A Description
of Our Modern World From 2,700 Years Ago
by Pastor
Paul J. Bern
For my
first posting of this new year I'm feeling God nudging me – well
okay, I mean encouraging me – to compose another warning about the
tumultuous times that are rapidly approaching. I always get attacked
on the Web for these kinds of postings. Some compare it to yelling
“fire!” in a movie theater, and I've been called worse than that,
but I don't care. This is the mission God has given me, this is what
I am doing with my life, and I will let nothing stand in my way! I
can't – it's critically important that I bring you all up to speed,
spiritually speaking, about the events that are currently unfolding,
and what the Bible has to say about it all.
What I'm
going to write about today will be the first 9 verses out of the 4th
chapter of the Book of Hosea in the Old Testament (that's right
between Daniel and Joel in the latter part of the O.T.). So let me
quote the first 5 verses for everyone, and it reads as follows: “Hear
the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge
to bring against you who live in the land: There is no faithfulness,
no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing,
lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and
bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land mourns, and all
who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of
the air and the fish of the sea are dying. But let no man bring a
charge, let no man accuse another, for your people are like those who
bring a charge against a priest. You stumble day and night, and the
prophets stumble with you.”
The
Book of Hosea was written in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the
eighth
century BC,
during the reign of Jeroboam II (786-746
BC).
Hosea (הושֵעַ)
prophesied during a dark and melancholic era of Israel's
history, the period of the Northern Kingdom's decline and fall in the
8th century BCE. The apostasy
of the people was rampant, having turned away from God
in order to serve both the calves of Jeroboam
and Baal, a
Canaanite
god. During Hosea's lifetime, the
kings of the Northern Kingdom, their aristocratic
supporters, and the priests had led the people away from the Law
of God, as given in the Pentateuch.
Forsaking the worship of God, they worshiped other gods, especially
Baal, the Canaanite
storm god,
and Asherah, a
Canaanite
fertility
god. Other sins
followed, including homicide,
perjury, theft,
and sexual
sin. Hosea declares that unless they repent of these sins, God
will allow their nation to be destroyed, and the people will be taken
into captivity by Assyria,
the greatest nation of the time. The prophecy of Hosea centers around
God's unending love towards a sinful Israel. In this text, God's
agony is expressed over the betrayal of Israel.
“Hear
the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge
to bring against you who live in the land: There is no faithfulness,
no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land.”
There are two schools of thought regarding this first verse. The
first are the traditionalists, who believe that the warnings are only
for the Jewish nation (“you Israelites”). The second school of
thought, of which I am a part, extrapolates this first verse, and by
extension the entire Old Testament, as being applicable to both Jew
and Gentile alike, since the apostle Paul wrote that “salvation is
first for the Jew, and then for the Gentile”. So even though this
is from a relatively obscure book of the Old Testament, it is still
just as applicable today as it was in the 8th
century BCE when this was written.
“
There is no faithfulness, no love, no
acknowledgment of God...”.
Isn't that our very situation today? We lack faithfulness towards God
and other people to whom we owe faithfulness, such as our families,
our bosses and co-workers. So many of us are living only for
ourselves, oblivious to their surroundings and those they are
supposed to interact with, and ultimately oblivious to God. And, to
put it bluntly, there are too many who refuse to acknowledge God.
Many of these people (but not all!) are set in their ways to the
point that I have stopped talking to them. All I can do is warn them.
But those who go on being atheists or agnostics, I will not stand in
your way any longer, so please continue as you are. Or those
individuals who worship Satan, well, you're on the wrong track in
life, but God can and will bring you back if you are both willing.
That's all I care to say about that for now.
“There
is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break
all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.”
Watch a Hollywood action movie and this is exactly what you see.
There's lots of cursing and killing, adultery and bloodshed, lying
and stealing. Sadly, this is a reflection of American society in the
early 21st
century. The lyrics in much of popular music breaks all bounds.
“Because
of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the
beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea
are dying.”
What does this look like to you? I'll tell you all what this is, it's
the mysterious animal, fish and bird deaths that are occurring
globally for seemingly no reason. Dead fish washing up on beaches by
the tens of thousands, birds dropping out of the air literally out of
the blue, and vanishing species like the polar bear, the honey bee,
the elephant and many more – all these are the hallmarks of our
generation, a generation where humankind's rampant pollution of our
environment is literally poisoning the earth to death. It's all our
fault!
The
Bible says clearly in Genesis chapter 1, verse 28, “God
blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number;
fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the
birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the
ground'.”
So it clearly states right here that God put us in charge of the
earth, to properly conserve its resources and preserve all the life
contained in the earth, and to manage it in a clean and orderly
fashion. Well, we've trashed it instead! Even now as I write this,
there is a sea of plastic bobbing up and down in the middle of the
Pacific ocean that is literally the size of Texas! Our ground water
has been polluted, the oceans have been poisoned, and the air
contaminated. We have done this to ourselves, and even where we
haven't, this systemic poisoning has been done with our consent
through our silence about the matter. It seems there have been too
many people who are unwilling to stand up and fight the powers
controlling our world. This too has to come to an end. Stand up and
fight for your right to quality of life, because if you don't we will
lose it forever!
“But
let no man bring a charge, let no man accuse another.... You stumble
day and night, and the prophets stumble with you.”
This is why nothing is being done about the pollution of the earth
and the trashing of our own environment. Those in charge in
government aren't governing, and the leaders in the churches aren't
leading. Everyone is wallowing in their own complacency – and
sometimes outright laziness – as they cash their paychecks every
week or month or whatever while doing only the bare minimum of work
required. The leaders we have selected are no better than ourselves,
and are often worse! It's all our own fault, we did this to ourselves
– so let's not accuse one another, for we are all just as guilty –
meaning we have all got some repenting to do. And now let me conclude
this week's message, starting at verse 6:
“So
I will destroy your mother – my people are destroyed for a lack of
knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I have rejected you
as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I will
also ignore your children. The more the priests increased, the more
they sinned against me; they exchanged their Glory for something
disgraceful. They feed on the sins of my people and relish their
wickedness. And it will be: Like people, like priests. I will punish
both of them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.” (Hosea
4, verses 6-9)
I
will destroy your mother? Is God going to kill all our moms because
we've all been bad? “Your mother” refers to 'mother earth', our
planet! The prophet Hosea was warning us that if we persist in
destroying the earth, God may decide to lend us a helping hand, so to
speak. That 'helping hand's' name is World War Three, and that is
what God is going to send us if we don't straighten up and mend our
ways. “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”.
Ignorance and complacency are not blissful, they are what happens
when we choose to disconnect ourselves from the world around us and
the people in it. Ignorance and complacency are the negative results
of not wanting to know, or of not caring enough to want to help
initiate change for the better. Ignorance and complacency are the
status quo.
“Because
you have rejected knowledge, I have rejected you as my priests;
because you have ignored the law of your God, I will also ignore your
children.”
Rejected knowledge? Just look at all the mumbo-jumbo that passes for
school textbook curriculum these days! Look at all the runaway kids
and the ones who get kidnapped and sold to sex traffickers. What
about the ones addicted to video games, online porn, drugs and
alcohol? The list goes on and on, and it's up to us to straighten
this mess out. It's about a reboot of our leadership from the bottom
up, starting with the parents in the home. “They
feed on the sins of my people and relish their wickedness. And it
will be: Like people, like priests. I will punish both of them for
their ways and repay them for their deeds.”
If America does not repent of her sins against God, of her
adulteries, thefts, murders and other crimes against one another, God
is going to destroy this land the same way he destroyed ancient
Israel during the time of Hosea the prophet – by military conquest!
So repent, all you people who are living sinfully as I have just
described, or America will soon be no more. The land will still be
here, I think, but the country will be gone forever. What a sad day
that will be! We're running out of time, people. Let's all band
together and begin doing wonderful and laudable things with our
lives. Who knows? Maybe we can change God's mind if we try hard
enough. Until next time.
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