'The greatest short story'

Listening to a classic Billy Graham sermon on the radio Sunday morning following Jordan’s weekly show (WYLL 1160 AM at 8:30), he preached the Parable of the Prodigal Son, informing his audience at a huge outdoor event held on the Ohio-Kentucky border that Luke’s account has been called “the greatest short story ever told.”

As soon as I got to church I couldn’t wait to look up the 22-verse passage, examining it specifically for its literary genius. When I got home this afternoon I found on Google that it was Charles Dickens who gave the parable the “greatest short story ever” rating.

Then I read from a preacher’s blog that “When the great American storyteller Mark Twain was asked, “Who do you think is the best storyteller every lived?” Mark twain answered, “Jesus Christ.” Then which story is the greatest story ever told?” He replied, “The Story of the Prodigal Son.”

In another Google entry, Poet Robert Bridges is said to have called Luke’s work  “a flawless piece of art.”

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I am working on a new piece regarding the time period of the Minor Prophet books (from Jordan’s Wednesday night studies). In the meantime, here is a background piece I put together in 2008:

 When couples come to my church for marriage counseling they’re given a homework assignment: Write down all the kings from when Israel was divided into a northern and southern kingdom and distinguish between those who were good and those who were wicked.

The idea is to have troubled mates concentrate on something that doesn’t involve fighting. By necessity, they usually end up working as a team, poring over the Old Testament verses for the answers.

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Crucial to understanding Israel’s institution of Baal worship, and its subsequent Babylonian captivity, is the knowledge that in 975 B.C.—at end of the reign of Israel’s third king, King Solomon—the nation was split in two by a dark, deep rebellion.

Suddenly, there were two separate empires—Israel, the northern kingdom composed of 10 tribes, and Judah, the southern kingdom made up of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.

“The northern kingdom apostatized more than the southern kingdom, and for almost 300 years there was civil strife as king after king sat upon the thrones of both Judah and Israel,” explains Hutchings. “Finally, God could look no longer upon the sins of Israel and He turned his face from them as the Assyrian Empire conquered and ravaged the land, even from Dan to Bethel.

 

“A remnant of the ten tribes of the northern kingdom escaped into Judah; thousands were taken into captivity to Nineveh, and aliens were imported by the Assyrians to mix with those remaining in the land. This was done by the enemy so that Israel might be destroyed as both a country and a people.”

 

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The classic passage in Jeremiah 44 about the apostate Jews worship of the Queen of Heaven starts out with the people complaining to the prophet: “But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.”

 

Before that, they had explained that when they did worship the Queen, as their fathers, kings and princes had done, they had had “plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil.”

 

The message was, “When we worshipped Baal, we had plenty of vittles and everybody was happy, but now that we’ve switched back to God, we’re hurtin’!”

 

Jordan explains, “In other words, ‘When we worshipped the devil, he took care of us and he prospered his church and we didn’t have any problems.’

 

“You’re in trouble, brother, if the estimation of success for you is whether your church is prospering and people are coming in and your offerings are going up.

 

“All this talk today about church growth—they been doing this ever since preachers ever got around taking to each other. The emphasis on growing, and having an upward mobility curve, and getting the right percentage growth and everybody mobilized and growing—it’s got to be ‘God blessing!’

 

“These birds said, ‘Boy, when we worshipped the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, our offerings went up every month and attendance was up! We had groceries and nobody persecuted us. And as quick as we started standing for what God said and going by the Book, you know what happened? Well, our attendance went down and the rats were jumping from the sewer trying to get away and we couldn’t get anybody to come to church and we couldn’t pay the mortgage and we couldn’t make the bond payments and we couldn’t get anybody out at prayer meetings. So we’re going to go back to the other thing because it’s what worked.’ The thinking was, ‘Don’t question us on whether it was right or not; it worked.’ ”

 

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In the competition between the northern and southern kingdom, the people were made to stay away from Jerusalem (Israel’s “headquarters” where God required every Jewish male to travel to three times a year to worship) by the erection of temples in the north.

 

The government propaganda, explains Jordan, was, “Go to the church of your choice, just don’t go to Jerusalem—it’s too far. I know they preach the Bible, but it’s too far to go across town over there. I mean, if you gotta travel 20-30 miles to get to church that’s too far and people don’t appreciate you. Go to a branch in your neighborhood. I know God said Jerusalem’s where you got to go worship but don’t be so bigoted and narrow-minded about things. I mean, fella, don’t you know you’re so narrow-minded that a fly could sit on the bridge of your nose and kick you in both your eyes at the same time?!’

 

“Folks, you thought all that stuff was just excuses some 20^th Century smart fellow invented, didn’t you?! They been putting those kind of excuses out for 2,000 years. They were doing it 1,500 years before Christ!”

 

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As part of setting up the false church of the north, priests were installed who weren’t Levites (the only ones God ordained for priesthood).

 

I Kings 12 reports that northern king Jeroboam “made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi.
[32] And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made: and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made.”

 

Jordan explains, “In other words, Jeroboam’s going to use the Levitical system to worship the idols with. That’s what you call biblical idolatry. Jeroboam’s using the Scripture and the scriptural system and setting up his own class of priests but they’re just not priests.

 

“You see, he’s counterfeiting the real thing. Notice he set aside the 15^th day of the month, which he devised of his own heart. Boy, I hope you see that! Jesus said to a bunch of people one time, ‘You teach the commandments, the traditions of men, and when you do you make void the Word of God.’

 

“Notice that the molten calf of Exodus 32 reappears over there in I Kings 12. You see, Jeroboam just reached back and took the tradition and set that thing up. They reasoned, ‘Our body of tradition and scholarship says this is it.’ The problem is their tradition and scholarship was wrong!

 

“It like Aaron passing off that (calf altar) as part of a feast to Jehovah. You lying rascal! A feast of Jehovah! It had nothing in the world to do with God Almighty! That’s Baal worship—that’s an image to the devil and it’s the worship of Satan under the guise of worshipping Jehovah.

 

“In Kings it says that Israel ‘served the Lord and worshipped idols.’ You know what that is, that’s total apostasy! You know what Daniel said? ‘I’m not going to have any part of that.’ He said, ‘You’re not gonna see me worshipping Baal, claiming I’m worshipping God.’ Folks, the end of all apostasy is idolatry and idolatry is this stuff right here!”