Children go hungry. Disease harvests misery across the globe. Violence encourages fear on personal, regional and national levels. Unlike ages past, the all-powerful God who created the earth and mankind does not currently speak through prophets. There are no voices from heaven. There are no angels commissioning men like Moses and Gideon to save God’s true believers. The Apostles have all been dead for centuries, who brought the dead back to life, made the lame walk, spoke in all languages and acted as the microphones for their God and His son.
Why? Why is God silent?
Well it isn’t as if we weren’t told this was going to happen. Three separate prophets (Micah, Amos and Isaiah) warn us of an extended period of time for when God would be silent. One prophet tells us specifically when God would end that silence. Micah warns us in this way:
Micah 3:6-7 Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them. Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips for there is no answer of God.
There will be no visions, no prophets or seers and no new enlightening revelations from God. However Micah doesn’t tell us when this period of divine silence would end.
The Prophet Amos tells us:
Amos 8:11-12 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.
At some point there would be a famine, a complete absence, of any pouring out of new revelations from the heavens. However, neither Micah nor Amos identify the beginning or the ending of this period of divine silence. Isaiah offers that answer. The prophet Isaiah describes the chronological environment for when this extended period of divine silence will end quite dramatically.
Isaiah 42:13-14 The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies. I have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: now will I cry like a travailing woman; I will destroy and devour at once.
God will no longer hold His peace… He will no longer be still or refrain Himself as has done for so long… when He ends His self-imposed silence with dramatic flourish. The ending of God‘s silence are like the war cries of a charging soldier and the agonizing screams of a birthing mother. This is an unmistakable context… from absolute silence to mega-decibels. There will be no subtlety. It will be unmistakable.
The chronological context is unmistakable in this chapter. Isaiah tells us this will be when the servant in which God delights (His son) will bring judgment to the Gentiles (all people that are not Jewish). This is in verse four of Isaiah 42. This will be when the praises of God are sung all over the earth (vs. 9). This new divine revelation period will be when Christ will set judgment in the earth and the nations will wait for his law. This is when the deaf will hear and the blind will see, because of the dramatic new revelations pouring from the heavens. This is the phrase throughout scripture that identifies the period of the latter reigns. This is when Jesus Christ will return to the earth to inherit the throne of his ancestor David. This is when the timeframe for the self-imposed divine silence will end dramatically and powerfully.
This silence began when the Bible was finished, with the Apostle John adding the last book at the end of the first century of the Common Era (about 96 AD). The miraculous Holy Spirit gifts were no longer available. The last revelation had been communicated. God’s silence began. We await the new age that will begin when His silence ends… unmistakably.