Today’s passage is part of a strong statement against idolatry in Deuteronomy. Idolatry is the worship of any “god” but the true God, YAHWEH, the God who made the heavens and earth (Gen. 2:4). YAHWEH is God of Israel. But even before Israel’s nationhood YAHWEH was God, and for that reason the name “YAHWEH” is attributed to God throughout the earliest Biblical accounts in Genesis. YAHWEH was both the God of Israel and the God of the entire world and universe!
Nevertheless,
supposedly intelligent people deny this.
I want to share with you a paragraph from a 1918 Guide to Southern
Palestine published by “The News of Palestine.” This was back in the day when “travel guides”
were really travel guides. It wasn’t a
book of hotels and restaurants. Rather
it was a book that really gave you a background on where it was you wanted to
tour. So in the early part of this book
there is a history of Southern Palestine, in 1918 very shortly after the ANZAC
forces under Gen. Allenby had delivered Beersheba from the control of the
Ottomans. Here is just one paragraph,
describing from the Old Testament, the religion of Israel.
Meanwhile, the worship
of Yahweh was essentially advanced by the writings of Amos, Hosea, Micah,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets. The advance consisted mainly in loftier
ideas of the moral and spiritual nature of the Deity, leading to the conception
of Yahweh as the God, not merely of Israel, but of the whole world. This was a basis on which the religion of
Israel could be preserved and developed amid the coming troubles. One of the most important events in the
history of the religion of Israel is the centralization of the worship of
Yahweh in Jerusalem in the days of JOSIAH (620 BC), a movement consequent on
the introduction of the new book of the law, Deuteronomy.
This isn’t a Bible commentary or theological
book; it’s a guide book for travelers to the Middle East. So, where did this person get these ideas,
that “centralization of the worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem” was not required
until the time of Josiah? Is the author maybe some Islamist or Jew-hater, an Ottoman
who is upset about the turn of events? I
honestly don’t know much about the author, but honestly, that has nothing to do
with this. The fact is, this was the
common belief of the day.
This rejection of an early date for Deuteronomy
was put forward by liberal, often German, theologians of the day. They denied the inerrancy of Scripture. They
denied inerrancy because they were anti-supernaturalists. They denied the miraculous, which included
words prophesied and then fulfilled, sometimes hundreds of years later. Thus, they had to put Deuteronomy into the
time of Josiah because Deut. 28 and 32 were being fulfilled before their very
eyes, and the prophets like Amos, Hosea, et. al. were referring to Deuteronomy
as they called the people to repentance.
In my view, this was all settled in the
Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy of the early 1900s. The conclusion was that Scripture could be
trusted. But here is the truly sad
thing. Today, this late-date for
Deuteronomy “stuff” has made a come-back.
Even in my own state of Montana there are “evangelicals” who hold to
this idea. It is an attack on the
veracity of Scripture.
So, let me restate the simple facts from Dt.
1:1-2: first, Deuteronomy is the words of Moses; second, Moses spoke these words
in the plains of Moab when Israel was about to cross over into Canaan; and third,
the people of Israel then, and the people of Israel after that time, were
accountable to God for obedience to what was said by Moses. If you deny that, you deny the Scriptures
that have been preserved by God and passed down to us today. This is a truly important issue. It is a part of the theological attack on God’s
future plan for Israel. Deuteronomy 32
strongly promises and predicts the salvation of the nation of Israel. Denial of that promise is a major part of the
deception of the latter days. We need to
stand strong on this matter!
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