The Righteous Fall Seven Times

Proverbs 24:16

4064 words long.

Published on 2024-05-11

The article on Riddles introduced the idea of Emotional Riddles. The answer to such a riddle does not come easy because the way the riddle is phrased repels the reader. The riddle tries to wrestle itself from your grasp, like Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32:24-29. If you do not hold on until dawn, you won't receive the blessing, the wisdom it conceals.

The riddle could come across as sexist and you are a woman, as with 1 Timothy 2, telling you to be silent and that you are not qualified to teach.

Or it could sound racist, like with Jesus' harsh words to the Canaanite woman whose daughter was sick:

“It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.”

- Matthew 15:26

Then there is Revelation 10, an affront to all Christians, telling us that we are not in the same league as the Apostle John. He gets to hear what the voice of the seven thunders said but we do not. That riddle stopped me cold for years, until I realized that when God says, "I am not telling you about that", He is secretly winking and saying, "But I am telling you about this." That was how I discovered that merely knowing the existence of an angel with a voice of seven thunders was a great clue. I followed that clue and found that the seven thunders had spoken four times before. Collecting all those utterances from Exodus, Job, Psalms and Revelation and laying them side by side was very informative. (See "Aftertaste: Donner & Blitzen" in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew for details.)

Those emotional riddles and many others push you away. They keep you at bay. They are not the only kind, though. Some riddles draw you in. Such was the case for me with Proverbs 24:16.

In "Appendix E: The Plan of Proverbs" from Peace, like Solomon Never Knew, I described how this proverb helped me. This passage builds on an idea developed at the start of the appendix. The first three chapters of Proverbs are an introduction, but the remaining chapters each correspond to one of the twenty-eight times of Ecclesiastes 3, in sequence. Thus Proverbs 24 matches the twenty-first time, "a time to tear".

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Some proverbs stick with you. After my mother died and my father nearly joined her in 2016, I prayed to the Lord for greater resilience. As I prayed, I recalled the following parable from memory:

for the righteous falls seven times and rises again,

but the wicked stumble in times of calamity.

- Proverbs 24:16

I asked the Lord who in the Bible would be a good role model for me to imitate that I might become one who could rise every time I fall. The name that came to mind was Job. Because of this verse from Proverbs 24, I studied Job and wrote Job Rises: Thirteen Keys to a Resilient Life. The confirmation that Job was the right book came when I read this parallel verse in Job:

From six calamities he will rescue you;

in seven no harm will touch you.”

- Job 5:19, NIV

So this verse started my journey through Job and concludes my journey through Ecclesiastes. Only because it holds such personal meaning to me did I linger over it – and discover that it is a riddle! This chapter matches “a time to tear”. If the righteous fall “seven times”, what times might those be?

• (1) A time to tear
• (2) A time to mend,
• (3) A time to be silent,
• (4) A time to speak,
• (5) A time to love,
• (6) A time to hate,
• and a time for (7) war.

Then in “a time for peace”, the righteous will “rise again”! Then will be the rapture of the church at the return of our Lord. This proverb is God’s promise to protect His church through the seven calamities: the opening of the seven seals, blowing of the seven trumpets, and pouring out of the seven bowls of judgment.

The pursuit of one proverb, one single proverb, opened up vast treasures of insight to me. I wonder what riches the others conceal?

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My insight above was that while the righteous may struggle and overcome any kinds of time, there was a hidden focus on seven specific times drawn from the twenty-eight of Solomon. Those seven times are the lead up to "a time for peace". The riddle was that the proverb seemed non-specific. A simple reading makes you think that you have grasped the whole message.

Over a decade ago, I came to the conclusion, based on a sober reflection on one of Jesus' parables, that I did not understand the parables as well as I thought I did. I did a deep dive and was proved right. Not that I discovered all that his parables had to say - I have since found much more - but that I must always consider that there is more to be learned from passages that I have already gained much understanding from.

Today it is May 11, 2024. This morning I was again meditating on this proverb when I found that it hid the unexpected. It was not a helpful pointer to Job. It was not a prophecy for the church of the future. It was a word directed to me.

Has anyone every shared a version of the four spiritual laws that has these words?

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Maybe you believe that and maybe you don't. The one thing made abundantly clear by the days that follow the hearing of that promise is that the plan is a secret. That secret plan may help God, but how does it help me?

When I was a young man, I read about another young man from the 19th century who reasoned that he could expect a working life of forty-five years. Thus he planned to study the Bible languages (like Hebrew and Greek) for the first fifteen years. Then he would study the Bible and theology for the second fifteen years. After that he would teach others what he had learned for his remaining fifteen years. Then that young man did exactly what he had planned and became one of the most learned and influential Christian professors of his era. O, how I longed to have the foresight to formulate such a plan and the discipline and perseverance to stick with it! Alas, I lacked both the aptitude for long term planning and the strength of character to execute such a plan. That idea became one of my heart's desires. In my life, I have harbored many such unobtainable desires. Knowing myself, such longings are things too deep for prayer.

The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water,

but a man of understanding will draw it out.

- Proverbs 20:5

Too much shame and feelings of inadequacy prevent those longings from rising to the surface. I had not the understanding to draw them out. Those desires may be too deep for me, but they are not too deep for God.

Delight yourself in the Lord,

and he will give you the desires of your heart.

- Psalm 37:4

Over the last decade, God has begun to answer prayers that I never prayed and given me treasures I did not know how to seek. Questions and confusions that I could not enunciate He has answered. I wanted to know how to simplify and structure all the complex ideas of the Christian faith. He is showing me that. I wanted to understand His wisdom. He has opened my eyes. I wanted to grasp His plan for history and resolve the hopelessly confused contradictions that abound in all theories of eschatology. He is doing that. I harbored questions whose answers I knew would require years of tireless study, focus, determination and skill beyond my ability. The Lord poured strength into my heart for the journey, just like Elijah on his way to the mountain to hear the Lord's still, small voice. The Holy Spirit guided me, pointing to me which chapters to read, refusing to let me proceed until I had found the idea that had to be found in that passage. Sometimes I lingered for days on a single verse. God did not give me answers, he gave me a plan. He gave it to me with out telling it to me. He walked me through his plan for my life, one day at a time. I had to read the words. I had to compose the charts and graphs. I had to search the internet, read the articles, and sort things into patterns until they made sense. I had to write the books and proofread them. I had to format everything for publication. That was what the Lord gave me. He gave me meaningful work and the joy of discovery. He gave me the sense that there was a destination. I was not adrift. There was a compass pointing to true north, even if it was not in my hand.

Lately, I began to get impatient. Like the professor from years ago, I feel I must get to the time when I share my ideas with others, to teach, lead Bible studies, and disciple younger believers. When? Should I rush through my writing so I can get to that? Or am I supposed to keep sitting before my laptop for years longer?

The Lord could tell me wait. He could tell me hurry up. He could tell me slow down. He could tell me have faith and trust that He is guiding me. Today He surprised me.

Today the Lord told me his plan.

How did He do that? He did it through Proverbs 24:16. He showed me how He has conformed my life to follow the twenty-eight times of Solomon. From this, I could see how many times I have already passed through, which I am in now, when it will end, and what comes next.

The principle is something I call scriptural incarnation. The idea is hinted at here:

It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose,

and not only when I am present with you, my little children,

for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth

until Christ is formed in you!

- Galatians 4:18-19

What does it mean for Christ to be formed in you? You acquire His character, his virtues, his mind, his desires, and his love. His goals become your goals. His interests become your interests (Philippians 2). Those are the sorts of things that come to mind. Ah, but there is so much more!

From reflecting upon my life, it has become apparent that God has shaped my life experience to imitate features of the Bible. After all, Christ is the Eternal Word. If we become like him, we must also become like it. This enables us to tap into analogies from our own life to gain insight into spiritual matters. We are all different people, so God performs this work in each of us in a different way. We treasure different psalms, chew on different proverbs, and identify with different Bible characters.

Elsewhere I have spoken of my Dreams. Some led me to Bible verses that helped me in times of trouble. For example, as a child I often dreamt about climbing the hill behind my house. In the dream, I knew that if I reached the top of the hill, I would see heaven. Decades later, that image directed me to Habakkuk 3, where the prophet, despite being mournful over a barren life, praises God in faith, trusting that one day, "I will climb on my high hills". Meditating on that verse every day for eighteen months gave me the faith to complete my thesis and graduate from MIT.

Twenty years ago, after a long study of the Bible's wisdom books, those ideas colonized my imagination. In my novels I imagined what the voice of the Seven Thunders might have said. I designed a city based on ideas from Psalm 119. The main street was lined with the pillars of wisdom. The villain tried to steal Lady Wisdom's house so he could build his own universe. And the good Lady was the head of a chain of grief counseling centers called the Houses of Mourning. All these fanciful notions made for a wonderful adventure. I had no idea that decades later I would identify the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, map out the blueprint for Lady Wisdom's house and decode many mysteries in the book of Habakkuk!

I could reminisce about connections between my life and many Bible books, but only one is needful: Ecclesiastes. By a quirk of fate, I was born in 1962, the year that Pete Seeger's song "Turn, Turn, Turn" was first released on an album. That song is based on Solomon's poem in Ecclesiastes 3. Understanding that poem unlocked myriad mysteries to my mind. By another coincidence, based on my research, Solomon was crowned king at age 23, the age at which I became a Christian. We don't know how old he was when he wrote Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, but it was probably near the end of his life. By my calculations, he died months after his 63rd birthday. While I do not savor the idea of copying THAT feature of his life, I am sixty-two years now, so the years I spent writing my book on Ecclesiastes probably overlap the parallel time in his life.

All that is slippery. This is not. After pondering the proverb this morning, I realized that God has shaped my life according to Solomon's twenty-eight times. But, you might say, isn't the universality of that pattern in the life of all people something you have argued?

Yes and no. At a materialistic level, the lives of most people follow the literal Growth Pattern. They pass through the human stages of development from security to loyalty, work for a few years as a mature adult, then endure decline and death. At a spiritual level, some people are never born again. Some who are born again do not proceed very far before their life ends. Unlike biological processes and social conventions, spiritual growth depends on the faith of each believer. Growth can be uneven, with a person stuck for long periods before progressing further. Such unevenness is the normal expectation for believers. My early years of faith were no exception. What is exceptional is how, after I reached a certain level of spiritual maturity, my progress became VERY regular.

Regular and slow. In the materialistic human Growth Pattern, every group of four "times" lasts seven years. That means that each "time" lasts twenty-one months. At such a pace, a person attains physical, emotional, relational, occupational and societal maturity at about forty-nine years. Consider a person who is born again at age twenty, a not uncommon age. If they were to live to seventy-six years, what would the slowest pace of spiritual growth have to be if they were to reach full maturity in the faith before they died? With fifty-six years remaining to them and twenty-eight times to progress through, they could spare no more that two years per time on average.

• a time to be born: Born again in April 1985
• a time to die: Death to self, gaining a new identity in Christ from memorizing Galatians and a comforting dream, September-October 1985
• a time to plant: Joined a church (Ruggles Baptist) in March 1986
• a time to uproot: Ended friendships with some unbelieving friends, Graduated college, thus leaving my campus fellowship, 1986-1987
• times to kill & heal, tear down & build up: Discipled by Christian roommates, books, church fellowship and Bible studies, healing from nightmares 1987-1988
• times to weep & laugh: Baptized in the Holy Spirit, freed from depression by overwhelming joy, 1988-1991
• a time to mourn: Significant losses, like a romantic breakup, job loss, Bible study leader leaving the faith, Early 1992
• a time to dance: Read Our Sufficiency in Christ by John MacArthur, attended Bible study on Romans 6, wrote a worship song, grew spiritually, Late 1992
• a time to gather stones: Participation in many church ministries, 1988-1996
• a time to embrace: dating & marriage to Tina, 1993-1994
• times to scatter stones and refrain from embracing: Rejected the Toronto Blessing when it took over our church, 1995-1997
• times to seek & give up: Despite two mission trips and passing three courses at seminary, discovered I was not called to be a missionary or a pastor, 1989-1993
• a time to keep: Depression limited my giving, 1983-1990
• a time to give away: Generous gifts to the church, charities and friends in need, 1990-1997
• a time to tear: Left Ruggles Baptist Church over the Toronto Blessing Movement, 1997-2004
• a time to mend: Returned to Ruggles Baptist church, extended forgiveness, attended men's Bible study, 2004-2011
• a time to be silent: Prayed and fasted three years, asking God to show me His glory, then mourned my mother's death, 2011-2018
• a time to speak: Writing Job Rises, Peace & Plague, this website, 2018-Present
• a time to love: Disciple and teach others what I have learned, Perhaps 2025-2032?

My life is by no means a pattern to follow, but several interesting things pop out. The first ten times required less than ten years, so the average was less than a year per time. Like many new Christians, I initially made rapid progress in the faith and it occurred in an orderly fashion, thanks to the good discipleship that I received.

The next thing to notice is that the times can run concurrently. "A time to gather stones" represents volunteering in church ministries and helping to build the church. In my life, that began after I was at the church a short time and continued throughout my time at church as I passed through the other phases.

After that, notice how the middle times are a bit jumbled, with some occurring out of order and more overlap occurring. When I studied Song of Songs (see "Appendix G: A Prophetic Song of Songs" in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew), I found that the Growth Pattern is similarly muddled. In that book, each of the twenty-eight speaking parts corresponds to one of the times. However, for fifteen of the sections, the time exactly opposite the expected time appears. This shows how young people are impatient and impulsive, having a terrible sense of time. That is why the Bride counsels her friends to "not arouse or awaken love until it is time". In my case, I tried to live out "a time to seek" before I completed "a time to dance". That means that I tried to pursue full-time work in Christian ministry before I had dealt with crushing loss, mastered my emotions and matured enough to handle such responsibility.

I have found this sort of scripturally-guided introspection to be beneficial. It has helped me understand how God works, which Bible truths set me free from which troubles, and now to understand some reasons why I failed at things (or succeeded) in the past. I recommend the practice to everyone.

The jumbled years make sense, as that was when I changed jobs several times, got married, had children, bought a house and switched churches. The chaos in my spiritual growth matches the chaos in my life.

The surprise for me was what followed the chaos. My spiritual growth slowed to a crawl. Consider the six most recent times, the times to keep, give away, tear, mend, be silent, and speak.

• The first overlaps my earliest seven years, including the crisis that led me to faith, 1983-1990.
• The second overlaps the next seven-year period, 1990-1997.
• Since then there has been no overlap and each time also lasts seven years.

This regularity shocked me. The switch from a rapid jumble to a regular, slower pace was a time to tear. That is the crucial time that I discovered in my analysis of Proverbs 24:16. The righteous man begins to fall in "a time to tear" and endures crises in each subsequent time, until he reaches "a time for peace" and his troubles end.

What is God telling me? Since I am six years into "a time to speak", it should end in 2025. That means I should expect to complete my website, perhaps write a few articles or one more book, then shift gears. Starting in late 2025, I should focus on teaching others, discipling them in what I have learned. After seven years of that, ending in 2032, I shall be near retirement age (I do not expect to retire at 65!). When I retire, my next phase will be "a time to hate", from 2032-2039. I believe that that the world will enter history's "time to hate" in 2040 AD, according to Solomon's Clock. Thus I suspect that I will be trying to wake up the church to what is about to happen. I do not expect that this is a message people will receive well.

Will my life work out this way? The Lord has not given me such a guarantee. The only assurance I have is this:

“Who then is the faithful and wise servant,

whom his master has set over his household,

to give them their food at the proper time?

Blessed is that servant whom his master will

find so doing when he comes.

- Matthew 24:45-46

The Lord has given me a timetable for the remaining years of my service, however many that may be. Should I be granted the next fifteen years or more, I know how I am to apportion my efforts during those years.

The Lord does have a wonderful plan for my life. He has chosen to share a little bit of it in my latter years so that I may run my race to completion. One reason He has done this is so that I can pace myself. I cannot sustain a marathon pace. My worries over this matter prompted His gracious gift, His answer to my prayer.

What might God do for you? Has surely has a marvelous plan for your life. He may reveal part of it to you or not, as he chooses, but the Lord will never discourage you from praying for insight.

If you, like me, seem to hit a brick wall in your progress towards Christian maturity, do not lose heart. This parable warns - and my experience confirms - that seven of the last eight stages, from "a time to mourn" to "a time for war", may take a long time. For me, the time per stage began at six months, before settling into a year per stage. Then after a period of crisis, they lengthened into seven years per stage. When your progress slows down by a factor of seven or ten, that will get your attention. It was then that the Lord told me I was spiritually deaf, but that He would take care of that. Many years of trials compelled me to learn to pray, fast, meditate on Scripture, and seek the Lord with persistence. I knew I had no strength to help myself, so I had to rely upon His grace. Eventually, I began to hear God more clearly. His voice grows clearer still. If you train yourself to listen for that voice, then when trouble strikes, you, too, shall rise again.

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