Should We Pray for ISIS to Be Saved or Destroyed?
00:00:00.000 | Pastor John, given the violence in the world at the hands of organized terrorism, a very
00:00:09.880 | prominent question on the minds of a lot of Christians is this.
00:00:13.820 | Should we be praying for the conversion of ISIS, or should we be praying for their destruction?
00:00:20.160 | What are some steps that we need to sort of walk through in order to answer this question?
00:00:26.200 | Let me answer in six steps.
00:00:30.640 | Number one, there are God-inspired psalms which pray for the destruction and the damnation
00:00:41.680 | of enemies.
00:00:43.640 | God-inspired men, inspired spokesmen of his choosing, to pray these psalms.
00:00:51.720 | Let me read a little bit of Psalm 69, and I choose Psalm 69 because Paul quoted it in
00:01:00.760 | this regard, and Jesus referred to it four times in relation to himself.
00:01:06.120 | And it is one of the most severe imprecatory psalms.
00:01:10.080 | This is verses 22 following.
00:01:12.200 | Let their own table before them become a snare, and when they are at peace, let it become
00:01:18.320 | a trap.
00:01:19.640 | Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually.
00:01:26.440 | Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them.
00:01:32.360 | May their camp be a desolation.
00:01:35.200 | Let no one dwell in their tents, for they persecute him whom you have struck down, and
00:01:41.560 | they recount the pain of those whom you have wounded.
00:01:45.120 | Add to them punishment upon punishment.
00:01:47.840 | May they have no acquittal from you.
00:01:51.800 | Let them be blotted out of the book of the living.
00:01:56.040 | Let them not be enrolled among the righteous.
00:01:59.520 | So there exist such psalms which God inspired that men pray.
00:02:05.360 | Step two.
00:02:06.520 | There are some situations in which a man, like David in Psalm 69, is right to speak
00:02:15.640 | words like these.
00:02:18.160 | The situation we know of is when God moves a psalmist to pronounce his God's own judgment
00:02:28.080 | rather than merely express personal vindictiveness.
00:02:33.480 | This is not a license.
00:02:34.880 | These psalms are not a license to make damnation pronouncements or desires without a clear
00:02:43.880 | evidence that you are speaking for God and with God, from God.
00:02:50.960 | That's step two.
00:02:52.260 | Step three.
00:02:53.640 | We should always approve the righteous judgments of God.
00:03:00.300 | When we see that God has judged a person or people, we should approve.
00:03:06.920 | It is blasphemy to criticize God for his judgments.
00:03:14.040 | Or to put it differently, it is blasphemy to try to be more merciful than God.
00:03:20.100 | Step four.
00:03:21.100 | When you have seen great and long hardness of heart, the time for praying for salvation
00:03:29.840 | might be over.
00:03:32.040 | It might be.
00:03:33.740 | It might not be.
00:03:36.160 | I say this because of 1 John 5:16.
00:03:39.460 | If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, pray,
00:03:46.960 | and God will give him life.
00:03:49.640 | There is sin that leads to death.
00:03:53.900 | I do not say that one should pray for that.
00:03:58.600 | He does not forbid prayer.
00:04:01.560 | God is not forbidding prayer for such sinning, but he does not command it either.
00:04:08.160 | I do not say one should pray for that.
00:04:13.340 | There is a fine line, isn't there, between not praying for a person's life and praying
00:04:20.880 | for a person's death.
00:04:24.440 | Step five.
00:04:26.000 | You may have prayed earnestly for the conversion of members of Boko Haram, say if you live
00:04:32.520 | in Nigeria, or ISIS, or Al-Shabaab.
00:04:35.960 | You may have prayed earnestly for their conversion, but now they are coming.
00:04:41.320 | They're at the edge of your village with machetes, and they are cutting children in pieces and
00:04:48.760 | disemboweling women and beheading men on their way through the town.
00:04:57.300 | In that moment of destruction, you might take up the words of Psalm 58 and pray them in
00:05:05.600 | that instant.
00:05:06.600 | "Knock the fangs out of their mouths, O God.
00:05:11.340 | May they disperse like water running away.
00:05:15.000 | May their machetes be dull and never find their mark.
00:05:19.120 | May the rising sun melt them like a snail too slow to do its deadly work.
00:05:24.720 | May they arrive at the house of the innocent like a stillborn child.
00:05:29.080 | O God, save the poor from the violence of the wicked."
00:05:34.600 | You may pray that.
00:05:35.600 | Yes, you may.
00:05:38.080 | Praying for damnation here would do little good for the village.
00:05:44.780 | What you want is the destruction of their murderous force against the innocent.
00:05:51.200 | Step six.
00:05:53.200 | Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
00:05:59.280 | Surely such a prayer would be a prayer for their salvation the way Paul did in Romans
00:06:04.600 | 10.
00:06:05.600 | Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they might be saved.
00:06:13.760 | Surely that is what we are to pray for our enemies.
00:06:19.320 | And I should add a step seven, I suppose.
00:06:21.920 | When our life is at stake, like Jesus on the cross or Stephen being stoned, when our life
00:06:26.800 | is at stake and we are being killed, may the Lord give us the spirit of Stephen and of
00:06:34.800 | Christ.
00:06:35.800 | Here's what Stephen said.
00:06:38.000 | And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
00:06:44.760 | And falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin
00:06:51.840 | against them."
00:06:53.040 | And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
00:06:55.920 | Surely that's the way we would all like to die and live.
00:06:59.920 | Yeah.
00:07:00.920 | So let me ask a follow-up question that will be more relevant immediately to Western listeners.
00:07:05.960 | When you see those military videos, you know, these green videos, and you see a truck full
00:07:10.160 | of ISIS soldiers with machine guns getting blown to the sky in oblivion in a fireball,
00:07:16.520 | what happens in your heart in that moment when you see that video?
00:07:21.480 | I don't know what happens from time to time.
00:07:24.600 | I'm sure there is mixture.
00:07:26.920 | I can describe sinful aspects of it, but I think what you're fishing for and appropriately
00:07:34.240 | would be, is there a good mixture of gladness and sorrow?
00:07:41.600 | And my understanding would be yes, and only God can see our hearts and know if we've arrived
00:07:49.240 | at the level of purity and godliness that we can delight for the right reasons in the
00:07:58.400 | destruction of a wicked path of life and wicked men, and sorrow simultaneously for something
00:08:07.200 | happening to them that we would not want to happen to ourselves, namely, they are lost.
00:08:13.040 | They are going into eternity without Christ.
00:08:16.840 | And I suppose if we pause to reflect and sort out our emotions, we might even be willing
00:08:22.360 | to say, "Would that they had been captured alive, put in prison, and been brought to
00:08:28.120 | Christ."
00:08:29.320 | But in that moment, you are seeing a providence of God, perhaps even through sinful men.
00:08:38.280 | I don't know who pushed the button or who aimed the rocket or what their motives were,
00:08:43.040 | but a providence of God to end wicked life.
00:08:48.040 | And you know that His judgments are right, and therefore in that moment there may be,
00:08:54.400 | I think, an appropriate mingling of approval of that providential judgment and sorrow that
00:09:01.600 | they did not come to Christ.
00:09:05.440 | That's very sobering and good and balanced and eternally mindful.
00:09:09.880 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:09:10.880 | And if you have a question for John Piper or if you missed some of our recent episodes,
00:09:15.720 | you can catch up at our landing page online.
00:09:18.400 | Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:09:23.880 | On Monday, we're going to be joined by author and speaker Paul Tripp.
00:09:27.080 | We've got some questions piling up for him, and he has graciously agreed to join us as
00:09:31.920 | a guest on the podcast.
00:09:32.920 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:09:34.680 | We'll see you on Monday with guest Paul Tripp.
00:09:36.880 | [End]
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