FAMINE OF HEARING THE WORDS OF GOD
An executive director of the United Nation’s World Food Programme pointed out three contributing factors to today’s worst global starvation; climate, plague, economy. His warning of a famine of biblical proportions could presage a new stage in the final redemption...
The word of the LORD that came to Joel son of Pethuel. Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.
Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine; wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips. A nation has invaded my land, a mighty army without number; it has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig-trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white.
Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the betrothed of her youth. Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests are in mourning, those who minister before the LORD. The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up; the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the olive oil fails.
Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers; grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed. The vine is dried up and the fig-tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree – all the trees of the field – are dried up. Surely the people’s joy is withered away.
Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God; for the grain offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God. Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD. Alas for that day! For the day of the LORD is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty. JOEL 1:1-15.
The Old Testament prophets appealed for the importance of “hearing from God” respectively in different situations. For example, Joel emphasised it at the time of disaster, in which he encouraged the nation to wake up to prepare for the worst point of climax in ‘the day of the LORD’.
Amos emphasised it against those who did not learn their lesson from repeated warnings. Micah emphasised it at a time when disobedience and perversion prevailed among God’s nation. Habakkuk emphasised it in a time of distraction, in which God’s nation had been savaged by a furious and cruel invader.
However, even though the disobedience and severe circumstances the nation had been placed under, God continually worked out His salvific and redemptive purposes, with His sovereign work for His people often being carried out in unseen ways throughout human history.
Joel observed draught, pestilence of locust, famine and forest fire, and perceived them to be a consequence of God’s anger. Witnessing the worst plague Israelites had experienced since the plague in Egypt, Joel urged them to tell their children to recount God’s works as Moses had instructed, reminding them of His mercy and goodness as well as of His judgment against His disobedient people:
What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? ... Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them (De.4: 7- 9).
Joel’s days resemble our days. For years, The UN has predicted a global famine of biblical proportions and in April, this year, the United Nation’s World Food Programme warned that famine fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic might leave 300 million people hungry in 2021.
This organization won the Nobel Peace Prize last month and its executive director David Beasley repeated the same warning that without drastic measures taken by a massive influx of funding, the whole world will face famines in November. The Nobel Prize Committee evaluated the work of WFP staff who lay their lives on the line everyday to bring food and assistance to close to 100 million hungry children and adults all over the world.
Beasley pointed out three contributing factors to today’s worst global starvation; climate, plague, economy, and wrote:
Every one of the 690 million hungry people in the world today has the right to live peacefully and without hunger. …the situation is dire indeed, exacerbated by the pandemic. Climate shocks and economic pressures have further compounded their plight… And now, a global pandemic with its brutal impact on economies and communities is pushing millions more to the brink of starvation… If we can’t reach these people with the life-saving assistance they need, our analysis shows that 300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period. This does not include the increase of starvation due to COVID-19.
In the same article mentioned above, Rabbi Yitzchak Batzri, quoting Amos1:18, which prophesies a famine, writes that ‘hearing the words of the LORD’ should be practised at the end-of-days as an essential stage of the process towards ‘the day of the LORD.’ He also claims that Beasley’s warning of a famine of biblical proportions could presage a new stage in the final redemption, explaining,
What the prophet is saying is that this famine, as awful as it will be, comes to serve a divine purpose …lack of food and water will inexorably drive the other nations to connect with Israel, just as Pharaoh enlisted Joseph to save Egypt… Israel taking a leading role in helping the nations cope with famine will be a necessary stage in the Messianic process… They will come for food, but from the famine, they will learn that the physical is not as important as the spiritual.
