Faith Overcomes Ignorance

“Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve? Canst thou number the months that they fulfil? or knowest thou the time when they bring forth?” (Job 39:1,2 AV)

 There are things we can know in a general sense.  But much of what can be known is not known.  Not when we boil it down to details.  In our passage above, the LORD is challenging Job.  He is asking Job if he can know for certain the exact time when a wild goat, or all wild goats, will give birth.  We can know, generally speaking, the month in which goats will birth.  What we do not know is the exact time they may bring forth.  Modern technology may make that immensely easier.  We can place a goat on a machine that will give us much information as to the time the ewe will bring forth.  We can watch contractions.  We can watch heart rhythms.  We can watch the breathing.  We can watch much.  But until that exact moment comes, our guesses are just that.  Educated guesses that may or may not be correct.  In short, we can guess, generally speaking, the events of the future.  But the particulars are beyond our grasp.  This was God’s point with Job.  Job may be able to know some things.  But unless he is God, he cannot know most things.

My thoughts went to the future.  We know some things are certain.  If the LORD does not rapture us out of here, we will experience a natural death that man has experienced since our first parents partook of the forbidden fruit.  We know it is a certainty.  We just do not know exactly how.  We know the world is going to precipitously fall away from God and because it will do so, circumstances of life will get much harder for everyone.  We may even know, generally speaking, what will happen.  Our indication can be found in the Book of Revelation.  How that plays out to us individually, we may not know.  All those curses of the tribulation will have indicators before the rapture.  Like the foothills of a mountain range, things will happen as we approach the tribulation that will play a part in the tribulation even though the church will not be there.  We can read Farmers Almanac all we want, but that doesn’t mean we will know exactly how the weather will pan out come the winter colds and storms.  All one has to do is watch a weather channel to know we can generally know what will happen.  Yet, until we have every detail, we know nothing for certain.  Ignorance of the details of the future; the events leading up to the rapture, future laws that will impact the church, and the day and hour of Christ’s return; requires that we live by faith today.

This is the burden of our limited brains.  We cannot know for certain any future fact.  At least in the details of those facts.  We know the sun will rise tomorrow because the tribulation has yet to occur.  We know winter will come.  We know next summer will see some heat.  We know if the LORD does not call us home or we are not raptured, we will get a day older, a year older, and perhaps decades older.  We know some.  It is by this knowledge that make plans.  What we do not know is far more.  This is what Job wrestled with.  He knew in the latter days, the LORD will return and he will be with Him.  He just didn’t know why God allowed what He did.  This ignorance can be frustrating.  Or worse, frightening.  I have visited many church members going for medical procedures that were terrified.  It is not that the doubted their salvation.  It was fear of the details of the future.  Job was a righteous man.  Righteous more so than any before him, and perhaps with the exclusion of Christ, after him as well.  That didn’t alleviate his frustration over what he didn’t know.  Nor couldn’t know.  And that is the rub.  It is not that we don’t know but could know.  It is the fact we cannot know which is hard to accept.  Thus, we must live by faith because only an omniscient God knows all things and controls all things.  Surrendering our need to know is a hard thing to do.  Job had a hard time with it.  But he finally did.  And that is when God blessed him.  Perhaps the LORD is waiting for you to surrender your need to know so that He can bless the faith that follows.