Though a thousand fall at your side, though ten thousand are dying around you, these evils will not touch you.
Psalm 91:7 NLT
What are we to make of promises like these? Millions of boys, French, German, and British alike went into battle in what was called The Great War, before the war of 1939-1945, with these promises on their lips, and they died in their hundreds of thousands. And along the way Christian Europe began to die as well.
Are these promises just a chimera, a fading dream whose tatters are blowing away on the wind?
I suggest they are not. First of all, not everyone who breathed them died. Many did not and could testify to miraculous deliverances. We must not forget those. However, I suggest that to take the promises too literally is to overlook an important principle of Biblical interpretation. That is, the ultimate import of all Biblical promises is spiritual. Someone may immediately say, “Oh, that is a cop-out – an easy way out of a problem.” But I don’t think so. It seems plain to me that this is the way, right or not, that the Bible works.
This is most glaringly seen in Matthew 5-7, that portion we often refer to as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus clearly says that if we only understand the Old Testament in literal terms we misunderstand it. The opening lines of the sermon state the principle in the starkest terms: to be blessed is not to be rich, powerful, and admired. Rather, it is to be poor, powerless and reviled for Christ’s sake. The Old Testament made the point in literal terms: serve God and be blessed with riches, many children, and a long life. But what really is it to have these? It is to be spiritually rich, to have led others into those same riches, and to live forever with our Savior.
So, back to our question. Can the idols of this world, the Moon goddess, the Sun god, the gods of Pestilence and Death, finally destroy us, deprive us of Life? Not if the Psalmist’s words are our own: “He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him (v. 2).” Indeed, many of those boys whose earthly lives were torn from them in the mud of Flanders, but with those words in their hearts are alive today, yes, even more alive than they were before their last day on earth.
Called To Be Transformed 