10 And the Lord said by his servants the prophets, 11 “Because Manasseh king of Judah has committed these abominations and has done things more evil than all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols, 12 therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. 13 And I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria, and the plumb line of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. 14 And I will forsake the remnant of my heritage and give them into the hand of their enemies, and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies, 15 because they have done what is evil in my sight and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even to this day.”
16 Moreover, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides the sin that he made Judah to sin so that they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. (II Kings 21)
Words cannot begin to describe the evil that Manasseh did as king of Judah. After the great years of Hezekiah's revival - removing the idols, faithfully calling out to God for help, refusing to trust in the help of evil people - Manasseh reverses it all and goes miles further away from God, beyond restoring idolatry, to personally sacrificing his children and many other evil practices beyond those of the Amorites who were so wicked God had driven them out from the land. How could God be just if he did not do the same to Judah? Intermingled with this story of man's faithlessness is God's faithfulness to His Own character. He had promised Hezekiah peace during his lifetime, but that promise did not carry over to the wicked days of his son, and further descendants. One wonders how much Hezekiah's final days of complacency affected his family and their turn away from God. Did he sow the seeds of reversing the revival? May we never back down from serving God fully and trusting Him completely, and may we have no part in creating a "negative revival".
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