THE FEAR OF THE LORD
IN the King James Bible, the word ‘FEAR’ is used some 483 times. Strong tells us that the word ‘FEAR’ has two different meanings, each is dependant on the context in which it appears.
Usually in a context with the word GOD or Lord it means REVERENCE, AWE, PIETY, HONOUR, RESPECT or similar words. In most other contexts it has the same meaning as fear in the English language, that is, being afraid, dread, terror,or similar words. The following four quotations from the Bible give examples of each meaning.
1) Job 28:28. ‘And unto man He said, behold the FEAR of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding’. (reverence)
2) Proverbs 16:6. ‘By mercy and truth iniquity is purged; and by the FEAR of the Lord, men depart from evil’. (reverence)
3) Exodus 15:16 ‘FEAR and dread shall fall upon them (the Egyptians) by the greatness of thine arm’. (be afraid)
4) Isaiah 25:3 ‘Therefore shall the strong people (Israel) glorify thee, the city of the terrible nations shall FEAR thee’. (be afraid)
God certainly does not want us to be afraid of Him. He loves us all saint or sinner.
Unfortunatly Lucifer the devil introduced sin and evil into the world thus corrupting every aspect of mankind. God wants us to repent of our sins, that is, change from evil to rightiousness. Make no mistake, man knows what is right and what is wrong. For God himself states in Genesis 3:22
” And the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil .. “
Paul in Romans 3:23 tells us
“For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
Further Paul says in Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”.
This gift of God is by virtue of the death of Jesus Christ himself, paying the penalty for all mankind’s sins, (as prescribed by the holy commandments – mortal death) on the cross of Calvary. Jesus, being God is an infinite being, and so can save an infinite number of sinners.
The Bible tells us, about the extreme conditions which will occur in the Latter Days and the Day of the Lord, just before the Second Advent. We read about corruption, chaos, floods, earthquakes, wars murders, disasters,every kind of sin, etc exactly like what we are seeing in our newspapers and televisions daily. This must mean that the Second Advent is nearing!
Titus 2:13-14 encourage us
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar (chosen) people zealous of good works.”
These peculiar people are the present day numerous descendants of Abraham and Jacob – the British, the Americans and their descendants world wide in big and small nations and many small enclaves. Sadly many are unrepentant disbelievers!
The Bible gives several prophecies in detail (which may be long lasting) describing the terrible conditions which will prevail on the earth in the ‘Latter days’ and the ‘Day of the Lord’ just before and at the Second Advent.
The present day worldly chaos of corruption, wickedness, evil and manifold sins on earth match these biblical prophecies and provide the certainty that the Second Advent will indeed come perhaps in years or be near or even very near. Isaiah 13:9-4 tells us (the whole chapter should be read)
“Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and He shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease,and will lay low the haugtiness of the terrible. I will make a man more precious (rare) than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir, (A rare treasure). Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of His fierce anger. And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep
that no man taketh up; they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee everyone into his own land”.
Paul in the New Testament details the whole world’s sins which will exclude the unrepentant: disbelieving sinners from the coming kingdom of God. Paul states in I Corinthians 6:9
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God”.
In Galatians 5:19-21 Paul also tells us
“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedltions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God”.
Paul in I Corinthians 6:18-19 adds the following
“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?”
In Malachi 4:5 God tells us
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord”
and in verse 6 He says
”And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse”.
There is no sign of Elijah at the moment, but if the Bible says.- he will come, them he most certainly will come.Verse 6 is simply saying that Elijah will ensure that the fathers, that is the servants of God responsible for teaching the gospel of salvation will teach the Bible’s, not the ‘precepts’ of men; and the ‘children’, (that is mankind) will listen and accept and believe in Jesus their Saviour. In Isaiah 13:9-14 above, Isaiah says God will destroy sinners and punish the wicked for their iniquity. Notice that God does not say ALL sinners or ALL the wicked. The significance of this arises a quotation in Revelation 14:6 where we read:
“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation and kindred, and tongue, and people …. “
It can only be concluded that God in His divine mercy may not destroy all unrepentant unbelieving sinners because of ignorance about Christianity or having been taught other so called religions. God in His wisdom would have known those of this description who might have accepted Christianity if they had been so taught. Another type of FEAR (afraid) common to mankind is really a misapprehension according to scripture. It is the fear of our inevitable mortal death at the end of our life here on earth.
First let us consider Genesis 1:26 where we are told
”And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness ….. “
Remember,God is a triune Being – God the Father, God the Son, Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. All three being known as the Holy Trinity. Man is also a Triune Being, of a very much more minor nature. We have a body, a soul and a spirit. We all know our body; our soul could be described as our character or being; our spirit is in our thoughts, the part that knows; that exists unheard, unseen, and operates through our brain, and can be used to contact God in prayer. Further silent uses are reading, planning, controlling our body etc. In several places in the Bible, God tells us that when a person dies in mortal death they will SLEEP. For example in Deuteronomy 31:16 God tells Moses
”And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold thou shall SLEEP with thy fathers … “.
Again in 2 Samuel 7:12 God tells David
”And when thy days be fulfilled and thou shalt SLEEP with thy fathers”.
Right throughout the Bible, mortal death of man is often referred to as SLEEP.
In Psalm 90:4 we are told
“For a thousand years in thy (God’s) sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.”
It is necessary to realize here that God is in ‘eternity’ not like man who is governed by time.
Considering a common situation:
When we go to bed at night to sleep at say 11PM and we wake at say 7AM, having had a completely unbroken sleep, we have no memory of the intervening eight hours. We were fully alive, but totally unaware of our existence, with no memory of the intervening eight hours sleep.
Similarly, consider the case of a man boarding a sleeper compartment of a night train going from one city to another far away. He awakes at his destination say 9 hours later having slept well and hadn’t woken until his destination. He was unaware of his existence on the journey, he was still alive and had no memory of the 9 hours of sleep. Time seems to be irrelevant here! In both cases, the sleeper and the sleeping traveller, were as if they were dead. But they were fully alive, and having quite normal sleep.
Now, God is aware that our mortal lives are limited to some three score years and ten, after which we die our mortal death BUT it is only the death of our body. The Bible tells us that after mortal death our soul and spirit are still in conscious being. Thus after mortal death, God has likened our existence to every day sleep.
Ecclesiastes 12:7. In this verse,God tells us:
“Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it”.
So we know that after mortal death we are still conscious beings. This situation is exemplified in Matthew 17:2-3
“and (Jesus) was transfigured before them (Peter James & John); and his (Jesus) face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light. And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses, and Elias (Elijah) talking with Him “
Daniel 12:2 tells us
“And many of them that SLEEP in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
Matthew 22:32 tells us that speaking of GOD,
“I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living”.
This means God is the God of all people of all times! mortal death does not exclude anyone in this statement.
John 11 gives us the story of the illness and death of Lazarus the brother of Martha and Mary. Martha had sent for Jesus to heal him, but Lazarus died before Jesus came. Jesus said unto Martha in verse 23 “Thy brother shall rise again”. In verses 25 and 26 Jesus says these most important and dramatic words:-
“I (Jesus) am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me though he were (mortal) dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever llveth and believeth in me shall never die. BELlEVEST THOU THIS?”.
In this last question,‘believest thou this?’, it must be remembered that it was asked by Jesus who was the Son of God, part of the Holy Trinity and was therefore without any doubt GOD HIMSELF. No doubt can be put on a statement by Almighty God!
God cannot lie, God is here confirming that all who die mortal death, continue to live through as conscious beings, and as we saw above in Daniel 12:2:-
“some (the repentant and faithful believers in Christ); to everlasting life; and sadly, some (unrepentant disbelievers of Christ) to shame and everlasting contempt “,
To complete this story in John 11 above finally, Jesus on the cross, gives us an example of this truth.
Luke 23:39-43 tells that Jesus had been crucified beside two malefactors as well – we read
“And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying, If thou be Christ, save Thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him saying, Dost thou not fear God seeing thou art in the same condemnation? and we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him ‘Verily I say unto thee, TODAY SHALT THOU BE WITH ME IN PARADISE!”
Take notice that the malefactor confesses his sin, and knew who Jesus was and believed in Him. Both were about to die and enter into’SLEEP’.
So the words of Jesus above in John 11:
” he that believeth in me, though he were (mortal) dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me SHALL NEVER DIE”.
applied to the Malefactor and shows that conscious being and existence does not cease at mortal death. Jeremiah 23:6 sees the future reign of Jesus on earth:
“this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS”.
The words of Moses to Israel in Deuteronomy 10:12-13 are very important now:
“And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, To keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good”.
AMEN
