger of becoming merely impenitently intransigent, having become denatured from its own base and basis which was in practical terms, highly Christian.

Actively HELPING election by such means as just now noted, is more than respecting other people's freedom; it becomes a participating move in the result! If that becomes in practice, intolerant of opposition to the point that parties are abolished or assaulted physically as is common, then the action in the first place has this strategic consequence, and for that, due responsibility is borne!

Further, democracy, if you want to talk in those terms, involves the power of the people, not just once, but on a continuing basis to elect the government of their choice. One must ask, and seek an objective answer to the question, with what ease does a FORMALLY Muslim government facilitate, enable and provide scope for a different, secular government to follow it ? and if this leads to a largely negative reply, then to what extent is this a highway of democracy!

Of interest here is a point made at

http://itooktheredpill.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/no-mention-of-god-in-the-us-constitution/

It includes this:

As profoundly religious as our founders were, don’t you ever wonder why God is not mentioned once in the U.S. constitution?

Read the Signatory section at the end of the Constitution:

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.

To whom does “our Lord” refer?
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

It might be argued that the term 'our Lord' was merely an historical reference, normal in that day, to the King. However, no English King had been reigning for seventeen hundred and eighty seven years.

In all these things we have to distinguish carefully between what may be made relevant to a particular view of law and its impact, on the one hand, and what evidence tells us of the cast of thought of a nation, on the other. Each has its place. Each attests in its own way.

Reverting to the topic of alternative religious groupings: There is no democracy where compulsion deadens change. If you want it, this is not it. If you want to further it, this does not do that. Liberty to annul liberty is not a democratic item. Forwarding such liberty is not a democratic thrust, but a meddling where total subjection becomes the option, instead of nearly total subjection: small gain and much loss!

See *1A of Ch. 7 above.

See WHY HERE which gives various data direct and through its references within the text, fully explaining this phenomenon. See also Mark 7:7ff..

See Lord of Longsuffering ... Ch. 6.

See on Psalms and singing: Question and Answer 13.

See SMR Chs. 3, 5 and 10, with Repent or Perish Ch. 7 and Barbs, Arrows and Blessings 6 -7, Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2 .