You don’t have to make apologies when you’re out there and the world wants to talk to you about some of these other issues.  You don’t have to go in and try to adapt somehow.  You’ve heard different renderings of it, whether it be the gap theory or whatever else it might be to cause the church to be able to conform to all of these ages and eons supposedly that it took for evolution to work.  We’ve arrived at a place, where the true science, true science is continually discovering the truth of God’s word.  It started many, many years ago.  Remember all of the great scientists were Christians.  Galileo, many of these; most of our great inventors were people who had some kind of knowledge of the Word of God.  What was it that motivated these men to discover that the world was not flat?  It’s when they were reading in Isaiah and saw where he spoke of the circle of the earth, they were like, “Huh… Well; let’s go find out. 

I’m talking about, with all this stuff constantly trying to inundate the church, how we need to pray like we’ve never prayed before, how we need to get on our faces before God and understand these truths.  Many of us are here and we, just because Jesus has radically changed our lives, we know His reality, we know His presence, we know the miracle of regeneration when we become born-again people.  The Bible says, “…old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”  Amen?  We experienced it when we humbled ourselves, when we got off the throne and asked Jesus to exert that role in our lives as Lord God Savior; amen?  We changed.  The things we used to love, we now hate, and the things we used to hate, we now love.  We’re a new creation, old things have passed away, all things are new.  Our eyes are opened and because of that, we’ve accepted many of these great revelations but have not taken time to familiarize ourselves with these truths.  I’m not saying that every class that we have needs to be an apologetics class.  I don’t even think apologetics should be a big part of our evangelism efforts.

But, beloved, we need to be able to give a reason of the hope that’s in us; amen?  Yes, thank God we start with our experience, who was it that did this?  What is this teaching that’s going on?  All I know is this the man said, “Once I was blind and now, I can see; go ask Him.”  Amen?  We have that experience, I know this.  Once I was blind and now, I see, praise God.  I am not the same person, my mind has been renewed, my spirit-man has come back to life.  I’m no longer under sin’s power; I’m no longer under Satan’s power.  I’m free, the scales have fallen from my eyes, praise God, the Word of God makes sense now.  I can read the Scriptures.  They are alive to me, and I can love people that I used to hate.  So here we are, and the world is opposing us and it’s going to get worse.

Second Chronicles, Chapter 29, in the days of Hezekiah— Let’s remember that just prior to Hezekiah coming, the kings, such as Ahaz, were ruling wickedly.  The lands were being possessed at that time that Israel and Judah were occupying, the areas from Samaria through the coast of Philistia, the conflict with Assyria and Syria, the other nations that would be solicited at times to come in and side with one side and battle with them and then change hands the next decade.  We see in the Scriptures, reading through Kings and Chronicles—good king, wicked king, good king, wicked king.  In the midst of all of that, God raises up a man called Hezekiah.  Look at 2 Kings, Chapters 18-20; parallel 2 Chronicles, Chapters 29-32, and Isaiah, Chapters 36-39.  All of those chapters together and gives you a good overview of what’s taking place here.  Just prior to Hezekiah’s reign we saw that those who had possessed the land thought it was good that a teacher be sent back to the regions to be able to instruct the inhabitants there in the way of their God.

Remember, each of these nations were polytheistic, which means they had more than one god, (poly for many).  Primarily, they would have gods that would have to do with the weather and rain.  They had gods that involved themselves in the conflicts of the nation that they would pray to and that would cause them to be victorious.  There were the gods that they believed in for fertility and the multiplying of their seed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but there were also regional gods.  They believed there were gods of the mountains.  They believed there were gods of the valleys, so if you’re going to fight in the valley this week, you need a valley god.  So, we have this as the mentality.  Idolatry was running rampant, of course.  It takes us back to God’s original command when Joshua took the people of Israel, the covenant people, into the Promised Land.

People talk about, “Oh, this horrible God, the bloody God of the Old Testament.”  Let’s remind ourselves that a little leaven leavens the whole lump; amen?  He said, “When you go into their midst, I want you to destroy all of them: men, women, children, kill their cattle.  I don’t want the world involved in your lives at all.”  Now, let’s step back quickly to 2 Corinthians, the admonition of Paul to the church, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you” (2 Corinthians 6:17).  Amen?  To be a friend of the world is to be the enemy of God.  Why?  Because the world still has idols, gods that are raised up to defy the living God.  We’re living in a time where Hezekiah is just getting ready to come into power.  If we’ll quickly turn over to Kings here, it will give us an idea of where these people are finding themselves and in the seventeenth chapter of 2 Kings, you can look over at verse 16 and let me quickly hit a couple of verses.  “They left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images….”  Verse 17, “And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire….”  Human sacrifice.