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Where's
Ezra?
‘We were like
men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our
tongues with songs of joy.’ As apposite as these words are to
the primitive
salvationists,
they were originally spoken by the Jews returning from exile
to their beloved
Jerusalem
(Psalm 126:1,2). Surely our early forebears were characterized
as joyful, happy dreamers! They had rediscovered the heart
of God. They were returning to Jerusalem (1). God had
beautiful plans and dreams for His people.
Those were
manifest by the quick building of the wall (2). Despite much
opposition from Sanballat and Tobiah (Nehemiah 2:10ff), we set
to the important task and built a wall that stretched to 125
countries (at last count). God blessed our ingenuity,
persistence, faith, and integrity.
But the next
few generations saw much more opposition, not all of it from
without. The returned exiles grew comfortable with the new
freedom and the standard of living they had built for
themselves. They grew content with the wall, even though the
Temple
lay in ruins for many more years (Ezra 4:24). They succumbed
to the political coercion over the years to drop the urgent
pursuit of their ‘religious’ agenda and eventually compromised
spiritually.
Where’s Ezra?
In the old
days, Ezra showed up, about 80 years after they started
building the wall, and about 450 years before Jesus was born.
More recently, the political coercion, the mission
contentedness, and the spiritual compromise are awaiting
another Ezra.
‘Ezra knew how
to get things done. He had the political savvy to win a
Persian king’s support for the trip back to Jerusalem, the
salesmanship to convince Jewish family leaders to go along,
and the organizational know-how to mount the long,
complicated, and dangerous expedition’ (3).
But Ezra had
much more than that.
As a follower
of God, Ezra was complete - he went from convert, to disciple,
to discipler (Ezra 7:10). He devoted himself to the study of
the law. He devoted himself to the observance of the law. And
then he devoted himself to teaching its decrees in
Israel.
He was
committed - he fasted regularly and prayed (Ezra 8:21,23;
9:6-15), even presaging the primitive salvationists by
confessing, weeping, and throwing himself down before the
house of the Lord (Ezra 10:1) (4). He took the historic step
from teacher and priest (Ezra 7:12) to leader.
He was
conscientious, with integrity insisting on God’s standard of
righteousness in the face of generational sin. He did not care
that the ramifications of repentance and restitution were
literally enormous. Neither was Ezra content to salute the
past victories. He recognized that, ‘when an army settles down
to an acceptance of a code and is content to stitch its
trophies on its banners, that army is lost’ (General Orsborn).
And finally, he
was covered; the hand of the Lord was on him (5). This last
factor is essential to Ezra’s success through every difficult
stage of his mission. The covering of God enabled him, granted
him favour in the eyes of everyone from king to compatriot,
and provided him with the guidance he needed to reach his
goal. God worked through governments, lobbyists, enemies,
loyalists, homesick Jews, unemployed priests, and kept His
hand on visionary leaders to accomplish His ends. But it seems
that He needed a visionary leader. He might have asked,
“Where’s Ezra?”
Where’s Ezra,
the complete, committed, conscientious, covered Christian who
will confront the comfortable, contented, coerced compromising
of The Salvation Army 80+ years later?
For Ezra, the
intermarriage was symbolic of spiritual compromise. Today our
spiritual compromise takes different forms, including
government restrictions applied through social service
contracts, highly questionable alliance with cultic groups and
secret societies such as free masonry (6), and a widespread
inattention to our heritage holiness doctrine. Our
intermarriage with the world’s values and lusts and interests
has weakened our flanks and blunted our attacks.
And yet, God
has beautiful plans and dreams for His people. “Because the
Lord was overseeing the entire situation,” (Ezra 5:5 LB) the
story can still have something much more exciting than a fairy
tale ending. And just as the people of
Israel
established a righteous standard in anticipation of the coming
of the Messiah, we, a new people of God (7), with a similar
standard, can accelerate His return. Where is the soldier or
officer who will call us to account and bring us to
repentance? Where’s Ezra?
(We expect that
there are hundreds)
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1. There are
several hypotheses about the sequence of events in Ezra and
Nehemiah. There is no intention to be dogmatic about the one
assumed here. Major themes such as cooperation and God’s
sovereignty are under- emphasized as a result.
2. Colonel John
Dean pleaded that we consider The Salvation Army our
Jerusalem. cited in M. Carpenter, JOHN
DEAN. No date. London: The Salvation Army. p74.
3. Philip
Yancey and Tim Stafford, 1992. EZRA, A MAN OF THE HEART. In
The Student Bible.
Grand Rapids: Zondervan. P437.
4. Ezra shared
with primitive salvationists a lack of concern for dignity or
decorum in his encounters with God (Huxley labeled primitive
salvationism ‘Corybantic Christianity’).
5. This is
similar to the judges and some kings in the Old Testament, and
the Acts 1:8 promise, and is sometimes referred to as the
anointing (‘The hand of the Lord his God was on him’ Ezra 7:6;
8:18; 8:22; 8:31).
6. Besides the
local lease agreements of Masonic Temples by corps, one THQ
has a property contract with the Masons.
7. To use Major
Rhemick’s phrase from his book, A NEW PEOPLE OF GOD.
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