10-7-06
        I believe I have just learned that someone I knew has died recently. Not by shear accident nor by natural causes but by the malicious deeds of men. Killed. Robbed of dignity, left for someone else to find and deal with. Cast aside like a soiled napkin. For what? Conveneince? Why do we live in a destructive world? Why do we do what feel like? Why are human lives the cost of our happiness? And why don’t we care? Why don’t the things on the news hurt us? And if just hearing about it isn’t enough we have multitudes of movies to graphically show us how it’s done. Murder. Rape. Theft. Immorality. Except we pay to see that. Who are we?

         If your god requires a blood offering, will you give it? If your comfort requires you to get an abortion, will you? If the amount of food on the table begs you to steal, are you going to? If the person next to you is keeping you from the only clean water in the city, what will you do? What can we do except what our culture has programmed us to do? Take. The morality of the media is one of instant gratification. Although it has been this way for sometime for every gadget to make life easier, for every pill to make life hurt less, for every movie to escape into. But now it is us who adhere to its doctrine.
       We are guilty of the first commandment. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Therefore we have let in the rest of the sins that break the commands of God almighty. He who created your very personality, and gave life so that you could honor Him.

          We say we have no idols when we are our idol. What does American Idol mean to you? Just a title, or a reason to weep? This story in Ezekiel fitly describes what is now and what is coming to America. Weep, all you who read it’s haunting message.

Ezekiel 8:1-9:10

CHAPTER 8

1 And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell upon me there.

2 Then I looked, and there was a likeness, like the appearance of fire-- from the appearance of His waist and downward, fire; and from His waist and upward, like the appearance of brightness, like the color of amber.

3 He stretched out the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my hair; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven, and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the north gate of the inner court, where the seat of the image of jealousy was, which provokes to jealousy.

4 And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the vision that I saw in the plain.

5 Then He said to me, "Son of man, lift your eyes now toward the north." So I lifted my eyes toward the north, and there, north of the altar gate, was this image of jealousy in the entrance.

6 Furthermore He said to me, "Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations."

7 So He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, there was a hole in the wall.

8 Then He said to me, "Son of man, dig into the wall"; and when I dug into the wall, there was a door.

9 And He said to me, "Go in, and see the wicked abominations which they are doing there."

10 So I went in and saw, and there-- every sort of creeping thing, abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed all around on the walls.

11 And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in their midst stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan. Each man had a censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up.

12 Then He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his idols? For they say, 'The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.'"

13 And He said to me, "Turn again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing."

14 So He brought me to the door of the north gate of the LORD'S house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.

15 Then He said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Turn again, you will see greater abominations than these."

16 So He brought me into the inner court of the LORD'S house; and there, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east.

17 Then He said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence; then they have returned to provoke Me to anger. Indeed they put the branch to their nose.

18 "Therefore I also will act in fury. My eye will not spare nor will I have pity; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them."

CHAPTER 9

1 Then He called out in my hearing with a loud voice, saying, "Let those who have charge over the city draw near, each with a deadly weapon in his hand."

2 And suddenly six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his battle-ax in his hand. One man among them was clothed with linen and had a writer's inkhorn at his side. They went in and stood beside the bronze altar.

3 Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub, where it had been, to the threshold of the temple. And He called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer's inkhorn at his side;

4 and the LORD said to him, "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it."

5 To the others He said in my hearing, "Go after him through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity.

6 "Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were before the temple.

7 Then He said to them, "Defile the temple, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!" And they went out and killed in the city.

8 So it was, that while they were killing them, I was left alone; and I fell on my face and cried out, and said, "Ah, Lord GOD! Will You destroy all the remnant of Israel in pouring out Your fury on Jerusalem?"

9 Then He said to me, "The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of bloodshed, and the city full of perversity; for they say, 'The LORD has forsaken the land, and the LORD does not see!'

10 "And as for Me also, My eye will neither spare, nor will I have pity, but I will recompense their deeds on their own head."

(NKJ)