From the Elder's Pen "Idolatry Of Israel And Judah" 8/24/03 Past/Future Articles

     We are told by the apostle Paul in II Timothy 3:12, “All that will live Godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.”  However, God has blessed us all these many years with peace and prosperity to the point that we have come to expect this to be the norm of life rather than the exception.  Therefore, when we encounter the trials of life we begin to feel as though God is against us.  Let us look at a period of time when God’s chosen people suffered the ultimate trials -- even to death.  Keep in mind God’s people had left Him and gone into idolatry.  He had allowed the Syrians and Babylonians to take them into captivity to never be a nation again.

     It would seem that the experiences of the Israelite Nation during the time of the Judges would have safeguarded them against the recurrence of such apostasy, but not so.  In the whole range of Biblical history, we do not have a greater exhibition of the depravity of human nature than what is supplied by the crime -- idolatry and abominations of the northern kingdom.  For a period of nearly 250 years this state of things prevailed with the exception of a brief time when idolatry was slightly checked at the beginning of the reign of Jehu.  But the sin was too deeply seated for this to have an appreciable effect, and Jehu himself finally committed himself to iniquity.

     From the time of Samuel to the latter part of the reign of Solomon, idolatry did not exist.   The influence of David was very great in keeping the mind of the nation steadfastly in sight of Jehovah.  The apostasy of Solomon was the beginning of the declension which assumed positive form as soon as the disruption occurred, not only in the firm rooting of idolatry by Jeroboam, but in the sinful reign of Rehoboam which was repeated in the reign of his son.

     It is in the midst of this utter depravity that the heroic work for the restoration of the worship of Jehovah such men as Elijah, Elisha, Asa, Jehosphaphat, Jehoiada, Hezekiah and Josiah, stand out so resplendently as a light in the midst of this moral decay.  In the study of the Prophets, we find in Judah and Israel some of the greatest souls of the nation giving messages from Jehovah that were the greatest ever delivered to a people to turn from their wicked ways.

Next time we will look at some of the punishments God’s people suffered for their sinful waywardness.