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National Apostasy Brings National Ruin
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you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand. ... You
have done foolishly; therefore from now on you shall have wars.”
2
Chronicles 16:8, 9
.
Instead of humbling himself before God, “Asa was angry with
the seer, and put him in prison. ... And Asa oppressed some of the
people at that time.”
Verse 10
.
“In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in
his feet, and his malady was severe; yet in his disease he did not
seek the Lord, but the physicians.”
Verse 12
. The king died in the
forty-first year of his reign and was succeeded by Jehoshaphat, his
son.
Ahab’s Wicked Reign Begins
Two years before the death of Asa, Ahab began to rule in Israel.
From the beginning a strange, terrible apostasy characterized his
reign. He“did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than
all the kings of Israel who were before him,” acting “as though it
had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the
son of Nebat.”
1 Kings 16:33, 31
. He boldly led the people into the
grossest heathenism.
Having married Jezebel, “the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the
Sidonians” and high priest of Baal, Ahab “served Baal and worshiped
him. Then he set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which
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he had built in Samaria.”
Verses 31, 32
.
Under the leadership of Jezebel, Ahab set up heathen altars
in many “high places,” until nearly all Israel followed after Baal.
“There was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do wickedness
in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife stirred him up.”
1 Kings 21:25
. Ahab’s marriage with an idol-worshiping woman
brought disaster both to himself and to the nation. The determined
spirit of Jezebel easily molded his character. His selfish nature
was unable to appreciate the mercies of God to Israel and his own
obligations as guardian and leader of the chosen people.
Under Ahab’s rule Israel wandered far from the living God. The
dark shadow of apostasy covered the whole land. Images of Baal
and Ashtoreth were everywhere. Idolatrous temples multiplied. The
smoke of sacrifices offered to false gods polluted the air. Hill and