When the Land Vomits
Dan Unruh
As Americans celebrated our nation’s birthday last Saturday the media is gleefully barraging us with the news of some who are celebrating what once was considered sickening and outright repulsive. Although God has blessed America with a beautiful land, He has also warned that when the inhabitants of a land defile themselves they also defile the land they inhabit. And when the land is defiled, it vomits. “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:24-25). Briefly stated, “these things” were an obsession with nakedness (verses 1-19), adultery (verse 20), the sacrifice of children (verse 21), homosexuality (verse 22), and bestiality (verse 23).
This “progression in perversity,” a phrase that gives more accurate meaning to the political “Progressive” label, parallels what has been occurring in our beautiful land for the past few generations. Outlined by decade, it was in the 1950’s that nakedness began coming out of the closet. In the 1960’s the “sexual revolution” made adultery shameless. In the 1970’s the sacrificing of children, “abortion,” was legalized. Then in the 1980’s homosexuals were emboldened to begin coming out of the closet in greater numbers. The popular vote in state after state opposed this “progression in perversity” until June 26, 2015 when five Supreme Court despots declared that their will superseded that of We the People. Next in the progression? Bestiality – a perversion already becoming acceptable in nations that legalized sodomite marriage before “the five” did.
Of course, some like to smugly point out that the book of Leviticus also condemns the eating of certain foods like pork and shrimp. However, what their beguiling talking-points sources do not inform them is that those dietary laws were for theocratic Israel alone, not for other nations. In other words, that which God prohibited Israel from eating He did not consider an abomination to others. For example, Deuteronomy 14:21, “Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God….” Thus, they were not to eat it, but they could sell it to others to eat!
Or they reference Leviticus 19:19, where God instructs theocratic Israel not to allow the breeding of two kinds of cattle together, the sowing of two kinds of seed together, or the mixing of garment materials. “See,” say they, “if you are going to judge us who practice what Leviticus 18:22 calls an abomination, you must also judge yourself for violating Leviticus 19:19!”
Never mind that God never says that other nations were defiled for the mixing of fabrics, seeds or breeds. Those statutes were designed to teach Israelites to “be holy unto” God (Leviticus 20:26) by learning to make distinctions (Leviticus 20:25). Israel had been delivered from pagan Egypt and was about to enter pagan Canaan where moral distinctions were ignored (Leviticus 18:3). One can be sure that if a person learned how to distinguish between a wheat and barley seed, or between a garment of wool and that of cotton, or between a goat and an ass, he would certainly know how to distinguish between a man and a woman! A distinction that even little children have the power to make that evidently eludes adult progressives who ludicrously confer upon the gender-confused inapplicable titles like “courageous.”
Indeed, due to the compromise and effeminate attitude of so many churches, religious institutions and leaders, we find ourselves in an increasingly greater battle over the issue of sexual perversion. For example although Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, rightly decried the faulty Supreme Court Decision, he is the same one who less than two years ago was featured in a Wall Street Journal article entitled, “Evangelical Leader Preaches A Pullback From Politics, Culture Wars” (The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, October 22, 2013, p. A1). Mr. Moore, in Obama-like fashion, basically announced ahead of time to the enemies of the gospel that he was tired of the fight and was ready to surrender. And some of the reasons given for this “pullback”? According to the Journal summary, “to keep millennials engaged in the church” and out of concern for “alienated young believers.” Moore’s quoted advice to church leaders is just as revealing: be “winsome, kind and empathic.” Perhaps he and other men of his caliber think that is the type of preaching God bid Jonah have when he finally entered sick Nineveh?
This comment from the PatriotPost.com’s 5/29/15 “Daily Digest” well communicates the sissy response most professing Christians have had and will continue to have: “Cultural and casual Christians, the ones who believe philanthropy and showing up for a holiday service is their only necessary spiritual response, will quickly self-identify and want to change the subject. Eventually, these fair-weather believers will either deepen their faith or more explicitly abandon it to avoid social stigma or name-calling.”
Our land is so sick it is about to vomit. Yet, to those who are disheartened by the celebration of this defilement, surrender yourself to be the fulfillment of Ezekiel 22:30, “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it….” Moses was that man for Israel: “Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach (same Hebrew word as “gap” in Ezekiel 22:30), to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them” (Psalm 106:23).
May the Lord God not have to say of America, “…but I found none.” Rather, may the truly courageous stand in the breach that has been made in our land, claiming the promise given in II Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
Dan Unruh is the pastor of Westside Baptist Church in Greeley, CO. He blogs at Get it Straight! where this article first appeared.