The Wheels of God

The wheels of God

They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

Rev 6:10

Deep within the heart of man there is a longing for justice, for wrongs to be made right. From the beginning this has always been true. When the first couple chose to eat of the forbidden fruit their world was changed. They now possessed an understand of good versus evil, of right on the scaffold and wrong on the throne. Intrinsically, mankind instantly understood that evil must be punished and good rewarded. Thus, there was no complaint from Cain when he was judged for killing his brother except his fear of others who would attempt to kill him.

This deep craving for justice is brought to its sharpest edge when there is no one on earth that can right the wrong. A murderer may go to the electric chair but that does not bring the child back to life. A thief can steal a prized possession and then sell it on the black market never to be seen again. Crimes that have passed the statute of limitation. In these cases, the deep desire for justice is ultimately denied, leaving us with the only course of action, divine retribution.

However, God is painfully silent when the hammer falls and our world is upended with injustice leading to unending pain. He feels distant amidst our calls for quick and exacting reckoning. We are left to wonder does he know, or worst, does he care. As the heavens are silent our anger and resentment grow until we are left believing that there is no justice in the universe.

The Great White Throne

Nevertheless, God is still on the throne, and he never misses the heartache caused by our fellow man. He is holy and just and that requires him to act but only in his time. The Roman philosopher and physician from the 3rd century, Sexist Empiricus, was attributed with this saying, “The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind small.” The English poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translates the German proverb of Friedrich von Logau’s Divine Retribution, with his own poem, Retribution, in the following way, “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small; though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.”

When the fifth seal is broken in the Revelation, no judgment is seen. The broken parchment reveals a group that had been gathered under the throne of God. Their request in the midst of the judgments of God was not surprising. With intense anticipation this group of martyred saints cry out to God for justice. They ask the One who sits on the throne how long it would be before their blood was avenged and they were told to wait a little longer. The King of glory heard them and promised retribution for everything done to them. They had not been forgotten. God records every evil act and justice will prevail.

The year was 1934 and Germany was on edge. Hitler's vice chancellor Papen had delivered a speech that was causing a current of rebellion to surge against the Chancellor. Germans had become uncomfortable with the Nazi approach to government and society, and the speech had awakened the sleeping giant of dissent. German’s President Hindenburg still held political authority and Hitler's old comrade General Rohm was pushing for the SA to consolidate power under his hand. Hitler felt his position slipping away, and so, on June 30^th, he made his move. After flying down from Munich, he joined Himmler and Goring and led a contingency of SS officers on a hunt and murder expedition. The killing squads, as they would come to be known, worked through day and into the night brutally killing those Hitler had marked out for death. Berlin was in shock, as history was born out of that merciless day of death. The cold hand of Nazi power was brought down with an iron fist but not without the notice of God.

Flying back to Munich on his private plane, Hitler, exhausted, looked out the window to witness a strange phenomenon of nature. As a man on board recorded, the plane flew “Against the background of a blood red sky, a piece of theatricality that no one had staged.” The blood that this madman of Austria had shed that day was stored in the heart of a God who wept for the innocent soul taken that day. What was unseen to the world was written down above and for future use at the great white throne judgement. Fear not, the grinding mill of God’s righteous judgement will put all things right. There is a day of justice coming.