The Asbury Journal 67/2:4-7 © 2012 Asbury Theological Seminary God} Silence: Psalm 28 A Prayer for Help (l)To you, 0 Lord, I call; my Rock, do not refuse to hear me. For if you are silent to me, I shall be like those who go do\VIl to the Pit. (2)Hear the voice of my supplication, as I cry to you for help, As I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary. I know that I am probably not alone in sometimes experiencing God's silence. Sometimes when I want----ffideed, need-to hear Goo speak, I hear nothing. I am curious to know how to deal \Vith it? How do you avoid letting God's silence take you do\VIl into the Pit, as the Psalmist describes it? Because God's silence, in our times of great need, can bring us low. First, a distinction: There are two reasons for us not hearing God. For some, they do not hear God because they do not believe that God speaks, or that if God speaks, he does not speak to them. They may not believe that God exists-so there is nothing out there to hear. The Bible has a phrase to describe these people who do not hear God speak. The Bible says that they "do not have ears to hear." (e.g. Matthew 11:15,13:19) They do not hear because something is wrong \Vith their psychic or spiritual hearing equipment. Or, as they would put it, they do not hear because everything is right \Vith their psychic or spiritual hearing equipment. Today the most well knO\VIl of those who have no ears to hear are the so-called new atheists. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dermett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, among others, are convinced both that God does not exist and that those who believe that God does exist are sadly deluded. It does not surprise the new atheists that Godis silent, because there is no God. People who do not hear God are the sane ones, they believe. For others, we do not hear God because God has chosen to be silent. The problem is not \Vith our hearing equipment. We do have ears to hear. We have used those ears often to hear God's soothing, encouraging, and helpful voice. But sometimes we do not hear because God does not speak. We have ears to hear, but God is silent. It is these people-most of you I would imagine-those who have ears to hear, that I am addressing. 4 MucK.: GOD'S SILENCE I 5 Second, a declaration: God is sometimes silent. Some of our Christian confreres do not want to admit God's silence. I make great use of a study Bible called the MVThematic Reference Stu4J Bible (Zondervan 1999) edited by an excellent evangelical theologian, Alister McGrath. In the appended 729-page thematic section, McGrath identifies hillldreds of words and themes, and lists after each theme all the Bible verses he thinks pertain to those themes. Itis like a concordance on steroids. Silence is one of the themes McGrath identifies, but in defining silence, McGrath declares that "Scripture stresses that God is not silent." (1796) I do not agree \.V.i.th McGrath on this point. The Bible tells us that Jesus, God incarnate, used silence often. He was silent in the face of the illlfair judgment of the high priest (Matthew 26:63), before Pilate (Matthew 27:14), and in an audience \.V.i.thHerod (Luke 23:9). Jesus was also silent in the face of being confronted by the Pharisees. This silence made his disciples illlcomfortable: ''\Xlhy did you not answer them," they asked? My 0\VIl experience of God reinforces the teachings of scripture and the apparently \.V.i.despread hwnan experience of God's silence. My experience teaches me that Godis silent. Often I do hear God's voice. Obviously, I must have ears to hear. Yet when I strain to catch his voice, God does not speak. God is sometimes silent. Third, an evaluation: God's silence, for those who have ears to hear, is a good thing. One way to look at God's silence is as a teaching tool God uses to help us grow in faith. God's son Jesus, for exmnple, answered specific questions brought to him in different ways. Some he answered relatively straightforwardly. Others he answered by telling a story; sometimes the story was a bit oblique and hard to understand W':ithout faith. And finally, Jesus sometimes "answered" questions bynot answering them, by remaining silent. :Might we conclude that Jesus chose his method based on what was most likely to bring glory to God the Father and his overall purposes? The idea that we are sometimes best served in our faith by going through a difficult time of testing, a dark night of the soul, is not an illlcommon idea. Jesus himself spent a testing time in the \.V.i.lderness. \Xlhen I was reading A.N. Wilson's Gods Funeral recently, I was struck by his quoting from a Thomas Hardy poem: Yet it is a long pursuit, Carrying the junk and treasure of an ancient creed, To a love who keeps faith by seeming mute And deaf, and dead indeed. -"God's Fillleral," Collected Poems, 307. 6 I The Asbury Journal 67/2 (2012) Wilson comments, focusing on the line, "To a love that keeps faith by seeming mute," by saying this: "Wittgenstein [Ludwi.g] is famous for articulating [the] submission of [human] silence. Yet there is a different silence-and that is (also) part of the drama. It is the silence of God himself. The Bible is full of it." (14-15) I think this poem and Wilson's use of it tell us far more than simply writing it off to Hardy's palpable deism. Oswald Chmnbers, hardly a deist, sees God's silence as something of a test: "Has God trusted you wi.th his silence-----{l silence that has great meaning? God's silences are actually his answers. Just think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany! Is there anything comparable to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking Him for a visible answer? .. His silence is the sign that he is bringing you into an even more wonderful illlderstanding of himself." -My Utmost For His Highest I am 65 years of age. I have had enough years illlder my belt to do many foolish things. And it is fair to ask the question, \Xlhy did God not speak? \Xlhen I was con templa ring doing or saying something foolish, why did God not warn me off? And as I was doing something foolish, why did God so often not tell me to quit? And after I had done the foolish thing, was even perhaps suffering the inevitable consequences, why did God so rarely berate me? \X1hy did God just keep, silently, loving me as I had to work it out on my 0\VIl instead of rem:indingme, ''Terry, I told you this would happen if you disobeyed my teaching." Fourth, a testimony: God's silence does not mean that God has not heard God is not a constant chatterer, like a radio we can tum on anytime we want just to have some sOillld, any sOillld, filling the air. God's response to us is far more sophisticated than that. God is not our 0\VIl personal radio, wi.th an on/off swi.tch that we control. God speaks to us as he sees fit. He speaks to us when he sees fit. And when it serves his purposes, Godis silent. Chmnbers again: "A wonderful thing about God's silence is that his stillness is contagious-it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, "I know that God has heard me." God's silence is the very proof that he has. As long as you have the idea that God w1l1 always bless you in answer to prayer, he wi.ll do it, but he w1l1 never give you the grace of his silence." -My Utmost For His Highest MucK.: GOD'S SILENCE I 7 God's silence can indeed bring us low. It more often than we would like hurls us into the Pit. Yet can we not admit that itis in the Pit, and only in the Pit, that some of the most ilnportant spiritual lessons are learned? We can endure, indeed even embrace God's silence if we realize that even when God is silent he still hears. And sooner or later we realize that God hearing us is all we need. That is the Psalmist's testimony: Thanksgiving for It (Help) (6)Elessed be the Lord, for he has heard the sOillld of my pleadings. (7)The Lord is my strength and my shield; in hiln my heart trusts; So I am helped, and my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him. * * * Correction In our Spring 2009 issue we published an essay, ((Justification ry Faith))): Richard Baxters Influence upon John Weslry.)) Due to an editing error, the essay was mistakenly attributed to Floyd T. Cunningham, president of Asia Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary. We apologize to Dr. Cunningham for the inconveniences this mistake has caused. We also apologize to Dr. Joseph W Curmingham of Eureka College who is the correct author of the essay. In order to etnphasize this correct attribution, we are republishing the essay in this issue with Dr. Joseph W Cunningham listed as the author. -Terry C Muck Edito
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As if 2020 were not insane enough already, we now have Democrats and their ruling class masters openly talking about staging a coup. You might have missed it, what with the riots, lockdowns and other daily mayhem we’re forced to endure in this, the most wretched year of my lifetime. But it’s happening.
It started with the military brass quietly indicating that the troops should not follow a presidential order. They were bolstered by many former generals—including President Trump’s own first Secretary of Defense—who stated openly what the brass would only hint at. Then, as nationwide riots really got rolling in early June, the sitting Secretary of Defense himself all but publicly told the president not to invoke the Insurrection Act. His implicit message was: “Mr. President, don’t tell us to do that, because we won’t, and you know what happens after that.”
All this enthused Joe Biden, who threw subtlety to the winds. The former United States Senator (for 26 years) and Vice President (for eight) has not once, not twice, but thrice confidently asserted that the military will “escort [Trump] from the White House with great dispatch” should the president refuse to leave. Another former Vice President, Al Gore, publicly agreed.
One might dismiss such comments as the ravings of a dementia patient and a has-been who never got over his own electoral loss. But before you do, consider also this. Over the summer a story was deliberately leaked to the press of a meeting at which 100 Democratic grandees, anti-Trump former Republicans, and other ruling class apparatchiks got together (on George Soros’s dime) to “game out” various outcomes of the 2020 election. One such outcome was a clear Trump win. In that eventuality, former Bill Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, playing Biden, refused to concede, pressured states that Trump won to send Democrats to the formal Electoral College vote, and trusted that the military would take care of the rest.
The leaked report from the exercise darkly concluded that “technocratic solutions, courts, and reliance on elites observing norms are not the answer here,” promising that what would follow the November election would be “a street fight, not a legal battle.”
Two more data points (among several that could be provided). Over the summer, two former Army officers, both prominent in the Democrat-aligned “national security” think tank world, wrote an open letter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in which they urged him to deploy the 82nd Airborne Division to drag President Trump from the Oval Office at precisely 12:01 PM, January 20, 2021.
About a month later, Hillary Clinton declared publicly that Joe Biden should not concede the election “under any circumstances.” The old English major in me interprets the word “any” to mean “no,” “none,” “nada,” “niente,” “zero,” “zilch” “bupkis”…you get the idea.
This doesn’t sound like the rhetoric of a political party confident it will win an upcoming election.
The Cover-Up in Plain Sight
These items are, to repeat, merely a short but representative list of what Byron York recently labeled “coup porn.” York seems to think this is just harmless fantasizing on the part of the ruling class and its Democratic servants. For some of them, no doubt that’s true. But for all of them? I’m not so sure.
In his famously exhaustive discussion of conspiracies, Machiavelli goes out of his way to emphasize the indispensability of “operational security”—i.e., silence—to success. The first rule of conspiracy is, you do not talk about the conspiracy. The second rule of conspiracy is, you do not talk about the conspiracy.
So why are the Democrats—publicly—talking about the conspiracy?
Because they know that, for it to succeed, it must not look like a conspiracy. They need to plant the idea in the public mind, now, that their unlawful and illegitimate removal of President Trump from office will somehow be his fault.
Never mind the pesky detail that the president would refuse to leave only if he were convinced he legitimately won. Remember: Biden should not concede under any circumstances.
The second part of the plan is either to produce enough harvested ballots—lawfully or not—to tip close states, or else dispute the results in close states and insist, no matter what the tally says, that Biden won them. The worst-case scenario (for the country, but not for the ruling class) would be results in a handful of states that are so ambiguous and hotly disputed that no one can rightly say who won. Of course, that will not stop the Democrats from insisting that they won.
The public preparation for that has also already begun: streams of stories and social media posts “explaining” how, while on election night it might look as if Trump won, close states will tip to Biden as all the mail-in ballots are “counted.”
The third piece is to get the vast and loud Dem-Left propaganda machine ready for war. That leaked report exhorted Democrats to identify “key influencers in the media and among local activists who can affect political perceptions and mobilize political action…[who could] establish pre-commitments to playing a constructive role in event of a contested election.” I.e., in blaring from every rooftop that “Trump lost.”
At this point, it’s safe to assume that unless Trump wins in a blowout that can’t be overcome by cheating and/or denied via the ruling class’s massive propaganda operation, that’s exactly what every Democratic politician and media organ will shout.
Stop the Presses
What then? The Podesta assumption is that the military will side with the Dems. There are reasons to fear they might. The Obama administration spent a great deal of political capital purging the officer corps of anyone not down with the program and promoting only those who are.
Still and all, determining the outcome of an election would be the most open political interference possible from our allegedly apolitical military, and it’s plausible that the brass won’t want to make its quiet support of the ruling class agenda that overt. The aforementioned Chairman has already stated that the military will play “no role” in the outcome of the election. That’s probably not a feint, but one wonders if it will hold given the obvious attempt to influence military thinking by people like Jeffrey Goldberg in his recent Atlantic essay.
Can the Dems rely on the Secret Service to drag Trump out? I have my doubts on this one. I’ve seen the Service up close; it really is (or strongly appears to be) apolitical. It has a job to do: protect the president, whoever that is. Officers take that job very seriously. If they don’t believe Trump lost, I don’t think they can be counted on to oust him. On the other hand, were they to believe he did lose and was refusing to leave—a scenario I find impossible to imagine but the Democrats insist is just around the corner—it’s possible the Service might act.
Barring all that, what’s left? Remember that phrase from the Dem war game: “street fight.” In other words, a repeat of this summer, only much, much bigger. Crank the propaganda to ear-drum shattering decibels and fill the streets of every major city with “protesters.” Shut down the country and allow only one message to be heard: “Trump must go.”
I.e., what’s come to be known as a “color revolution,” the exact same playbook the American deep state runs in other countries whose leadership they don’t like and is currently running in Belarus. Oust a leader—even an elected one—through agitation and call it “democracy.”
The events of the last few months may be interpreted as an attempted color revolution that failed to gain enough steam, or as a trial run for the fall. Is the Trump Administration prepared?
Here’s one thing they could do: play their own “war game” scenario so as to game out possibilities and minimize surprises. They should also be talking to people inside and outside of government whom they absolutely trust to get a clearer sense of who on the inside won’t go along with a coup and who might.
They also need to set up or shore up—now—communication channels that don’t rely on the media or Big Tech. Once the ruling class gives word that the narrative is “Trump lost,” all the president’s social media accounts will be suspended. The T.V. channels, with the likely exception of Fox News, will refuse to cover anything he says. Count on it. He’s going to need a way to talk to the American people and he has to find the means, now.
For the rest of us, the most important thing we can do is raise awareness. If there is a conspiracy to remove President Trump from office even if he wins, they’re telling you about it precisely to get you ready for it, so that when it happens you won’t think it was a conspiracy; you’ll blame the president.
Don’t be fooled.
