EXODUS
Thats where God is explaining the core elements of his plan to the Israelites. According to scripture, God spoke to Moses and explained the basic ground rules in the Ten Commandments. He said:
I am the Lord your God.
You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God.
SOMEHOW MAN DOES NOT, DID NOT, WON’T GET THE POINT.
In essence, though this is very clear, somehow it always seems to get twisted a little. In an earlier part, we talked about the Separation of the Church and State and my belief that they are two entities and when they collide, they create more problems than the good they serve.
Abortion issues, faith based spending etc. all fit under worship rules and not government rules. Lets look at the cornucopia of false Gods, the Romans who had not only the traditional stone, mud, brick and mortar Gods but also adorned walls with special cursing Gods. They also had a few “living type Gods”.
Few chariots had St Michaels statues on them as he hadn’t been invented yet. The hit song “Plastic Jesus On My Dash” was still a long way away since dashboards nor plastic was available either. Probably the most significant item tied to the chariot for protection was the head of one of your enemies on a spear. That was big mojo in those days.
Looking back at the Roman Empire, we almost see parallels that draw us little closer to the rise and fall of that empire because we forgot, confused, reorganized our moral priorities to suit us.
The second chance Moses had after the "Great Golden Calf Scandal" proves at least in Biblical lore that God was very clear that he writes the law and folks are expected to obey it.
Fairly unforgiving, he did give Moses a second shot at it, possibly cutting the Fifteen Commandments to Ten for brevity. Moses tripped, broke the third tablet and man was off the hook for five. The Lord settled for ten on two tablets according to the way Mel Brooks tells it.
Unfortunately they were the ones that concerned public servitude”.
Number 11 “Thou shalt not steal from Public funds”.
Number 12 “Thou shalt not falsely create thy own image”.
Number 13 “Thou shalt not take bribes”.
Number 14 “Thou shalt not keep Concubines, Male or Female for mortal pleasures”.
Number 15 “Thou shalt obey the same laws thou rights for the plebeians”.
EXTRA CURRICULUM:
The Commandments as defined were not suggestions and the major, major one in my mind is expressed four times in Exodus so the numbskulls hopefully can get it right.
You will find the explanations interesting reading. Somehow this does not always work and the deluge lately of false Gods is overwhelming by the underwhelming.
If 11 through 15 were still active, Washington would be a large mass, like a volcano pit and even today some scholars believe that was volcano ash LOT saw, not a pillar of salt.
If it was salt, which was like money in those days, I’m sure he would of smashed it into pieces and sold her at the next campground.
Much has been written on this subject from a religious standpoint, after all that’s where it came from, but I will try to bring it down to earth.
Someone promising allegiance to one form of religion over another, with resulting gain or consequence is a False God themselves... read lines three and four about idols and self gain. What amazes me the most is the written word literally predicted all those things man would do if left to his own idolatry.
I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD:
I am the Lord your God. This is relatively simple; the Lord is the boss, the main Kahuna, the big guy, the one and only, incomparable and unique, singular and so forth. Anything that changes that scheme is a false God.
NO COPIES
You shall have no other gods before me. This reinforces the first line, that carbon copies, similar products, plastic dashboard pieces, golden calves, discounted viewpoints, and products sold by Wal-mart and others are not the same. This also includes prayer for snakes, monkey worshippers, rat worshippers, idols, statues, and multiple forms of Gods made from but not limited to clay, porcelain, wood or stone carvings or images that show up in bacon, the bark of trees, your egg in the morning, leaky paintings and statues or anything else sold on eBay.
NO CREATIONISM
You shall not make for yourself an idol. No homemade stuff, no copying great works for yourself, I refer this specifically for those pretending to be the big guys right hand man on earth though they might deny, their "Golden Cadillac’s" are surely similar to the "Golden Chariot" he drives. Add adornments with Golden TV settings, Gold Rolexes, Gold Pianos...more than just the "Streets of Gold". In reality, most of it is cheap gold colored paint. Facial adornment and longer hair, fake suits made to look like cassocks and so forth.
Got to love it. It was reported one of the Evangelicals took $23,000 dollars of donated money to buy an antique commode, which is like a chest of drawers for her office. I guess the stuff at Staples or Office Depot weren't good enough. And if that was another kind of commode, it brings new meaning to sitting on the throne.
Going by Webster some of the commodes held chamber pots. In another instance, I remember being at the airport one day when one of the TV demi-Gods flew into St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport and parked their G3 at the FBO. I was honored, he was parked next to my white Piper 160 plane with the plain brown tweed interior.
I got a chance to see the inside of that aircraft sneaking on with the ramp kids, and if the most Holy needed earthly transportation, he could borrow this one. Ermine, white carpets, gold fixtures, and silverware, the finest things that your tithe money can buy.
Hallelujah! Incredible opulence. I asked when did God land here? The ramp kid said:, He’s not God, he only pretends to be Gods helper. They don’t even tip. “You take care of us, they don’t”. I felt humbled, I had remembered the ramp kids this year and they knew one looks out for another.
DON'T USE ME AS A REFERENCE
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God. Endorsementation using God as the healer. Various products and services “approved by the Lord” for use by those who haven’t quite figured it out yet that God has all the tools and doesn’t need any of these worldly trinkets. Especially those offered on TV.
EXPOSING THE FAKIRS.
http://www.bible.ca/tongues-photogallery-pentecostal-trinkets.htm has a great collection that should be in a museum of these fake objects way too numerous to mention here and many are accompanied by threats to ones salvation if you don’t contribute.
Plus you will wind up on a list that guarantees you will be hounded to death for money with literature emails and letters. This one should do serious harm to those using Godly endorsements for their prayer cloths and divine bottles of "Holy Water". The last jerker using the H/W Bottles got caught by the Paparazzi filling the bottles from a tap behind his office and the dumpster was filled with letters and envelopes. What’s wrong with that?
Well those letters and envelopes were supposed to been sent to Bethlehem to be blessed first. He is still there peddling his ways and bottles of water.
Rex Hubbard, Peter Popoff and the late Oral Roberts used this money maker.
The big guy needs to get better Code Enforcement help and a little muscle. But these are only the religious false Gods, what about the people we put on pedestals and chase relentlessly in imitation of physical excellence. It’s called Sports.
SPORTS:
What about those sports figures? We seem to place them real high. We want to walk in their shoes. we do ! They are called Reeboks and cost over 100 dollars plus. More with some custom brands. All endorsed by guys who can throw a ball through a hoop with great accuracy.
And the peer pressure is so great lids will harm other kids and steal their sneakers or worse, kill them. It has happened. Innocent children murdered or beat up for a pair of shoes, Boggles the mind.
How does a culture support these things. It’s a million dollar industry and we all pay for it. Something is wrong and that something is false Gods.
Here are some of the worst things that corrupted sports. Do you remember? Skating star Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, Salt Lake City bribes the International Olympic Committee to get the 2002 Games, Pete Rose betting-on-baseball scandal. Other falls from grace, Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods, athletes yes, role models no. Boxing stars, these are athletes, not Gods.
But their actions are not Godly, they are cheats, liars and some pretty good illusionists. They are not what they appear to be which leads us to our biggest category, the Politicians.
POLITICIANS:
Our politicians are no better, probably falling in somewhere between hell and rapidly rising hot water. It has turned our Congress through lobbying in to the single most corrupt organization in the world. A vote against health care because the Senators "donations" come from the health industry is not only a conflict of interest; it is a conflict of morality. In my language is still called a bribe.
These men we look up to are the false GODS. What they say and what they do till they get caught are two different things and they get rich doing it. We call them patriots. They make decisions based on what’s good for them and their career. They do not serve us.
FALSE GODS in HEALTH CARE:
One of the best examples of greed and selfishness is exemplified by the Health care issue. The health care industry runs the country. It too, is corrupt beyond belief. The orbital cost of health care is based on a system of padding the bill, and beating the system. We are becoming drug addicts.
TV is the medium, if you didn’t have the disease, you’ll have it after the commercial. Not to the drugs of leisure but the drugs produced by the myriad of pharmaceutical companies and quacks pretending to be doctors and phony infomercials.
Not surprising is the list of things that can kill you in these drugs. It is longer than the list of the things that make you better. Just watch TV at dinnertime. It's instant disease by the power of sub-luminal insertion. Then watch the lawyers chasing the drugs for the harm they did.
The commercials appear to be heavenly created. Flowing fields of flowers, beautiful scenics of mountain ranges, Gods opulence in a myriad of colors shades and hues. And you visit the other God, your doctor and he tells you, “take two and call me later tomorrow”. your plumber had more warmth...
Now we have the needed medical surgery and it is only exceeded by plastic surgery in the elective department. At the same time we spending the dollars to look pretty, we are getting older, getting fatter, peripheral artery disease, coronary artery disease, neopathy, skin disorders and diabetes and we worry about the lemmings.
The promise of greater health comes with the bottle…. Another false God.