Title: 13
Author: JOEG
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© 2002 Joe Griffin	                                   ▼                        02-01-31.JSH-607 /

The Inscrutable Question: Indictment of a Decadent Client Nation, Hosea 4:1-6; Charles Feinberg’s Synopsis of Hosea 4
	25-	The Northern Kingdom suffered similar circumstances under threat from the Assyrians and were warned by a man, known as the Prophet of Doom, named Hosea.  His chilling prophecy found in chapter 4 of his book is a classic indictment of decadent client nations:
Hosea 4:1 -		Hear the word of the Lord, you citizens of Israel, because the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the nation because nothing of doctrine is being taught. Therefore, nothing of grace is being applied. There is no knowledge of God in the land. 
1)	The nation of Israel is called to order before the Supreme Court of Heaven by the words, “Hear the word of the Lord!”  Following this is the reading of the indictment against the client nation and its people: (1) no “truth” which means there is no doctrine being taught, (2) no “mercy” which refers to the lack of grace orientation to life and circumstances, and (3) no “knowledge” which means the people have no divine viewpoint.
Hosea 4:2 -		Instead there is treachery, deception, murder, stealing, and adultery. There is violence and bloodshed follows bloodshed [ NASB: idiom for criminal actions that are unrestrained and go unpunished ]. 
2)	This bill of indictment must and will be dealt with by the Supreme Court and means there is about to be a major downtrend in the history of Israel.
3)	We see much of this indictment in evidence within the current Zeitgeist of client nation America: (1) Treachery is common in corporate agreements whether in business contracts or marriage vows, a sin that begins with treachery toward God’s mandates; (2) deception is rampant whether by the flimflam of advertising or the rhetorical veils of special interest groups; (3) murder is willingly redefined whether it involves a mother who drowns her children or terrorists who ambush innocent civilians; …
(4) stealing has become sophisticated whether it is by overburdening taxation or by cooking the books at Enron; (5) adultery is now another lifestyle whether it is running around on your spouse to shamelessly moving in with one’s current whore.  (6) The seriousness of criminal violence is plea-bargained down or overlooked altogether since (7) the lack of virtue among the people is transferred to the various areas of jurisprudence beginning with the law-school professor and extending to the judge on the bench.
Hosea 4:3 -		Therefore, the land mourns and all who live in it languish, along with domestic animals, birds and the fish of the sea. They all perish.
4)	The implication here is that drought is a part of the cycles of discipline and has its effects on the animals. 
Hosea 4:4 -		Yet let no one find fault and let no one offer criticism, for actually your citizens should be as those who are complaining, vilifying, reprimanding, quarreling, causing strife against the priests.
		5)	When the client nation enters into the throes of national discipline the people, devoid of integrity, grace, and divine viewpoint, begin to project blame on their fellow citizens.
	6)	However, the real fault lies in the pulpits.  Failure to communicate doctrine has led to a spiritually ignorant population that has for too long bought the lie and thus has no biblical problem-solving devices to face the invasion of a predator nation.
	7)	As a result it can only rely upon human viewpoint which can only produce the temporary fixes of human good and evil.
Hosea 4:5 -		Therefore, you have stumbled in the daylight so that even the prophet will stumble with you in night darkness.  And I will destroy your mother [ client nation ].
	8)	Because of the failure of the priesthood the people’s thinking went astray during the period of national prosperity.  As a result, when the client nation’s historical trend turns downward they are unable to find their way in the spiritual darkness they have created.
Hosea 4:6 -		My people are destroyed because of lack of knowledge.  Because you have rejected knowledge, I will reject you from being My priest nation.  And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.
9)	For a client nation historical downtrends are caused by rejection of Bible doctrine.  This “lack of knowledge” leads to a lack of divine viewpoint and therefore a drought of divine good which means no blessings.
10)	Although the initial cause can be traced to the communicators of doctrine, the people are also to blame because they did not seek out truth or respond to it when they heard it.
11)	God always provides messengers during historical downtrends to warn the people to change their minds about Him, His Word, and His plan.  These individuals were called prophets in the dispensation of Israel: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, et al.
12)	Although the priesthood was faithless, God was faithful and provided warnings through His prophets, therefore the people had no excuse.
13)	They had no knowledge of doctrine because they rejected God’s grace provision.  In turn God rejected them as a client nation.
14)	Since the people of Israel deviated away from the truth and when reminded of it refused to return to it, God was forced to abandon them as the people of His client nation.
15)	“Forgetting their children” means that if any in the next generation have any positive volition they will have to pursue it in the environment of a destroyed nation or choose to make the geographical move to the next client nation.
26-	Dr. Charles L. Feinberg was Colonel Thieme’s favorite Hebrew professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and it is to him, along with Senator Barry M. Goldwater, that he dedicates his book:
Thieme, R. B., Jr.  Anti-Semitism.  2d ed.  (Houston: R. B. Thieme, Jr., Bible Ministries, 1979), iii:
Dedication.  To Jewish friends, old and new, this volume is respectfully and affectionately dedicated.
Barry Goldwater, gentleman, officer, statesman, with whom it was a pleasure to serve in those wartime years.
Dr. Charles L. Feinberg, Hebrew scholar and professor, who made the original languages of the Old Testament so live in the classroom that exegesis became my way of life.
27-	Dr. Feinberg wrote a commentary on what are called the Minor Prophets, a designation that does not imply their revelations are insignificant but rather that they are brief by comparison to others.   They are found at the end of the Christian Old Testament beginning with the book of Hosea.  I believe you will find Dr. Feinberg’s synopsis of Hosea 4 to be very instructive:
Feinberg, Charles L.  The Minor Prophets.  (Chicago: Moody Press, 1948), 28-29:
The cause of the trouble is stated as a lack of knowledge, but only because they have already rejected the knowledge given them.  In this the priests, their teachers, were the chief offenders for they had misled the people of God.  Rejecting the knowledge and will of God, Israel could no longer fill the priestly office, so they are deposed from their noble position.  And all this defection of the people came not because they had not been previously prospered of God.  On the contrary, prosperity had the opposite effect that it should have had.  The more they were multiplied, the more they sinned against the Lord.  Consequently, such glory as they had would be turned into shame.
The accusation of Hosea against the priests of the day is extremely grave.  He charges that the priests delighted in the sins of the people and had their hearts set on the people’s iniquity, because it brought them revenues in fines and sin offerings.  They had a vested interest in the continued sin of Israel.  The priests reaped a harvest in a corrupted and misled people.  Both were equally to be punished for their ways.
Not desiring to retain the knowledge of God, the people were given over to work every kind of moral uncleanness.  It is the same lot which befell the heathen nations as recorded in chapter 1 of Romans.  Occupation with a lifeless ritual ultimately led the people into idolatry and every unclean practice.  Blindness and a spirit of error settled down upon them.
The soul-destroying abominations of the Canaanites became the practice and daily routine of God’s highly favored people.  They conformed to the unwholesome practices about them instead of inveighing with holy zeal and fervor against them.  With these idolatrous rituals, all manner of physical impurity was bound up.  Such pollution spreads as a cancerous growth, and soon the womankind of the nation became corrupt.  The collapse of the nation and its accompanying ruin became inevitable.
Faithlessness toward God always results in faithlessness to the most sacred ties on earth.  If God be not honored in the life, man can expect to fare no better.  Defection from God brings with it disaster in the social and home life of a nation.

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