Blood, Prayer, and Martyrs. All Cry Out.

           

What grabs the attention of the Lord God Almighty? More than we could list here, so let us look at only three.

First, blood.

“Then the LORD said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel your brother?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’ And the LORD said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth’” (Genesis 4:9–12).¹

What a stunning thought. Blood cries out from ground. Just as stunning is that the Lord hears it.

The verb “crying” has within its semantic domain words such as shouting, yelling, screaming, raising a battle cry, rejoicing, and lamenting. In the case before us, it is not crucial in my opinion, to fine-tune the Hebrew word tsa˓aq, but those other meanings enrichen our understanding. Blood is shouting. Maybe screaming. Perhaps lamenting.

There it is. In the truth of Scripture.

This should give us some interesting contemplation about Immanuel’s blood. Surely, it too cried out—shouted—from the earth.

Or perhaps rejoiced.

It should also generate some interesting thoughts about the blood of innocent babies and murdered innocents of all kinds.

In Genesis 4, our first example, the Lord God Almighty responds strongly to the voice of just one innocent man’s blood. How does He respond to that of millions?

Another instance of a cry which caught the Lord’s attention is farther along in Genesis.

“Then the LORD said, ‘Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know’” (Genesis 18:20–21).

We are not told the source of this outcry. Was blood spilled there, as well? Or was that outcry the pleadings of the only righteous man in the city, Lot?

We do not know.

Regardless, I would like to draw attention to the seeming insignificance of the sources of these two attention-getting outcries. One man’s blood. Possibly one man’s prayers. And God’s staggering, inevitable response. The first was to forbid a man to work the ground from which the blood of a slain man had cried. The second was to incinerate entire cities (Genesis 19:24–25 and 29).

Our last example is the outcry of martyrs.

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been” (Revelation 6:9–11).

The spilling of martyrs’ blood is to be avenged, according to these verses. That request would be answered at some future time. I do not think that response will be desired by a great many people, nor expected.

What do these three outcries tell us about a coming judgment of the world, where the blood of martyrs and millions and millions of murdered people and babies cries out from the ground? How loud are these shoutings?

What do these outcries tell us about a coming judgment on the United States?

It is time to plead for mercy, my brothers and sisters. It is time to ask the Lord God Almighty to grant people repentance and salvation in these last days.

“His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Luke 3:17).

That Day is coming. Stay awake.

¹All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Gif courtesy Bing images.