Lighthouse Trails Research Journal
8
The Fate of the Nations—Then and Now (Psalm 9)
BY BILL RANDLES
The wicked shall be turned into
hell, and all the nations that forget
God. For the needy shall not always
be forgotten: the expectation of the
poor shall not perish for ever. Arise,
O LORD; let not man prevail: let
the heathen be judged in thy sight.
Put them in fear, O LORD: that the
nations may know themselves to be
but men. Selah. (Psalm 9 :17-20)
M
any people miss the full import of the
Psalms of the Bible because they limit
their understanding of them to being divine
poetry or as wisdom literature.
Some correctly go further and realize that
the Psalms are also Messianic prophecies,
describing the mission and triumph of the
Lord Jesus. But few realize that the Psalms
of the Bible have an eschatological aspect.
They speak of the events and conditions of
the end-times and of the coming of the Lord.
Psalm 9 celebrates the cataclysmic judg-
ment that falls upon the nations of the
world who hate and trouble Israel. They
have digged a pit for her, but they them-
selves have fallen into it. They are guilty
of innocent blood, but the Lord comes to
make inquisition.
In the passage above, there are two cat-
egories of nations discussed. The wicked
nations are those who are and always have
been twisted. These are those whose very
essence has been shaped by false religion,
such as Islam, or Hinduism, or the more
recent Atheistic nations (communist).
At the core of every “culture” is a “cul-
tus,” a religion which informs and under-
girds the culture so pervasively that few even
consciously realize it. If the religion is false,
the culture is by definition deeply flawed.
There are nations which can only be de-
scribed as “wicked.” Injustice is written into
the very fabric of the culture, let alone the
laws which reflect that culture. Because of
VOLUME 8—NO. 1
the religion that undergirds those nations,
informing their cultures, there must of ne-
cessity be a “caste system” or a “Jizya” tax.
Muslim nations have to be hostile to
Christians; one would expect them to top
the world lists of the most repressive nations,
to women, minorities, and religious minori-
ties. Sharia is of necessity a twisted parody
of justice. These nations are “the wicked”!
But there is another category of nations
suggested here, “all of the nations that forget
God.” These are the nations who once had
some semblance of freedom, true justice,
and human rights. They were never perfect
but for a time were not oppressor nations,
although they wielded unprecedented
power to be so.
I speak of the West, Europe, the English-
speaking world, and wherever they colonized
and thrived. How is it that such nations
developed into such freedom loving, human-
rights guarding, private-property respecting
cultures? Because our culture developed out
of the soil of Judeo Christianity.
It is the secret of our prosperity in the
West as well as of our sense of fairness,
respect for life, willingness to sacrifice, our
work ethic, insistence on checks and bal-
ances in government, and a host of other
traits which have brought refugees from
every other culture streaming into the West
to enjoy those freedoms.
But the West has forgotten God, for
the most part. Certainly our leaders have;
many of them are working hard to erase all
traces of the Judeo Christian influence from
our past, present, and future. They have
repudiated God; they are actually proving
to be hostile to God!
The nations are headed for Tribulation;
they are about to be cast into an unbeliev-
able pit, a Hell of biblical proportions!
For the needy shall not always be
forgotten: the expectation of the
poor shall not perish for ever.
I believe the “poor and needy” that
God will not forget, in this case, are not
the “political poor” nor is this a reference
to general poverty.
Here the “poor and needy” are the
remnant of God’s people, who have been
isolated by the nations, hated, and lied
about and who have no natural resources
or power to successfully answer the charges.
They cast themselves on God for they have
no other options in a hostile world.
Israel’s enemies are gathering in size
and influence, and her friends and lovers
are abandoning her. Vicious hate groups
such as Hamas, Hezbullah, and Al Queda
are losing their fear of Israel, realizing that
her former friends are aloof.
But she is about to learn the age-old les-
son that it never was the USA or the IDF
that saved and preserved Israel. Israel’s help
and champion has always been God.
The last verses of this Psalm are a prayer
about the nations, in which the Psalmist by
the Holy Spirit exposes the twofold prob-
lem with the modern nations of the world,
and which has led to this coming cataclysm:
“Put them in fear, O LORD”— Cer-
tainly America, Britain, and Europe have
lost the fear of the Lord. Is it any mystery
why Wisdom is so far from our leaders?
They are godless, and thus have no knowl-
edge.
When nations lose the fear of God, they
lose the power to have a just and moral
society. There is no reason to restrain any
appetite, no matter how depraved when
God is forgotten, as Paul testifies:
And even as they did not like to retain
God in their knowledge, God gave
them over to a reprobate mind, to do
those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness,
fornication, wickedness, covetousness,
maliciousness; full of envy,
murder, debate, deceit, malignity;
Concludes on next page
SPRING 2020