By Staff
We all know about darkness in the physical world. The sun goes down and it gets dark. The sun comes up and the darkness goes away.
When it gets dark, most of us recede to our homes waiting for the light to return. We do everything imaginable to push back the physical darkness so we can expand our lives.
There is spiritual darkness. It is the absence of the power and presence of God.
We know that God is omnipresent, everywhere all at the same time. We know that God is omniscient, knowing everything at all times.
There are places and conditions when God seems to withdraw Himself. Those places would be obviously spiritually dark.
The apostle John declares in the Gospel of John, chapter 3, verse 19, that "men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."
There are places of darkness where God does not seem to involve Himself. In Paul's epistle to the Romans, chapter 1, verse 24, we read, "Therefore God gave them up to uncleanness …." In verse 26, "God gave them up to vile passions." And in verse 28, "God gave them over to a debased mind … ." These people hated spiritual light, loved darkness, and God allowed them to move progressively into more and more darkness. That darkness is more vile and wicked than we could ever imagine.
There are times in the Holy Scriptures when God specifically visits the darkness. One is in Genesis, chapter 11. Men were growing independent of God and decided to build a tower to reach into heaven (Genesis 11:4). In verse 5, we are told, "the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built." Could not God in His omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence see and know what was going on? Yes, He could, but He visited this place of darkness because the evil was threatening to spill out.
Another instance when God visited a dark place is in Genesis, chapter 18, verses 20-21, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me." Once again, the Almighty, all-powerful Living God of Heaven knew what was going on in this place of darkness, but an "outcry" against it caused Him to visit.
What was this "outcry"? Was it the groaning of creation described in Romans, chapter 8, verse 22? Was it the outcry of innocent people-women and children caught up and ravaged in a deluge of sin? Was it the cry of righteous people grieving in their hearts against the darkness and the wickedness? We do not know. We do know there was an outcry that reached and moved God.
There are two more specific times when God says He saw something that moved Him to act. In Genesis, chapter 6, verse 5, it says, "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth." God brought the great flood that destroyed the earth as it was. In Exodus, chapter 3, verse 7, God said to Moses, "I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry . . . ." God subsequently delivered His people from slavery.
Not too many years ago, Hollywood gave us a microcosm of dark and light. We were introduced to a graphic "dark side." We saw the sinister evil and allurement of this darkness. We also saw the good represented by the people who had chosen against the dark side. We cheered as the good guys prevailed and darkness was eliminated. That was all fiction, but represented the fact that we need to be champions of the Light.
God moves against the darkness when the outcry against it reaches Him. Let it be the outcry of the righteous in prayer, storming Heaven for God's ear, not the cry of the innocent being tortured while we stand idly by asking, "Why doesn't somebody do something?"
Let us cry against the darkness lest the darkness blinds our eyes (1 John 2:11).