“Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. And now, because you have done all these things, declares the LORD, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim. (Jeremiah 7:8-15 ESV).
Jeremiah is speaking truth to power as he speaks for the God who is There! How can you go around killing others, looting homes, raping innocent women, and consciously beheading people, and yet stand before the God of the Universe to worship? Today as you walked the streets of Liberia, you see the same corruption, the same nepotism, the same tribal carnage, and evil. How can we forget so easily as a people and nation? We continue to repeat the same jealousy, envy, acerbity, and hate for our fellow human beings because they’re successful, and we are not. We have turned to stones, rivers, trees, snakes, and nature gods, instead of the God who is there. Instead of turning to the total Lordship of Christ, I mean the totality of life in Christ fullness. Christ must be Lord of our lives, be it education, marriage, our kids, our leaders, including intellectual matters, the area of culture, law, justice, and judges, yes, Christ must have total and complete control of every inch of our will.[1]
The words of the 16th century French Philosopher Blaise Pascal still ring true today "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Everyone is a Pastor or Rev in Liberia, yet we have no fruits to show for our faith. You don’t have to understand biblical hermeneutics, “just interpret my dreams and visions. Paul warned Timothy to be on the lookout for such people:
“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.” (2 Timothy 3:1-9 ESV)
Dear Brothers and Sisters, let us not lose hope, but let us anchor our hope, not in an anchorless sea of relativism, but in Christ.
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