Crack the Whip

When I was a kid, and maybe you have done this, a favorite game to play was called, Crack the Whip. We would line up, alternating our placement, so that we weren’t all facing the same direction. This gave us the strongest grip as we double-clasped each other’s wrists. The long line formed, we would all follow the person on the end that we deemed to lead the line, always with glee from the very last person, the caboose of the human train. It was always best if the biggest kids were at the front because they could provide the most power and speed, although care was taken that the last person wasn’t too small and fragile, for obvious reasons!

Then we’d begin. The leader would slowly get the speed of the train up and then begin to move off course doubling the line of kids back on itself. As the doubled-back chain of children passed each other and approached the end of the line, their speed accelerated until the last child felt the full velocity caused by the total change of two directions of speed, and the torque created was always too great for the strength of the grip of the last person, who would be forced to let go and be flung away from the group, spinning, and landing on the ground, everyone laughing. Then the second to the last person became the last person of the line, and, Oh wonderful thought! The next victim of Crack the Whip!

Lion trainers, horse teamsters, and many other trades have used the whip for centuries. They used it not necessarily to hurt the animals, but to scare them. The crack created by the whip is like a stabbing pain to the wild beasts who survive by fight or flight.

Likewise, God uses His whip. His whip is the life in this world. He knows how to manipulate life to save those whose hearts are yearning to be free from the wicked master they and their parents have chosen for them, the adversary who “smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke.” Is. 14:6. But Christ, the God of the New and Old Testaments, doesn’t do like the devil. “Though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. For He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.” Lam. 3:32, 33.

He can orchestrate events in this world; He moves people here and there in spite of Satan’s objections. If a soul looks heavenward, even deep in the thick walls of a prison made by his own wickedness, Christ, “this same Jesus whom ye saw go into heaven,” (Acts 1:11) works His providences to reward that honest soul. He honors our power of choice, much to the chagrin and altercation of the devil. It’s Christ who enforces the law of freedom of the will and conscience, against Satan’s gross trampling of it all, his threats and rage all to scare us away from looking to heaven, and his arguments and blasphemy toward the court of heaven in our hearing. Christ respectfully but rightfully ignores all the accusation of unfairness by the devil and commands His angels to continue working the events around the life of that earnest seeker for truth and deliverance from sin. (Lam. 3:35;Rom. 3:26;Jude 9;Matt. 8:8,9).

“Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered? But thus saith the Lord, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.” Is. 49:24, 25.

But our freedom from the adversary does not come without a cost. After all that heaven has expended to deliver us, the result will be permanent, deeply felt, and never forgotten. When Christ has allowed Satan to take us far away, and then He moves to bring us back, the train of events and the forces of nature doubling back against all that Satan can muster to keep us; when Christ must dispense more than an equal but opposite reaction to the momentum Satan has created in our habits and tastes, the snap-back of our focus might seem like we will end up in traction. But our conscience is convicted, our attention to God arrested, our willfullness corrected, the current of life moving safely and smoothly in the opposite direction from before, we are humbled and happy again.

Definitely, at that point we know that God doesn’t fool around if His services have been requested. Then we realize that we are but dust. When we see the power of God, we soberly ask, “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” What is man, “whose breath is in his nostrils, …wherein is he to be accounted of?” Ps. 8:4; Is. 2:22. Learning human weakness, we acknowledge, “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but,” we humbly confess with new assurance, “the word of our God shall stand for ever.” Is. 40:6-8.

Although God knows how much stress we can take, the removal of Satan’s grip on our heart will require more from us than we can do for ourselves, and it will “shiver our timbers.” But when the storm is over, when Satan has conceded his lost captive and Christ has imprisoned a new heart in His love and care, then we may look back, and be thankful for the bigger than life-size Crack the Whip that certainly was no game, but a battle in the cosmic controversy between Christ and Satan, a matter of eternal life or death.