Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1911-01-18

NTEBROklYN D
|E1il2EBER Va
NV. '..RIBLE: STUDIES'
INiQUiToUS GOVERNMENT sue
CESSFUL.
Xmas 16:23.33-January %.


but sin is a reproach to any people. =
Prov. l4:Si.
The Onri dynasty OF Israel was d
successful one according 10 worldly
standards. but d failure from the Di-
vine standpoint. Omri, great gem
eral. succeeded to Israels throne after
! the death of Jeroboam. He was very
successful and conquered the Moabites.
to the East of the Jordan, putting
them under an annual tribute of the
| fleece of two hundred thousand sheep.
He built new Capital, the city OF
Samaria, and successfully outranked
Jeroboam as misleader of his peo-
pie along religious lines. According to
Israel's Covenant with the Almighty
there was but the one LeVitical priest
hood and the one holy temple OF Je-
hoyah's presence for the whole people
of Israel, and it was at Jerusalem. AS
worldly wisdom guided Jeroboam To
completely separate the ten tribes
from the two tribes by establishing
| new places of worship and simplifying
the worship and symbolizing God by
golden calf, So the same spirit of
worldly wisdom suggested To Omri
still further departure from God and
still closer approach TO the customs
and idolatry of surrounding nations.
Omri died, or, according to the rec
ords, "Omri slept with his fathers.
We are not from this declaration to
draw the Inference that as Il wicked
man he went to eternal torment and
that the nature of the torment is
sleep. Neither are we to think of
Omri as sanity and going to heaven
and to imagine that those in heaven
are asleep. Nenther are we to think
of him as having gone to Purgatory>
and that the experiences there are
drowsy We must leave all such un-
scriptural notions respecting the dead.
good and bad. We must come back to
the Bible and from it learn that all
who die. like st. Stephen tActs 7:60),
fall asleep to await the morning of the
resurrection. when the Redeemer will
call all forth from the tomb (John
5:28. 20, Rev. Ver.)
Ahab and Jczebel.
Ahabs name signifies. Like his ia
Their" And surely he was. His name
was appropriate. His was a reign stlli
more successful in unrghteousness
For twenty-five years he devoted him
self to the further undermining of
true religion and to the introduction of
the worst forms of licentious, heather
idolatry He was greatly assisted in
this course by his wife-Jezebel, the
daughter of the King of the Sidonians.
Her name signifies chaSte: yet she
used her great influence with her hus-
band and throughout the nation for the
furtherance of unchastity in connec-
ton with the orgies known as the re-
lligious rites and ceremonies, connect
ed with the worship of Baal and of
"Ashtoreth," the female divinity wor-
shipped.
Lessons Here For Us.
All civilized people are deeply inter
ested in earthly governments and their T,
success. We all crave social and
financial prosperity. Nevertheless it |
is still true that prosperity is injurious
in proportion as it separates the peo-
pie from the Divine arrangements and
the blessings which thereto attach. |
Only Righteousness can truly exalt a !
nation. Every form of iniquity is in
furious, however it may at the time
seem contrary to this. Ours is the day
of the greatest worldly prosperity this
earth has ever known But alas. it is
not day of religious prosperity. on
the contrary, there never was a time
when unbelief in a personal God and
in the Bible as his revelation was so
general amongst intelligent people.
Our church edifices are becoming tenn
Piles of fashion, concert and lecture
halls while the real worship which
alone is pleasing to the Almighty Is
far removed.
The worship of Mammon. the bowling
to the golden calf. the sacrificing of
lives to the requirement of wealth, be-
long to our day as truly as to that of
Ahab--but on more refined scale and
therefore the more deceptive and in
sidious.
Continually we find that God uses the
wrath of man to praise him. The eff
feet of tae prosperity of Ahab and
Jezebel was two-fold: it ensnared and
degraded one class. while it aroused
and separated from itself another
class-those who worshipped God in
spirit and in truth. Such left the ten
tribe kingdom and its idolatry and
Identified themselves with the two
tribe kingdom Of Judah and its true