Pagan Culture; How fast is it subverting our faith in God?

Pagan Culture;  How fast is it subverting our faith in God?

Recently I wrote an article dealing with Apostasy in the Church and used Jeremiah as a starting point where God was totally upset with his shepherds following the Baals prophets.  

This evening on Fox’s 8:00 PM program, with Jesse Waters, showed a world group of people participating in a ritual being blessed with a pagan type of worshiping trees.  There are many descriptive variances of the different ways worship of trees affects people.  During this short portion of the program, a woman appearing as some type of priestess, after reciting a prayer, went to each person on the platform and blew into or onto the forehead of each and placed her hands on their scalps as in an anointing type of gesture.  Reading about the past pagan type of worship to trees I found that there is a pagan worship called Germanic paganism and mythology.  Pagan tree worship is a practice that is mentioned in the bible in the Book of Jeremiah.  God’s words to him;  “Learn not the customs of the nations, and have no fear of the signs of the heavens, though the nations fear them.  For the cult idols of the nations are nothing, wood cut from the forest, wrought by craftsmen with adze (a carpenter may saw out a suitable tree and skillfully scrape off all its bark),- (Wis 13: 11) adorned with silver and gold.  With hammers and nails they are fastened, that they may not totter.”  (Jer 10: 1 - 4).

The main focus here is one sign of how a Christian nation, in fact the world, has succumbed to the enticement of things, whether inanimate or natural foliage that is pretty to look at and enjoy for its exquisiteness growing for our enjoyment.  But to see these things as a means to worship as if a god is the path for disaster, and too many are following this slippery slope.

“God said in the Commandments; “You shall not have other gods besides me.  You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth;  you shall not bow down before them or worship them.  For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishments for their father’s wickedness on their children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation but bestowing mercy, down to the thousandth generation on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.”  (Dt 5: 7 -10).

What is it going to take for our future generations to realize that the electronic media is becoming the vehicle that will open a world of opportunity to ignore God, the Church, and even a society that was built for their own success?  Before their eyes, the promotion of illicit sex, crime that no longer has consequences, and a belief that is simply what their conscience dictates to them.  Morality has become a word that along with much of our language is disappearing from the dictionary, and the wisdom we grew up with

We, as parents and guardians of the upcoming leaders of our nation and the world, have a serious problem that neither the government nor the leaders of faith are going to solve this dilemma alone.  It will be our task to use the voting process to put back in Washington people who will lead the world in peaceful and righteous paths.  We must also stand with the Church and promote tenets that are God’s guidance of rooting out the pleasure of idol worship and find Christ in their hearts as well as standing with righteousness as found in the bible.

Ralph B. Hathaway