E is for Ezekiel Eight

This is one of the saddest chapters in the Bible.  In this chapter, the Lord takes Ezekiel in spirit to the temple and shows all the corruption going on inside it.  He also sees the perpetrators saying, "God doesn't see!"  Verses 7-18 show the image of priests in a dark room burning incense to these idol images on the walls, women on the temple porch weeping over Tammuz, and priests on another porch worshiping the rising sun.

This corruption did not happen overnight.  Probably some revolutionary guy came and told one guy that drawing images on the wall would enhance the worship of YHWH, and so he started doing it, and before you know it, there's a trend of burning incense to images in the temple when God clearly said you shall not bow before graven images.  Maybe they justified it because they weren't bowing.  I don't know. 

I don't have the time to research Tammuz, but if I recall, she was some nature goddess who died every year.  The women mourned over her at God's temple, the temple of the God who said you shall have no gods before me.  I don't know if maybe some woman came along and decided that God could be portrayed as a woman, and when seasons change, it's like she's dying.  But they find some justification for giving some woman equal or higher status to God and probably still insist that they don't worship her.

And then the men on the back porch worshiping the sun.  Religious groups have always loved nature.  I like nature.  It definitely reflects God's majesty.  However, nature is not god.  God is like the sun, but the sun is just a ball of gas he created to give light and seasons to the earth.  I think what started as spiritual nature walks slowly turned into nature worship.

These things still happen in our churches.  People will bring something like yoga, practice it in church and assure the people that they are only stretching and relaxing.  Next thing you know, they are following Hindu prayer rituals that actually invited demons into their lives, and all inside the house that goes under Christ's name, the one God revealed to the world as His salvation and God's body on earth.  The same God who said there shall be no other gods before me.

Then it slowly grows into the church accepting homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, affairs, pedophilia, following your hearts, and anti-Christians such as Oprah, Deepak Chopra, Rob Bell, and even go so far as to endorse Planned Parenthood.

Israel went into exile after this episode.  Our Church is about to undergo a serious cleansing, and it breaks my heart to see the people I love give into these new age practices and teachers without consulting the Bible.  In fact, if they read the Bible, they would be able to identify them in all their subtlety.  But I hope the ones I love still in these kinds of churches find protection in Christ's blood and his mercy to lead them away from the false practices and teachers who deny that Christ is the only way to God the Father.