Mining the Minors: Amos (37)

There is a short, somewhat mysterious passage in the final speech Moses made to Israel before his death in which he declares that when God divided mankind — presumably referring to the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, which ends with the words “the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth” — that God also “fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God”.

Now, we know what the phrase “sons of God” means to believers from the teaching of the New Testament. However, in the Old Testament, the same expression is consistently connected with angelic beings.

Does God Judge Nations?

A question from a list of what Andy Stanley refers to as “old covenant leftovers”, various ways he believes the modern church mixes what he calls “obsolete” theology with the New Testament teaching of Christ and his apostles:

• “Why would a Christian believe God judges nations at all?”

Stanley intends this as a zinger, but I’m not at all sure it zings. It may be a bullet point in a bulleted list, but it has the pinpoint accuracy of a wet snowball lobbed by a lethargic six-year-old in a too-tight snowsuit.