Connecting the Dots … God’s truths, our consequences

Editor’s Note: This is the third installment of an article written by retired Judge Donald West. Visit harrisondaily.com to read the first three segments.

Between approximately 739 and 721 B.C., Isaiah inscribed God’s warnings, condemnations, and threats of judgment, chastisement, and punishment for child sacrifice, idolatry, and spiritual adultery to the divided, as of 930 B.C., Jewish states of Israel and Judah. Isa. 57:8 … “You (Israel) have uncovered yourself to those (idols) other than Me, and have gone up to them (idols); you have enlarged your bed and made a covenant with them (idols) ...; 9…  and debased yourself even to Sheol (Hell) … 58 ... Tell My people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins … 59:2 …  BUT your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, SO THAT HE WILL NOT HEAR. 3. For your hands are defiled with blood (child sacrifice), and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversity (the new American  civil right!) … 7. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood (again, child sacrifice); their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;  WASTING AND DESTRUCTION ARE IN THEIR PATHS.”  

And as it was for Israel and Judah, so it is now for this United States. Can’t anybody in our national “leadership” connect these dots with the here and  now and divert us from what is otherwise in our own PATH due to our mimicking of the worst traits of Judah and Israel? No? Yes, you're right, we  don’t have anywhere near the right leadership to even begin to recognize  the depravity of our situation: only mindless, Godless, humanistic, ideological leadership to rapidly accelerate the diabolical direction that we have been headed in for far too long already.

Have you ever wondered what is worse? Ignorance, arrogance or impudence? Regardless, our country and its leadership are absolutely satiated with all three traits, and we are and will pay in spades as did and still are, Israel and Judah; and with the added bonuses of all the sadness, grief, and horror has and will emanate from these three national traits that we have directed toward the God of gods and Lord of lords, the God of Israel.

Absorb the God of Israel’s declarations to His own nation through Moses while His people were still in the “outhouse” (those forty years in the desert  as He purged His nation of 603,548 of the 603,550 man army of Israel [Joshua and Caleb being the only survivors of that chastisement], because  of their refusal to enter the Promised Land due to the physical size of their  Canaanite opponents). “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the Great God, mighty and awesome, Who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe.” Deut.10:17. God does not show partiality, and that includes toward egoistic and id driven, heathenistic, hedonistic, paganistic, and God-debunking societies such as oursl 

And in that latter year of 721 B.C., because of the total lack and absence of and good kingship and/or any other good subordinate influence; and in spite of the attempted leadership of God’s prophets which Israel ignored, or even worse, killed, God’s Isaiah inscripted threats and prophesied “bad paths” became a catastrophic reality when the Empire of Assyria invaded, engulfed, crushed, desolated, and annihilated the northern Kingdom of  Israel. One is want, if the opportunity was possible, to ask Israel if their rejection of their God and His standards was worth it? After that litany of calamities, is there doubt as to a survivor’s response?

As mentioned previously, the Kingdom of Judah, among its more numerous bad kings, was nevertheless blessed with some good kings (Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, Hezekiah, and Josiah), who attempted during their reigns to return themselves and their nation to the commandments and standards of the God of Israel; and in so doing they bought the southern Kingdom of Judah a little over an additional century and a quarter of God’s further patience; even though suffering from two Babylonian incursions in 605 and 597 B.C.

But then the culmination of Judah’s bad kings and spiritually destructive leadership against God would bring His third and calamitous chastisement on Judah in 586 B.C. Chastisement by the same perpetrator of the two previous incursions, Nebachadnezzar and the Empire of Babylon. As you will see momentarily, God calls this perp “My Servant.” The God of Israel frequently uses bad guys to punish those whom He decides and desires to chastise; even the formally good guys, even His own Chosen People.

Jer.25:9: “Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north (the various peoples of the Babylonian Empire), says the Lord, and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, MY SERVANT (didja catch that), and will bring them against this land (Judah), against its inhabitants (God’s own people), and against these nations all around (including Egypt, Moab,  Edom, Ammon, etc.), and will UTTERLY DESTROY THEM, and make them an astonishment, a hissing, and perpetual desolations. 10.

MOREOVER (if that was not enough) I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness (and I now feel the absence of both in my life), the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of  the millstones (looks like some people are about to go hungry) and the light  of the lamp. 11. And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.”

Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian Empire had begun its domination of the Middle East by defeating the Empire of Assyria, and thereafter had made Judah its satellite and satrap by 605 B.C. That initial incursion would involve Babylon taking some of the more accomplished, bright, and educated of the nation of Judah back to Babylon. Among that group would be four names of whom you most assuredly have heard: Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and Daniel. Well, maybe not those names, but their  Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach, Abed-Nego, and Belteshazzar, respectively. Daniel 1:6-7 … ’member?

This invasive incursion would, of course, not be the last nor the worst. God gives us plenty of opportunities to change our behavior before He finally decides that we just cannot obey, nay, will not obey, Him. In Judah’s case, Babylon would revisit Judah and Jerusalem in 597 B.C. and appropriate more of Judah’s non-organic treasures as well as more of her gifted sons, one of whom will be another familiar name: Ezekiel. But, as you are well aware by now, nothing seems to impress Judah into conforming her ways to her God’s ways. Not the historical lesson of the annihilation of her northern sister Kingdom of Israel; not the two incursions of 605 B.C. and  597 B.C. into her own domain with the expropriation of her monetary treasures; not even the appropriation by Babylon of her future national leadership like Daniel and Ezekiel and many others. NADA!!!