Ezekiel
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Ezekiel Chapter 6
Now we see the reason God shows disfavor with Israel at that particular time. They had gone into idolatry. They were using images in their worship and in reality serving another god or a false god for they are not really gods but devils. The heathen worshipped false gods and used images in their worship but the heathen were ignorant at this point in history. There was a time when all mankind had known who the Lord was. After the worldwide flood and they started all over again with Shem, Ham and Japheth, they all knew that God saved them and knew who God was. A grandson of Ham called Nimrod actually started idolatry and rebellion against God again. Babylon was a city that represented a false unity and rebellion against God. When God broke up that unity, they were scattered all over the world and took their false religious worship with them. That is why they had so many similar gods and goddesses but with different names. This went on from generation to generation. God chose Israel for a people that He would teach the right way. Israel was supposed to be the examples and teach other nations the way to God. When they started copying the nations around them and worshipped their idols they were without an excuse. Here is how compromise can start. When they started intermarrying with those that worshipped idols, then in order to please them they begin to allow their images either for decoration or to allow diversity. They might have done what the Christian church did years later and just used the images to worship the real God. The early church in order to win the heathen, adopted their images and holidays but substituted Christian names. What is not realized is the fact that behind image worship are demonic spirits which are there to deceive us into thinking we are worshipping a real live god and maybe even God Himself. This is where the written word comes into play. The second commandment says, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image to bow down unto it." God knows what is behind images. God knows the danger and deceptive spirits that aurround image worship. Ah, if only....if only we would recognize how good God is and how dangerous Satan is. God loves the other guy hates the human race and has always desired to wipe us out. Little by little Satan gets people into idolatry, child sacrifices, and gross sexual immorality that accompanies all false worship and false religion. As a result disease, deception and much evil comes within humans. That is why we see so much hate and war. It is not that God wants all worship to Himself entirely but He knows that Satan is out to steal, kill and destroy. Any god that is not the real God will bring harm, disease, misery and eternal death to the one involved in it. We can think to use them as only decoration but there is a spirit behind those things. Evil spirits can mimic religious feelings and we can even feel religious and think we are worshipping the real God. Idolatry will sooner or later lead to evil because the deceiver is out to do just that, cause evil. The heathen idolatry of the past required innocent child sacrifices. Perhaps Satan was trying to keep the Christ child from being born. To get them to indulge in sexual immorality would corrupt the seed of the woman that was to bring forth the Messiah. To get Israel into this stuff is exactly what Satan desired. He knew that God had chosen Israel to bring forth the one who would defeat him in the end. When Satan brought image worship into the church, it was to defile the church so that we would not spread the true gospel that would save the lost but be satisfied with a substitute religion still naming the name of Christ and giving us good religious feelings but it would not do one thing to insure our eternal salvation or save the lost. For hundreds of years the church was in spiritual darkness until the great awakening started and the door to truth was starting to open again after the falling away that occured a few years after the death of the apostles. I use the word start here because the reformers did not go far enough out of the darkness. It took years paved with the blood of many martyrs before the outpouring of God's spirit returned to the church. In saying all that though, God always has a remnant that stays true to Him. It doesn't get into the history books all the time but there were those that stayed true. Probably if they got into the history books they would have been presented to the public as heretics because the established church would have labelled them that way. Now there are many working to return us to those days of darkness by uniting us back into error supposedly to return the "separated brethren" to the mother church. Why would anyone who has ever read church history from an unbiased source fall for that lie? God gave us the written word to keep us from returning to error. Jesus is the way of salvation, not a big organized institutional church. Our salvation is through faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ and not into any earthly manmade institution whether we call it a church or whatever. Does that mean we go it alone and never go to church or worship with fellow believers? No. We should have good bible believing spirit filled local churches all over the globe. When we all join together having one purse and one head that isn't Jesus Christ however, it can lead us to return to the same error that happened before. Being politically strong and uniting church and state before the literal return of Jesus Christ leads to the wrong kind of converts. Instead of getting people into the church by being born again by the spirit of God, we start getting them in without true life changing conversion. We may still use water baptism, sacraments and a few rituals. We may still have creeds and doctrines but if the heart is not changed by the spirit of God we will have the same mess they had in the Middle Ages even to the point of using forced conversions. Jesus said to go into all the world and teach all nations. We are to preach the gospel that brings salvation. We are not to gain converts to a religion called Christianity. We are to get people changed and born again by the spirit of God. We have not been given permission by the Lord to use force. We are not Israel. Israel at one time had permission to enforce law and order within their borders. The church has not been given that kind of authority. We are to spread the gospel only. We are not to set up a nation or city with a head and rule with authority. We are to go into all the world and preach the gospel. When the Lord returns He will set up a righteous government. This doesn't mean that Christians are not to run for office and try to influence the government with godly principles but we are not to use force to win converts but to trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to draw souls to Jesus Christ.
God left a remnant of Israel scattered all over the world because end time prophecy cannot be fulfilled without Israel. The church here has to be very careful too that they realize that it is usually a small number that stay true to the truth of God's word. If we are looking for big numbers and large majorities, we may be deceived because the crowds usually go the wrong way not the right way. A good church needs to be winning souls but a great number of them are only getting people that are coming from other churches. To have a good church we have to have committed workers who are not out for "What is in it for me and my family," but "How can I serve God in this place?"
It is a shame that we tend to forget God when we are prosperous and comfortable. We have to have trouble and hardship before we remember who our creator is. Look at how God feels here. God is grieved to see people that He gives His best too, only to have them desire other gods that really hate them. Sin especially among those that know better, grieves the heart of God. Luke 12:48 warns all of us that to those that are given much, more is required of them. The more we've known God, His word and His commandments the more we are required to keep them. Many in Israel today do not understand why their people have suffered so long and hard. They refuse to see it. Yet the moment they do see, their eyes will be opened. Israel is going to return to God in droves. Blindness is still upon them until the fullness of the Gentiles but they will be grafted in their own vine again. Many Jews have already found the Messiah, Jesus that was crucified close to 2000 years ago, but alas this message causes some to get very angry yet today. They associate the word Christian with terror, torture and death rather than eternal life. They do not realize that those that did those things to Jewish people did not even know God, they were only using His name for their own gain in this world. True believers in Jesus that call themselves Christians and those that know their bibles, will never hate the Jewish people. All throughout history we have those that are of the truth and those that are fakes.
Israel lost their homeland, returned back only to lose it again because of the sin of idolatry. The land became desolate and barren when that happened. In 1948 they returned and the land now blossoms like a rose. Their enemies want them gone. In the latter days God will save them when the return to God and recognize the true Messiah their ancestors rejected. Ezekiel and other prophets foretell all these things. Read and understand. Today there may be a few into idolatry using images but we have a more sophisticated type of idolatry. It could be celebrities, possessions, sexual sin, worldliness and political power that is our god. However, I do see images and real full blown idolatry returning is some places. This makes some passages in the book of Revelation more understandable. We really do not have to change the word of God at any time to conform to modern understanding because sooner or later we will see that what was originally written comes to pass just like it said. Just ignoring the word of God or the law of God is to rob our souls of eternal life. We really need Him in our lives whether we be Jew or Christian that have strayed from the right path. |
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