It is impossible to miss the evil changes taking place on television. I don't watch the sinful sitcoms on TV but you cannot miss the ads and the commercials about those programs. Unfortunately, they are extremely popular with the younger crowd, those thirty-five and under. Many Christians too are watching such programs that push forward terrible images of sex to entice our most impressionable population.
The Bible hints that such changes can be expected. In the Scriptures, especially the OT, sexual sins are most prominent. For example, the sins of the nations are especially referred to with the word "Ashtoreth." The Ashtoreh refers to the goddess of sex. She was worshiped by the pagan world and then by the Jews. The name Ashterte comes from this word. We get the word "Easter" from this description.
Have you noticed on TV how a new program may begin with a certain plot that does not have a salacious intent to it. But by several programs down the road, the plots begin more and more to have a sexual connotation to them. Suddenly the audience is hooked! I am shocked by the commercials that I see advertising such shows. The content is getting worse and worse! There seems to be no stopping of what Hollywood is trying to put forward.
All of this is driven by the Ashtoreth. Sexual sins are the most open and also the most subtle. All cultures and societies around the world are driven by sexual sins. America went the longest without such open temptation. Then, the last three or four decades, driven by television, it all began to collapse in this country. This is what happened to Israel. The Jews at first destroyed the Ashtorah poles of the pagan peoples in the Holy Land. But in time, the Jews joined the pagans in taking on the sexual attitudes of the people of the land.
2 Kings 21 tells us Hezekiah destroyed the evil Ashtorah high places. But "Manasseh erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah (grove), as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them" (v. 3). In fact, "he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he made his son pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and used divination, and dealt with mediums and spiritualists. He did much evil in the sigh of the Lord provoking Him to anger" (vv. 5-6).
Manasseh "set the carved image of Asherah that he made, in the house of which the Lord said to David … 'I have chosen the house (temple) in Jerusalem, which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel, I will put My Name there forever'" (v. 7).
At the Asherah groves all the sexual evil of the pagan world was practiced. Such evil is here in America today. The Word of God puts such practices in the dark but when the Bible is lost to the culture, such sins return. This is why today we have an explosion of homosexuality, transgender relations, unleashed abortion, College students "hanging out" together with sexual sins—and no one seems to know how to stop them.
God said "I will bring calamity on Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of this calamity, both his ears shall tingle. … I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. … I will abandon the remnant of My inheritance and deliver them into the hand of their enemies, and they shall become as plunder and spoil to all their enemies, because they have done evil in My sight, and have been provoking Me to anger" (vv. 13-15).
The pagan world "has also made Judah sin with his idols" (v. 11). The enemy, foreigner, and stranger is entering our gates. They are coming in from Mexico and the Middle East. They know not our Reformation/Christian heritage. They know nothing of our Christian values and beliefs. They are destroying and polluting our morals and removing the Word of God from our practices. We are too impotent to stop them. We are going along with what they "teach" us.
We will be reaping what we have sown!
—Dr. Mal Couch (4/11)
