1 Hear the word of the LORD, O people of Israel; for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land; 2 there is swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds and murder follows murder. 3 Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air; and even the fish of the sea are taken away.
This paragraph could have come right out of the morning headline news. Just as Solomon said, “Nothing new under the sun”. [Eccl. 1:9 ] Our society is in great trouble. We face the same God with the same rules that the Northern Tribes of Israel did. Have you meant any one from one of these tribes lately? No, they have been totally lost to history. Where have the descendants of Rueben, Gad, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, and Manasseh, Dan, Asher, Naphtali, and half of Levi, gone? Yet the spiritual leaders of God’s people continue to preach that God is a God of love and He will forgive all our unfaithfulness. Really?
For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Rom. 11:21
These Northern Tribes once inhabited the countries that we now call Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Northern part of the modern nation of Israel. For more than 2500 years now the land still mourns. God’s anger has still not subsided.
4 Yet let no one contend, and let none accuse, for with you is my contention, O priest. 5 You shall stumble by day, the prophet also shall stumble with you by night; and I will destroy your mother. 6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.
We no longer have a temple with priest performing sacrifices, for that has passed away. The “priests” have been replaced by predatory pastors, preachers, teachers, call them whatever you like, they are supposed to teach the word of God to the people. However a great many have neglected the whole Word of God, and gone a whoring after doctrinal differences, psychology, or empty illustrations that make one feel good but provide no substance. These spiritual leaders will not feed you, it is high time we pick up our own Bible and feed ourselves. That is the only way to find out what God requires of us. They will say anything to keep the money coming in, they will not offend anyone with truth, nor will they condemn. Why people might leave their church and every preacher knows that he who has the largest congregation makes the most money. Because we are not corrected, we are now sinning that grace may abound.
This all comes down to the dogma that the law has passed away, and without the Law we have all become lawless. Even though the Bible says nothing of the sort.
Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. Rom. 3:31
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Rom. 6:1-2
We must repent of our lawlessness, and return to the faith that was delivered to us.[Jude 3]
7 The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; I will change their glory into shame. 8 They feed on the sin of my people; they are greedy for their iniquity. 9 And it shall be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways, and requite them for their deeds. 10 They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the harlot, but not multiply; because they have forsaken the LORD to cherish harlotry.
The priests were supposed to know the truth. However because of their greed they are not imparting it to the people. Part of this was political. The Northern Tribes were separated from the Southern Tribes and therefore Jerusalem with its temple. So the priest that lived in the North fashioned a new religion by combining the truth with the local superstitions and myths. They built altars away from the appointed place. [1 Kings 12:25-33] In this way the people would stay loyal to the kings of the Northern Tribes and not the descendants of David in Jerusalem. Not much different then today were spiritual leader try to teach loyalty to them personally or their denomination, instead of loyalty to the Son of David.
11 Wine and new wine take away the understanding. 12 My people inquire of a thing of wood, and their staff gives them oracles. For a spirit of harlotry has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the harlot. 13 They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and make offerings upon the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is good.
These people were so drunk that they turn to idols. There is something about drugs and alcohol that dulls the mind so that such nonsense is accepted. All the old pagan mystery religions had a drink based in wine or beer, that may have other even more powerful hallucinogenic in them to aide the worshiper in connecting to the spirit world. Once the mind is clouded even tree worship seem normal.
Therefore your daughters play the harlot, and your brides commit adultery. 14 I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with harlots, and sacrifice with cult prostitutes, and a people without understanding shall come to ruin.
God equates this unfaithfulness with harlotry. He says we are all whores. We are not faithful in our relationship to God. We were to be his bride. But being God’s bride is boring and no fun. So we have mixed our faiths, just as the ancient Israelis did. We have renamed all these pagan things with Christian names, so that it will be all right to continue to celebrate them. We are taught that we are honoring God on His birthday, when it is really an old pagan holiday. In fact it is the holiday of the very god that who over and over in the Bible is condemned by God i.e. Molech, a.k.a. Saturn, Kronos, and Rephan, the god who ate his children.
FYI: Eating his children is a mythologized memory of our father Adam, who by eating destroyed his children. So it was the ultimate ancestor worship.
Why have our spiritual leaders taught us this? Because they covet. They covet the lights, the food, the drink, but most of all the money. More money comes into the church at Christmas than any other time of year. They are not teaching, they are preying.
15 Though you play the harlot, O Israel, let not Judah become guilty. Enter not into Gilgal, nor go up to Beth-aven, and swear not, “As the LORD lives.” 16 Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn; can the LORD now feed them like a lamb in a broad pasture?
17 Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone. 18 A band of drunkards, they give themselves to harlotry; they love shame more than their glory. 19 A wind has wrapped them in its wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their altars. Hos. 4:1-19
Because these teachers, no longer teach the word of God. God’s people have no knowledge that what they are doing is wrong. They turn to Gurus, and charms, things long since driven from our society as superstition. It is all coming back. All manner of improper worship is going on. This is spiritual whoredom. God wrote all the answers to life, down in a book. There is no need to look elsewhere. They preach against fictions like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings at the same time they themselves are practicing soothsaying. But the congregation knows nothing. They are untaught. The people have been taught to be proud that they are open minded. What they really are, is open to all the lying deceiving tricks of Satan.
Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour. 1 Pet. 5:8
So the lies go on, taught from generation to generation. The people have unknowingly become enslaved to these lies. Truth sets one free, lies confuse and insnare. If we don’t repent soon, and return to our God, and the Bible He gave us, we will come to the same kind of ruin that the Northern Tribes did.
God gives a warning to Judah i.e. the Southern Tribes, not to join in the harlotry of Israel or the Northern Tribes. Judah is to remain faithful to the God of the temple. And is not to go to these other high places.
“As the LORD lives.” Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn; can the LORD now feed them like a lamb in a broad pasture?
From the time that Moses came down from the mountain and found the people worshiping a golden calf [Ex. 32], to the church right after receiving the light that was the Messiah, began to corrupt the faith.
Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour. 1 John 2:18
. . . and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already. 1 John 4:3
We have been whores, unfaithful to our God. The corruption of the Believers started in the first century. It is not something that is still future to us. We have always indulged false teaching. Over the centuries we have carefully nurtured them in our hearts. Taught them to the next generation, so that they are never completely erased. Even when a reformer comes along and gets rid of one or two of these abominations, a generation or two later, someone else has dug the corruptions back up and is dragging it back into the congregation. We tell ourselves it is OK, because everybody else does it. We want to fit in. We don’t want to stand out. We don’t want to be the weirdos. All this is because our faith is insecure.
Don’t be stubborn like these lost tribes. Don’t be joined to the things of paganism. When Messiah returns will you be ashamed? These things that the spiritual leaders say are OK to do. Are they not from the same source as the things that got the Northern Tribes exiled, and lost?
We have been unfaithful in our relationship to God. We are committing treason against our God and King. He desires to be our one true love. Yet just like Gomer Hosea’s wife, we keep steeping out on Him for other lovers.
We were told to come out of these pagan influences.
And he called out with a mighty voice,
“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul and hateful bird; for all nations have drunk the wine of her impure passion, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich with the wealth of her wantonness.”
Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,
“Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Rev. 18:2-5
The Song of Songs 