Jeroboamism

2 Kings 3:2-3 KJV

And he wrought evil in the sight of the LORD; but not like his father, and like his mother: for he put away the image of Baal that his father had made.

Nevertheless he cleaved unto the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin; he departed not therefrom.

The Jehoram did not sin in the same way as his father because he removed the worship of Baal from the land, but he did continue the sin of Jeroboam. Jeroboam's sin was not in leading people to worship the false gods of the world but to divert the people's worship from the house God had sanctioned and by ordaining priests God had not called.

America and indeed our world today is filled with Jeroboam's sin. There are those who claim to worship the living God but refuse what they call "organized religion." They will name the name of Christ but they will not meet in the house of God and with the people of God. They especially will not submit to the ministry authority of a man of God.

In some cases they have constructed their own places of worship.

Some of those places have existed now for centuries, but their age does not negate the fact that they were man made and not God sanctioned.

Some of them (though generally speaking they are not the oldest of them but modernized versions of protestant denominations) have quite large gatherings.

But the popularity of a movement does not imply the blessing of God upon it, even if they claim God's blessing.

Almost all of them have rejected God's "organized church" and have chosen for themselves their own priests and pastors.

Popular writers or itinerant preachers, male and female, work the circuit for these new followers of Jeroboam. The television and Internet have provided the ideal setting for them in that they can feel like they have been fed without any commitment to personal growth or responsibility to service.

The dangers of Jeroboamism is that this lose and shepherdless (or false shepherd) faith is that it lacks spiritual discernment often leads to deeper versions of idolatry such as the Baalism of Ahab's day. Once people have been led to leave the authority of God's house there is little to prevent them from experimenting further in Satan's many substitutes for truth. Even so we find out world filled with a plethora of "worse" idols.

• I heard today that the false religion of Mormonism grew faster than any religion in Washington State over the last two years.
• Those who claim to be the most fundamental of our spiritual leaders are about to find themselves almost forced to politically endorse a Mormon for the Presidency.
• Islam is growing at an enormous rate.

We have abandoned the church Jesus said He would build and have embraced Jeroboamism in the forms of Catholicism and Protestantism (including the most recent versions of it - reformed churches and emergent churches) and it is leading to spiritual sins that are even worse.