THE LAST DAYS OF THE OLD KINGDOM OF ISRAEL.
Judah’s last days under puppet kings of Egypt & Babylon.
2 Chronicles 36 (KJV-Public domain).
1. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father’s stead in Jerusalem .
2 Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem.
3 And the king of Egypt put him down at Jerusalem, and condemned the land in an hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.
4 And the king of Egypt made Eliakim his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem, and turned his name to Jehoiakim. And Necho took Jehoahaz his brother, and carried him to Egypt.
5 Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord his God.
6 Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and bound him in fetters, to carry him to Babylon.
7 Nebuchadnezzar also carried of the vessels of the house of the Lord to Babylon, and put them in his temple at Babylon.
8 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and his abominations which he did, and that which was found in him, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah: and Jehoiachin his son reigned in his stead.
9 Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.
10 And when the year was expired, king Nebuchadnezzar sent, and brought him to Babylon, with the goodly vessels of the house of the Lord, and made Zedekiah his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem.
11 Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.
12 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord his God, and humbled not himself before Jeremiah the prophet speaking from the mouth of the Lord.
13 And he also rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God: but he stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart from turning unto the Lord God of Israel.
14 Moreover all the chief of the priests, and the people, transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem.
15 And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place:
16 But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy.
17 Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age: he gave them all into his hand.
18 And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king, and of his princes; all these he brought to Babylon.
19 And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof.
20 And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia:
21 To fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years.
22 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying,
23 Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up.
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STUDENT’S FOOTNOTE.
Jerusalem’s days were numbered, ninety to be exact, before the beginning of the end. After three months Pharaoh invaded, plundered, and took a host of the populace prisoners of war. What he had left undone Nebuchadnezzar destroyed, including the city walls and the temple, when he also took most of the remaining citizens away to Babylon.
POSTSCRIPT:
This is a salutary warning to any Judeo-Christian nation which turns its back on the God of peace and becomes so aggressive and violent in getting its own way that the civil unrest is tantamount to civil war. Beware the end is nigh for God will use the atheistic nations and the religious enemies of Christ to judge and destroy it.
To whom much is given shall much be required. The greatest sin of such a nation today is not the violence or the puritanical hypocrisy, but its abandonment of public prayer amid its worship of worship by its churches.
Month: June 2018
The Message of Apostate Christendom in the Last Days.
THE GREAT DECEPTION OF THE LAST DAYS (see Matthew 24 warnings by Jesus)
1. Easy religion = those preachers and churches that evangelise to get the most people responding to their message by eliminating genuine repentance (gift of godly sorrow)
a. Jesus spoke of them in John 10 as thieves and hirelings that do this
b. It is popular today to preach how easy it is to receive Christ, but this error is unbiblical and both Jeremiah and Jesus said that it is not enough to want heaven after death. It is not enough to want to miss hellfire after death. It is not enough to seek the Lord by attending church and/or reading the Bible, saying prayers, or being baptized in water. The prophets and Jesus demand:-
i. wholeheartedness, seeking the Lord with all of one’s heart
ii. that one admits his lack of faith and need of divine faith as His gift
iii. that one admits his heart is deceitful and wickedly self-righteous
iv. that one admits his inability to have faith or grace and that he went astray from the womb under the curse of Adam’s sin passed on through his forbears
v. that one admits, when he is religious, that this is a self justifying motive and not the so-called inner desire to seek the Lord by the promptings of conscience (which is also fallen and corrupted by sin). Paul calls the conscience “evil”.
vi. That one admits that he is made in the image of the earthy (i.e. Adam’s image, not God’s image as he was originally created in his innocence).
“The easy religion offering unconditional acceptance into the Kingdom by SELF FAITH and automated repentance is justified by the moral majority who twist Romans 10:9 away from its context and bibliolatrously venerate it (& verse 13). Then the clergy of easy-religion use them to interpret all other Scriptures. This illogical hermeneutic becomes the arbiter of all New Testament truth and acts as a blocking filter to disallow both the effects of the curse and its legacy of ORIGINAL SIN to deny man’s utter dependence upon the endowment of grace to repent and believe the Gospel.”
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/beware-hirelings…-sheeps-clothing/