Exodus
23:20 ¶ Behold, I send an Angel before
thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have
prepared. 21 Beware of him, and obey his
voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name
is in him. 22 But if thou shalt indeed
obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine
enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. 23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and
bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites,
the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off. 24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor
serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them,
and quite break down their images. 25
And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and
thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. 26 There shall nothing cast their young, nor be
barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil. 27 I will send my fear before thee, and will
destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine
enemies turn their backs unto thee. 28
And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite,
the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. 29 I will not drive them out from before thee in
one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply
against thee. 30 By little and little I
will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the
land. 31 And I will set thy bounds from
the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the
river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou
shalt drive them out before thee. 32
Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. 33 They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they
make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a
snare unto thee.
Here
is an important doctrine regarding what an angel is, a spiritual
representative, the presence of someone, in this case God. God’s name is in the
angel.
Isaiah
63:9 In all their affliction he was
afflicted, and the angel of his presence
saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them,
and carried them all the days of old.
Judges
2:1 And
an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to
go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your
fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.
Verse
24 reinforces God’s disgust with worshipping gods, little g, and idols. They
are either figments of man’s imagination or devils.
Deuteronomy
32:17 They sacrificed unto devils, not
to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your
fathers feared not.
Do
not think that because you don’t worship Thor or Kali that you are not
worshipping a false god. Any time you think, “an education will make me
successful,” or, “having that man or woman will make me happy,” or, just
constantly wanting something other than what you have you are creating idols,
not much differently than ancient people. You are one step away from giving
your dependence on education, sex, or material possessions a name, an identity
to worship. Anything we place as more
important than obedience to God and faithfulness to Him is an idol. We are to
do right, to do our best, and to trust God only for our success and happiness.
Education is a good thing, intimacy between a husband and wife is an honorable
thing, and we need food and shelter but we must not depend on them rather than
God.
For instance, in
regard to wealth, Paul warns Christians;
1Timothy
6:6 ¶ But godliness with contentment is
great gain. 7 For we brought nothing
into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. 8 And having food and raiment let us be
therewith content. 9 But they that will
be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful
lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is the root of all
evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and
pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
And
Jesus admonished His disciples using the Syriac word for the personification of
money.
Luke
16:13 No servant can serve two masters:
for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to
the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
With
regard to sex as an idol the ancients had goddesses like Ishtar, the goddess of
immigrants and prostitutes, a version of which we have in the harbor of New
York City also called the goddess Liberty, popular among the Enlightenment
thinkers like James Madison, the so-called Father of the Constitution, along
with Providence, a reference to a vague universal power but certainly not the
God of the Bible. The Greeks and Romans of Paul’s time had Venus and Aphrodite,
goddesses of sex, who were worshipped in temples like those of Acrocorinth in
Greece with short-haired priestesses, the reason why the Corinthian Christians
demanded that their women have long hair which Paul approved while stating that
it was not an issue in other churches. See 1Corinthians 11.
Idolatry
is and has been one of the prime sins of man against God throughout history.
This has been the cause of the perverted, sexualized religion of the ancient
world and the decadence of mankind. Idolatry results in sexual perversion and
it is the byproduct and result of idolatry.
Romans
1:19 ¶ Because that which may be known
of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God,
they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their
imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became
fools, 23 And changed the glory of the
uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and
fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24
Wherefore God also gave them
up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own
bodies between themselves: 25 Who
changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature
more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For
this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did
change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the
natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men
working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of
their error which was meet. 28 And even
as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a
reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit,
malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters,
haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things,
disobedient to parents, 31 Without
understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable,
unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment
of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the
same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
In
that passage we can see why society decays and who is responsible for its
decay. God gives delusions and permits our more decadent natures to take
preeminence.
Whether
our idol is the flag or Constitution, which Mormon Joseph Smith convinced
patriots was divinely inspired by God, or whether it is money, sex, or
education idolatry is one of the prime reasons that American Christianity is so
powerless to impact a dying world in any way other than providing humanistic
drivel to control a congregation under the guise of fundamentalist, right-wing
or liberal, left-wing preaching.
Thou
shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but
thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.
God
is promising these physical, literal Hebrews coming into a physical, literal
land blessings and prosperity and protection and the written words of God are a
vital part of those blessings. By the way, don’t let some wicked preacher tell
you that if you attend church whenever the doors are open you won’t ever get sick
or have trouble in your life. We cannot apply literal, physical promises to the
Jews before Christ to the Christian as they are not promises made to us under
this dispensation. For all of your slavish devotion to a fundamentalist
preacher’s will and whims you will have trouble in your life and you will get
sick at some point and you will probably have a child that goes astray, etc.
etc.
Joshua
1:8 This book of the law shall not
depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that
thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then
thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
While
Christians were not promised an earthly country we would do well in life to
honor these admonitions and warnings that God has given. Idolatry will destroy
your walk with God and make you a caricature of a person of faith to the
unsaved, a cartoon, a joke. You cannot uplift an idol in one hand and God in
the other without looking stupid, a hypocrite, or just plain evil.
Even
though Christians do not have a country on this earth the historical principle
laid down in Romans, chapter one, applies to nations as we know them. Let me
give you a brief religious history of America to show you how idolatry can be
poison. America’s self-worship as idolatry has its
roots in the country’s earliest times. The
good thing, which was the belief and faith that this new land was to be a
nation set apart by God for a divine purpose was a common thread preached
throughout. However, a specific millennial belief, that Christ would set up a
kingdom on earth without being present Himself to last for literally a thousand
years or with the millennium as just representing a long time was the standard,
evangelical Christian view until the 20th century. This is called
Postmillennialism, with Christ returning at the end of the thousand years. With
a few exceptions it was believed that Christ would rule through His church. But
there was no doubt that America would be the location where this period would
begin. Men like John Cotton, Ephraim Huit, Increase Mather, John Davenport,
John Eliot, Samuel Sewall, Cotton Mather, and Joseph Morgan preached an
imminent millennium and Eliot, combining the fervor of what was called Fifth
Kingdom Monarchyism prevalent in England, was especially hopeful that the New
Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation would descend upon America itself.[1]
Sermons were preached before Congress that said that America was the Promised
Land and that the events of Revelation would take place here before we
converted the world and established Christ’s kingdom for Him.[2]
An actual, historical Kingdom of God was
expected, with the millennium, a thousand years of Christ’s reign through His
church, coming soon.[3]
Jonathan Edwards, the Congregationalist preacher so important to the series of
revivals in 1700s America called The First Great Awakening, viewed the
millennium not as Christ physically returning to save a ruined world, but a
gradual process where righteousness and the control of Godly men became
prevalent as Christ ruled through His church.[4]
Millennial ideals were also preached during
the time of and after the American Revolution pointing more and more to
America’s God-chosen role in the bringing in of Christ’s Kingdom, linked to
evolutionary progress. President of Yale College Ezra Stiles said;
It may have been of
the Lord that Christianity is to be found in such greater purity in this church
exiled into the wilderness of America, and that its purest body should be evidently advancing forward, by an augmented natural increase and
spiritual edification, into a singular superiority, with the ultimate
subserviency to the glory of God to converting the world.[5]
The nineteenth century was an era in secular
and religious thought of a progress that was inevitable.[6]
In Protestant evangelical faith, Postmillennialism, that mankind would create a
millennial kingdom without Christ’s physical presence, was, “the commonly
received doctrine,” of the century.[7]
The documents, the speeches, the sermons are available for you to read, mostly
free. Don’t take my word for it. During this period this doctrine was the
intellectual compromise between the devastation of God’s judgment on the world
portrayed in the book of Revelation in the Bible and the evolutionary theory of
constant movement upward to better and better times, and a utopia.[8]
Liberal religious thought in collusion with the growing atheism of science
brought about a weakening of the hopeful, religious viewpoint of a coming
golden age created by Christians dependent upon their own righteousness but it
was the nightmare of the Civil War and the calamity of World War One that drove
the nail into the coffin and, “it became a relic of a lost world.”[9]
But, at the time of the Civil War’s
commencement most evangelical Christians in America believed that the United
States was God’s Promised Land and
white, Anglo-Saxon Americans His chosen people, destined to bring in a ‘golden
age’ of peace, prosperity, and righteousness as Christ ruled the earth for
either a literal thousand years or for just a long period of time, represented
by the word millennium, through His
church. Lincoln himself referred to America, not Christ, as the last best hope
of earth.[10]
It
was not unusual for nations with a state church to view themselves as God’s
chosen people. England, Russia, and Germany were notorious for this view.
German sermons during World War One even likened the German Army to the Holy
Spirit moving in the world and ‘God With Us’ in German was on the belt buckles
of soldiers. Glorification and even deification of the state was one prime
motivator in the half-century of war.
President
Woodrow Wilson’s mentor at Johns Hopkins University, Richard Ely, put the
thought of the elite and great planners whose government was God’s agent on
earth or His replacement even like this;
Now, it may
rationally be maintained that, if there is anything divine on earth, it is the
State, the product of the same God-given instincts which led to the establishment
of the Church and of the Family. It was once held that kings ruled by right
divine, and in any widely accepted belief, though it be afterwards discredited,
there is generally found a kernel of truth. In this case it was the divine
right of the state.[11]
But
worshipping the state as a “Christnation,” as the Redeemer Nation of the world,
was America’s undoing. With the leadership making government God’s agent on
earth rather than God’s people and with the common Christian expecting that we
could create a perfect world without Christ physically present we had this
great religious expectation that was blatantly false.
That’s
why today so many think that they are electing a pastor or a messiah when they
vote for a president and then try to Christianize their candidate if elected to
make him look like something he is not. It all boils down to state-worship.
World
War One, the Jazz Age, the automobile, the sexual revolt of the 1920s, the
triumph of evolution in science, the growing importance of the Entertainment
industry all figured in to God’s judgment on the nation for its idolatry. As an
example, where women who wore makeup were derided as ‘painted city women’
before the war, with strong suggestions of immorality, the demands by boys
returning home that their women look like French girls has resulted in the fact
that Christian women wouldn’t dare leave home without makeup on today. In
addition, the lax morals produced by boys and girls being able to go off alone
in a car and listening to Ragtime and Jazz watching Hollywood movies glorifying
decadence was a chilling reminder that something was very wrong in America. We
had the Great Depression, remember? Then, another devastating war and a
so-called Cold War for 50 years pounded away at our families and our
institutions. Look at today. Do you not doubt we are under God’s judgment? Look
at Israel in Kings and Chronicles. Don’t you see America in every page? Ancient
Israelites, like Americans, believed that they were special and by virtue of
their exceptional place in God’s ordained world they deserved peace and
prosperity, both of which were taken away over time for their idolatry.
Fundamentalism
came about in the early 1900s because America, under God’s judgment, appeared
to be descending into chaos and darkness. The King James-only movement came about in 1964 because fundamentalism
had gone crazy with regard to its denial of the Bible we had in front of us.
The problem, fundamentalists wrongly assumed, was non-Christians polluting
God’s country. The actual problem was Christian idolatry and not venerating
God’s word above our ambitions. This is how idolatry, in this case, worship of
one’s country as a god on earth, can do horrible damage.
We
are held to the same standard as everyone else and we have been found wanting.
I refer you to the passage I quoted earlier from Romans, chapter one, again to
find out why things are the way they are.
But,
it must be said, unlike the Hebrews assuming control over an area of land the
promise to Christians is an eternal inheritance. We don’t get a utopia here, a
millennium without Christ’s physical presence, but we can get an awful mess.
It
is interesting in Verse 28 how God promises to use creatures to drive out the
inhabitants of the land He has promised to the Hebrews slowly. God has used
many naturally occurring events as weapons. Remember the plagues of Egypt?
Compare
what ancient Israel was to be with what America was to be to see a difference
dispensationally. Israel was not to permit idolatry in its borders and was to
drive out the idol-worshippers lest they pollute the Hebrew religion, which
their existence did, as we can see by reading the Bible. America is a
pluralistic nation with many different religious traditions or no religion at
all. We cannot remove everyone from the land who does not believe exactly what
we believe or how we believe, no matter how much you would like to do that. The
Hebrews didn’t do that either, but it was their apostasy that garnered them
God’s wrath.
I
think it is important to realize that every Christian now is a type of the
nation of Israel then, as the children of Israel then were a type of every
Christian today. Our land is a spiritual land and our Canaanites are our sins.
God promises us that He will drive out our sins if we obey Him as He promised
the Hebrews He would drive out the wicked, child-sacrificing, bestiality
practicing, temple-prostitute patronizing Canaanites if the Hebrews obeyed.
But,
having said all that, I would go on to say that if Christians themselves would
repent and turn from their sins and obey God in the best way they know how,
believing His word, they would not be deceived by lying, gutless, and corrupt
politicians and their land would not be given over to the perversion, violence,
and decay that is so prevalent. God honors obedience, not obedience as defined
by some fundamentalist whack-job preacher or evangelist who just wants to
control them but obedience and righteousness as defined by the Bible. The
problem with America is not homosexuals, left-wing demagogues, drug-dealers, or
liberal judges. The problem with America is the faithlessness of Christians who
regard the Bible as a type of Emily Post’s book on etiquette to be observed if
convenient and who regard God as more of a concept or idea than a real, living
entity who controls every aspect of reality from their living room to the edges
of the universe.
[1]
David E. Smith, “Millenarian Scholarship in America,” American Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 3 (Autumn, 1965), 539. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2710907. (accessed 10.28.2015), 539.
[2]
Fountain E. Pitts, A Defence of
Armageddon or Our Great Country Foretold in the Holy
Scriptures In
two discourses, Delivered in the Capitol of the United States, at the request
of several members of Congress, on the anniversary of Washington's birthday,
1857, (Baltimore: J.W. Bull
Publishers, 1859), 90.
[3] Ernest Lee
Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s
Millennial Role (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), 29.
[4]
Ibid., 30.
[5]
Ezra Stiles, “The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor,” in The Pulpit of the American Revolution, or,
The Political Sermons of the Period of 1776, John Wingate Thornton, ed.,
(Boston: D. Lothrop & Publishers, 1876), 405, 472.
[6]
Tuveson, Redeemer Nation, 52.
[7] Henry Boynton
Smith,”History of Opinions Respecting the Millennium,” The American Theological Review (Boston: Charles Scribner &
Son, 1859), 642. https://books.google.com/books?id=hWrUAAAAMAAJ&vq=millennium&pg=PA642#v=snippet&q=millennium&f=false (accessed
11.14.2015).
[8] James H.
Moorhead, “The Erosion of Postmillennialism in American Religious Thought,
1865-1925,” Church History Vol. 53,
No. 1 (Mar. 1984), 61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3165956 (accessed 11.14.2015).
[9]
Ibid., 77.
[10]
Jean H. Baker, “Lincoln’s Narrative of American Exceptionalism,” in We Cannot Escape History: Lincoln and the
Last Best Hope of Earth, James McPherson, ed., (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 42.
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