From the Elder's Pen "God's Judgment" 9/21/03 Past/Future Articles

 Judgment will begin at the house of God for the world has already judged themselves.  Are you ready?  God has always demanded of his people that He be put first in their lives.  Under the old law the first commandment was to have no other gods before Him (Ex. 20:3).  Under the new law or Christian Dispensation, we are told to love the Lord thy God with all our heart, soul and mind for this is the first and greatest commandment (Mk. 12:29-30).  Idolatry has always been a problem of man.  This is simply loving something or someone more than God or putting it between God and themselves.
 Throughout the O. T. the Bible student learns about the prosperity and error of man that ran in about forty year cycles.  God would allow heathern nations round about to punish His people for their wicked ways.  In Lev., 26 beginning with the 14th verse, God pronounces a curse on disobedience.  In the 36th verse, He tells them He would put fear in them even to the sound of a shaking leaf.  That they would think someone was there when there was no one.  God has chosen three ways of punishing man.  Their enemies, famines, and pestilence.  An example is found in 1 Chron. 21st chapter where Davis had sinned and God was displeased.  God sent Gad David’s seer to tell him of his sin and gave him a choice of the afore mentioned punishments.  Davis said let me fall into the hand of God for His mercies are great.  So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel and there fell seventy thousand men.
 It would seem that the experiences of the Israelite nation would have safe guarded them against the recurrences of 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 of idolatry and abomination in 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 this iniquity.
 From the time of Samuel to the latter part of the reign of Solomon, idolatry did not exist.  The influences of David were very great in keeping the mind of the nation steadfastly in sight of Jehovah.  The apostasy of Solomon and then the reign of his sons was a steady downhill direction for the Israelites.  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.
 The Northern Kingdom was taken into Syrian captivity with the Southern being taken a little later into Babylonain.  This began a bitter period for the Jews.  In 168 B.C. there were forty thousand Jews slain by the Syrians and they profaned the temple by offering on the altar a sow, and erected an alter to Jupiter.  The people were forbidden to worship in the Temple and were compelled to eat the flesh of swine which was against the law God had given them.  A great massacre followed, women and children were sold into slavery.  In terror the people fled from Jerusalem and for over three years the Temple worship was abandoned.  The Jewish religion was forbidden and the Temple was devoted to the worship of the Grecian god, Jove.  The monster, Antiochus, did everything in his power to obliterate the Jewish religion.
 So we see just a small recording of what happens when we leave God.  God will turn from us.  The older I become, the more aware I am of serving God faithfully each day.  Let us all set a goal of more love for God, more love for our fellowman, more forgiveness in our hearts, preferring one another as we draw ever closer to the judgment bar of God.