SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/26/2016
8:58 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Their
Idolatry
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Nahum 3:4-7
Message of
the verses: “4 All because of the many harlotries of the
harlot, The charming one, the mistress of sorceries, Who sells nations by her
harlotries And families by her sorceries. 5 “Behold, I am against you,"
declares the LORD of hosts; "And I will lift up your skirts over your
face, And show to the nations your nakedness And to the kingdoms your disgrace.
6 “I will throw filth on you And make you vile, And set you up as a spectacle. 7
“And it will come about that all who see you Will shrink from you and say,
’Nineveh is devastated! Who will grieve for her?’ Where will I seek comforters for you?’”
The god that Nineveh worshiped was Ishtar, who was
the goddess of sexual passion, fertility, and war, so one can understand why
Nahum would use the metaphor of prostitution which in the Scriptures speaks of
spiritual idolatry. Israel was punished
by the Lord for this same sin and they knew better for they knew who the one
true God was and yet they worshiped other gods in spite of their knowledge of
who God is.
I just cannot help while looking at many of these OT
prophets that I see our country in the places that the countries that these
prophets wrote about who were ready to be punished as the position that we are
in at this time. I have to bring up a
book that I am reading written by Warren Wiersbe who writes about fifty great
people who he says as believers we all should get to know. The time period goes from the late 1700’s to
the middle 1900’s as far as their birth and deaths. He writes that if he could have picked a time
in which he would have loved to live it would have been sometime during this
period as there were many great preachers and churches and many were coming to
know the Lord as their personal Savior and Lord during this time. While first studying the book of Revelation
many years ago one of the authors stated that his belief was that the churches
found in chapters 2-3 were prophetically places in order and as I read through
the book by Wiersbe on these wonderful believers I believe that this time
period would have been the age of the Philadelphian church and then our time
would be the Laodicean church era. This is the last church spoken of in the
book of Revelation and as we look at the OT prophets that we have looked at so
far we can see similar things happening to mostly the children of Israel as
they were about to go into judgment and as we look at the world around us now
we can see many nations in this same position and a good example of one from
the OT times is the Assyrian empire which has fallen as seen by the prophet
Nahum.
Dr. Wiersbe writes these very insightful words: People become like the god that they worship
(Ps. 115:8), for what we believe determines how we behave. Assyria spread this evil influence to other
nations and enslaved them by their sorcery (See the description of the corrupt
end-times religious system given in Revelation 17).”
He goes on to write “In ancient times, prostitutes
were often shamed by being publicly exposed, and this is what God promised to
do to Nineveh. God would expose Assyria’s
nakedness before all the nations, and this would be the end of their
influence. The magnificent wealthy city
would become a heap of ruins.”
1/26/2016 9:19 PM
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