Some of you may know Bible history well enough to recognize the phrase “the Sin of Jeroboam”. It refers to the cult religion instituted by Jeroboam in his revolt against Rehoboam and the royal House of David. Ostensibly, it was a political move to prevent his subjects returning to Jerusalem several times a year to appear for mandatory Temple rituals. He was afraid his subjects would suffer an emotional urge to restore the House of David over the northern tribes.
While succeeding dynasties in the Northern Kingdom added in other pagan cults, the one thing that remained in the conversation and minds of the folks there was the name “Jehovah” and its association with the cult shrines at Dan and Bethel. The mythology of Baal was included, while keeping the name of Jehovah. It was a strong pagan cult and teaching that displaced the Covenant of Moses and its revelation. This syncretism was a recurring theme since before the Exodus, and manifested in the rebellion with the Golden Calf. That symbol was used in both of Jeroboam’s shrines.
Thus, any time you read in the historical accounts a reference to God in the mouths of someone in the north, it carries the baggage of those shrines and the false religion raised up in His name. They seldom denied that Jehovah was their nation’s God, but they had twisted the meaning of His name so that it represented something else entirely. It reduced Him from being God of all Creation to being merely a national deity among other valid deities.
Today, Zionism stands as another cult, rather like that of Jeroboam. Zionism has inherited the same underlying rejection of the God who revealed Himself, and replaces Him with something made up from human political ambitions. And the churchians who go along with this madness are no better. It’s all just a wild cult that has been called up to serve human ambition. The problem is that this thing is not just an idea, but a demonic power that seduces and destroys.
This is the Sin of Jeroboam: religion built by political ambition. It’s a damned bad idea the Devil sold to someone desperate to fulfill the desires of their fleshly nature. For American church folks, it turns Christian religion into a nationalist cult. For Jews, it turns God into a lackey for their ambition to rule the world.
And the same destruction that took away the northern tribes will come upon both modern Israel and the US. There is no covenant protection outside the Covenant. Neither the US nor Israel are special to God.
In my understanding, the warnings implicit about Jeroboam are a lot more relevant to us today than the more popularized Sodom and Gomorrah. Jeroboam doesn’t have that dramatic factor that S&G do, so we (westerners) are less likely to remember it.