Awaken Bible Prophecy Update 6-28-23: As in the Past, So in the Present

There is so much to learn from the trials, tribulations, and underlying apostasies of God’s children, Israel and Judah, when they turned away from Him in rebellion.

When we read the Old Testament, we see that sinful people practice their sin regardless of who they are and in what earthly dispensation.  As it was in ancient Israel, so it is today in America and the rest of the world.

Jeremiah 5 provides a template for our instruction as to what occurred in Jerusalem during the times that God was supposed to be the Holy One of Israel, the One whom His people were to faithfully follow.  These truths are evergreen in that the sinful falling away during that era absolutely apply to our condition in these end times.  What we see is a very sad state of affairs, which is evident all around us.  The key to grasping all this is to understand that which grieves God to the core.  These things are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

What is it that gives God heartburn about His unfaithful human creation?  The two primary issues are encapsulated in the first two of the Ten Commandments.  #1 is having another god in place of, or in addition to, our Holy God.  #2 is the creation and worshiping of idols – images of any sort – in place of the Lord.  Follow these two paths at any time of history and you’re in serious trouble, destined for self-imposed trials, tribulations, or even soul death.  Why?  Because then you’re grieving the Holy Spirit, which is a death knell.

In today’s Prophecy Update we’ll look verse by verse at this description that Jeremiah 5 provides and draw the inevitable analogy to our desperate times.

Transcript:

There is so much to learn from the trials, tribulations, and underlying apostasies of God’s children, Israel and Judah, when they turned away from Him in rebellion.

When we read the Old Testament, we see that sinful people practice their sin regardless of who they are and in what earthly dispensation.  As it was in ancient Israel, so it is today in America and the rest of the world.

Jeremiah 5 provides a template for our instruction as to what occurred in Jerusalem during the times that God was supposed to be the Holy One of Israel, the One whom His people were to faithfully follow.  These truths are evergreen in that the sinful falling away during that era absolutely apply to our condition in these end times.  What we see is a very sad state of affairs, which is evident all around us.  The key to grasping all this is to understand that which grieves God to the core.  These things are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

What is it that gives God heartburn about His unfaithful human creation?  The two primary issues are encapsulated in the first two of the Ten Commandments.  #1 is having another god in place of, or in addition to, our Holy God.  #2 is the creation and worshiping of idols – images of any sort – in place of the Lord.  Follow these two paths at any time of history and you’re in serious trouble, destined for self-imposed trials, tribulations, or even soul death.  Why?  Because then you’re grieving the Holy Spirit, which is a death knell.

In today’s Prophecy Update we’ll look verse by verse at this description that Jeremiah 5 provides and draw the inevitable analogy to our desperate times.

First, we’ll pray.  Then, since we’re examining the entire chapter of Jeremiah 5, we’ll let that stand for our Scripture today.

<PRAY>

As in the Past, So in the Present

• As I mentioned moments ago, there certainly is an analogy to be drawn from Israel, her heart condition toward God and her many apostasies, to our world today – specifically to America
• Our nation is not covenantal in the same manner that Israel was and is because God Himself made a one-sided covenant with her, promising by no one greater than Himself that His promises for this nation would stand because of who He is – Almighty God
• America is covenantal with God but only on a par with other earthly covenants
• Our Founding Fathers made a human covenant with God in good faith, but because we are frail and subject to sin, that covenant could only stand as long as the people in our nation upheld it
• That desire has long passed, as we’ve worked diligently to eradicate God from our society, our culture, and our moral traditions
• It wasn’t God’s promise to keep us close to Him; it was ours for all its weaknesses as we now see
• On the other hand, God’s covenantal promise to Israel cannot be broken or superseded from a human perspective
• When the children of Israel – God’s Chosen People – decided to turn from Him, He made every effort to prevent that – maintaining great patience in doing so
• Eventually, since every man did what was right in his own eyes, God allowed Israel to suffer the consequences of their apostasy
• This is our analogy with America
• The difference is that because of God’s Word, He reconstituted Israel and will completely restore her as a nation of faith with no other God but Himself
• In America’s case, we have no such redemption promised or coming
• In the end we will be no different than any other nation
• In the Millennium, if we revere God and obey His commands, He will bless us
• If we don’t, then like any other nation that continues to despise Him, America will suffer deprivation
• This is all in the future; our concern right now is how we stack up as an apostate nation compared to what happened with Israel in her apostasy as described in Jeremiah 5
• For that, we’ll go verse-by-verse and discuss what God, through the prophet, has to say

Jeremiah 5

¹ Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,
    look and take note!
Search her squares to see
    if you can find a man,
one who does justice
    and seeks truth,
that I may pardon her.

• God directed Jeremiah to seek out anyone in His city – the City of God – who might be honest and do right.
• It reminds us of Genesis 18, in which the Lord appeared to Abraham before His angels called down destruction upon Sodom.
• Were there 50 righteous men?
• How about 10?
• No, none could be found but Lot, and despite being described as righteous, he was seriously compromised.
• As for his family, there was actually nothing righteous about them.

• If we ask, “Where is there justice in our land today?” we begin to comprehend how alike we are to what took place then.
• Consider our justice system.
• Where are the honest judges?
• In fact, is there any integrity at the highest levels beginning at the position of Attorney General of the United States who oversees the Department of Justice (DOJ)?
• How about within the law enforcement agencies, e.g. the FBI, that are appointed to ensure equitable and fair treatment of our citizens in criminal or civil matters?

² Though they say, “As the Lord lives,”
    yet they swear falsely.

• Throughout the entire city of Jerusalem, the people mouthed the words of holiness, but they were lies.

• Throughout America we have literally thousands of churches that have fallen away from true Biblical doctrine, such that they pursue any cause except that which is righteous unto God, yet they declare that they’re doing His will.

³ O Lord, do not your eyes look for truth?
You have struck them down,
    but they felt no anguish;
you have consumed them,
    but they refused to take correction.
They have made their faces harder than rock;
    they have refused to repent.

• Despite discipline and punishment, God’s children lived up to the description that they were a stiff-necked people.
• They did what they wanted in their own self-will, and nothing that God did would change their attitude.

• The deception sweeping America (and the world) that gender is a man-made construct so a person can be anything they wish: a man can be a woman, a woman can be a man; or someone can be a cat or dog, i.e. a furry of some kind, is evidence of a depraved mind that has hardened against God.

⁴ Then I said, “These are only the poor;
    they have no sense;
for they do not know the way of the Lord,
    the justice of their God.

• Jeremiah thought that maybe it was just the poor who were like this.
• They were uneducated; so perhaps didn’t know God and His character because they were ignorant and lacked instruction.

• Could that be true in our land?
• We have only to look at the education system to see the indoctrination of the common man.
• The Three Rs of Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic (reading, writing, and arithmetic) are now an anachronism from an earlier time.
• There’s no space for these outdated concepts in a school system dedicated to imparting gender equality and social justice concepts.

⁵ I will go to the great
    and will speak to them,
for they know the way of the Lord,
    the justice of their God.”
But they all alike had broken the yoke;
    they had burst the bonds.

• As a result of his previous thinking, Jeremiah changed tactics and sought out those who should surely know God’s Word and all it stood for.
• After all, they’d been instructed in righteousness from their youth.
• Ah, but no luck. Jeremiah found that they also had rebelled against the way of the Lord.

• At our highest levels of society among the most educated – the great and the powerful – the idea of any of them having some devotion toward God is a joke.
• Those who are supposed to guard the way of our Constitutional Republic based on principles from our Founding Fathers long ago sold us out.

⁶ Therefore a lion from the forest shall strike them down;
    a wolf from the desert shall devastate them.
A leopard is watching their cities;
    everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces,
because their transgressions are many,
    their apostasies are great.

• God will not be mocked.
• He sees and He knows the heart of man.
• Because Judah in those ancient times had turned from Him, He purposed to bring discipline to these rebellious people.
• God’s way of discipline is often to unleash the sword, famine, pestilence, and wild beasts, followed by dispersion and captivity.
• His people transgressed against Him, so God brought reproof.

• There’s a reason Jesus said that in the latter days, there would be wars and rumors of war, great earthquakes, and other horrific consequences for the hard heart of man that turned from Him.
• We’ve been experiencing these and more birth pains of so many worse disasters that are on the horizon.

⁷ “How can I pardon you?
    Your children have forsaken me
    and have sworn by those who are no gods.
When I fed them to the full,
    they committed adultery
    and trooped to the houses of whores.

• Elsewhere in Scripture, God declares that Judah is worse in her iniquities that Sodom.
• We know the condition of that depraved city for which God offered no further mercy upon seeing that it had reached a point of no return in its anti-God rebellion.

• Luke 17:28 assures us that these final days will see depravity equaling the times of Lot in the city of Sodom – or worse.
• Can anyone with wisdom and a discerning eye or ear contest that we’ve surely reached this point?
• How much more will God endure before our land is subject to the destroying angel?

⁸ They were well-fed, lusty stallions,
    each neighing for his neighbor’s wife.

• Despite abundance in Judah, the people forsook the Lord and turned to the other gods of their neighboring nations, as if any of them could supply what God did.
• Upon emulating these pagans, God’s people adopted their many sexually immoral practices.
• There’s a reason God explicitly stated in passages such as Leviticus 18 that the people of Israel were not to engage in such depravities.

• Today, the idea of marriage has dwindled to a precious few.
• Almost everyone of a certain age, and many who are older, commits fornication outside of marriage, if not adultery within that sacred institution.

⁹ Shall I not punish them for these things?
declares the Lord;
    and shall I not avenge myself
    on a nation such as this?

• For Judah, they were no different than that which is described in Proverbs 30:20:

This is the way of an adulteress:
    she eats and wipes her mouth
    and says, “I have done no wrong.”

• God strongly condemns such behavior.
• For His people to engage in such grievous behavior was an astonishment to Him.
• He vowed to take action.

• No different are we in America.
• We have transgressed the way of the Lord, and He is about to bring down the hammer.

¹⁰ “Go up through her vine rows and destroy,
    but make not a full end;
strip away her branches,
    for they are not the Lord‘s.

• This is likely a directive to the destroying angel who will act upon the Lord’s command and exact His vengeance.
• Yet, as He always does, He will retain a remnant.

• When God makes an end of America and the rest of the unbelieving world, everything will be stripped away except for those who have committed their hearts to Him

¹¹ For the house of Israel and the house of Judah
    have been utterly treacherous to me,
declares the Lord.

• Were there 50 righteous men in all the land?
• Even 10 righteous?

• As for us, the numbers of those saved are dwindling.
• We’ve spoken of the various polls that show how few believe true Biblical doctrine anymore, even within the church.

¹² They have spoken falsely of the Lord
    and have said, ‘He will do nothing;
no disaster will come upon us,
    nor shall we see sword or famine.

• It seems that regardless of the era, people don’t think they’ve done anything wrong against God; as such, what is there to punish?
• Judah certainly believed this.

• As to our current times, since everyone does what is right in his own eyes, their morality is a personal, relative concept.
• There is no God against which to transgress; thus how can anyone see judgment coming?

¹³ The prophets will become wind;
    the word is not in them.
Thus shall it be done to them!’”

• In the time of Ahab as king of Israel and Jehoshaphat as king of Judah, the prophet Micaiah was summoned to pronounce whether a certain military action was approved by God, as told in 1 Kings 22.
• The pagan prophets had all declared that it was a good move.
• Micaiah, standing in the very throne room of God, saw that a lying spirit sent by God went into the mouth of those prophets.
• Their counsel was nothing but empty words, a dry and desert wind blowing disaster.

• In our time a new group of so-called prophets and apostles has arisen in the form of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).
• They are self-proclaimed in their positions, and their prophecies are no more trustworthy or verifiable than the pagan prophets advising Ahab.

¹⁴ Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts:
“Because you have spoken this word,
behold, I am making my words in your mouth a fire,
    and this people wood, and the fire shall consume them.

• God does not look kindly upon those who presumptuously say, “Thus says the Lord.”
• The pagan prophets of old – just like Balaam who gave poor advice to King Barack against Israel – all perished apart from the Lord and make their eternal home in Sheol.

• If pastors and teachers of God’s Word are held to a higher standard than others as James 3:1 tells us, then no doubt those who proclaim themselves to have a special anointing to direct the church and give it counsel – yet without having God’s true imprimatur, i.e. His sanction, what might be the fate of these men and women in their impertinence?

¹⁵ Behold, I am bringing against you
    a nation from afar, O house of Israel,
declares the Lord.
It is an enduring nation;
    it is an ancient nation,
a nation whose language you do not know,
    nor can you understand what they say.

• Against the house of Israel, after the division that occurred during King Rehoboam’s reign, God sent forth His Word such that Assyria mustered itself and brought complete destruction upon the Northern Kingdom so it was no more.
• As for Judah, this Southern Kingdom likewise suffered a similar fate, only by the sword of the Chaldeans of Babylon.

• America is on the same trajectory, only in a somewhat different manner.
• Our open borders are allowing in multiple people of different languages such that we are being overrun by illegal aliens from many countries.
• It’s doubtful the result will be much different than from Israel.

¹⁶ Their quiver is like an open tomb;
    they are all mighty warriors.

• In the case of Israel and Judah, Assyria and Babylon had mighty warriors who killed with abandon, leaving the streets and rural pathways littered with dead bodies – the land itself becoming an open grave.

• For now, the multitudes of young men entering our nation – be they Muslim adherents or Chinese infiltrators – are simply slipping away out of sight from the authorities and biding their time
• Will there be a call upon them at some point by their masters to rise up, bring chaos, and kill the inhabitants of our land?
• Time will tell.

¹⁷ They shall eat up your harvest and your food;
    they shall eat up your sons and your daughters;
they shall eat up your flocks and your herds;
    they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees;
your fortified cities in which you trust
    they shall beat down with the sword.”

• The prophecy that Jeremiah brought described how Israel’s enemies would consume all that was good and abundant in the land.
• Nothing could stop them.

• For America, consider how the flow of illegal aliens over the years has cost taxpayer money by the billions, while needy Americans are told to suck it up in the spirit of tolerance and diversity
• This horde is no different than the locusts that devour and keep marching onward looking for more.

¹⁸ “But even in those days, declares the Lord, I will not make a full end of you. 

• Israel and Judah deserved a full end from the Lord.
• They had shown their disdain for Him by lusting after foreign gods.
• The people of those pagan nations held such an allure by their outward appearance, that in their sinful condition God’s children couldn’t help themselves.
• Ezekiel 23 depicts God speaking of Israel and Judah in an allegory of two unfaithful sisters.
• Oholah (v 5-6) was Israel who “played the whore while she was mine, and she lusted after her lovers the Assyrians, warriors clothed in purple, governors and commanders, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses.”
• Taking things to a greater extent (v 11-15), Judah, Israel’s “sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister. She lusted after the Assyrians, governors and commanders, warriors clothed in full armor, horsemen riding on horses, all of them desirable young men. And I saw that she was defiled; they both took the same way. But she carried her whoring further. She saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion, wearing belts on their waists, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them having the appearance of officers, a likeness of Babylonians whose native land was Chaldea.”
• Despite all this, the Lord in His mercy promised He would retain a remnant for Himself.

• The difference for us in America is that God has made no such promise concerning our nation in our whoring to be like the rest of the world.
• However, He has determined to keep a faithful remnant – those of us who love Him and watch for Christ’s soon appearing.

¹⁹ And when your people say, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all these things to us?’ you shall say to them, ‘As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land that is not yours.’”

• This was an example of sowing and reaping.
• The Israelites loved their foreign gods so much, God determined to let them soak up their abominations by living in their midst away from the land He had given them as a blessing.

• In a similar way, we in this nation seem to have loved the ways of foreigners so much that we’ve invited them in without measure and imposed no requirement that they assimilate any longer as in the past.
• We’re more than happy to completely change the composition and nature of our country, since foreigners obviously are more righteous than we who are native to this land.

²⁰ Declare this in the house of Jacob;
    proclaim it in Judah:
²¹ “Hear this, O foolish and senseless people,
    who have eyes, but see not,
    who have ears, but hear not.

• Because of the Israelite proclivity to go their own way by turning their stiff necks toward the Lord, many times through the prophets He called them out on this, declaring how foolish they were in their blindness and deafness when they should have seen and heard Him clearly.

• Given our origins with many having a righteous heart toward God, and even demonstrating that over the years by the rise of the church and how we went into the world preaching the Gospel, the fact that we have completely spurned God in these latter days shows how foolish we are.
• How are we blind and deaf?
• We have God’s Word in abundance with its many prophecies still to be fulfilled.
• Yet the church ignores or mocks the idea that we could actually be on the cusp of absolute fulfillment of every last one of these prophecies.

²² Do you not fear me? declares the Lord.
    Do you not tremble before me?
I placed the sand as the boundary for the sea,
    a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass;
though the waves toss, they cannot prevail;
    though they roar, they cannot pass over it.

• The people of Israel forsook their fear of God shown clearly through His creation.
• When this is lost, a falling away from Him is inevitable.
• Even Israel today is secular, meaning that despite having been miraculously regathered as a nation from the dry and dead bones of a dispersed people (Ezekiel 37), their hearts remain stone and they chase after foreign gods.

• This also is the problem in our nation.
• Church growth strategies, light and fog machines, worship songs that equate Jesus as their boyfriend, the best and most prosperous life we can live now, social justice constructs, and more, have diluted the Word of God, such that He is no longer the One who set the mountain on fire with lightning and thunder plus the blast of a trumpet so that when the people gathered round it, they trembled and feared for their lives.
• No, He is simply the loving and gentle Jesus who always blesses or the kindly grandfather in the sky.
• The church has forgotten that: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 9:10).
• We have no wisdom in the church today because we have no fear.

²⁴ They do not say in their hearts,
    ‘Let us fear the Lord our God,
who gives the rain in its season,
    the autumn rain and the spring rain,
and keeps for us the weeks appointed for the harvest.’

• God made the seasons with the rain coming at the right time for abundant harvest as a reminder to His people.
• This was to be celebrated in the various feasts and festivals, always keeping the Lord God in view who watched over their land for the good.
• But the Israelites forgot God nonetheless.

• Consider our amazing land with all that God has blessed us as seen in the lyrics of America the Beautiful:

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

• But America is no more this beacon, a shining city on a hill.
• It is a nation to be torn asunder because of the very freedom and abundance that God bestowed upon us, yet we have despised

²⁵ Your iniquities have turned these away,
    and your sins have kept good from you.

• Sin deceives and turns people from that which is good to something they think will be more pleasurable than doing what God has commanded.
• Israel exemplified this heart issue and wallowed in its iniquities.

• Following in Israel’s footsteps, we in America are now experiencing the absence of God’s goodness in many ways.
• But do we even recognize the problem?
• Of course not.

²⁶ For wicked men are found among my people;
    they lurk like fowlers lying in wait.
They set a trap;
    they catch men.

• That broad road of destruction causes many to walk it, with some men rising up in their self-willed sin to lord it over others.
• We read in God’s Word how this happened in ancient times through its blunt depiction of this issue.

• Our equivalent is the global elites, those who think they are better than others because of their great wealth and the power they exert.
• Through this they intend to exult themselves even higher while eradicating those who disagree.
• Only the compliant will be granted life, and that not so much, as they will own nothing yet be happy with their drugs and fabricated existence in the metaverse of trivialities.

²⁷ Like a cage full of birds,
    their houses are full of deceit;
therefore they have become great and rich;
²⁸     they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no bounds in deeds of evil;
    they judge not with justice
the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper,
    and they do not defend the rights of the needy.

• How God hates injustice!
• Those who proclaim their own righteousness and harm the cause of widows and orphans, along with the poor and needy, and have profited beyond measure, the Lord calls them out.
• There were far too many like this in ancient Israel despite having God’s commandments which should have made them know better.

• We have our Deep State and the bureaucrats who toady to it.
• The ones at the top of the heap grow wealthy while those who do their bidding get crumbs.
• They never seem to mind.
• I think of the Biden Crime Family that has raked in so many millions of dollars over the years and are shielded by government officials and MSM journalists who certainly haven’t received a fraction of what the Bidens have
• Wouldn’t you think they’d complain about this inequity?
• But no, they’re happy to protect their masters and get little in actual return
• The rest of us are the recipients of their wickedness as they weaponize law enforcement, the courts, the rules and regulations of government, and even the corporations that actually used to gear their efforts toward pleasing their customers.
• Now the State is all – and all-powerful – working its injustice night and day.

²⁹ Shall I not punish them for these things?
declares the Lord,
    and shall I not avenge myself
    on a nation such as this?”

• God’s rhetorical question has an answer that’s self-evident given His nature and character.
• Yes, He should absolutely bring down the hammer on His people Israel.

• Why should we in this, the Days of Noah, think that our fate at God’s hands should be any different?
• How foolish we are to believe otherwise.
• Judgment is coming, and it’s very near.

³⁰ An appalling and horrible thing
    has happened in the land:
³¹ the prophets prophesy falsely,
    and the priests rule at their direction;
my people love to have it so,
    but what will you do when the end comes?

• When the priests and prophets turned their backs on God, they opened themselves to the depredations and predations of Satan, i.e. his desire to steal, kill, and destroy.
• He gave these supposed men of God false dreams and visions and they led Israel down the primrose path toward utter devastation, and the people willingly followed to their horrible fate.

• Today we have those both in the church and secular society that proclaim a Great Awakening is just around the corner.
• How people love to have their itching ears scratched!
• God’s Word declares disaster, and far too many people willingly embrace what they think will be good, yet will tear them apart.

• Finally, we see how God will deal with all this

Jeremiah 6:19

¹⁹ Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people,
    the fruit of their devices,
because they have not paid attention to my words;
    and as for my law, they have rejected it.

• God’s Word foretold that Israel and Judah would go into captivity following the coming of the sword, famine, pestilence, and even wild beasts.
• Why?
• Because the people ignored the wise counsel of their God.
• For that they would suffer and pay the ultimate price.

• We, too, in this land, by spurning the favor and blessings of the Lord have finally come to the point of God’s wrath that must be rained down upon us.
• As Israel went, so goes America by disdaining our very Creator and the source of life.
• Our nation deserves nothing less, and the Bible shows us prophetically that in the absence of a word about us, we will come to nothing.

Summary

• That time is soon approaching.
• We are storing up God’s anger against us just as He stockpiles massive hailstones in the storehouses of heaven to execute war in pursuit of His justice.
• Only those who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior will escape
• Our deliverance in the pre-Tribulation Rapture is promised in its foretelling
• We will be taken up from this alien world when Jesus appears for us in the clouds
• We will spend seven glorious years in His presence
• When He returns to the earth for His 2^nd Coming at the end of the Tribulation, we will follow on His heels
• For the next 1000 years, we will work gloriously in His kingdom
• What an amazing future we have!
• If you are somehow watching this and don’t know Jesus personally in an intimate relationship, time is slipping away from you
• You won’t make a profession of faith at the last minute because by then the twinkling of an eye will have passed, the Rapture will have happened, and you’ll be left behind to face the Tribulation’s horrors
• Today is the day of your salvation
• Don’t miss it!
• For everyone else, we must continue about the Father’s business as He has given it to us
• Let’s not be slack but engage it with diligence
• The past is definitely prelude to the present when it comes to how a people with God’s immense blessings fall away to destruction
• Our nation has followed a similar course and is about to realize the same fate
• This unbelieving world doesn’t have much time left
• In these last hours, let’s prove worthy of Him who has saved our souls and will keep us from this coming day of trouble that consumes the entire earth