Playing the Harlot in Our Scientific Age?

Hosea 4:12 says, “My people
ask counsel from their wooden
idols, and their [wooden] staff
informs them. For the spirit of harlotry
has caused them to stray, and they have
played the harlot against their God.”

Hosea used strong language against
his fellow Israelites, calling them harlots
because they had violated their
vows to remain faithful to the one
true God. Is it possible that Christians
today, and particularly Christian leaders—in their zeal to make Christianity
more enticing—are actually “playing
the harlot,” too? Here is what I mean.

Born-again Christians who love the
Lord, preach the gospel, and insist on
the inerrancy of Scriptures are saddened
when they read how the Israelites
compromised God’s Word as they
embraced more and more pagan beliefs
(including idolatry) from the nations
around them. God calls such compromise
“harlotry.”
Over and over again, Scripture gives
clear instructions concerning the worship
of the one true God, and it condemns
compromise with pagan beliefs
as harlotry (Jeremiah 3:6).

Universal Fallen Nature

Because of
our sin nature, God knows how we
humans are more likely to be influenced
by that which is wrong than that
which is right. God describes our heart
this way: “The heart is deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked; who
can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 (NKJV)).

Despite all the miracles many Israelites
saw God do for them, many compromised
their worship of God with
idolatry and pagan rituals. As we read
about this in the books of Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Hosea, and Amos, we shake
our heads and say, “How could they do
this? How could they play such harlotry,
as God describes it?”

But I’m also reminded of the verse,
“And there is nothing new under the
sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). You see, ever
since Adam sinned, man’s sin-cursed
nature hasn’t changed. Certainly, those
who are born again, as the Bible defines
this, know that their sins are forgiven
and they will spend eternity with the
Lord. Nonetheless, such Christians
still have to deal with their sin nature
daily while in these sin-cursed bodies.
Even the great apostle Paul had this
battle: “For I know that in me (that is,
in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to
will is present with me, but how to perform
what is good I do not find. For the
good that I will to do, I do not do; but
the evil I will not to do, that I practice”
(Romans 7:18–19 (NKJV)).

All Christians have feet of clay. All,
no matter how dedicated to the Lord
and His Word, are susceptible to being
drawn into error because of our sin
nature. Indeed, we are all guilty of
“harlotry” (idolatry) to one degree or
another every time we choose sin and love the world rather than loving God
and following His rule (1 John 2:15; see
also Colossians 3:15).

Commands to Avoid Compromise

Because
of man’s fallen nature, God frequently
gave instructions to the Israelites such
as this: “You shall not make anything to
be with Me—gods of silver or gods of
gold you shall not make for yourselves”
(Exodus 20:23 (NKJV)).

In fact, because man is so likely to
compromise God’s Word, God gave further
instructions: “And if you make Me
an altar of stone, you shall not build it
of hewn stone; for if you use your tool
on it, you have profaned it.”

Why is that? In Genesis 3 we read
that the serpent said to Eve: “For God
knows that in the day you eat of it
your eyes will be opened, and you will
be like God, knowing good and evil”
(Genesis 3:5 (NKJV)). Humans want to be their
own gods—our nature is that we want
to replace the true God with our own
god. So God told the Israelites not to
use any tool on the stone for an altar.
In other words, He did not want them
to be tempted to make a god when they
carved in stone.

But sadly, the Israelites gave in to
this temptation and did adopt the false
gods of the pagan nations into their
own system of worship. They compromised
God’s Word. “My people ask
counsel from their wooden idols, and
their staff informs them. For the spirit
of harlotry has caused them to stray,
and they have played the harlot against
their God” (Hosea 4:12 (NKJV)).

And then we find how God responded:

He has withdrawn Himself from
them (Hosea 5:6 (NKJV)).

“I will send a famine on the land
. . . of hearing the words of the Lord”
(Amos 8:11).

“I will despise your feast days. . . .
Offerings, I will not accept them. . . .
I will not hear the melody of your
stringed instruments” (Amos 5:21–23 (NKJV)).

“My people are destroyed from lack
of knowledge . . . . I also will forget your
children” (Hosea 4:6).

Yes, their children rebelled against
the Lord—the parents lost their children
to the pagan world. As for all their
offerings, praise, and worship, God did
not hear them or accept them.

Compromise Today

I submit that there
“is nothing new under the sun.” The
same situation, albeit portrayed in a different
way and using different terminology,
is happening today. I suggest much
of the church today is really no different
when we consider this sin of harlotry.

When I debated Bill Nye in February
2014, he was not just defending molecules-to-man evolution and millions of
years; he was also defending naturalism.
Naturalism is the belief
that the whole universe,
including the earth and all
life, is explained by natural
processes. This is Bill Nye’s
religion—the religion of the
secularists.

The belief in millions of
years to explain geology and
molecules-to-man evolution is the secularists’
attempt to justify their religion
of naturalism. It is really human beings
attempting to be god and worshipping
matter and time (millions of years).
In fact, Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in
episode 8 of the recent Cosmos television
series: “Our ancestors worshipped
the sun. They were far from foolish. It
makes good sense to revere the sun and
stars because we are their children. The
silicon in the rocks, the oxygen in the
air, the carbon in our DNA, the iron in
our skyscrapers, the silver in our jewelry—were all made in stars, billions of
years ago. Our planet, our society, and
we ourselves are stardust.”

Christians
have mixed
belief in
millions of
years with
God’s Word.

Sadly, many Christians, including
many Christian leaders (pastors, seminary
and Bible college professors, Christian
college professors, and so on), have
adopted evolutionary geology, biology,
astronomy, and anthropology, along
with belief in millions of years, and
they have mixed such beliefs with God’s
Word. Because such beliefs are founded
on an antibiblical, anti-God worldview, I
do humbly submit that such is harlotry
no different than that of the Israelites.

Now I also state, as I have many
times before, that salvation is conditional
upon faith in Christ as the Scriptures
teach, and not upon one’s view
on the age of the earth or evolutionary
ideas. Certainly many born-again
Christians have adopted evolutionary
beliefs, which doesn’t mean they can’t
be saved. But it does not alter the fact
they have played harlotry with man’s
religion that opposes God’s Word.

I also submit that what happened to
the Israelites is happening today. There
is a famine of the hearing the
Word of the Lord in our Western
world, as many church
leaders water down the teaching
of the Word and adopt the
world’s views in regard to marriage,
abortion, and so on.

We are losing most of the
coming generations from the
church—over 60% of those in their
twenties right now who were once connected
to the church are not connected
any longer. Yes, churches all across our
Western world have emotion-touching
music and well-run programs—but I
submit that in many instances God is
not hearing them because they have
not taken an uncompromising stand on
the Bible’s authority.

So I challenge those who do compromise
God’s Word in Genesis by adding
man’s ideas to contemplate these
things. And I end with this challenge
that God gave to the Israelites: “Therefore
say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord
of hosts: “Return to Me,” says the Lord
of hosts, “and I will return to you,”’”
(Zechariah 1:3).

SourceThis article originally appeared on answersingenesis.org

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