Our God is simply unstoppable. This can be the most beautiful of things for those who have high affections for Yahweh and the most frustrating of things for those who wish to stamp out the faith, or who, at the very least, are peeved by its ubiquity.
To try and halt God’s purposes, to slander his name, or to even attempt as to put so much as a single black smudge on anything remotely connected to Him will only result in his glory being multiplied all the more. To do so is only to pour gasoline on a holy fire.
I realized this in the oddest of ways on an old Indian train a few nights ago. Granted, this idea of Gospel opposition as gasoline on a fire is incredibly Biblical. When the authorities threw Peter and John in jail for sharing their faith, they preached the Gospel in jail and even more people came to Christ (Acts 4:3-4:4)! When a “sharp disagreement” bitterly divided Paul and Barnabas in Acts 15:36-41, causing them to go their separate ways, the Gospel began being spread over twice the area—the one-headed missionary monster grew a second head! Consider Job: when God permits Satan to wreak havoc on Job’s material life in Job 1, it only results in refined and intensified worship!
When the Roman Catholic Church of centuries past engaged in the practice of selling “indulgences” (payments for the forgiveness of sins), it only served to prompt Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation—a movement founded on the principles of scripture as the lone written authority as faith as the lone means of salvation! When indigenous Auca tribesmen in the jungles of Ecuador speared missionary Jim Elliot to death, his story, rather than discouraging the next generation of Christians, prompted countless thousands to leave their homes and become missionaries themselves. Even today—especially today—the areas of the world where the Christian churches are persecuted most (think India and China) are the exact areas where the church is growing the quickest!
Spiritual warfare is another great example of this concept. The very schemes that Satan uses to attack believers (demon possession, for example) actually end up increasing the faith of many people (myself included) because they are tangible examples of the spiritual realm’s existence. Even the contrivances we take for granted are used by the hand of God. The Internet, for example, though created for worldly and secular purposes, is now broadcasting the Gospel worldwide and connecting missionaries from every country, thus rapidly accelerating the advancement of the Gospel.
As our Indian train rolled on and I pondered this thought, I stood and gazed out of the open train door at the evening sky. The sky was painted with hues of purple, red, and deep orange. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. When I turned to Michael and told him to look at it, he told me that the colors were actually caused by the pollution in the air and that Los Angeles experiences something similar because of its pollution. A few days later, when I regained Internet access, I searched this idea online and found that indeed it was true! The particles of pollution in the air obscure the natural spectrum of light, thus causing the sky to turn abnormally radiant colors. This may sound insignificant, but I think it brilliantly illustrates the principle that God is unstoppable! It’s as if God is saying to us, “You think you can dirty my glorious creation by heaping man-made pollution into the air? Fine—I will light up the sky and my creation will be even more stunning than it was before!”
Lastly, let us not forget the prime example of human beings pouring gasoline on God’s fire. Human beings murdered God’s only son, unaware that by doing so they were making available the path of salvation for of all mankind.
