.
Judgment
of
Idolatry
.
There are pastors today that have omitted
teaching about sin and repentance and even the cross – they no longer teach on
how one should live out being a disciple of Jesus by picking up His cross and
walking on the narrow road that leads to eternal life - Paul warns us to beware
of those who come with a different gospel - we need to stop and examine our
walk with God and make sure that we are not being swept away by those who would
have us be distracted by worldly ways and worldly thinking and compromise
godliness even in the slightest manner
Malachi vs Revelation,
Part 2
The
Jerusalem Christian Center
This
past year we have taken a look at the Lord's return to see if we are ready for
His coming.
In our
last newsletter, we compared Malachi's day, the last book in the Old Testament,
with the letters to the churches in Revelation, the last book in the New
Testament.
We saw
that despite God's faithfulness in the midst of their trials, the people in
Malachi's day complained against God and even turned from Him.
We also
saw in the message to the churches that nothing was new over the years: the
people still sinned against God and followed idols and corruption filled their
assemblies.
So, we
want to continue looking at these two books and we want to examine our own
lives to see if we too have fallen into any of these ways and maybe even into
idolatry.
A Time of Judgment
"For behold the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and
all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming
will set them ablaze, says the Lord of Hosts, so that it will leave them
neither root nor branch.
“But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will
rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like
calves from the stall.
“And you will tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes
under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing, says the Lord of
Hosts.
“Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and
ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel" (Malachi
4:1-4).
We see
that this time of judgement is yet to come and when it comes, it will come with
fire, not like the day of Noah when God judged the earth with a flood.
God
promised Noah that He would never judge the earth again by flood.
In Revelation we see the judgment of "the great harlot
who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of
immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of
her immorality" (Revelation 17:1-2).
John
saw Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots, and the abomination of the earth.
He saw
the woman who was dressed in purple and scarlet and was adorned with gold and
precious stones and pearls; having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations
and unclean things of her immorality, drunk with the blood of the saints and
the witnesses of Yeshua, and whose name is not written in the Book of Life from
the foundation of the world.
The Great Harlot
So, who
is this great harlot?
The
Bible tells us that at the end times, there will be a universal order of
worship, a one world religion.
This
will not be some new religion, but one that has its roots going back to the
Tower of Babel.
This
false religion has deep roots, and it has found its way into the Jewish
religious system and even into our congregations today.
The
Devil appears as an angel of light, this is what the Bible tells us.
He is
crafty and cunning and deceitful and through all this, he has been able to turn
the hearts of God's people away from the truth, and has caused them to worship
idols.
We see
this in the book of Malachi, how the priesthood became corrupted and allowed
the people to offer up blemished sacrifices.
The people began saying, "God blesses the wicked."
Immorality
and divorce began to increase.
The people no longer tithed and they even said, "It was
in vain to serve God and there was no profit in it."
We see
these same things happening in the time of Paul, and John's words to the
churches in Revelation speak of these same issues.
Three Symbols of Idolatry
In the
message to the seven churches, Yeshua mentions three names that the people did
or did not tolerate:
1.
Balaam
2.
Jezebel
3.
Nicolaitans.
Balaam
Balaam
was summoned by King Balak to come and curse Israel.
Balaam
was not a prophet of God, but a pagan seer, a magician with supernatural
powers.
His
practices were clearly pagan but even at this, God warned Balaam not to curse
Israel (Numbers 22).
After
being confronted by one of God's angels and his own donkey speaking to him,
Balaam foregoes the king's reward and only blesses Israel to the anger of King
Balak.
But
later Balaam returns and we find him among the Midianites, whom he advises on
how to lure the Israelites into cult practices and immorality, worshiping the
pagan idol Baal of Peor (Numbers 25).
In
Malachi, the people stumbled because of the sins of the priesthood.
In
Revelation, God was against the church of Pergamum for, like Balaam, they
caused the people to stumble into pagan practices of eating things sacrificed
to idols and to commit acts of immorality.
The Book of Jude refers to these people. He says, "For
certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked
out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of God into
licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Yeshua."
Jude
goes on to describe these people as going the way of Cain and, for pay, rushing
headlong into the error of Balaam.
In verses 12-13 he says, "These men are those
who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear,
caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds of autumn
trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up
their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has
been reserved forever."
These
people are in our churches today misleading believers and whole congregations.
Not
only have today's Bibles omitted words like the blood but pastors have omitted
teaching about sin and repentance and even the cross.
The
gospel message has been changed to social issues (not that social issues are
not important, but without the gospel message we have not carried out God's
way).
Pastors
no longer teach on how one should live out being a disciple of Yeshua by
picking up His cross and walking on the narrow road that leads to eternal life.
Paul
warns us to beware of those who come with a different gospel (Galatians
1:6-9).
We need
to stop and examine our walk with God and make sure that we are not being swept
away by those who would have us be distracted by worldly ways and worldly
thinking and compromise godliness even in the slightest manner.
Jezebel
Jezebel
was married to King Ahab. She was the pagan daughter of Ethbaal, King of Tyre
and Sidon.
Her
idolatrous religion consisted of polytheism and mythology centered on Baal, the
sun god Sap, Reshep (an underworld deity), and her fertility cults honoring
Ashtart, mixed with Semitic and Egyptian ideas.
She had
450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the goddess Asherah.
She
wanted to have her gods placed on equal footing with the one true God of
Israel, which created conflict with the prophet Elijah.
In 1
Kings 18, Elijah wins the victory at Mt. Carmel over her pagan
gods.
In the letter to the churches, John writes to the church in
Thyatira as recorded in Revelation 2:20-23, "But this
I have against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a
prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bondservants astray, so that they
commit acts of immorality and eating things sacrificed to idols, and I gave her
time to repent; and she does not want to repent of her immorality, behold I
will cast her upon a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her
into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds and I will kill her
children with pestilence; and all the churches will know that I am He who
searches the minds and hearts and I will give to each one according to your
deeds."
In
today's churches divorce is rampant and we have tolerated way too much sin.
We have
pastors condoning divorce, immorality, and even lifestyles that we know are
against God's Word.
Pastors
themselves are being caught in adulterous life styles and children of pastors
and deacons are also having children out of wedlock and having alternate
lifestyles.
We have
accepted this kind of behavior and we are told to be tolerant of such things.
We need
to examine ourselves to see if we have become tolerant of sin and if we have,
then we need to repent.
The
Scriptures tell us that we are to expose sin, not condone it or tolerate it (Ephesians
5:11-13).
Nicolaitans
In the
message to the churches, John writes to the churches of Ephesus and Pergamos to
praise the people for not tolerating the Nicolaitans; and the other church he
rebukes and tells to repent for holding on to the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.
So, who
are these Nicolaitans? The Bible does not make clear who these people are.
Because
of the references in the text, we can surmise that they must have something to
do with idolatry.
Well,
let us look closely to the name. The name consists of two names: Nakao,
"to conquer," and Laos "for laity."
This
seems to have something to do with a religious system, perhaps a division
between priests and the laity.
Is this
what was happening in Malachi's day, that the priesthood became corrupted and
led the way for the people to fall into their sinful ways of offering blemished
sacrifices and divorce and even their complaining about God Himself?
Like
anything that takes root, it only grows and produces fruit and this is what
happened when the Nicolaitans infiltrated the Jewish congregations and then
became part of the doctrine of the church.
The
Nicolaitans were not some followers of just any one person, but an occult
practice resulting from Greek mythology.
The
name comes from Nike and Laos. Nike is the Goddess of victory and Laos were her
followers.
In
Greek mythology, Nike is the goddess of victory, whose function was to proselytize
or evangelize for Zeus, to ascribe to him all the honor and glory of all the
other gods, and thus displace them so that he (Zeus) might be worshipped in
their place.
You may
say that, "This is all mythology," but we must remember that
mythology was the religion of the pagans.
When
persecution to believers did not stop the rise of Christianity, these pagan
governments had to try something new and what they did was to infiltrate the
churches with these people; this is what Jude was writing about when he said
that certain people have crept in unnoticed.
These
Nicolaitans have been masquerading, worshiping in our churches and have made
converts of us all.
Because
of this, we have today many pagan practices in our churches.
For
instance, the Nico-laos is the same as Nicolaos, the same St. Nicolaos who
shows up every December 25th to celebrate the birth of Zeus, Jupiter, Mithra,
Nimrod, Baal, Addon, Apollo, Tamuz, and Baccus; many of these same gods were
worshiped by Jezebel (thanks to the emperor Constantine who Hellenized much of
what we believe today).
The
image of the mother and child comes from a pagan cult; Easter a pagan goddess
along with her fertility rabbits and sunrise worship.
Halloween,
May poles, New Year's Eve watch nights, and even Sunday worship are all
Babylonian feasts.
Yeshua
was never called Jesus, even by the Greeks of His day, for the name Jesus is
taken from Zeus.
We have
been Hellenized and Babylonianized, and even when the Protestant church broke
away, they still continued in the practices of the Nicolaitans. Let us go back
to the Word of God and let us go back to our Jewish roots, for God has not
changed, not His Word; it is us who have broken away for a one world religion.
The Book of Remembrance
We read
in chapter 3 verse 16 of the book of Malachi that God did not
give up on the people, but He chose to remember those who were faithful and
feared Him, and a Book of Remembrance was written.
God
said that they would become His and that He would spare them.
In
Revelation we see the same thing, that God will remember His people who are
faithful to Him.
In the letter to the church in Sardis, Revelation 3:5 says,
"But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their
garments; and I will not erase his name from the Book of Life, and I will
confess his name before My Father, and before His angels."
We read in Revelation 20:12, "And I saw
the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, the books were
opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life, and the dead
were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their
deeds."
The
Book of Remembrance was something that kings kept.
In the
Bible, the Book of Chronicles was a record of the lives of the kings of Israel.
We see
this in the time of Esther that the king kept records and chronicles of
events.
Esther 6:1 says, "During the night the king could
not sleep, so he gave an order to bring the book of records, the chronicles,
and they were read before the king."
If it
weren't for these records, Mordecai would not have been rewarded.
It is
the same with our King: one day His books will be opened and all of our deeds
that have been recorded will be read and we will be rewarded according to our
righteous deeds.
People,
no matter when they lived, either in the time of Malachi, or at the time of the
Apostle John, or even today, still hope for the Messiah.
In the
day of the Apostles, they were waiting for the return of Messiah.
But
today, are we still waiting and preparing for His return or have we fallen
asleep or even worse have we fallen into idolatry?
Let us repent and examine to see if we truly have our light
burning, waiting to hear the call, "The Bridegroom cometh!"
Let us
return to our first love, Yeshua, the one true Messiah of God.
Next
newsletter we are going to look at the coming of Elijah in the Book of Malachi.
We hope
that the light of Hanukkah keeps burning in your hearts and as we celebrate the
Messiah's birth, let us celebrate it in the true light of God's Word.
The
Jerusalem Christian Center began in 1988. It started as the Evangel Food Pantry and
grew into the Southside Ministries of Evangel Church. We are a
non-denominational outreach. We worked with the Hispanic and Hmong communities
of Milwaukee, WI. In 1993, we incorporated and became the Jerusalem Christian
Center Inc. During our 20+ years of ministry, we have grown from a little
church food pantry to Home Missionaries.
The Jerusalem Christian Center has been involved in youth groups and children's
groups, VBS, and men's and women's Bible studies. We were the first and only
food pantry in Milwaukee that went to peoples' homes. The Jerusalem Christian
Center ministered to over 80 families who were poor and needy. We delivered
over 4,200 bags of food to homes and tons of perishable and non-perishable food
to 15 food pantries a year. We also handed out clothing and household items and
our holiday outreach collected and handed out thousands of gifts to children of
all ages each year. The Jerusalem Christian Center evangelized and taught how
to evangelize.
We also became a Para Church Ministry. The Jerusalem Christian Center held a
children's program once a month with a local children's pastor. We also did
children's programs for other local churches and The Milwaukee Outreach.
