Patterns of Assimilation

Just as we reviewed and summarized Satan’s replacement and hijacking campaign through Nimrod and Semiramis during the (Abraham) patriarch era, let’s review his campaign in a brief summary of Israel’s history.

Again, the whole strategy of the enemy is to hijack by replacement, either through direct apostasy or assimilation, to deauthorize the legitimate authority of God’s people. By doing so, they become powerless and defeated, first as individuals, then families, nations and ultimately the world. Satan’s end game is global worship of himself by hijacking God’s blueprint.

Israel went down to Egypt as a tribe, but when God delivered them from the womb of oppression, Moses helped mid-wife the birth of a nation. God called this newborn His armies. He brought them to a mountain in the wilderness, and in basic terms, took wedding vows with them.

Just as God required faithfulness from individuals in the patriarch (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) era, He now required faithfulness from a nation, His nation, to model faithfulness to all the nations! They were now physically free, but inward captives to Egypt’s culture – completely unaware of just how mentally enmeshed their souls were with the world they had just been delivered from. God would lead them through a time of decompression; He would cleanse, train and prepare them for a “state of freedom.”

When the time came to enter the Promise Land, Moses reviewed their 40-year classroom, reminding them to stay clean from the surrounding cultures and their gods – those who presently occupied what God was about to give Israel. Moses went on to prophesy that once they took ground in bold obedience to God’s leading, their challenge would be to maintain ground for God’s godly cause. 

God’s intent and design for Israel to be a separate and holy nation, was not to have a “we four and no more club” - just the opposite! It was a pilot initiative to showcase to the world what fulfilled and right living looks like – an image of the spiritual state of good and holy. Israel would be a light to the nations and teach the world about the One True God, who God is and what His will is in the earth. They would be an example for all the world in their relationship to God in both their victories and defeats.

Moses warned that, if not focused, they would eventually dissipate in their force of godliness and begin to absorb ungodliness from the surrounding nations. This happened. In Israel’s early history in the land, they went through a vicious cycle of falling away from their obedient relationship with God and caving to the surrounding culture’s pagan practices. God would then send a prophet calling for repentance; Israel would repent and be stable for a time until yielding yet again to compromise. This time period was called the time of the Judges.

Israel then wanted a king, just like their surrounding neighbors had kings. This was an offense to God, seeing as He was the King of kings and they wanted a king like the other nations that human kings. Nevertheless, God gave them kings. We know this era of monarchy through the story of Saul, David and Solomon, and the kings of Israel.

Saul, the people’s choice, defaulted in the insecurities of his heart to same-o, same-o image management – the uninspiring egotistical leader that chases truly inspired folk around with javelins.

David, God’s choice as a king, whose heart beat with the same insecurities as Saul, however followed after God in spite of his fear with abiding trust. Though far from perfect, he enjoyed the transformation that naturally, though supernaturally, happens through obedience and rightly relating to the Lord and expanded the Kingdom of Israel upon the earth.

And the offspring of that faith, David’s son, Solomon, was blessed with a heritage and enjoyed unbelievable wisdom and abundance while he was building God’s kingdom. But when he started building his own kingdom, egotistically driven, he becomes the absolute epitome of corrupted power – he assimilated himself and became an apostate king. All that he had built for the Lord’s Kingdom was virtually destroyed by the shift of focus to build his own!

After Solomon’s reign, the kingdom was penetrated with corruption, primed for division and began yet another vicious cycle of falling away by kings who did evil in the sight of the Lord and recovery by kings who feared the Lord and did righteously in His sight.