In today’s edition of the North Carolina Baptist Biblical Recorder, editor J. D. Hufham skips over specific news of battle developments, news that is simply too troublesome to be able to paste over with optimistic platitudes.
Instead, Hufham turns to that most trusted of sources among Baptists: the Bible.
The editor’s message to North Carolina Baptists is simple: God is in control, and while bad things seem to happen to the people of God, He cares for His people and does what is best for them. And everyone knows God’s people are white Southerners.
In this world there is apparently no difference in the lot of the wicked and the righteous. Both share alike the common blessings of God, the rain and sunshine, seed-time and harvest. The same admixture of prosperity and adversity, joy and sorrow, is seen in the lives of each. When disease and death stalk abroad through the land, they visit, with equal impartiality, the dwellings of the godly and ungodly. Afflictions and disappointments fall to the lot of each. If there is any difference at all, it often seems to be in favor of the wicked. His pathway through life is smooth and prosperous. Wealth showers her favors on him, and disease and suffering do no approach him, while the life of the believing neighbor is but one succession of sorrows and disappointments. Sometime, too, the reins of government are placed in the hands of the ungodly; and then the people of the Lord are forced to drain the cup of suffering to its very dregs. They are driven from their homes, hunted like wild beasts and put to death like common felons. They are “killed all the day long;” they are “accounted as sleep for the slaughter.”
Some persons find, in these facts, arguments to sustain them in their open, unblushing infidelity. Others have foolishly concluded that there is no punishment for the wicked, beyond this world. It is needless to expose the fallacy of reasoning which leads to such absurd conclusions. Even amid the apparent disorder and confusion of the world, God rules. He orders the lot of the righteous, and so directs and controls the events of their lives as to secure the best and highest interests. In many cases they will not be able to understand this at the time; and in others it must be a matter of faith with them till they have passed away from earth, but it is true nevertheless. It would be a natural and inevitable inference from the doctrine that God has so loved His people while they were yet sinners to give His Son to die for them, to redeem them and make of them His own children. Having done all this for them, He can not fail to grant them those smaller blessings which are needed for this life. He that spared not His own Son, but gave him up for them will, how shall He not, with him, freely give them all things?
But we are not left to inference in this matter. The Scriptures clearly teach us that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.–This world is a school in which they are to be trained and disciplined and made ready for a higher, holier life in heaven; and all things are made to work together for the accomplishment of this end. God graciously shields them from anything which would interfere with it. He watches them with jealous care and allows no real evil to befall them, no plague to come nigh their dwelling. This is true everywhere and under all circumstances.
Such are the teachings of God’s word; and while the doctrine is at all times precious and consoling to the believer, it is especially so in seasons like the present. We need it now, more than ever. Let us treasure it up and ponder in our hearts again and again. Have afflictions come and made your life desolate? Has disease entered your system and made your life a long, unvarying routine of weariness and suffering? God, who tenderly loves you, saw that it was necessary for you and hence He has sent it. Have your loved once been torn from you, and are you left alone and desolate in this world? God has allowed these afflictions to come upon you. He has sent them in mercy. In the fortunes of war, have you been stripped of your property, driven from your home, and left to drink the bitter cup of poverty? Are your enemies assailing you fiercely and do they seem to be triumphant for the time? God allows them to go thus far. They have their limits beyond which they can not go.
Reader, are you anxious and troubled about the future? Remember that God rules over all, and, even amid the throes of revolution and the ruin of nations, He suffers no real evil to befal any one of His children. Cast all your care on Him, knowing that He careth for you.
Herein are the seeds of a Calvinistic-infused post-war theology, by now articulated to varying degrees by many white Baptist elites, in which the South might lose the war against the abolitionist North, but will nonetheless be victorious in God’s mysterious plan for his elect.
Source: “God Cares for His People,” Biblical Recorder, May 18, 1864 (link)
