end of the kingdoms 2 Kings 17-25 - Come Follow Me with Sam

 This is where the party ends for the kingdom of Israel. Actually, the party ended a long time before this; these chapters are where the two kingdoms get physically kicked out of the venue. 

No one ever wants the party to end, and no one wants a debbie-downer to crash the fun, but if you are on the wrong path, you need to start paying attention until you can get your feet back under you and make strait your way again.

Some of the really wretched stuff

In children's bible stories, the false religions and idolatries of the pagans are pretty toned down - you get the feeling that the worst part of following idols is missing the blessings of following Christ. As you get older, you may wonder why whole civilizations were destroyed for just not following God.

These chapters give some bare hints of some of the insanely stuff that was going on. It is not even close to child appropriate. We are talking child sacrifices, sex worship, secret murders, and the like. Really really bad stuff. Don't do this. These are the kind of things that God will let you be wiped out as a nation for doing.

A note on Lehi

Lehi lived during the time of these chapters in Jerusalem. It is a good reminder to read these chapters when you read the first chapters of the Book of Mormon and vice versa. When Lehi tried to warn them, they tried to kill him. When Nephi asked for the plates, they tried to kill him. This was a people with murder seething in their hearts and what they sowed, they reaped, but by the time they realized they were in place of the harvest it was too late.

Also, Laban may have received the easy out from Nephi, depending on how important he was. Nebuchadnezzar had Zedekiah's sons slain before his eyes, which were then put out. Laban would certainly be hauled away captive or killed, and possibly tortured before that point.

A note on Josiah

Its getting a little in vogue to criticize or accuse Josiah as being a false reformer who actually destroyed the true religion in Israel, but put in a good light by the Jewish historians/scribes that wrote his account. I find this view hopelessly obtuse and completely one-sided. While I'm willing to entertain the possibility that certain things were lost during Josiah's restoration, it seems abundantly clear that Josiah stopped all the terrible things mentioned above from going on, and ended terrible wickedness that came from idolatry. You can't just ignore or dimiss these kinds of things going on in the groves and at gehenna and other places. So think twice (three times even) before you take cheap unsubstantiated shots at Josiah.

When can worshipping Christ turn into idol worship?

This may be surprising to some, and way to meta for some of my readers, so if this is confusing, just skip this part and seek to worship in spirit and in truth like Christ taught.

Sometimes we fall into the trap of idol worship in the very act of praising or worshipping Christ. Idol worship is ascribing to some object besides God power to save. It can be a false god, your car, your home, or even an intangible thing like the image of God you make up in your mind vs the true and living God. We have a stark (dare I say brazen aha aha?) example of this happening in 2 Kings 18 when Hezekiah smashed Moses' brazen serpent because Israel began worshipping it like an idol. This was meant to represent Christ Himself, and looking on it granted miraculous healing in the sinai desert. But people got too caught up in the image and then they got distracted and then it became a false God.

We can see the same thing happen in the New testament with the scribes and pharisees. Those who you would think would be most devout and who spent the most time in an attitude of worship were the ones who put to death the real God of which all their writings were purportedly about. They had created a false God after their own image based on God's own teachings and we know this because when the real God came, they were not able to worship or even recognize Him.

We can see this again happen in during the current restoration of the gospel. While I respect the billions of people on earth who worship God, some of them much more devoutly than most of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it makes me marvel how many are not able to recognize by the spirit His work and church on the earth. I do not mean to say that by viewing the members, those who truly follow Christ should automatically be able to know, but I am pointing out that Christ-followers should be able to recognize Christ and His work, and it is apparent that many who profess to follow Christ are not able to see His hand or recognize His work, similar to in the New Testament.

Finally, I am suspicious that despite our best and most sincere efforts in the church, we end up worshipping our image of Christ that pleases us the most instead of the True and Living God of the Old, New, and other Testaments. To some degree, Christ's true character will remain out of reach of the common rank and file anyway because this cannot be comprehended by studying, only by The Spirit. But even with this caveat, how many times have we shaped Christ after the manner that we want Him to be? How many times have we emphasized the character of Christ based on the latest trends and ideas of the world? How much has our emphasis on different attributes changed over time, based not on greater understanding but on greater reliance upon the world's ideas and the world's ways?

There are always the humble few yearning for the Living God, that when He appears, they will be like him, for they shall see him as he is. I want to be in that group.