Are You Eating the Fruit of Lies!

The Minor Prophets Speak to Today 

When the day of judgment dawns 

Hosea 10:13b-15 NLT
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*You are eating the fruit of lies!

One of the problems in America today, indeed the world, is that most of the people believe in lies. The intelligentsia believe in lies. The so called common people believe in lies. The religious people, you name the type, believe in lies. The scientists, not all of them, believe in lies.  Because the underlying assumptions of the people are not true, what they believe is not true. 

Even truth filtered through lies produces lies, beliefs that are lies. 

Lies about human sexuality started by my generation with our sexual revolution sowed the seeds for greater lies about sexuality and relationships today.

Lies are fed to us by politicians and the government, many of whom believe their own lies.

Lies about what has or has not been proven about the origins of human kind, indeed the whole universe or multiple universes as that may be, have bled over into great corruptions in all the sciences - material, actuarial, social, psychological, even theological. Therefore, many of our beliefs about life, society, and ourselves are lies.

Some of the greatest lies are the cultural lies we have embraced. The lies about how things ought to be and the lie that if we try hard enough we can achieve those lies.

The more we preach these lies to one another the angrier and more afraid we become. The stronger we hold to these literal impossibilities, the more things we judge to be wrong, the more lies we create and believe about why things are wrong and broken, and the more depressed we become individually, as societies, and as a nation.

Things are not going well!

We have eaten the fruit of lies and they have made us sick - corporately, financially, politically, educationally, religiously - you name it!

Hosea also mentions a specific fruit of lies in his day that we still believe today ---

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You have eaten the fruit of lies—
    trusting in your military might,
believing that great armies
    could make your nation safe.

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** Now the terror that we have began to feel has become real action!

Deep inside many hearts people are experiencing a repressed terror. My own children believe revolution is imminent. That it is too late to turn it back now. They just hope that it will be handled on paper and by words not violent action.

Groups like Occupy Wall Street and similar actions were initial calls for this needed, inevitable revolution and things have only gotten worse politically, socially, and financially since. The injustices have become more deeply entrenched. The unsustainable inequities have become more pronounced and reduced more individuals to poverty or barely getting by. The American dream has become a tale from the past, now shattered, and in reach of fewer and fewer individuals. Hard work has never so undermined and undervalued by the political and hyper-financial classes.

And throughout the world the fulfillment of Hosea has been occurring again and again. The fact that women and children in some places are literally being dashed to death seems impossible in a modern world. We can not let ourselves picture it, imagine it. The terror it raises within us is palpable and we refuse to accept it.

But now, America, according to Hosea, according to the examples and teachings of scripture which were set down as warning to us ...

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The terrors of war
    will rise among your people.
All your fortifications will fall,
    just as when Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel.
Even mothers and children
    were dashed to death there.

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You can probably name a handful of groups in the world that are wanting to bring that war here, to our own soil. Some of them have already done so.

*** Because of our great wickedness, in and out of the church, we will share that great fate!

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You will share that fate, America,
    because of your great wickedness.
When the day of judgment dawns,
your ruler-ship will be completely destroyed.

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Hear ye the word of the Lord
given through the prophet Hosea.

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photo credits:

Grape Vine By MonsterMuffin20 @flickr com
This city is burning by Kevin Tiqui some rights reserved @ flickr.com