We live in a supremely schizophrenic society; one that begs for peace, but cannot be at peace for a single moment. It is interesting that everywhere we look people are asking, “Why can’t we get along?” But that same person will scream bloody murder at the drop of a hat.
Just a look at this week’s presidential election and the aftershocks that are reverberating through America reveal just how intolerant our tolerant society is.
To be sure, the only way to peace is through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only when souls come united in the truth of Scripture and begin to truly align themselves with their Maker—thinking His thoughts after Him—only then will we find unity of heart and peace of mind.
But let’s make no mistake, the gospel is itself a tinderbox easily ignited. While it promises peace and ensures an unmovable utopia to come, it divides friends, unsettles homes, and creates tensions between neighbors.
When we come to a passage like this one, we come to find that opposition and hatred are part of the warp and woof of this present world. The passage before us shows us that all religions, at their root, are hate based religions.
I know that this is not what you typically hear. You will hear that this or that religion is a religion of love. We Christians will even say that our God is love and our highest calling is to reflect His unconditional love.
But let us be clear. Every religion in the world is a religion of hate. It will love what it loves, but it will also display the utmost odium—the highest animosity—for that which does not fit into its system.
This morning, I want you to notice the myth of “coexist.” You know the bumper sticker theology. You know it all to well. It is the mantra of our tolerant, pluralistic society. But our passage shows us that it is a foolish illusion and the most prominent lie of our age.
When you look at this passage, you see the conflict. You see the loathing. You see the hatred. And you see it first in our own religion.
Don’t be fooled. We are haters, and we are called to be haters. We are to abhor what God abors. Look at how this passage begins. It shows us how the Lord does not tolerate in the least a broad ecumenism. Put more precisely, this passage reveals how the Christian God utterly despises a mixed (or syncretistic) religion.
I. We see how much the Lord despises syncretistic religion
The passage begins with the word “adversaries.” This is used in reference to the people who were living in the land of Judah. Right away the Lord wants you to know that these guys are not friendly neighbors to the exiles who had returned. The people of the land were hostile, as will become evident. But it is noteworthy that the Lord calls them His enemies. There is an understanding that there is no friendly existence between these people and the Lord.
But the question we have to ask is why they are hated so much? Why is it that God sees them as enemies?
More importantly, why is it that the people of Judah did not want them lending a hand with the rebuilding of the temple? Wouldn’t it have been good to have the help? After all, many hands make light work, right? They could get this job done in a jiffy if they hired in these men. Especially since they say they worship the same god and have been sacrificing to him for decades.
But that’s the hitch right there. The truth is that they do not worship the same god. They might say that they do. The gods may have some similarities. They may even have the same name. They may be calling their god “The Lord,” but the truth is it isn’t the same God.
The reason they may not take part in the construction of the temple is because they were a people whose faith was not pure. Their religion was a mixed faith. They had what we may call a syncretistic faith.
Young people, that’s a big word. I want you to upload that to your vocabulary. It is a very important word, as we will see in just a moment. Syncretism means mixed or blended. Let’s say you have a glass of water in one hand and some lemon juice in the other. The water is pure water. But if you combine the two, you now have lemonade. It has become a blend of water and lemon juice. It is no longer pure water, but it is a mix of two different kinds of fluid.
Now there are some similarities between the original water and the lemonade. They are both liquids. They probably have some molecular similarities. But there is something very different about them too. As a matter of fact, they are quite different.
This mixing is what we call syncretism.
Now imagine that instead of lemon juice and water you have Christianity and another religion. And when you mix them together, instead of getting lemonade you get this odd mix of Christianity and this other religion.
That’s what had happened to the people who were living in the land of Israel. Originally, these people worshiped YHWH. But when the Assyrians and Babylonians came in and conquered them, they began to move people around. That’s what the reference in verse 2 to Esarhaddon is all about. He was a king of Assyria who shipped in people of other cultures and religions, be they Assyrians or Arabians. And what happened is that these people began to intermarry. And not only were the people beginning to be intermarried, but their religions began to be intermarried as well. They mixed their Jewish beliefs with the new religions that were introduced.
These people came to be known as the Samaritans, who we read quite a bit about them in the New Testament times. These Samaritans were considered to be God’s enemies and they were not allowed to participate in the reconstruction because they were syncretistic.
Put simply, their religion was pagan. Even though there might have been some similarities, and even though they may have presented themselves as being of the same religions, they were not. It was a form of idolatry. If they would have been permitted to share in the work, their ideas would likely have spread like a cancer through the Judean population.
And what we glean from this is that this religious blending is a great evil in God’s eyes. It is one that He cannot tolerate because it is to worship a different god altogether.
Now, why is all this important? It is because syncretism is still alive and well today, and we need to be aware of it. We need to be careful not to blend our faith with other religions or man-made philosophies. We too, like these Israelites need to be careful who we befriend, who we marry, and who we seek fellowship with on a regular basis. More importantly, we need to be aware of the beliefs floating around in our culture and make sure that we do not imbibe them. These things can contaminate the purity of true Christianity.
There are already many who have succumbed to this great evil. You can see syncretism in a number of different places in the broader church today. There have been people lately who have sought to mix Christianity and Islam. They are calling it Chris-lam. These people say that the two religions are basically the same. They worship the same god. So why not integrate them and “cherish” what each religion has to offer.
A good example of this was found in the opening ceremonies of the PCUSA’s general assembly this past year. The worship committee had a Muslim Imam offer a prayer to Allah as a part of their worship service. That was a vivid testimony to how far that denomination has fallen.
This is just one extreme example. Not too many people are into that. What is more dangerous is the secular humanism, the existentialism, and the postmodernism that is so widespread in our culture. Many people believe themselves to be Christians, but what they really are is an odd mix of Christianity and these other philosophies. It is a secularized Christianity or a post modern Christianity.
Let me give you some examples. Secular humanism is the philosophy that is devoid of God. It puts man and his reason at the center of everything. A secular Christianity is one that doesn’t take belief in God too seriously. They say, “Yeah, God exists, but we can believe in evolution too.” Or they will consider things like abortion, which the Bible distinctly forbids as murder, or living together, which the Bible forbids as fornication, as things that are completely permissible.
So a secular Christian will likely go to church and listen to the Bible read, but he’s not going to take it all that seriously. So he may acknowledge some outward Christianity and even some form of morality, but there is no real recognition of Christ’s lordship over life, passion for the gospel, or true grasp of anything particularly supernatural. Christianity is purged of these things and is mainly man centered.
Existentialism is another worldview that is prominent in our day. It is the belief that what really matters is what you feel to be true. Whereas the Christian focuses on what Scripture says, existentialism focuses more on intuition and the old Disney mantra of “following your heart.”
Existentialism is found among many Christians. Christians do what they feel is right, and not what is biblically right. Perhaps the most prominent place where this is demonstrated is in the worship services of many churches. The worship is emotion driven, rather than driven by the truth. Not that worship should not be emotional. It should be. But the emotions should be evoked by the truth of God’s word.
In many cases though, people choose which church to attend based on the personal high they get. Or they come looking for a “religious experience” rather than a message that will be informative and convicting. And you certainly do not want your children in the service with you. You have to put them in some children’s church program or church daycare because you don’t want to ruin the feeling of a good church experience.
In Biblical churches you come looking for God and you only get a lift after you have bowed yourself in humility and repentance. So there is a distinct difference between true Christianity and wicked twist of existentialism & Christianity.
There’s one more worldview I want to point out. As I said, some in the church today are mixing the faith with the humanistic worldview (where they are guided more by a man centered way thinking, rather than Scriptural thinking) and many others are living life based on the experience or feelings based life of existentialism. But there are still others who are mixing the faith with the postmodern worldview that is so prevalent today.
Postmodernism says that truth ultimately cannot be known. This you may see is a contradictory statement. One cannot truly know whether or not truth cannot be known. But this doesn’t stop people from embracing this kind of absurd thinking.
The idea, though, is that there can be no certainty. There is no certainty about what God has said. There is no exact way of salvation. The Bible is open to many different interpretations. Jesus may be a way of salvation, but he’s probably not the only way. What’s true for me may or may not be true for you.
Ultimately, for the postmodern Christian it doesn’t matter what you believe, what matters is the relationship you have.
Listen to this quote. It is from Henri Nouwen, who was a Catholic priest (he died around 1996). This quote expresses something of the postmodern spirit.
"Our faith in Jesus is not our belief that Jesus, the Son of God, lived long ago, performed great miracles, presented wise teachings, died for us on the cross, and rose from the grave. It first of all means that we fully accept truth that Jesus lives within us and fulfills his divine ministry in and through us. This spiritual knowledge of the Christ living in us is what allows us to affirm fully the mystery of the incarnation, death, resurrection as historic events. It is the Christ in us who reveals to us the Christ in history."
The truth is that our faith is in the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, lived long ago, performed great miracles and died for us on the cross. Nouwen, along with other postmoderns, thinks that is hogwash. They don’t want to emphasize what is true, they want to emphasize what is true for me. Things that are spiritual and relational, that’s more important (and perhaps even more true) than actual facts.
It may be that you’ve met someone that falls into one of these three categories. Or maybe you know a church or a church leader who promotes something like this. What we need to understand is that these things are wrong; terribly wrong. These are the Samaritans of our age and these are defilements of the true faith.
As our passage makes clear, God hates these degradations of the faith and He does not tolerate them. Thus, it is incumbent upon us to steer clear of any mingling of our beliefs and hold fast to the faith that was once for all delivered up to the saints in the Scripture.
Now, lest you take offense and think that this is overly extreme, we have to consider what the rest of our passage says. While the first three verses show us how much God hates a mixed/syncretistic Christianity, the rest of the passage—I might even say, the majority of our passage—tells us how much the world despises a pure and undefiled Christianity.
II. We see how much the world despises pure Christianity
In verse 4 we begin to see the true colors of the people of the land. It says that the people of the land “discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build.” Verse 5 says that they frustrated their work by means of bribes. In other words, they were so dead set against God’s people that they were ready to pony up funds to stop them.
Verse 5 also says that this harassment continued all the way through the reign of Darius I. Now, mind you that is probably a total of 10-15 years. But that’s not it. The passage goes on. It goes on to talk about how they even sought to undermine the work of restoration by writing letters to the powers that be. Verse 6 talks about a letter that was written to Ahasuarus. And verses 7-23 recount for us the letter was written to Artaxerxes.
But you have to understand something about this. There is a historical leap that goes on here. Ahasuarus lived during the time of Esther, which was about 40 years after Cyrus. Artexeres lived about 80 years after Cyrus. This letter would have been written long after the building of the temple had been completed, after the time of Ester, and during the time of Nehemiah.
So, what’s going on here? Why the skip in time? Why does the author feel the need to include the details regarding things that happened almost 100 years later? It is for effect. It is to help you realize just how much the foes of God really hate you! It is as if the author is saying, “While I’m talking about the harassment that the people of God felt, let me go ahead and recount for you another instance or two of how bad it was.”
The correspondence that we have here recounts for us the legacy of irritation that the people of the land had for the people of God.
Think about it. If you had a neighbor who was putting up a garage or a barn, you might ask if you can lend a hand and help him with the project. But if your neighbor said, “No thanks, this is something that my family and I are going to do. We’re pretty satisfied with the way things are and we have it under control.” What would your response be? If you really loved your neighbors, you’d just go home. You wouldn’t be out to sabotage him or undermine his work. And even if you did play a practical joke or call the city in to have their permits checked, if you really did like your neighbor, you wouldn’t keep on doing that. You would only do that if you hated him.
So this chapter, more than telling you how much God hates a mixed faith, tells you how the mixed faith really hates God.
This is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said, “You are either for me or against me.” He was talking to the religious leaders of his time and they claimed to be all pro-YHWH. But when Jesus came along doing his good works and casting out demons, they accused him of being the agent of Satan.
Where ever true Christianity lives, it will find that the imposter religion—the mixed religion, will claim to be its best and most faithful friend. But the true Christian will eventually feel the squeeze. The imposter may pose as a comrade and best buddy, but at some point it will reveal its true colors and it will begin to tighten the noose around your neck. It will show its real hatred for Christ and you will be persecuted, like Christ himself was.
Conclusion:
Thus we see the intolerance of religious belief. You are going to have intolerance. That’s the name of the game. It simply boils down to one little question: Who’s intolerance is right?
The answer to that question is found in Scripture. The book of Revelation pictures it perfectly. The book of Revelation isn’t subtle when it comes to painting the conflict that exists between Christ and his enemies. In league with Satan is the 12 headed beast, the false prophet, and the prostitute. They comprise the unholy trinity which set their machinations upon Christ and his people. They’re reign is a reign of terror; it’s a reign of ravenous bloodthirst. But in the end, what happens? The Christ returns and they are cast forever into the lake of fire.
Ezra remunerates for us the conflict, but there is a sense in which you must read the whole of the Scripture to get the full and final picture. Ezra may prepare us, but Revelation comforts us and controls us in the midst of the hatred.
To be sure, the only way to peace is through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only when souls come united in the truth of Scripture and begin to truly align themselves with their Maker—thinking His thoughts after Him—only then will we find unity of heart and peace of mind.
But let’s make no mistake, the gospel is itself a tinderbox easily ignited. While it promises peace and ensures an unmovable utopia to come, it divides friends, unsettles homes, and creates tensions between neighbors.
When we come to a passage like this one, we come to find that opposition and hatred are part of the warp and woof of this present world. The passage before us shows us that all religions, at their root, are hate based religions.
I know that this is not what you typically hear. You will hear that this or that religion is a religion of love. We Christians will even say that our God is love and our highest calling is to reflect His unconditional love.
But let us be clear. Every religion in the world is a religion of hate. It will love what it loves, but it will also display the utmost odium—the highest animosity—for that which does not fit into its system.
This morning, I want you to notice the myth of “coexist.” You know the bumper sticker theology. You know it all to well. It is the mantra of our tolerant, pluralistic society. But our passage shows us that it is a foolish illusion and the most prominent lie of our age.
When you look at this passage, you see the conflict. You see the loathing. You see the hatred. And you see it first in our own religion.
Don’t be fooled. We are haters, and we are called to be haters. We are to abhor what God abors. Look at how this passage begins. It shows us how the Lord does not tolerate in the least a broad ecumenism. Put more precisely, this passage reveals how the Christian God utterly despises a mixed (or syncretistic) religion.
I. We see how much the Lord despises syncretistic religion
The passage begins with the word “adversaries.” This is used in reference to the people who were living in the land of Judah. Right away the Lord wants you to know that these guys are not friendly neighbors to the exiles who had returned. The people of the land were hostile, as will become evident. But it is noteworthy that the Lord calls them His enemies. There is an understanding that there is no friendly existence between these people and the Lord.
But the question we have to ask is why they are hated so much? Why is it that God sees them as enemies?
More importantly, why is it that the people of Judah did not want them lending a hand with the rebuilding of the temple? Wouldn’t it have been good to have the help? After all, many hands make light work, right? They could get this job done in a jiffy if they hired in these men. Especially since they say they worship the same god and have been sacrificing to him for decades.
But that’s the hitch right there. The truth is that they do not worship the same god. They might say that they do. The gods may have some similarities. They may even have the same name. They may be calling their god “The Lord,” but the truth is it isn’t the same God.
The reason they may not take part in the construction of the temple is because they were a people whose faith was not pure. Their religion was a mixed faith. They had what we may call a syncretistic faith.
Young people, that’s a big word. I want you to upload that to your vocabulary. It is a very important word, as we will see in just a moment. Syncretism means mixed or blended. Let’s say you have a glass of water in one hand and some lemon juice in the other. The water is pure water. But if you combine the two, you now have lemonade. It has become a blend of water and lemon juice. It is no longer pure water, but it is a mix of two different kinds of fluid.
Now there are some similarities between the original water and the lemonade. They are both liquids. They probably have some molecular similarities. But there is something very different about them too. As a matter of fact, they are quite different.
This mixing is what we call syncretism.
Now imagine that instead of lemon juice and water you have Christianity and another religion. And when you mix them together, instead of getting lemonade you get this odd mix of Christianity and this other religion.
That’s what had happened to the people who were living in the land of Israel. Originally, these people worshiped YHWH. But when the Assyrians and Babylonians came in and conquered them, they began to move people around. That’s what the reference in verse 2 to Esarhaddon is all about. He was a king of Assyria who shipped in people of other cultures and religions, be they Assyrians or Arabians. And what happened is that these people began to intermarry. And not only were the people beginning to be intermarried, but their religions began to be intermarried as well. They mixed their Jewish beliefs with the new religions that were introduced.
These people came to be known as the Samaritans, who we read quite a bit about them in the New Testament times. These Samaritans were considered to be God’s enemies and they were not allowed to participate in the reconstruction because they were syncretistic.
Put simply, their religion was pagan. Even though there might have been some similarities, and even though they may have presented themselves as being of the same religions, they were not. It was a form of idolatry. If they would have been permitted to share in the work, their ideas would likely have spread like a cancer through the Judean population.
And what we glean from this is that this religious blending is a great evil in God’s eyes. It is one that He cannot tolerate because it is to worship a different god altogether.
Now, why is all this important? It is because syncretism is still alive and well today, and we need to be aware of it. We need to be careful not to blend our faith with other religions or man-made philosophies. We too, like these Israelites need to be careful who we befriend, who we marry, and who we seek fellowship with on a regular basis. More importantly, we need to be aware of the beliefs floating around in our culture and make sure that we do not imbibe them. These things can contaminate the purity of true Christianity.
There are already many who have succumbed to this great evil. You can see syncretism in a number of different places in the broader church today. There have been people lately who have sought to mix Christianity and Islam. They are calling it Chris-lam. These people say that the two religions are basically the same. They worship the same god. So why not integrate them and “cherish” what each religion has to offer.
A good example of this was found in the opening ceremonies of the PCUSA’s general assembly this past year. The worship committee had a Muslim Imam offer a prayer to Allah as a part of their worship service. That was a vivid testimony to how far that denomination has fallen.
This is just one extreme example. Not too many people are into that. What is more dangerous is the secular humanism, the existentialism, and the postmodernism that is so widespread in our culture. Many people believe themselves to be Christians, but what they really are is an odd mix of Christianity and these other philosophies. It is a secularized Christianity or a post modern Christianity.
Let me give you some examples. Secular humanism is the philosophy that is devoid of God. It puts man and his reason at the center of everything. A secular Christianity is one that doesn’t take belief in God too seriously. They say, “Yeah, God exists, but we can believe in evolution too.” Or they will consider things like abortion, which the Bible distinctly forbids as murder, or living together, which the Bible forbids as fornication, as things that are completely permissible.
So a secular Christian will likely go to church and listen to the Bible read, but he’s not going to take it all that seriously. So he may acknowledge some outward Christianity and even some form of morality, but there is no real recognition of Christ’s lordship over life, passion for the gospel, or true grasp of anything particularly supernatural. Christianity is purged of these things and is mainly man centered.
Existentialism is another worldview that is prominent in our day. It is the belief that what really matters is what you feel to be true. Whereas the Christian focuses on what Scripture says, existentialism focuses more on intuition and the old Disney mantra of “following your heart.”
Existentialism is found among many Christians. Christians do what they feel is right, and not what is biblically right. Perhaps the most prominent place where this is demonstrated is in the worship services of many churches. The worship is emotion driven, rather than driven by the truth. Not that worship should not be emotional. It should be. But the emotions should be evoked by the truth of God’s word.
In many cases though, people choose which church to attend based on the personal high they get. Or they come looking for a “religious experience” rather than a message that will be informative and convicting. And you certainly do not want your children in the service with you. You have to put them in some children’s church program or church daycare because you don’t want to ruin the feeling of a good church experience.
In Biblical churches you come looking for God and you only get a lift after you have bowed yourself in humility and repentance. So there is a distinct difference between true Christianity and wicked twist of existentialism & Christianity.
There’s one more worldview I want to point out. As I said, some in the church today are mixing the faith with the humanistic worldview (where they are guided more by a man centered way thinking, rather than Scriptural thinking) and many others are living life based on the experience or feelings based life of existentialism. But there are still others who are mixing the faith with the postmodern worldview that is so prevalent today.
Postmodernism says that truth ultimately cannot be known. This you may see is a contradictory statement. One cannot truly know whether or not truth cannot be known. But this doesn’t stop people from embracing this kind of absurd thinking.
The idea, though, is that there can be no certainty. There is no certainty about what God has said. There is no exact way of salvation. The Bible is open to many different interpretations. Jesus may be a way of salvation, but he’s probably not the only way. What’s true for me may or may not be true for you.
Ultimately, for the postmodern Christian it doesn’t matter what you believe, what matters is the relationship you have.
Listen to this quote. It is from Henri Nouwen, who was a Catholic priest (he died around 1996). This quote expresses something of the postmodern spirit.
"Our faith in Jesus is not our belief that Jesus, the Son of God, lived long ago, performed great miracles, presented wise teachings, died for us on the cross, and rose from the grave. It first of all means that we fully accept truth that Jesus lives within us and fulfills his divine ministry in and through us. This spiritual knowledge of the Christ living in us is what allows us to affirm fully the mystery of the incarnation, death, resurrection as historic events. It is the Christ in us who reveals to us the Christ in history."
The truth is that our faith is in the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, lived long ago, performed great miracles and died for us on the cross. Nouwen, along with other postmoderns, thinks that is hogwash. They don’t want to emphasize what is true, they want to emphasize what is true for me. Things that are spiritual and relational, that’s more important (and perhaps even more true) than actual facts.
It may be that you’ve met someone that falls into one of these three categories. Or maybe you know a church or a church leader who promotes something like this. What we need to understand is that these things are wrong; terribly wrong. These are the Samaritans of our age and these are defilements of the true faith.
As our passage makes clear, God hates these degradations of the faith and He does not tolerate them. Thus, it is incumbent upon us to steer clear of any mingling of our beliefs and hold fast to the faith that was once for all delivered up to the saints in the Scripture.
Now, lest you take offense and think that this is overly extreme, we have to consider what the rest of our passage says. While the first three verses show us how much God hates a mixed/syncretistic Christianity, the rest of the passage—I might even say, the majority of our passage—tells us how much the world despises a pure and undefiled Christianity.
II. We see how much the world despises pure Christianity
In verse 4 we begin to see the true colors of the people of the land. It says that the people of the land “discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build.” Verse 5 says that they frustrated their work by means of bribes. In other words, they were so dead set against God’s people that they were ready to pony up funds to stop them.
Verse 5 also says that this harassment continued all the way through the reign of Darius I. Now, mind you that is probably a total of 10-15 years. But that’s not it. The passage goes on. It goes on to talk about how they even sought to undermine the work of restoration by writing letters to the powers that be. Verse 6 talks about a letter that was written to Ahasuarus. And verses 7-23 recount for us the letter was written to Artaxerxes.
But you have to understand something about this. There is a historical leap that goes on here. Ahasuarus lived during the time of Esther, which was about 40 years after Cyrus. Artexeres lived about 80 years after Cyrus. This letter would have been written long after the building of the temple had been completed, after the time of Ester, and during the time of Nehemiah.
So, what’s going on here? Why the skip in time? Why does the author feel the need to include the details regarding things that happened almost 100 years later? It is for effect. It is to help you realize just how much the foes of God really hate you! It is as if the author is saying, “While I’m talking about the harassment that the people of God felt, let me go ahead and recount for you another instance or two of how bad it was.”
The correspondence that we have here recounts for us the legacy of irritation that the people of the land had for the people of God.
Think about it. If you had a neighbor who was putting up a garage or a barn, you might ask if you can lend a hand and help him with the project. But if your neighbor said, “No thanks, this is something that my family and I are going to do. We’re pretty satisfied with the way things are and we have it under control.” What would your response be? If you really loved your neighbors, you’d just go home. You wouldn’t be out to sabotage him or undermine his work. And even if you did play a practical joke or call the city in to have their permits checked, if you really did like your neighbor, you wouldn’t keep on doing that. You would only do that if you hated him.
So this chapter, more than telling you how much God hates a mixed faith, tells you how the mixed faith really hates God.
This is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said, “You are either for me or against me.” He was talking to the religious leaders of his time and they claimed to be all pro-YHWH. But when Jesus came along doing his good works and casting out demons, they accused him of being the agent of Satan.
Where ever true Christianity lives, it will find that the imposter religion—the mixed religion, will claim to be its best and most faithful friend. But the true Christian will eventually feel the squeeze. The imposter may pose as a comrade and best buddy, but at some point it will reveal its true colors and it will begin to tighten the noose around your neck. It will show its real hatred for Christ and you will be persecuted, like Christ himself was.
Conclusion:
Thus we see the intolerance of religious belief. You are going to have intolerance. That’s the name of the game. It simply boils down to one little question: Who’s intolerance is right?
The answer to that question is found in Scripture. The book of Revelation pictures it perfectly. The book of Revelation isn’t subtle when it comes to painting the conflict that exists between Christ and his enemies. In league with Satan is the 12 headed beast, the false prophet, and the prostitute. They comprise the unholy trinity which set their machinations upon Christ and his people. They’re reign is a reign of terror; it’s a reign of ravenous bloodthirst. But in the end, what happens? The Christ returns and they are cast forever into the lake of fire.
Ezra remunerates for us the conflict, but there is a sense in which you must read the whole of the Scripture to get the full and final picture. Ezra may prepare us, but Revelation comforts us and controls us in the midst of the hatred.