Author: Pastor Jory Brooks

The Shaker communities all died out because they did not allow marriages or births, and only one out of ten children who were brought in by their parents remained in the Shaker religion. Yet some of the other religious denominational oddities of the period are still with us today, shaking the foundations of Christian belief with their disparate and extra-biblical teachings.

Hosea said the Lord would prevent them from finding their path back. “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths…Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.

It is almost beyond belief that concepts of pure paganism pose as Christian in our churches today. Believers need to be warned that not all that is religious is right in the eyes of God.

So, this most important prophecy, the high-water mark of prophetic understanding, could be either literal or spiritual, fulfilled in Jeremiah’s time, or Christ’s sacrifice, or else awaiting the coming millennium. Utter confusion reigns among leading New Testament scholars!

It is troubling that mainstream Christianity today seems to have lost its sense of mission and evangelism. The attitude of many modern evangelicals and fundamentalists is that evangelization—or proselytism, as now disparagingly labeled—is wrong. “We must accept each other as we are. We must candidly remain as we are.”