Christianity in the West has declined continuously for years. In the last two decades several quantifiable aspects of Christian influence have dropped by approximately 12% including church attendance, those identifying as Christian, and how great a role Christianity plays in people’s lives. This decline is even greater when taking into account population increase. There are many factors behind this which I’ll discuss over time including pain experienced within the church, false teaching, legalism, hypocrisy, and many others. However, the people I know who have fallen away from the faith or had their fire dimmed all have one reason – they went through a traumatic experience and, when God didn’t physically protect them, chose to no longer trust God. One of two things happened when you read that last sentence – either the idea of God providing physical protection seemed entirely normal or you wondered why those individuals would expect God to physically protect them in the first place. The answer to both reactions is simple – the Western Church for many, many years has by and far taught that God promises Christians physical protection. This teaching stems from either outright lies or a lazy examination and teaching of the gospel. It is only one part of false teaching within the Western church and its focus on the earthly instead of the eternal.

            In any discussion, but especially ones of this nature, it is important to make sure relevant terms are strictly defined. In the context of this blog, physical protection means the direct intervention/stopping of someone in the act of performing a harmful action. For example, someone swinging a weapon is physically stopped by another being grabbing their arm. I use this definition because this is the context the Western Church usually teaches God’s protection in and it falsely gives Christians the expectation God will always keep them from harm and do so in a very direct way. There are many stories from the Bible used to teach this false narrative. The story of David and Goliath told as David being a weak, untrained kid and God magically guiding the rock from his sling. The stories of God saving Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fire and Daniel from the lions taught as God simply shielding them from harm. The stories of the Israelite conquest of Jericho and other Old Testament victories taught as God will directly crush all your enemies before you. Earthquakes and angels freeing Peter and other apostles from prison as proof that God will free you from imprisonment. There are many more. Obviously, these are all examples of protection so you may question how I can say the teaching that God promises physical protection is a lie. It’s quite simple, God’s physical protection is not an overarching promise and while God does protect at times, He does not directly stop people in the act of committing evil. However, looking at the examples of His protection produces common themes that reveal how God’s protection works.

            When talking about the ways God protects, it is vital to first lay down a rule that He created and holds Himself to. He will not take away or alter the free will of others. The whole story of humanity is about free will and our choosing to use it for relationship with Him or to defy Him. This is not a rule Satan abides by. Satan’s number one trick is using the promise of freedom to enslave you. A simple example is addiction. There is not an addiction in this world that is encouraged within the Bible or any other teachings of Christianity. However, within the world addiction runs rampant and is largely encouraged. Most of the non-Christians I know spend as much of their free time as possible partaking of things that alter their sense of reality. An altered sense of reality is a loss of free will. God being unwilling to alter the free will of human beings both affects how He can help us protect ourselves and how He can protect us from others. With this rule in mind, the ways God provides protection are by putting us in positions to train, speaking to us directly, sending others to help us, spiritual intervention, giving those committing evil over to their desires, nature, and angelic intervention in the physical realm.

            God makes sure we have time to train for every danger we will encounter. This training can take all forms – skills, physical ability, spiritual strength, emotional stamina, knowledge, etc. I won’t go into detail on forms of training but my favorite example from the Bible is David and Goliath. If you only read the story of David and Goliath, you might think it really is a story of an untrained shepherd boy who was able to supernaturally defeat a giant. This is why it’s important to read the Bible in context. If you read starting from a few chapters before you’ll find out that David was a shepherd for many years before this happened. Being a shepherd didn’t just mean making sure sheep didn’t run off, it also meant protecting the sheep from predators. Lions and bears are specifically mentioned in this passage and having to fight them with sling and club. David hated being a shepherd. God put him there because it gave him time to develop the skills he would need to defeat a giant and begin his arc towards becoming one of the greatest kings of Israel. He had countless hours watching over grazing sheep to hone his skills with the sling and club, practicing hitting targets which were increasingly difficult. He honed his strength with physical labor. He had practice fighting off lions and bears using his sling and club. When Goliath came, David didn’t want to fight him but, when no one else stepped up, he was ready to. When faced with Goliath, David dealt with him the same as he dealt with the lions and bears. He whipped a few stones out of his sling and, when he dazed Goliath, David closed the distance and decapitated the giant just as he would club a predator. I know many Christians who are in or go through phases of life where they don’t know why God has them there. It doesn’t feel like much of a purpose. When you look at these times through such a lens, you are taking yourself out from under God’s protection. If he put you somewhere (not you put yourself there) and you aren’t sure of the purpose, it is because there is something about that situation which is training you for your next trial or a bigger trial. Don’t waste the training time. If you do, you won’t be ready for the trial coming your way that is likely part of the path to the greater calling God has on your life.

            God provides protection by speaking to us. The ways God speaks to us are unique and individual just as we are unique and individual. God can speak through an audible voice, a still small voice, a sense of peace or lack thereof, imparting to us wisdom or knowledge that does not come naturally to us, through visions, through dreams, through angels, through a burning bush or any one of a number of other undeniable physical manifestations mentioned in the Bible. In the story of Gideon, God gave him the plan to defeat the Midianites – a plan that defied human logic. Gideon listened and won. My Father had a story of God protecting him on a missions trip to Africa. Long story short, the men of the village were getting ready to stone him for preaching and God told him to go up and shake their hands with both of his hands. This caused them to drop their rocks to shake his hands and he was able to leave safely. Again, a plan that defied human logic. God speaks to us all the time about where to go or not go, what to do or not do – listen.  Along with listen, read. God’s commandments in the Bible go a long way towards keeping us from harm. Any competent instructor teaching self defense will first tell you the best defense is avoiding the danger to begin with. God taught this from the beginning of time. There are many things you don’t need to hear specially from God because it’s already spoken by God to us in the Bible. When you take the time to think about it, the number of harmful things we are kept from just by heeding God’s written word is astounding.

            God protects us through others. It’s my firm belief, involved somewhere in every evil deed is someone who could have intervened but did not do what God told them. God works through us. I can’t think of anything in the Bible, after creation, God did where he didn’t work through a human in some way, whether it was the individual carrying out an action or just following. The next time you suddenly get the idea to check on someone, feel a pull to help someone, or get involved in a situation; pay attention. Make sure it’s from God and not just your own feelings but pay attention – you could be God’s protection for someone else.

            In circumstances where the forces of darkness are directly involved in a spiritual attack through human hands, God will send armies of angels. An example from the Bible is when the Syrian Army encircled Elijah. Elijah’s servant was afraid, Elijah prayed for his eyes to be opened, and the servant saw an angelic army around them. There are numerous stories from missionaries preaching the gospel in areas of strong demonic activity where the natives of the area were going to kill them. However, when they arrived where the missionaries lived, they saw strong warriors surrounding the camp, became afraid, and left. However, you’ll notice, these spiritual armies never directly do battle with the human armies. Countering the forces of darkness with angelic armies does not affect the free will of those directly influenced to do evil. One could argue it is actually returning a measure of free will to those individuals.

            When a people or person has completely cut themselves off from God and given themselves to evil, God will give themselves over to their desires and allow them to bring about their own destruction. This is often referred to in the Bible as God hardening their heart. God is not unjustly causing someone to turn against Him but removing Himself completely from them. The primary example of this in the Bible is of Pharoh and the Exodus. When God removes Himself entirely from someone’s life their sin nature fully takes over – lust, greed, desire, envy, etc. Unchecked sin nature always causes us to destroy ourselves in the end as it did Pharoh and the army of Egypt.

            The way we see God provide protection the most is through nature. His creation is corrupted but He is still the one who created it and can shape it to His will. The Flood, fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, earthquakes causing the fall of Jericho and prisons to open, shutting the mouths of lions, Israel’s army winning as long as Moses’ arms were raised, stopping the sun in the sky, and even causing blindness of the Syrian Army are all examples of Gods protection through control of nature. Just as a clock maker knows how to precisely adjust the mechanisms to make the hands turn in the manner he desires, so God is able to adjust the mechanisms of His creation to provide protection.

            Last, we have angelic intervention in the physical realm. This is primarily represented in the Bible where angels entered prisons the apostles were kept in awaiting execution, released their shackles, and walked them past the guards. You’ll notice again though, the angels do not directly interact with the humans involved other than the apostles. There is only one story in the Bible I can think of where angels were allowed to directly interact with human beings to stop evil. This is when the two angels were sent into Sodom and Gomorrah to find anyone righteous. The men of the city tried to break into Lot’s house and sexually assault the angels there in human form. In response, the angels blinded them.  There is no explanation why these angels were allowed to do this just this one time in the Bible. However, I have some theories. First and foremost, I believe a large part of this rare permission had to do with the men of the city directly attacking spiritual beings, albeit in human form. These angels were there on a direct mission from God to find anyone righteous and to get Lot and his family out of the city. By proxy, a direct assault on the angels was a direct assault on God himself which warranted this direct crossing of spiritual to earthly realm. Attacking the angels directly was also a direct attack on their mission from God. We’ll come back to the importance of this idea later.

After the free will rule, the second common theme we can derive from these stories of protection is they all occurred with people who were within His will. If you squander the training He provides you, if you fail to respond to the mission He has for you, if you ignore His voice whether spoken or written in the Bible, or if you ignore people He’s sent to you then you are taking yourself outside of His will and the loss of any protection He did or would provide is a consequence of that. This isn’t because He’s vindictive and causes people to get hurt when they don’t do what He says. It goes back to free will. If we defy Him, go against His will, and ignore the words of protection He has given us then we are choosing not to walk with Him and rejecting everything associated with Him – including His protection.

            With all that I’ve said about the way’s God protects, I’m sure you are again wondering how I can say God does not promise physical protection. You may think – sure, none of these examples have God stopping someone in the act of swinging a sword or firing a gun or an angelic army firing bows at a human army but God is stopping what was intended before it got to that point. That is an argument for a little less strict of a definition of physical protection but then we come to the hard truth – for every story of God’s protection there are thousands where Christians are hurt or martyred. The very same disciples/apostles I talked about being rescued in examples above were, all but one, executed in horrific ways. John the Apostle is the only disciple who was not. By church tradition, an attempt was made to execute John by boiling him in oil but he came out unscathed. He went on to write the last book of the Bible, Revelations, after a vision from God. That’s important and I’ll come back to it. Other than John, God ultimately didn’t physically protect any of them. Pick up Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, in it’s original, updated, and new versions. Look at the murder of Christians in Rome where they were killed in all manners including being turned into human torches. Look at the murder of Christians in Soviet Russia. Look at the murder of Christians in present day Nigeria, China, and most Muslim countries. Too many stories of Christians dying for their faith to count and I haven’t even gotten to the number of Christians who encounter physical harm that has nothing to do with their faith – car wrecks, physical assault, sexual assault, etc, etc, etc. Last, let’s talk about Jesus, who was brutally murdered. God didn’t provide them physical protection. It is not a debate.

Now, the question must be addressed of why God did not use one of the ways he can protect without violating free will, to keep these people safe. There are two reasons I’ve found. Most importantly, God’s focus is on the eternal. As discussed above, all the times God provided protection, those people were perfectly within His will. The flip side is all the martyrs I mention above were perfectly within His will also. It doesn’t seem to make sense. It seems contradictory but it’s not. God’s protection is to further the eternal mission. First, that was protecting Adam and Eve who were in perfect fellowship with God until they chose to defy Him. After the fall and corruption of God’s creation, that was protecting the Jewish people, making them into a great nation beginning with Abraham, and making sure Israel remained a nation with the laws God originally gave her. This was necessary so Jesus could be born into the world in the perfect environment to spread God’s will and serve as the ultimate sacrifice to atone for our sins and bring us again into relationship with God. Beginning then and continuing now, the eternal mission is to spread the gospel and bring as many people to Him as possible. Looking at the disciples’ lives, all of them completed their mission here on earth before God allowed them to die and come to Him. God’s protection is not to extend our mortal lives as a reward for believing in Him but to allow us to complete the part of the eternal mission He’s given us. As all things with God, protection has purpose. If we are within His will, we will be given a chance to complete our calling. This brings us back to John the Apostle, the only one of the twelve disciples who was protected from martyrdom. He had one more mission, writing the book of Revelations so we would know what to look for in the end times. It’s a hard pill to swallow when you realize God’s protection isn’t about you individually but about you fulfilling your part of the eternal mission. For anyone eternally minded as He is eternally minded, there is peace in knowing that if you are walking in His will, you have purpose, you will fulfill your purpose, you will not die until you have met your purpose, and when you do die, you are going to be with Him. It is fascinating that while the Western Church deteriorates, the Church everywhere else – especially in areas of heavy persecution – grows. I believe this is because when faced with the possibility of death for your faith on a daily basis, your mind is on the eternal things and not the things of this earth. The eternal is where the true power of the gospel lies. The eternal is also where God’s ultimate protection resides. When a follower of Jesus dies, they are perfected as we were meant to be before sin polluted creation and in His direct presence we are beyond harm. If you are not at peace with this, pray that God would turn your mind and heart from the earthly to the eternal.

Second, with God nothing is wasted and He will use what was meant for evil for good to develop us into the people we need to be to accomplish the mission He created us to complete. No one ever became stronger by sitting on the couch. It takes tearing your muscles with thousands of micro tears so they can heal and become stronger. No one became smarter by just laying out on the beach. It takes reading, studying, testing to gain knowledge and the wisdom that comes with it. Stress and hardship are required for any kind of progress. Trials and tribulations are necessary for growth. Gold can only be refined and purified in fire. God does not cause anything bad to happen to us but we can take comfort in knowing that no matter what we go through He will use it and it will not be wasted. For those whose journey ends, God can use the witness of a Christians untimely death to bring thousands to Him. What great peace and comfort resides in knowing everything, including pain and suffering, is meaningful in His hands instead of pointless outside of them. What great peace and comfort to know it can all be used by Him to transform us and bring others to Him which is our eternal mission and ultimate purpose for being here.

To summarize, God does protect but He doesn’t provide protection in the way or for the reasons the Western Church has taught for quite some time. Just by listening, reading, and following we can receive His protection by avoiding most of the ways people find themselves in danger in this life. In the ways He protects outside of us following his written word, it is for the purpose of furthering the eternal mission and not just extending our lives or avoiding harm because we believe in Him. Our focus must be eternal as His focus is eternal. That doesn’t mean life on earth is inconsequential to Him and I’ll address that in a later post. The church must begin teaching the full truth of the gospel and God’s promises and not just what sounds good or the Western Church will continue to erode and decay until it dies.

– The Old Man