God’s Faithfulness in Judgment, Part 3a: Religious Leadership

God’s Faithfulness in Judgment, Part 3a: Religious Leadership
Thursday, December 4, 2025 by Dr. James W. Walraven

Categories: Apostasy / Contemporary issues / God’s sovereignty / Scripture discussion / Spiritual deception / The church / Thought for Today / Truth telling

Under God’s judgment. What happens to a nation’s religious institutions when that nation faces God’s judgment? Does that nation remain faithful or not?

Sadly, the nation facing God’s judgment does not remain faithful. Typically, it abandons all aspects of its biblical heritage. Those under judgment deliberately chooses to rebel, to mock, to disdain God, to teach lies.

Consider the following:

Amos 7:16 (ESV): “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,but of hearing the words of the LORD.”

Amos 8:12 (ESV): They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.

Ezekiel 13:19 (ESV): You have profaned me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, putting to death souls who should not die and keeping alive souls who should not live, by your lying to my people, who listen to lies.

Isaiah 9:16 (ESV): For those who guide this people have been leading them astray, and those who are guided by them are swallowed up.

Jeremiah 8:8 (ESV): How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie.

Jeremiah 14:14 (ESV): And the LORD said to me: “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds.

Jeremiah 23:32 (ESV): Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the LORD, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them. So they do not profit this people at all, declares the LORD.

Romans 1:24–25 (ESV): Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Many additional verses could be cited.

In contrast, Titus 1:2 and Hebrews 6:18 inform us that God never lies. Rather as Jesus tells us in John 8:44, Satan is the father of lies.

Several “Bible teachers” today insist that as Christians, we are free to ignore the Old Testament, that it does not apply to us. They claim that the Old Testament was written only to the Jews; the New Testament applies to Christians. Most notably among that group is Andy Stanley, who wrote a best selling book on that very topic.

None of that is biblical; those teachings are false; those teachers speak the lies people want to hear. Our situation today is no different from what God’s prophets in the Old Testament warned about.

We will continue our discussion in the next post.

Personal note: after getting the computer issues solved, I’ve since been battling some health issues. I’m hoping to resume my normal posting schedule shortly.

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