There was more for Ezekiel to see, for in verse 13 God tells the prophet that there are even greater abominations that have oozed into His Church. The church of Ezekiel's day had become paganized just as the Church world wide, but particularly in America, is becoming more and more paganized.
This is manifest most vividly in three areas. 1) Moral permissiveness i.e., the increased embracing of homosexual deviancy, not only as permissible, but acceptable to the degree that such individuals should be ministers in the Church. 2) Unholy devotion to the natural world. I'm not talking about the appreciation of nature as a testimony to God's creation. I'm referring to those who see God as Father and Nature as Mother the environmental Church where saving endangered Puerto Rican Red Cave Cockroaches is equal to saving souls! 3) The old demonic wizardry of mind over matter now being so widely accepted, especially by Charismatics, as faith. I'm referring here to Positive Confession, Visualization, trance inducing meditation, controlling or using our "guardian" angels (which is necromancy or having familiar spirits).
In Ezekiel 8:14 16 we find this paganism. In verse 14 women are seen weeping for Tammuz. Tammuz was the Babylonian goddess of new life and liberty as symbolized by spring. Now spring, as we all know, is beautiful but short lived. In this mythology and idolatry, a male deity who was the life of spring dies and a female deity, Tammuz, is prayed to and worshiped in hopes she will bring him back to life. There is a picture in a set of Bible encyclopedias of this goddess as depicted in an artifact of antiquity. She is amazing because she is, from the shape of the wreath on her head to the uplifted bristles in her hand, a twin to the Statue of Liberty!
In this day of the religious political right, the Christian coalition etc., it is considered almost heretical to say that the USA, while settled largely by ordinary Christian people, was not framed governmentally by born again politicians, nor modeled after a godly ethic!
More than anything else, this country arose from the New Thinking "illuminate" philosophy of an emerging New Europe (led by the French). This era was the beginning of humanism and New Age paganism. Many of the "founding fathers" were New Age deists (there is a God, but He is absent). They included Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Thomas Paine. From our capitol's architecture, to this nation's law and legislature, it was patterned after ancient pagan Greece and Rome not the Bible.
The Church in America must realize that the United States is a neo pagan society in government as well as culture. Christians in this land must make themselves ready for their coming King by purging themselves of the Red, White and Blue. Tammuz sits at our gate in New York City. An obelisk (phallus) is the monument to Washington. The great pyramid of Egypt with the all seeing eye of Satan atop it adorns our money. The phrase "liberty and pursuit of happiness" trumpets the basic tenet of Humanism the above all value and power of Man. In holding so tight to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the Church turns its back on God's temple as they did in Ezk. 8:16 to worship the sun god of paganism! Oh! Yes they do!
Deuteronomy 4:20 told us that we were a people of inheritance of God's inheritance. This is a Kingdom of God inheritance, not an American or African or Asian inheritance. It is an inheritance of spiritual, not earthly or political, liberty (I Cor. 7:21). Yet, from many black pulpits and the white right we often hear more about the promise politic than the promised land. God's Kingdom is surely in this world but as assuredly still not of this world. America is not only not "God's country," it is Babylon the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. It is pagan.
The greatest proof that this is totally a pagan society is its violence. Violence, more than any other "fruit," is the proof of paganism. Ezekiel 8:17 says, "for they have filled the land with violence." Violence, not sexual sin or drunkenness, was the sign that the world had hit bottom causing God to destroy it by the flood (Gen. 6:13). The violence of Sodom marked that society's lowest ethic (Gen. 19:9).
America's senseless violence today is the chicken that comes home to roost again and again, for this is a nation founded on genocide. Native tribes were eradicated and/or incarcerated as "Christian men" stole their land and lives. "Christian men" fought each other in a civil war not so much over slaves as over cotton, iron, and political control.
Christian, where do you think all the paganism in the Church is coming from? It is coming from the Sodom in which we live, the Sodom which so many Lots are so fond of. The Sodom so many love to emulate in their music, dress, goals, etc. We are worshiping the stars, the host of heaven, in doing this.
The Church's divorce rate is not much different from the world's. We can't tell someone they are in sin by practicing lesbianism because people believe "God made them that way." You can't even tell someone it's ungodly to smoke cigarettes. Drug addicts and alcoholics are not in moral sin, they are "diseased." Every major denominational or international interfaith summit now is sure to have a statement on how "sinful" the Church has been for not doing more to protect "Mother Earth." I could go on.
From sea to shining sea the Church is echoing pagan views and not standing on, and certainly not demanding adherence to, God's statutes and judgments. This spot can only be purged when the Church completely renounces and separates from the pagan societies in which they live. Only then can we be His bride and He our God. We must get over this fantasy of our American heritage being a godly heritage. In actuality, the American heritage, from the beginning, is pagan. Only then can we be the people of His inheritance (II Cor. 6:14 7:1).
Only those individuals in Christendom who have made themselves ready will be sealed and be the Bride of Christ for which He will return. We must flee the idols of institutionalized Diotrephesism (denominationalism), and Americanized Christianity (paganized, new age Christianity). The failure to do so will result in what follows in Ezekiel 8 and 9.