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Stone Choir

Apostasy

Stone Choir

Stone Choir

Education, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2024

⏱️ 156 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hosts

Corey J. Mahler

coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

    Woe

    aka Eschatologuy

    @treblewoe

      By the time Josiah, King of Judah, noticed that pagan worship practices had crept into the land of Judah — and even into the Temple itself —, apostasy, wickedness, and idol worship were rampant. The Temple was filled with altars to and symbols of false gods, the area around the Temple and around Jerusalem was filled with centers of false worship, and the valley adjacent to Jerusalem even saw the sacrifice of children to demons. Undoubtedly, these false beliefs and false practices did not creep into Judah all at once — Satan brought them in bit by bit.

      The apostasy of Judah was not the first time humanity lost the Word of God (although perhaps none have done this as literally as Judah forgetting the actual scroll somewhere in a pile of rubble in the Temple); by the time of Judah’s apostasy, Israel (the Northern Kingdom) was already apostate and in the process of being eradicated by the Assyrians. We see the same happening all over the world as the sons of Noah lost the Word of God over time — some certainly faster than others. And, of course, the entire world, save Noah and his immediate family, had lost or rejected God’s Word by the time of the Flood.

      Today, the churches face a similar crisis as that which faced Josiah: We are beset on all sides by false worship, and false shepherds and wolves have even brought these false beliefs and false practices into the church. We have fallen so far that supposed pastors, priests, and teachers will recoil when presented with the words of God. This does not mean that there is no hope, but it is surely a call for repentance and prayer. Josiah would not see the destruction of Judah, which God promised as recompense for their wickedness, but his grandson would.

      Let us not be like the wicked Northern Kingdom or the apostate Southern Kingdom.

      Joel 2:12–14 (ESV):  
»“Yet even now,” declares the LORD,  
  “return to me with all your heart,  
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;  
  and rend your hearts and not your garments.”  
Return to the LORD your God,  
  for he is gracious and merciful,  
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;  
  and he relents over disaster.  
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,  
  and leave a blessing behind him,  
a grain offering and a drink offering  
  for the LORD your God?«

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      Show Notes

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      Transcript

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      Transcript

      Click on a timestamp to play from that location

      0:00.0

      I'm I'm Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler.

      0:41.3

      And I'm still, Woe.

      0:44.3

      Today's Stone Choir is part four of our series on the State of the Church.

      0:49.3

      Today we're going to be discussing the subject of apostasy in the church and of the church. We began with the

      0:55.8

      first episode where we discussed the nature of religion itself, and in that we defined religion

      1:01.3

      in terms of where it sources its morality, where our church is getting their right and wrong,

      1:07.3

      because right and wrong moral claims are themselves the basis of a religion. And so within

      1:14.3

      the Christian church, the exclusive source of such morality must necessarily be Scripture. And we made

      1:20.6

      the case in that first episode that much of what we in the church today describe as right and wrong

      1:25.5

      is not actually sourced from scripture. Much of it wrong, is not actually sourced from Scripture,

      1:35.3

      much of it is, in effect, sourced from the new global religion that's emerged really since the 60s.

      1:41.4

      In the second episode, we dealt specifically with the Judaizing heresy, the fact that so much of newly invented theology in the last generation or two is fundamentally

      1:47.9

      trying to make Christianity more Jewish, that somehow that would make it more authentic.

      1:53.9

      And so we gave a couple examples and pointed out that this is pervasive and it's relatively

      1:58.7

      new, but it's not novel, because in the first century,

      2:03.0

      it was the very first heresy that the church battled. So the fact that it would come roaring back,

      2:08.3

      not a surprise, it's entirely believable. It's another example of how the church is

      2:13.4

      departing from the historic Christian faith. Last week's episode was entirely about the Gnostic heresy, which was the second major heresy

      2:22.4

      that attacked the church after Judaizing.

      2:24.8

      And it went on for a couple centuries.

      2:27.2

      And we made the case that there are significant portions of the underlying Gnostic religion

      2:33.3

      of the first few centuries that are roaring back today,

      ...

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