My People Are Destroyed For Lack Of Knowledge

  

The prophet Hosea ministered to the Northern Kingdom of Israel about 12 years before the capital Samaria fell to the Assyrians in 722 b.c. (2 Kings 17). The majority of Jews living in the Northern Kingdom were deported to Halan and Habor, West of Carchemish. The king of Assyria then repopulated the Jewish cities with his people from a number of cities including Babylon (2 Kings 17:24).

   Like the prophet Amos (755 b.c.) before him, Hosea condemned Israel for its lack of faithfulness to their God (4:2). And since Israel was God’s client nation on earth, with the responsibility to demonstrate to all of the nations which lived in the region regarding the reality of the one true God of the universe. In other words, just like our country is a client nation for spreading the Gospel, the Israelites were supposed to be doing the same.

   They failed. It is instructive for us today to understand why they failed.

   In Hosea chapter 4, he states the reason for their failure.

Verse 1, the indictment is laid out:

Listen to the word of the Lord, O sons of Israel, for the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, because there is no faithfulness or kindness, or knowledge of God in the land.

Verse 2, Hosea describes how these people of God were occupied instead of undertaking their divine directive:

There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing and adultery. They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed.

Verse 3 divulges the unintended consequences of their rebellion:

Therefore the land mourns, and everyone who lives in it languishes along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, and also the fish of the sea disappear.

   Note the phrase “everyone who lives in it languishes.” The word languish means to become weakened or feeble. But here it doesn’t mean in a physical sense, but in a moral and spiritual sense.

Verse 4, Hosea warns those who would attempt to refute the case which the Lord has against His people:

Yet let no one find fault, and let none offer reproof; for your people are like those who contend with the priest.

   In other words, God doesn’t want to hear their rationalization for their sinful rebellious behavior, because they will be just as argumentative towards Him as they are to their own priests.

Verse 5 explains their fate because of their rebellion:

So you will stumble by day, and the prophet also will stumble with you by night; and I will destroy your mother.

   To destroy your mother is like cutting off the read of the snake – the whole nation will be destroyed.

Verse 6 informs us in definitive terms why they have been destroyed by the Assyrians:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.

   But unlike verse 1 where he mentions ‘no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God,’ Hosea now pinpoints the problem with the Israelites: ‘lack of knowledge.’ I doubt if he is referring to the lack of knowledge concerning the details of life (cooking, hunting, farming, caring for the animals, etc.). But you can be certain that this has to do with their lack of knowledge regarding the teachings of their God and the principles of the doctrines found therein.

   Knowledge of Biblical doctrine requires that it be learned, which also suggests that it needs to be taught. Hosea takes to task the priests, the religious leaders, for not doing their job of teaching the Israelites the precepts of godly living. Therefore the people go about committing all those overt sins mentioned in verse 2 – a perfect formula of failure for God’s people who reject knowledge, leading to the removal of the nation.

Application for the Twenty-First Century Believer

   What does this have to do with believers in Jesus Christ in the 21^st Century? Specifically: the survival of our country and its status as a client nation for God. For the moment, never mind the unbelievers who are under the control of evil and are driving their social endeavors of anarchy and corruption. None of these people and none of our present leaders will ever save our country. If we believe (and we should) that Jesus Christ controls history, then we should understand that He will allow our country to fail when there is evidence of the same conditions as in Hosea’s day: the majority of believers who reject the knowledge doctrine.

   Knowledge of doctrine means that you understand the principles of God’s Word, that you live by them and that you apply them to the events of your life. It demands that these principles become embedded in your consciousness so that you are able to recognize every eventuality of life in order to determine its value upon divine viewpoint – and then know how to respond. 

   And further, it means influencing those around you, i.e. family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors. When all believers are practicing their faith in this manner, it will result in the reshaping and changing of the minds of the unbeliever – the culture as a whole.

   This is our mission for the 21^st Century. Not the endeavors of the social gospel or the gospel of prosperity (whether personal or financial). Not the drive towards a ‘feel good religion’ characterized by the mega-church movement with its excessive emphasis upon praise bands and raised hands and sermonettes for Christian-ettes. Not the Emerging Church movement with the heresy of its “generous orthodoxy.”

   To accomplish this mission it is imperative that the apostasy in the name of Christianity be confronted for what it is. This will take courage and total reliance on the Holy Spirit to empower Biblical leaders from seminaries, Bible colleges and churches to teach from the inspired, inerrant and ultimately authoritative source from God: Scripture.

   Without this mission, we as a nation will suffer destruction as did the Israel nations in the time of Hosea. The destruction may take many different forms from how they suffered. But one thing for certain, we will lose our ability to serve and worship God freely.

   So therefore, the key to the future survival of the United States is not in the political parties, Congress, Supreme Court or the President. It lies with the believers of Jesus Christ to respond to the real mission of our age: to gain knowledge from God’s Word in order to live lives that witness the reality of His existence. And as Jesus stated in John 17:21 that if we as believers demonstrate unity “the world may believe” that the Father sent His Son, Jesus Christ.

 

© 2022 David M. Rossi

Welcome to the 21st Century

Ireland Backs Legalizing Gay Marriage By A Landslide: Fox News
Ireland Becomes First Nation To Legalize Same-Sex Marriage: CNN
Love Wins: Ireland Makes History With Gay Marriage Vote: MSNBC
Ireland Backs Legalizing Gay Marriage By A Landslide: ABC
Resounding Result In Ireland's Vote On Same-Sex Marriage: CBS
'It Feels Brilliant': Ireland Legalizes Gay Marriage: NBC

These were the headlines a year ago, May 23, 2015, on the respective websites. It’s almost like we, the world, were backing the Irish soccer team playing against the Mars Rockets for the New World Order Cup. All that is missing is the ticker-tape parade down O'Connell Street, in downtown Dublin, Ireland. And I’m not so certain there wasn’t one.
Welcome to the 21st Century were presidents promote class envy; presidential candidates practice unfettered prevarication; entertainers are heralded as enlightened savants by their drooling/mindless groupies and the media; the push to legalize the use of marijuana (because we don’t already have substance abuse in our country, plus everyone else is doing it!); and the sanctioning of sodomy thinly disguised as equality. Sure, everybody wants equality. But this is an attempt to radically change a human institution, that has been around since Adam (no pun intended) – the family. A man and a woman enter into a familial relationship, their love brings forth children. It couldn’t be any more logical or simpler than the way God instituted marriage. He never provided an exception clause for ‘committed relationships.’ And He never condoned the depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah – He rained fire and brimstone down upon them and destroyed them, Genesis 19:1-29.
I pray that this does not happen to our country!

What is the "Normal" Life?

What is a normal life?

How is a normal life to be defined?

Better yet, who defines what a normal life is?

The dictionary definition of normal states that this descriptive adjective means: Conforming with, adhering to, or constituting a norm, standard, pattern, level, or type.[1]

So if a normal life is one which conforms to a norm or standard of living, then who or what establishes the norms and standards?

Our culture here in the United States, in a vigorously constraining manner is moving rapidly towards a secularist society. A society that is not simply devoid of Godly influence (What they call ‘religious’), but a society that repudiates, disavows and rejects any and all ‘religious’ influence of morals and values. These secularists are iconoclastic and nihilists. They will not be satisfied until the God of the universe is stamped out of existence. Paul mentions these godless men as those “who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”[2] For that is exactly what they are doing, suppressing the truth about the God of this universe and the normal life which He provides.

For believers to say that these suppressers really don’t know what they are doing to our culture demonstrates a lack of Biblical knowledge. To think, as the secularist does, that they have the ‘right’ to destroy the principles of our nation’s foundation so that they can ‘do their thing’ without any moral restraints, is dangerously foolish. But the most devastating failure is that a Christian consensus to the otherwise has not emerged.

There is also this determined effort in our culture to accept “alternative” lifestyles as normal. By this is meant that if a person is homosexual, lesbian, transgender, or anything other than heterosexual, then these are “alternate” lifestyles and thus, normal.

But based on Scripture, any lifestyle that is devoid of Christ as the center of a person’s life, that is an alternative lifestyle. It is not the life which God has designed for all of mankind. The normal life which God intended is that each man, woman and child should “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”[3] For Jesus stated that He came “that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”[4]

It is a Biblical fact that if we Christians have been divinely delegated to proclaim and demonstrate this normal life which the God of the universe has offered to “whoever believes in Him,” consequently we should also speak up loud and clear about the ultimate benefit that they “shall not perish, but have eternal life.”[5] And that His normal life (eternal life) which He bestows, begins at the moment of faith in Jesus Christ.

We dare not as Christians stand by idly and allow the secularists to define a normal life as a life without God, without Christ, without eternal life – which dooms men for all eternity.

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[1] The American Heritage College Dictionary, p.948

[2] Romans 1:18 NASB

[3] Matthew 22:37 (Deuteronomy 6:5) NASB

[4] John 10:10 NASB

[5] John 3:16 NASB

Just Go With The Flow!

     Former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once stated: “If my fellow citizens want to go to hell, I will help them. It’s my job.” It seems that the current liberal/progressive court along with the present regime have become collaborators of the former Justice Holmes to complete his “job”. And for those of us, the remaining citizens who still adhere to the traditions and Godliness of the original intent of the Founding Fathers, we are told to “Just go with the flow!”

     That old expression “Just go with the flow!” was originally meant to encourage you when you were at odds with the direction that the boss, the business, the spouse or whoever was trying to drag you along. Especially if the course they were proposing was contrary to where you wanted to go.
     When I was a manager in the fast-food hamburger business, I remember the corporations’ decision to introduce a breakfast program. I had numerous reasons of how illogical and burdensome the program would be for a successful operation. But since the competition was 'doing it', I was compelled to “Just go with the flow!”

     As Christians, we are surrounded by a culture in a frantic rush to undo everything that the founding fathers of our country established with the intention of creating a nation free from just the type of pagan secularism which we are encumbered with today. Yet even some Christians seem to have decided that since everyone else is ‘doing it’ [gay marriage, sodomy, pornography, marijuana, etc.] or since society has sanctioned it we should “Just go with the flow!”

     However the flow of Biblical truth – and the responsibility to observe God’s righteous demands – goes in only one direction: from the Almighty to mankind; male and female, saved and pagan (unsaved). There is no variance given. All are to live within His standards. For there will be a fair and honest judgment from the Supreme Court of Heaven: “For we [believers] must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10), and unbelievers will be judged also (Rev. 20:12).

     We must realize that God is still in control. It’s not as if He stood up to dust His throne and then all hell broke loose without His knowing. He surely knows and He surely will judge. So, it’s not time to throw in the towel and “Just go with the flow!” Now we must act by continued prayer and study of His Word and to ensure that by our lives and by the words we speak that Christ is faithfully ingrained back into our culture.

ANYTHING GOES

ANYTHING GOES
By Cole Porter, Justin Burford 
WB Music Corp., Emi Music Publishing Australia Pty Ltd. 

The world has gone mad today
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today,
…
I know that I'm bound to answer
When you propose,
Anything goes

The debauched Cole Porter probably never thought his song Anything Goes was a prophecy of the 21^st Century. And yet his prophecy was fulfilled, thanks to at least five equally ill-advised Supreme Court justices who decided in June 2015 to legalize same-sex marriage and the Affordable Health Care Act. At that time in our republic we had no moral compass, no safeguard in place to avert the moral breakdown of our society. The highest court in the nation had turned their backs on the intent of the founding fathers of our nation. Those men believed that a robust society should be ruled by laws which had their foundation in the morality of God’s Word. Please note, I am a firm believer that morality cannot be legislated. Yet, if we are to survive as a nation, it is imperative that moral guidelines should be a vital consideration in the adjudication of laws and in all aspects of our society.

I include some of the most prominent founding fathers and their statements of the importance of reliance upon God for the well-being of our nation. It is far better to be on the wrong side of history, than to be on the wrong side of God as the founding fathers attested.

John Adams: in a speech to the military in 1798 warned his fellow countrymen stating, “[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”1

George Washington: “And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?”2

James Madison: "Before any man can be considered as a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe." - Signer of the Constitution; Fourth President of the United States.3

Thomas Jefferson: "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever." - Signer and the Principal Author of the Declaration of Independence; Third President of the United States.4

James Madison: “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”5

It should be noted that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the matter of the Affordable Care Act was based upon their interpretation of the ‘intended’ meaning of the law that was written, and not upon the plain interpretation of the wording. Does it seem strange that those five justices in 2015 who were supposed to interpret the Constitution were not able to consider the plain ‘intent’ of the founding fathers?

Fast forward to 2022: Five justices, following the original intent of the Constitution, struck down Roe vs. Wade, a 50 year old law legalizing abortion, correctly basing their argument that such an issue was not found in the Constitution. The backlash towards these justices has never been seen before in history. It only proves the unfortunate fact that we as a nation still do not have a moral consensus. Even though the moral intent of the Founders is well documented, there is a crusade among many to devise their own “moral compass”—one that dismisses the Founders’ intent of a reliance upon God. This will lead only to anarchy and the collapse of our Republic.

So it seems for those who wish the demise of our country, I guess to them, anything goes…

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1 John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1854), Vol. IX, p. 229, October 11, 1798.)

2 George Washington, Address of George Washington, President of the United States . . . Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore: George and Henry S. Keatinge), pp. 22-23. In his Farewell Address to the United States in 1796.

3 http://www.gospelway.com/government/hobby_lobby.php (accessed June 29, 2015)

4 http://www.gospelway.com/government/hobby_lobby.php (accessed June 29, 2015)

5 A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, June 20, 1785; The Papers of James Madison, Edited by William T. Hutchinson et al. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1962–77 (vols. 1–10); Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977–(vols. 11–) Vol. 8

 

© 2022 David M. Rossi 

    

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