God’s Gracious Killer: God’s Conquering of a Dark Heart

By Dwight David Croy

Naaman, a successful soldier, is confronted with the greatest survival challenge of his life. Little does he realize that a power greater than the armies of Aram and Assyria will make him see the dark world he lives in a bit differently. He and his family, friends, and his military "iron ring" of trusted servants will all be helpless.
Military missions are familiar, and he can trust his iron ring and his disciplined battle skills. Journey with Naaman, his wife, a Hebrew slave girl, three boys who want to be soldiers of Aram, and his iron ring on a mission to confront his killer and learn about true power. Rimmon, the god of lightning, storm, and thunder, is challenged by Yahweh. Assyrian history from 850-800 BC is revealed as one walks in Naaman's journey. Despite powerful kings, religious superstition, ancient cultural norms, and a king's view of "big" and "little" people, we find out what God does. Experience how Naaman finds an answer to his killer and light for his darkened heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Apr 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666770582

Dwight David Croy

Dwight David Croy is retired and the author of God’s Focus on the Fatherless (2016). He came to know Christ as his personal Savior at a young age and has served the Lord in a variety of teaching and serving roles in the body of Christ until entering the ministry as a pastor, military army chaplaincy, and teaching juvenile boys in an Eckerd residential home under the North Carolina Department of Justice and Safety for an overall forty years of experience. Croy obtained a BRE at Multnomah University, an MDIV at Denver Seminary, and a DMIN at George Fox University. Married to Karen for over forty years with two children, Jonathan and Amber, Croy is now blessed with three grandchildren: Caleb, Ada, and Joshua.

Book preview

Preface

A saint of God is greatly aided when counseling an adult or child in crises who was taught Bible stories by a mom and/or dad, grandmas and grandpas, and faithful Sunday School teachers. These pathways are very much needed in guiding our children to adulthood. Spiritual handholds like Bible stories are barely used by adults, much less our next generation of children. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Ps 11:3). Let us all tell the stories of the greatness of our God. Let us pray that the next generation will have more handles to grab hold of in their dark valleys. Real people followed a great and mighty God. May we learn about their path and gain wisdom from their godly direction. This book is one more engagement to look at God’s interaction with his creation to show himself to a person, a tribe, a nation, and finally to the world.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my wife, Karen, and the ladies of Seven Lakes Baptist Church for their help in proofreading and copy editing this book. Besides my wife, my daughter Amber Dierking, Bobbie Sue Harvel, and Amanda Taylor are true warrior moms who have raised children, boys specifically, and helped make this book presentable, polished, and more pleasurable to read. My thanks to the boys and staff at Eckerd in North Carolina who gave me great insights about youth while teaching Bible, English, and History. A full and thankful heart for my parents, who introduced me to Yahweh in the flesh who sacrificed himself on my behalf and saved me from all my sins. Also, all the saints in the role of Sunday School teachers, pastors, and youth leaders who whispered in my ear and repeated reminders in my head that Bible stories are for unfolding the revelation of Jesus Christ, Yahweh in the flesh, and telling people the good news in multiple venues. Bible stories are real glimpses of God’s great work in the hearts and minds of the people created in his image. My thanks to the many churches and military chapels I have been allowed to pastor and be a part of in worshipping our great God. My thanks to Multnomah University, Denver Seminary, and George Fox Seminary for their professional training that aided my walk with the Lord as he directed my path in ministry. Godly organizations are made up of innumerable saints of God who poured some of themselves into me along with the cloud of witnesses who have gone on before us. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jesus.

Introduction

A shiny, salty bead of sweat formed on the big man’s brow as he hammered the iron ore. As he pounded, the bead of sweat started its journey down the big, glowing face to his double chin. The dripping sweat glistened down his arms. As his arm went up, the bead of sweat hesitated. The arm went down, the sweat continued its gravitational pull. The arm went down, clang! The bead of sweat continued. When the arm went up, the sweat very nearly went backward. Ever so slightly the tired arm stayed down long enough for the sweat drop to race forward to the man’s wrist. It was jarred from its journey and dripped into the hot mass of molten iron. Hiss! The droplet disappeared in a moist, evaporated whisper. Naaman’s sweaty slave must make the tool of war perfectly to satisfy his master. Iron, along with grit, to prove their gods of thunder, lightning, and storm, were the true path of the Aram Nation. Power and strength were all they comprehended. The Nation of Aram scraped, clawed, and fought up mankind’s mountain of flesh to be supreme and to prove the strength of their gods. Iron was their path. Pound the iron swords, pound the iron spear blades, pound the iron scales, and pound the iron inserted into boots. Iron was the lifeblood of an Assyrian. Only a man who could emulate iron could lead them in victory. None represented the strength of Aram better than Naaman the renowned soldier of them all. With his lead, nothing would stand in the way of domination over the world.

Eight hundred and fifty years before Jesus Christ and Roman rule, Naaman’s journey is fixed in the middle of Assyrian history. Aram, Naaman’s nation, is in the middle of the fertile crescent that stretches from Egypt, up to the Great Sea, along the river Euphrates, and across to the Zagros Mountains. The Assyrian army would strive to grow and overthrow the known world, not once, but twice. Assyria was moving from small territorial factions to the dream of an empire.

Assyria was the first nation with a standing professional military force equipped with iron, psychological warfare, and first-of-its-kind siege machinery. The Assyrian Empire had a disciplined army so equipped and trained that they transitioned away with seasonal warfare. Many of their kings would declare, I destroyed, devastated, and burned with fire. Valiant men would rise in the ranks. Those who were seen as instrumental in allowing a king to rise in power would be just short of a king’s status. Strength was respected, and a wise king kept their most dangerous and effective warriors close to them. Valiant men in Assyria were versatile in warfare and tribal mobile men of power, wealth, and influence. These militant traits would describe none other than Naaman.

Kings would declare themselves the mouthpiece of their respective gods. The god Ashur would demand allegiance, but multiple gods representing different cities would be worshipped as long as they rendered aid and allegiance to the ever-growing Assyrian Empire. The gods demanded an undefined perfection; always scowling at their followers from the dark recesses of their respective temples. The gods would take, take, and take. Unsated gods took the best of their children, gold, silver, fruits, vegetables, sacrifices, and devotion. Kings, with their god’s approval, would go into battle with their forces, striving for the unrelenting perfect standard that the gods demanded. Only then could one have the best place in the underworld. Strangely, the Empire of Assyria became what they worshipped. The hand-carved individual gods representing parts of creation lost their identity. In the hindsight of history, gods were summarily replaced by a collective humanity with an extensive reach. The empire’s grotesque expansion became the ever-consuming god of Assyria.

The Assyrian organization that allowed for a steady swallowing of the known world was the demanded tribute from trade routes, submissive local government power, and relocating conquered people into the different limbs of this growing beast. For the first time, designated royal roads were established, with the fastest horses bringing communication to the capital of Assyria and its major cities. If one had something in a territory that the Assyrian army wanted, they would take it or destroy it. Cheat them of their tribute, steal their trade routes, besmirch their leadership, or show loyalty to an enemy—look to the horizon, the iron army would come.

Look to where the land meets the sky. Is it a giant armored insect unemotional to eradicate forces against it? Is it an iron black liquid that covers everything that they touch? Is it a shiny scaled snake ready to swallow an innocent prey? They marched as steadily as ants. Marching in unison, the infantry marched in ten files of twenty ranks. With disciplined flexibility, the infantry fought in squads of ten to allow precision in maneuvering. Each squad was trained to listen to a non-commissioned officer. The ground would shake as multiple captains would lead companies of five to twenty squads. Muscular men marched bearing iron tools of defense and offense on their bodies. Marching infantry with iron leather shields, marching archers with iron-tipped arrows, marching slingers with iron-coned helmets, and marching spearmen with iron-scaled vests are arrayed by thousands followed by a swift cavalry on horses and furious charioteers to bring shock and awe to the enemy. The archers would shoot a thick downpour of arrows to thin out the strength and soften the resolve with a rain of fear. If one feels the ground shake, sees the dust become unsettled, smells the sweat of soldiers, hears the rumbling of war machines and the clattering of iron tools of war, it might be past time to flee. The disciplined war machine would outlast all efforts. Military movement was planned, efficient, and intimidating. Their spears, shields, swords, chariots, bows and arrows will give a glimmer in the sun, prophesying the shortness of life, as if living one’s last day on the earth. If blessed, the Assyrian commander will give only one chance to surrender. Any hesitation before the iron ocean would sweep over them, and they would be no more. The empires that followed them took notice and learned from their ways.

1

A lone bat hurried to catch up to the swirling mass of bats on the move in the pinkish purple dusk of a Damascus night sky. From his disoriented view, people in conversation and flickering fires were starting to dot the landscape all too familiar to the culture of the people of Aram.¹ The silent bats had their favorite places to sleep, often in the branches of large cedars or a grove of palm trees. All those glimmering fires represented families and friends remembering and exchanging information important to their lives.

Albazi gathered up the last pieces of lavash and closed up his parents’ selling booth before a departure to a firepit with his friends.² A loud shriek behind him nearly caused him to drop the few pieces of lavash saved for his friends. The shaman woman was behind him and pointed to the bats disappearing into the nightfall.³ An omen! An omen! An omen! she screamed through her rotted teeth as she pointed to the lone bat in the sky. There is a rebel within the house of Aram. Albazi was shaken, staring at her loud and wild face. Damascus’ most disheveled shaman had matted hair, dirty skin, filthy threadbare clothes and a smell that rivaled a large, sweating soldier after a full day of marching. Thankfully, she only showed up once in a great while. Her unrequested presence usually showed when there were fewer crowds. Otherwise, she would suffer abuse from a number of people who worshipped other gods and only listened to the formal priests and priestesses of the temple of Rimmon. Albazi was caught in her crazy, confused spell that was more spectacle than real information.

Albazi suffered a slap on his back that woke him from his trance at the antics of the solitary shaman. Zayno, one of his friends, pushed him out of his stubborn gaze, and said, You want to listen to her all night or have some real conversation with your friends? He laughed knowing the answer and said, still grinning, She is closer to the underworld than we are, or is that what worries you?

Later, when the sun finally slept, three figures huddled in hushed tones around one fire among the thousands in Damascus. Albazi,⁴ Nukh,⁵ and Zayno⁶ had been friends as far back as their memories could take them. That wasn’t especially far since they were only fourteen or fifteen years of age—give or take a few months. The boys often came together around a fire with their family, but as they matured into young men, each wanted to gather around a fire of their own. Their gathering wasn’t always planned, but out of friendship they spoke to one another every three to four days. The day would soon come when they would be required to join the ranks of the Aram military. Much of their talk was about the future and what they would become. Like all boys of Aram, they looked forward to serving in Ben-hadad’s army.

To see the three of them together, one might have imagined them as a young fighting squad already. They were friends who shared dark hair, dark brown eyes, starting whiskers, well-tanned skin by the task of hard work and mutual courage to take on a challenge. Aram’s promising energetic youth ready to take on a world represented by their dreams. Give them the training and equipment and one would see the best upcoming men of strength for the people of Aram.

Zayno was the tallest and quick to start conversations and be first in everything. If there was a leader among them, yet to be proven, it was he. He was likely the strongest, yet their friendship did not feel the need to test each other. Zayno’s dad was also tall, and due to his immense height, he was a spearman in the infantry of Aram. Zayno, being the oldest in his family, was responsible for