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Transcript 370E — Does God Promise Physical Blessings?
CALLER: Is there any promise in God's Word of God's provision for those who continue to abide in their calling, as it's been confirmed?
HC: Is there any provision in the Bible that God will provide financially for those who are faithful to the Word of God?
Let's assume that you were in a concentration camp in Siberia. And you were condemned to stay there for the next ten years. Can you faithfully walk in God's way in this concentration camp? And supposing that there was a promise in the Bible that promised something financially? It would be hollow mockery, wouldn't it? Because there wouldn't be any possibility of getting out of that concentration camp.
As a matter of fact, God does not promise financial prosperity, or physical prosperity. These blessings may come, but there's no promise that they will come. The Bible simply says that we are to be content with out lot, whatever it is.
The Bible indicates that we are strangers and pilgrims here. The Bible does use Israel as an Old Testament example of God's blessing, indicating their riches, and so on, as an evidence of God's blessing. But when we look at salvation, and look at the true nature of God's blessing, the ultimate nature of God's blessing, it does not rest with the physical. It rests with a relationship to Christ, a knowledge that our sins have been forgiven, a knowledge that we belong to Him, eternally. That's where it all is.
CALLER: So the physical blessings are just extra things? They don't necessarily come, according to His Word? They're just kind of a bonus.
HC: Yes. They may not even be a blessing. They may be a curse. God may be testing us with physical blessings. He may give us extra income to see what we're going to do with this. Are we going to use it to God's glory, or are we going to use it in the pursuit of pleasure, so that we are increasingly taking our eyes off Christ?
Physical wherewithal is not necessarily a blessing. It depends on what we do with it. On the other hand, God may be sending severe deprivation into our life. He may take our job away. He may strike us down with an illness so that we can't work. He may send a drought, in order to remind us of more important things. Drought, if it is very severe, can be an exceedingly wonderful blessing, if there are those who are exercised by it, so that they will indeed return to Christ.
CALLER: There is a spiritual likeness to spiritual drought, is there not?
HC: The Bible speaks of the Old Testament days as being a time when the ground was parched, when the world was a desert. And it speaks of the days when Christ would come, and the Holy Spirit would be poured out, as the wilderness bringing forth abundantly and running with water, because you see, the Gospel is like water. Whatever it goes, it brings life, life to those who are being exercised by it, so that they become saved.
CALLER: Do you have any scriptural references to the stream in the desert?
HC: Isaiah 35, I think, is such a reference. Let me turn to that a moment. In Isaiah 35:1 we read, "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing." There are a number of statements like this, and a number of them are in Isaiah.
Isaiah 32:15 & 16 & 17. It's speaking there about the Holy Spirit being poured out from on high, and the wilderness becoming a fruitful field.
Isaiah 44:3: "I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground. I will pour My Spirit upon your seed, and My blessings on your offspring. And they shall spring up like grass amid water, like willows by flowing streams."
These are a few of these kind of references.
CALLER: With that I would like to thank you very much for your ministry, and for Family Radio.
HC: Thank you so much for calling. Good night.