Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
The story of King Solomon is one of the most fantastic in all sacred history. He starts out apparently perfect with that most rare gift of wisdom. He gets everything added to it. Every year he collects "666 talents of gold" until he has tons of it, he enjoys peace with his prosperity, "and all the earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart" (1 Kings 10:14, 24).
Solomon, you have it made! You have brought heaven on earth, better yet, you are fulfilling God's promise to Abraham that "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Gen. 12:3). And then, Solomon, you blew it; you turned right around and "went after Ashtoreh, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites." You built temples to pagan gods and set them up in our holy city of Jerusalem (1 Kings 11:1-8)! Why, oh why, would you do this? What made you fall like this?
This almost unbelievable history must have a lesson for us today--it's "Solomon's Law," which must be fulfilled again, more than 3000 years later until the lesson is learned. Add to Solomon's impressive "holy" obedience of his early years (with God's undeniable blessings) the factor of Old Covenant thinking, and the recipe calls for national apostasy to develop. Solomon reverses 500 years of Israel's history, takes them back to the "Egyptian" darkness from which they had been delivered.
Now, in our modern Christian history, if we add to all our "holy" obedience to the law (with God's undeniable blessings) the factor of Old Covenant theology, we also inevitably end up going to "Babylon" to learn methods of worship and patterns of thinking. We again reverse our own history. Those who have been sacredly commissioned to proclaim "Babylon the great is fallen" fulfill "Solomon's Law" by adopting Babylon's theology and worship. Solomon finally had the sense to repent. Lord, grant that same precious gift to us!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: July 26, 2002.
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