Forward by Accomodation

The church seeks to save itself through accommodation.  It is not the first time the people of God have walked that route.  The Hebrews left Egypt with Moses out front, but by the time they reached the Promised Land, their leader lay in an unmarked mountain top grave and a new younger man named Joshua had emerged to lead them across the Jordan.  When they crossed the river and went into the new land, they carried with them a unique spiritual heritage, one unlike any other which existed on the face of the earth.  It was the "there is only one God" faith. 

 

When they made safe passage across the dry river bed, things started to change.  They found themselves among a people bent by conquest, but a people still bowing to wooden hand made gods like Baal.  Instead of declaring the faith of their heritage, they accommodated the culture around them by installing some of those wooden gods in their own homes.  Perhaps, it started because sons and daughters found marriage partners among the Baal worshippers, or perhaps, this worship of a fertility god became a hedge against loosing crops due to lack of rain.  Whatever, the reason, the Hebrews started buying into the culture, accommodating its false value system, and compromising their own spiritual heritage as the unique people of God. 

 

The church today seems to be walking down this same road.  It was a road that took the Hebrews away from the regions around the Jordan River to foreign lands beside the River Chebar in Babylon.  Not being a prophet or a prophet's son, this old worn out preacher cannot see into the future, but does have great fear that a church with such a rich spiritual heritage could choose to forsake it through cultural accommodation and theological compromise.  The road forward is a dangerous road if the church chooses common consensus as its authority instead of the timeless, tested written Word of God.