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Atheists see blood

In 2 Kings 3 there is an account of a battle in which the outcome hinged on people mistaking water for blood. The kings of Israel, Judah and Edom went out into the wilderness with their armies in order to punish the king of Moab, who had stopped paying tribute to the Israelite king. But they ran short of water. So they called for the prophet Elisha.

Elisha advised them to make ditches in the valley. During the night, the ditches filled up with water. In the morning the Moabite army looked over the valley, and the reflection of the red sky on the water appeared to them like pools of blood.

2 Kings 3:21-23
And when all the Moabites heard that the kings were come up to fight against them, they gathered all that were able to put on armour, and upward, and stood in the border.
And they rose up early in the morning, and the sun shone upon the water, and the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as blood:
And they said, This is blood: the kings are surely slain, and they have smitten one another: now therefore, Moab, to the spoil.

Assuming there had been a battle, the Moabites approached the camp of the Israelites, expecting to find them wasted, but instead were slaughtered themselves.

Atheists and skeptics who reject the gospel are much like those unfortunate Moabites, who mistook water for blood. They view the truths of the gospel which Christians accept, as notions unfit for human consumption! The gospel which is as cool, clean, fresh drinking water to believers, is as distasteful as blood to them. Several facts make the scriptures unpalatable for people; the flawed cosmology that resulted from changes made to the OT by the hellenistic king Antiochus IV and his agents in the 2nd century BC is one reason. Another reason is that the scriptures record miracles and prophecies. Another is their own lack of imagination, and a literal reading of passages in the Bible that are symbolic, or written in poetic style. For these or several other reasons, many view the Bible and the message of the gospel not as clean, refreshing, life-giving water, but as blood that they cannot bring themselves to drink!

This could be what is pictured by a prophecy about the 2 witnesses. Jesus identified the Spirit of God and the scriptures as two things which testify of him, and one who testifies is a witness. One of the powers of the 2 witnesses is to "turn the waters to blood" (Rev 11:6). Jesus referred to the gospel as "living water" (John 4:10).

Copyright © 2007 by Douglas E. Cox
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