Ancient Israel was founded for the purpose of manifesting the will and purpose of Almighty God relative to mankind.  He began the process with the 12 tribes of Israel, the descendants of Abraham.  After having her symbolically acknowledge the blood of Jesus Christ (a lamb) on the night before their release from Egyptian slavery, after “baptizing” them in the Red Sea and after giving them God’s Ten Commandment Law at Mount Sinai, Israel was destined to be His “light to the Gentiles” (heathen) for the purpose of bringing them into His fold.  Though she began in supernatural splendor, secular and Biblical history reveal that over time the nation began to fall away from God by setting aside her national and spiritual foundations and principles established by her Founder.  The leaven offered by the heathen nations around her proved to be too much for many of her people to resist.  Israel, created to be His representative on the world scene, soon turned away from Him and began to worship and serve other gods and eventually their idols (physical renderings of their appearance).

The nation became so corrupt that it could not remain as one.  The contention came to a head when the nation divided due to a tax issue.  The tribes of Judah and Benjamin (and later Levi) came to be known as Judah, nicknamed “Jews” by King James translators.  The other ten tribes (Joseph’s two sons resulted in Israel having thirteen ten tribes) carried the name “Israel.”  She was also called Samaria and Ephraim (one of Joseph’s sons).  The land of the Jews was known as Judea with Jerusalem as their capital.  This area came to be known as the Southern Kingdom.  Israel’s homeland (the Northern Kingdom) was known as Samaria, which was her capital city. It is this kingdom that served as the model which a future nation would emulate.  It would be this future kingdom to which the prophecy/warning under consideration was written.  Read Israel: The Divided Kingdom.  Key word–Divided.

Over time Israel fell away from God and began worshiping the golden calf of the Egyptians.  Other gods were eventually embraced by the Israelites as they continued to mix with the heathen peoples around them.  There soon came an exchanging of gods from spiritual to material, invisible to visible as the nation sunk into materialism, carnality and sensuality.  Wooden, clay and rock formed idols came to represent Israel’s various gods.  Following the creation of her own gods, Israel then evolved to the point where her people felt free to create their own truth.  Where there is no absolute truth, Satan substitutes subjective (self-determined) truth.  This is what the Serpent of Eden convinced Adam and Eve to do.  By eating of the forbidden fruit they became the creators of their own private truths by overruling THE Truth of God.  They did away with the Laws of God and created laws more to their liking.  In this way a new morality was embraced which nullified the standards they once embraced and declared immutable.  Their descendants have consistently walked in their spiritual footsteps.

When an individual or nation rejects God the person or nation can no longer tolerate any remembrance of Him to exist.  Both the mind and the society must be cleared of all vestiges of Him.  Such was the case with the Israelites who expelled God from her public square, from her government, from her culture and from the personal lives of her people, including her children, as well as her spiritual leaders.  The Northern Kingdom removed God’s Word from their public discourse and His Law from their individual and collective conscience.  By forcing God out they created a vacuum which Satan filled with heathen gods and goddesses.  The peoples’ lives became filled with idols (see Exo. 20:3-7) which led them into ever more carnality and materialism.  Israel now found herself at war with the very foundation upon which she had been built.  To win the war, every reminder of their Creator God had to be expelled from the society.  This Israel did.

Even at her founding and throughout her best years there had always been people within Israel who had not embraced her God and His Words, who had practiced pagan rites and rituals and warred against His standards.  However, they had practiced their idolatry in secret, operating in the shadows, out of sight and out of sound.  Their practices were declared taboo, outlawed and prohibited by the Ten Commandment Law of God.  However, as the nation drew farther away from God such practices began to come out of the shadows, became tolerated, then accepted, then established and then enforced.  What the once Godly nation had rejected and outlawed she now exalted and glorified.  The change from Godly to ungodly, from light to darkness, holy to evil was complete.

One of the gods that emerged from the shadows was a deity that would eventually dominate every aspect of Israelite life.  This was the god of the Canaanites whose land the Isrelites taken at the command of the Lord.  This was the land which God had promised the descendants of Abraham.  There would come a time when all knees, including those of the Israelite kings, would bow to this god whose name among the Canaanites was Baal.  Baal was the most powerful of the Canaanites’ many gods.  Baal had many titles.  He was the god of war, the master of the wind, lightning and rain.  He was also the god of fertility, increase and prosperity.  For this reason the Israelites built alters of worship in various places throughout the land where they would pray to him, asking him to bless their fields and herds.  Here they made sacrifices of their grain and livestock.  At his command, they would also sacrifice their most precious possessions.  The nation whom God had raised up to represent Himself as a fountain of righteousness to the world would, over time, evolve into a Baal (Satan)-dominated spiritual sewer.

Israel had exchanged the true, living God for an imaginary deity whose character was the exact opposite of the God who had freed them from Egyptian slavery and given them the very land on which they now lived.  The result was the transformation of everything they had ever known–their culture, their laws, their leadership, their principles, their ways, their values, their nature, their history, their identity and ultimately, their future.  Having rejected the light, they had embraced darkness and as a result, had been mastered by it.  The god and religion that promised to bring them freedom would eventually enslave them and, in the end, destroy them.

Let us remember that what happened to Israel was written and preserved for “our admonition (instruction) upon whom the ends of the world have come” (1 Cor. 10:11).  This history and prophecy was recorded and preserved for  the true children of God living in the final days of the final age of the world.  Let us not forget our distant past and the fact that God is now revealing our ancient history to us as a teaching (warning) tool.  Let us learn what He is telling us, believe it and do what He commands us to do.  Those who do so are Christ’s “friends,” His spiritual “brethren” for whom He died.  Read Jesus Christ–A “Friend of Sinners” and Jesus’ Brethren.  Key words–Friend and Brethren respectively.  L.J.