Haggia 2: 7 - And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts.
What is the desire of all nations?
This passage is a good example of the treasures that can be found in the Bible, when you study it. If we were to read this passage just from a surface level, we will see that this is talking about the temple.
7And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts.
8The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts.
9The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.
This is clearly what the text is saying. However, If we look closer we see there is more found in this statement then just the clear and given message. I feel “the Desire of all nations” is a title of Christ.
One may ask “how can any one say this, seeing that the world for the most part does not seek to come to Christ?”
Indeed this is true. Recently I told someone that more Christians had been put to death in the last 100 years for their faith, than in any other time in history. They felt I was wrong in saying this. However this is the sad truth.
Think about this for a moment. We live in an age that is viewed by many as a time where mankind is much more enlightened than before. Mankind are sophisticated beings now, so the thought goes, and have no need for primitive ways of the ancient past religion. God is not needed, says the humanist society, for God is but a manmade illusion that belongs to the primitive past when we were just mere cavemen. We, now being more intellectual, know better and are much smarter with the recent advances in science, where we no longer need such archaic things.
Atheists think believers in God have not caught on to the truth of this enlightenment, and feel they waste their time going to church. They view religion as the problem to most wars and arguments in this world. If only they could get rid of all the people of faith, life would be much better, or so they think. But what is the reality of such thinking?
The triumph of secular humanism with its atheism, evolutionism and situation ethics that have won out in many nations in the last 100 years, and shows us what life is like under such godless humanist societies. We know of the rise of gangster statesmen such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe and many more like them.
When atheism takes hold of a society, moral relativism is inevitable. Nothing is sacred. There is no objective standard of right and wrong, no God, thus no eternal Day of Judgement. If no hope of eternal justice then life becomes cheap.
At least 180 million people have been killed by secular governments in the 20th Century, and that is a very conservative estimate. We are not here talking about people who have died in wars caused by secular humanist states, because that would massively increase the body count. The greatest threat to life in the 20th Century was not firearm accidents, or crime, or even wars! More people were killed by their own government in peace time than were killed by foreign invaders in war time.
Dr. David Barrett, editor of the massive “World Christian Encyclopedia,” and author of “Cosmos, Chaos and Gospel, and Our Globe and How To Reach It,” has documented that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was responsible for killing over 40 million people. Joseph Stalin closed down over 48 000 churches, and attempted the liquidation of the entire Christian Church.
Similarly, communist dictator of China, Mao Tse Tung launched the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, ”History’s most systematic attempt ever, by a single nation, to eradicate and destroy Christianity…” Mao was responsible for killing about 72 million people.
The communist takeover of Cambodia in 1975 resulted in the death of up to 3 million people - a full third of the total population. When we add to these the death toll of communist regimes in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Cuba, and Zimbabwe, the body count is staggering.
It was said in jest by the communist, ”If God is dead, then all things are possible!”
As Dr. James Kennedy observes in ”What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?” the 20th Century was:
“one of mass murder, genocide and institutionalized terrorism, the fruits of that phantom faith in the secular state that persists in promising liberation even as it attacks the most fundamental human attachments.”
This is the sad end of a godless world. This world in no way seeks to have God as part of their life. We see this hate in our own nation today, as atheism grows and the hate for Christians grows with it. Ours is no longer a nation that fears God. So how could it be said that Christ Jesus is “the Desire of all nations?”
That which the whole world sighs and mourns for, knowingly or unknowingly, the light to disperse the darkness it feels, the liberty from its spiritual slavery, the restoration from its degradation, can not come to us or upon with our own will. It must be placed on us by the only one that has the power and authority to do so.
Again, man may not know Christ is the answer to this inner longing that each man carries with him, but this does not remove Christ as the desire. What is implied in the passage is not that the nations definitely desired Him and seeked Him, but that He is the only one to satisfy the yearning desires which all feel unconsciously for a Saviour, for peace, for understanding in life, and at the same time seeks other means to fill this void. The world will keep looking to fill that longing, but wanting to be filled by be anything but God.
How much easier it would be, if they would only come to God. God can fill that longing to give them the peace they have looked for. No matter what the care, Jesus is there. I feel this poem captures the idea pretty well.
"HE CARETH FOR YOU."
Author unknkown
What can it mean? Is it aught to him
That the nights are long and the days are dim?
Can he be touched by the griefs I bear,
Which sadden the heart and whiten the hair?
Around his throne are eternal calms,
And strong, glad music of happy psalms,
And bliss unruffled by any strife.
How can he care for my poor life?
And yet I want him to care for me,
While I live in this world where the sorrows be;
When the lights die down on the path I take;
When strength is feeble, and friends forsake;
When love and music, that once did bless,
Have left me to silence and loneliness;
And life-song changes to sobbing prayers--
Then my heart cries out for a God who cares.
When shadows hang o'er me the whole day long,
And my spirit is bowed with shame and wrong;
When I am not good, and the deeper shade
Of conscious sin makes my heart afraid;
And the busy world has too much to do
To stay in its course to help me through,
And I long for a Saviour--can it be
That the God of the universe cares for me?
Oh wonderful story of deathless love!
Each child is dear to that heart above:
He fights for me when I can not fight;
He comforts me in the gloom of night;
He lifts the burden, for he is strong;
He stills the sigh, and awakens the song;
The sorrow that bowed me down he bears,
And loves and pardons, because he cares.
"Let all who are sad take heart again.
We are not alone in our hours of pain;
Our Father stoops from his throne above
To soothe and quiet us with his love.
He leaves us not when the storm is high,
And we have safety, for he is nigh.
Can that be trouble which he doth share?
Oh, rest in peace, for the Lord does care!"
Christ Jesus is indeed the desire of all nations.