"... Satan works to blend together his system with God's system, because when you
blend error with truth you have destroyed the truth. You no longer have a mixture of
truth and error; you have error. Just like when you take poison and put it in a glass of
milk -- you not only have a glass of milk and poison, you have a glass of poison, because
the poison has corrupted the good milk. So it is with Satan's system when it is
mixed-in, even with Biblical things, it becomes a corrupting influence and you
no longer have truth and error -- you have error. And the truth is even corrupted by
the error.
"... Part of the ministry and message of Jeremiah was one of condemnation because Israel had adopted the corrupting influence of the worship of the Queen of Heaven [Jer. 44:17,18] ... Important to note -- people are concerned about what works. One of the things destroying the church today is pragmatism. We find even believers looking to see what works and that becomes the standard for what they want to adopt, rather than looking to the Word of God and building upon that. And this is the foundation for why the people of Israel were worshiping the Queen of Heaven ... It's just a pragmatic approach; things worked better.
"And that's the way some Christians look at it. They look around and see what's
going on in some churches and they say, 'Well, that's what we ought to do --
it works!' But
that's never a fair test or standard. The question is, 'Is it Biblical?' not 'Does it work?'
Because here the testimony of the Jews [Jer. 44:17,18] was, 'We were better off; we had
less misfortune when we worshiped the Queen of Heaven then we do now, so Jeremiah, you
can't change our mind.'"
* Taken from a sermon titled Apostate Church in Prophecy, preached 11/26/89 (Gil Rugh).
