Break Up Your Fallow Ground

This is from The Christian Excavator blog:

Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men. Hosea 10:12-13

In this passage God tells His people to break up their fallow ground. Fallow means to be unplowed or uncultivated. It describes a field that has been let go or neglected. Spiritually it describes a heart that has become complacent and unbroken.

My children and grandchildren will reap the iniquity and the “fruit of lies” that several generations of complacent Christians have allowed this nation to sow. I sometimes find it hard to believe how far our nation has plunged. Because of the indoctrination of our school system and the steady corrupting influence of the media most people cannot even discern right from wrong.

“It is time to seek the Lord” Like the people in Hosea’s day we have “plowed wickedness” and then act like we are shocked when we reap iniquity. We have trusted in our own way instead of seeking the Lord.

A.W. Tozer said concerning this passage;

“The fallow field is smug, contented, protected from the shock of the plow and the agitation of the harrow. Safe and undisturbed, it sprawls lazily in the sunshine, the picture of sleepy contentment… But it is paying a terrible price for its tranquility; never does it feel the motions of mounting life, nor see the wonders of bursting seed, nor the beauty of ripening grain. FRUIT IT CAN NEVER KNOW, BECAUSE IT IS AFRAID OF THE PLOW AND THE HARROW… In direct opposite to this, the cultivated field has yielded itself to the adventure of living. The protecting fence has opened to admit the plow, and the plow has come as plows always come, practical, cruel, business-like and in a hurry. Peace has been shattered by the shouting farmer and the rattle of machinery. The field has felt the travail of change; it has been upset, turned over, bruised and broken.” 

We have been complacent long enough. We have avoided the plow for too long. Our smug faces need to be washed with tears. Many church doors will close…it is just a matter of time. A lot of churches are just a couple funerals away from extinction.

We need to beg God to plow our hearts. It is true that God will always have a remnant. He will always have His churches. He will always have a people on this earth until He returns…they just may not be here in America. {Some statistics say that 4000 churches shut their doors in America every year}

I had heard several years ago that some countries in the “far east” were preparing to send Christian missionaries to America. A walk through any mall or shopping center reveals how heathen we have become.

Do you really want God to pour out His Spirit on your church, in your community?  Are you prepared for the plow to run through the middle of your undisturbed heart? Do you really want God to plow your fallow ground?

“Lord, prepare my heart to receive thy word, that it may be like the good ground, or I shall be undone for ever. Let my heart be broken up and prepared by thy plough. That I may have a good, an upright and sincere heart.” – Benjamin Keach, Baptist Preacher, Horse-lie-down, Southwark, London {1640-1704}

Why do Evolutionists Believe in the Religion of Evolution?

1: They do not want to be responsible for their actions
2: They want to be separate from God
3: They want sexual freedom
4: They want a way to hide from God
5: They want to live like animals
6: They want knowledge apart from God
7: They want to destroy religion

The above excerpt was taken from:

Evolutionists Explain Their Objectives

_____

Wistar Destroys Evolution
Laughing at Evolution
OOPARTS
Scientists of Faith
The Original Enviro-Nazis
Environmentalism as religion run amok

Genesis 1: 26-28:  "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

_____

"If there is no God, everything is permitted."

--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Contrary to Common Sense

Oswald Chambers, 1874-1817

"We hear it said that Jesus Christ taught nothing contrary to common sense: everything Jesus Christ taught was contrary to common sense. Not one thing in the Sermon on the Mount is common sense. The basis of Christianity is neither common sense nor rationalism; it springs from another centre, viz. a personal relationship to God in Christ Jesus in which everything is ventured on from a basis that is not seen."

--Oswald Chambers

_____

“One must be a great man indeed to be able to hold out even against common sense."
"Or else a fool.”

--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

_____

“The warrior of God is not the man of muscle and a strong jaw, but the man of un-utterable weakness, the man who knows he has not any power; Jacob is no longer strong in himself, he is strong only in God, his life is no longer marked by striving, but by reliance on God. You cannot imitate reliance on God.”

--Oswald Chambers

Today's Baal Worshippers

Today's Baal Worshipers

December 19, 2008

By Matt Barber

-

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV)

Modern-day liberals – or "progressives" as they more discreetly prefer – labor under an awkward misconception; namely, that there is anything remotely "progressive" about the fundamental canons of their blind, secular-humanist faith. In fact, today's liberalism is largely a sanitized retread of an antiquated mythology – one that significantly predates the only truly progressive movement: biblical Christianity.

While visiting the Rivermont Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Va., a few weeks back, I heard a troubling, albeit thought-provoking, sermon. Pastor John Maybray addressed the ancient Canaanite practice of Baal worship and, though he didn't reveal it by name, connected the dots to its present-day progeny: liberalism. Baal, the half-bull, half-man god of fertility, was the focal point of pagan idolatry in Semitic Israel until God revealed His monotheistic nature to Judaism's forebears.

In his sermon, Pastor Maybray illustrated that, although they've now assumed a more contemporary flair, the fundamentals of Baal worship remain alive and well today. The principal pillars of Baalism were child sacrifice, sexual immorality (both heterosexual and homosexual) and pantheism (reverence of creation over the Creator).

Ritualistic Baal worship, in sum, looked a little like this: Adults would gather around the altar of Baal. Infants would then be burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the deity. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants – men and women alike – would engage in bisexual orgies. The ritual of convenience was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting Baal to bring rain for the fertility of "mother earth."

The natural consequences of such behavior – pregnancy and childbirth – and the associated financial burdens of "unplanned parenthood" were easily offset. One could either choose to engage in homosexual conduct or – with child sacrifice available on demand – could simply take part in another fertility ceremony to "terminate" the unwanted child.

Modern liberalism deviates little from its ancient predecessor. While its macabre rituals have been sanitized with flowery and euphemistic terms of art, its core tenets and practices remain eerily similar. The worship of "fertility" has been replaced with worship of "reproductive freedom" or "choice." Child sacrifice via burnt offering has been updated, ever so slightly, to become child sacrifice by way of abortion. The ritualistic promotion, practice and celebration of both heterosexual and homosexual immorality and promiscuity have been carefully whitewashed – yet wholeheartedly embraced – by the cults of radical feminism, militant "gay rights" and "comprehensive sex education." And, the pantheistic worship of "mother earth" has been substituted – in name only – for radical environmentalism.

But it's not just self-styled "progressives" or secular humanists who have adopted the fundamental pillars of Baalism. In these postmodern times, we've also been graced, regrettably, by the advent of counter-biblical "emergent Christianity" or "quasi-Christianity," as I prefer to call it.

This is merely liberalism all dolled up and gratuitously stamped "Christian." It's a way for left-wing ideologues to have their "religion" cake and eat it too. Under the guise of "social justice," its adherents often support – or at least rationalize – the same pro-homosexual, pro-abortion and radical environmental policies pushed by the modern-day Baal worshiper.

Though the "Christian left" represent what is arguably a negligible minority within larger Christianity, the liberal media have, nonetheless, embraced their cause and seized upon their popularity among elites as evidence that the so-called "Christian right" (read: biblical Christianity) is losing influence – that Christianity is, somehow, "catching up with the times."

Because emergent Christianity fails the authenticity test whenever subjected to even the most perfunctory biblical scrutiny, I suspect it will eventually go – for the most part – the way of the pet rock or the Macarena. But this does not absolve leaders within the evangelical community from a duty to call leaders of this counter-biblical revolution on their heresy. It's not a matter of right versus left; it's a matter of right versus wrong – of biblical versus non-biblical.

Nonetheless, the aforementioned pillars of postmodern Baalism – abortion, sexual relativism and radical environmentalism – will almost certainly make rapid headway over the next four to eight years, with or without help from the Christian left. The gods of liberalism have a new high priest in Barack Obama, and enjoy many devout followers in the Democratic-controlled Congress, liberal media and halls of academia.

Both Obama's social agenda and that of the 111th Congress are rife with unfettered pro-abortion, freedom-chilling, pro-homosexual and power-grabbing environmentalist objectives. The same kind of "hope, action and change," I suppose, that was swallowed up by the Baalist Canaanites of old.

So, today's liberalism is really just a very old book with a shiny new cover. A philosophy rooted in ancient pagan traditions, of which there is naught to be proud.

There's "nothing new under the sun," indeed.

[The preceding article was taken from Sarah Beveridge's blog Believer's Journey.]