In the days of the judges in Israel, prior to the work of Samuel and after the death of Joshua, Eli reigned as Judge and High Priest over the nation. The Sanctuary of the LORD was in Shiloh and the sons of Eli served as priests.
Pitifully and alarmingly, these sons of Eli slept with the women who came to sacrifice unto the LORD in the Sanctuary’s precincts and greedily desecrated the sacrifice of the LORD so much so that people ceased to come to the Sanctuary to worship. Several warnings, dreams, visions, and prophecies were sent to Eli and his sons over these evils without effect until God Himself took up the matter.
The nation was soon at war with the Philistines and sent for the ARK OF GOD. Thinking that the presence of God will give them victory, they sadly placed their faith in the symbol instead of the “Creator”. They lost miserably and the Ark was ceased by the Philistines. The sons of Eli were slain in the war and Eli fell to death on hearing these. His in-law also went into forced labour. She named the child Ichabod, for, said she, the Glory (of God) is departed from Israel!!
Israel was now without a leader, Judge, and protector, until Samuel came. This history repeated itself in Christ’s day when He was rejected and crucified by the nation. He told them, “Your house is left unto you desolate”, meaning, that the Glory of God has departed from Israel. And departed it did when the curtain in the Temple was torn at His crucifixion and Jerusalem was razed to the ground by the Romans. The nation was scattered until 1948 when Israel🇮🇱 became a nation.
The condition of Israel in Eli and Christ’s day is the condition of the church today. The world is full of evil today because of the silence of a dead church!! The Christianity of our day maintains the forms and trappings of religion but lacks the power and spirit thereof. She holds the Bible and does the contrary. She has wealthy well-fed priests in the midst of poor laity. Her priests have sanctimonious names like “Most Reverend, Holy Father, Monsignor, Doctor of Divinity” etc, but partake in the darkest sins. She blesses homosexuality and praises corrupt politicians for fame and money.
The Christianity of today is a lifeless body, a saltless salt, a Christless Christianity, a whitened sepulcher full of rotten bones, a church without a Bible, a society of friends where sin is garnished and hypocrisy reigns. Surely, the glory of God is absent in most churches of today and by extension, the world: Ichabod! The church and the world are sitting in intense darkness under chains and retribution is close at hand. Not by Philisti or the Romans, but by Jehovah Himself.
Give me the old-time religion…that’s my prayer!
