"And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to
number Israel. And David said to Joab and to the rulers of
the people, Go, number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan;
and bring the number of them to me, that I may know it. And
Joab answered, The LORD make his people an hundred times so
many more as they be: but, my lord the king, are they not
all my lord's servants? why then doth my lord require this
thing? why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel?
Nevertheless the king's word prevailed against Joab.
Wherefore Joab departed, and went throughout all Israel, and
came to Jerusalem...And God was displeased with this thing;
therefore he smote Israel. And David said unto God, I have
sinned greatly, because I have done this thing: but now, I
beseech thee, do away the iniquity of thy servant; for I
have done very foolishly...So the LORD sent pestilence upon
Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men. And
God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he
was destroying, the LORD beheld, and he repented him of the
evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough,
stay now thine hand. And the angel of the LORD stood by the
threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite."
1 Chronicles 21:1-4, 7-8, 14-15, KJV

As I mentioned a moment ago, the loss of Godly fear is soon
accompanied by the temptation to trust in ourselves, and in
our own wisdom, instead of in the Lord; and this temptation
ultimately results in disobeying the Lord in some way; which
is exactly what David did. As I explain in other articles,
such as in the aforementioned 'The Fruits Of Disobedience',
as well as in 'The Children Of God And Politics', the very
fact that the Israelites even had an Earthly king over them,
was due to disobedience on their part, and their wayward
desire to be just like the pagan nations which surrounded
them. In other words, they weren't content with just having
the Lord as their Eternal King in the Heavens; they wanted
to blend in with their enemies and adopt their customs. So
the spirit of pride and disobedience which first reared its
ugly head shortly after the Israelites were liberated from
Egypt, ultimately resulted in their downfall and destruction
by their enemies. As King Solomon wrote:

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit
before a fall."
Proverbs 16:18, KJV

From their on-again off-again obedience during the times of
the Judges, to rebellious Saul's repeated disobedience and
loss of the kingdom, to David's various sins of the flesh,
to Solomon's steep fall into pagan idol worship in his old
age, the situation just continued to deteriorate more and
more as the years progressed. As we saw in part one, the
Prophets Isaiah and Hosea wrote 'ye will revolt more and
more' and 'And now they sin more and more'. Again, what a
sad story for a people who had been so close to the Lord.

What I find most alarming about this situation in ancient
Israel, is that the Jewish leadership, as well as the common
people, were living in self-denial of the truth. They knew
that they were totally backslidden from the Lord; yet they
continued to go through the motions of serving Him; so that
on the surface, things appeared quite normal. The truth of
the matter was entirely different, and God's true Prophets
knew it, and even wrote about it. The Prophet Ezekiel, for
one, clearly exposed what was going on behind closed doors.
While the politically-correct, false prophets and priests
were lying to the people, and telling them 'Peace, peace;
all is well', the true messengers of the Lord were warning
them of imminent invasion and destruction by a very cruel
and violent enemy, because of their sins against the Lord.

This delusion by the Jewish leadership was intentional; they
were purposely trying to deceive the people into believing a
lie; and yet, as I shared with you in part one, this is what
the people wanted to hear. They didn't want to hear of their
wayward condition. They didn't want to be told that God was
soon going to judge them harshly through an invasion by a
foreign power. They wanted to be overcome by a false spirit
of complacency and lulled to sleep. As Jeremiah said:

"The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by
their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will
ye do in the end thereof?"
Jeremiah 5:31, KJV

Imagine that! 'My people love to have it so'! Those foolish
people wanted to be blinded to the truth by their deceptive
leaders! They wanted to see things in reverse! About one
hundred and fifty years earlier, the Prophet Isaiah said of
them in the prophecy I shared with you earlier, 'Surely your
turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the
potter's clay'. In other words, Isaiah was telling them that
the Lord knew that they were purposely twisting the truth,
and in fact turning the truth upside down and presenting a
lie as the truth; and soon He would expose their wicked
deception, and smash them in the fires of His hot judgments,
like a marred potter's vessel which is utterly useless. In
fact, twenty-four chapters earlier in this same book, Isaiah
wrote of them:

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put
darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter
for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"
Isaiah 5:20, KJV

So you see, that is the spirit of strong delusion which
existed in the land of Israel for literally hundreds of
years; and as I explain in other articles, it existed right
up until the time of Christ, and strongly manifested itself
through the self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees, who were
constantly attacking the Lord, just as their forefathers had
persecuted and slain all of the Prophets of truth who had
come before Him. It is for this very reason that Jesus said
of His enemies:

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye
build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres
of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our
fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the
blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto
yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed
the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the
damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye
shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in
your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That
upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the
earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of
Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple
and the altar."
Matthew 23:29-35, KJV

For more on this topic, please read such articles as
'Revelation's Babylon The Great Whore'. The point is, for
literally hundreds of years, the rebellious Israelites had
been living under a cloud of strong delusion, because once
one rejects the truth, there is no room for anything but
delusion and deception. As Isaiah also wrote in one of the
final chapters of his book:

"I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their
fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer;
when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before
mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not."
Isaiah 66:4, KJV

The Israelites feared foreign invasion more than anything
else, and that is exactly what the Lord brought upon them.
It wasn't long after Isaiah wrote the previous lines, that
the Lord strongly chastised the northern kingdom of Israel
through the Assyrian invasion. In like manner, it was also
forty years after Jeremiah began to prophesy against the
southern kingdom of Judah, that the Lord likewise punished
them through the invasion by the forces of Babylonian King
Nebuchadnezzar, which left Solomon's Temple destroyed, and
Jerusalem in ruins. It should also not surprise us then,
that hundreds of years later, Jesus would quote from
Isaiah's writings, in order to expose the same deceitful
spirit which characterized the false Jewish religious
establishment of the First Century:

"He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied
of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth
me with their lips, but their heart is far from me."
Mark 7:6, KJV

So it is clear then, that the delusion in Israel was so
strong, that the political and religious leadership, and the
people, had a totally twisted, perverted view of the world,
and of their relationship with God. They were so deceived,
that they didn't even realize how far they had strayed from
Him; and it all began when they lost their fear of the Lord,
and became haughty, self-confident and started trusting in
their own wisdom, strength and military might, which
ultimately resulted in them compromising their faith with
the pagan nations around them. As we saw in part one, the
Prophet Ezekiel fully exposed the self-confidence of the
ancient Israelites when he wrote in part:

"But thou didst trust in thine own beauty . . ."
Ezekiel 16:15a

By this time, some of you may be wondering what all of this
talk about the sins of ancient Israel has to do with the
title of this article. For those of you who are in tune to
God's Spirit, I am sure that you already see the startling
parallels to the Endtime, and particularly to the spiritual
condition of modern-day America. In fact, if you happen to
be a regular reader of my articles, then you may realize
that I really haven't said anything new, but am merely
reiterating certain points I have already made in other
articles, some of which I have already mentioned.


Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
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