THE NEXT ADVENTISM
God Sees Everything
A NEW ADVENTIST FRAMEWORK FOR DIVINE JUSTICE BY CHRISTOPHER C. THOMPS ON
When I was a little boy, my mother was a firm disciplinarian. As a child, I resented not having the same freedom my peers had. But as an adult, I know now that she actually shielded us from danger in a very volatile time. Te crack epidemic was raging then, and I know she was determined that she wasn’t going to lose her children to the streets. I remember conversing with peers as they shared the things
they did with or without their parents’ knowledge. I’d quietly listen with the full awareness that my mom wouldn’t have it. I was convinced that my mom knew everything and that everything she didn’t know, she would find out. Of course, my mom didn’t actually know everything. We did
get away with some things, and she never found out about others. But we knew her standard and what she expected of us.
Nothing Hidden According to the Bible, absolutely nothing is hidden from the divine gaze. Psalm 2:1-6 says, “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? Te kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.’ Te One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, ‘I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.’” Te psalmist is appalled at the brazenness of the wicked, their
convoluted reasoning, conniving schemes, and their expectation that they will escape any and every form of recompense. But they are terribly mistaken. God is still King. Revelation 18 begins with a grandiose pronouncement: an
angel descends from glory to proclaim that God’s earthly enemy, Babylon the Great, is finally going to be punished for all the evil she has perpetrated in the world. Tis passage describes a framework for the meting out of justice: “For her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes. Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double for what she has done. Pour her a double portion from her own cup. Give her as much torment and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself ” (verses 5-7, NIV).
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