In Genesis 15: 16, Abram is told by God that “the
iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full”. What this means is that
the Amorites (who were then in possession of Canaan) had not yet
developed in wickedness and evil as much as they had later when
Jehovah used Abram’s descendants to cleanse the land. Some of
Abram’s allies were Amorites (see Gen. 14: 13, 24), but when the
children of Israel arrived in their inheritance centuries later, the
divine instruction was to “save alive nothing that breatheth” and to
“utterly devote … to destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites”
(Deut. 20: 16, 17). Now there is, I believe, something of a parallel
between the iniquity of the Amorites and the state of this world,
and the point at which God will intervene with the judgment He has
foretold. Is it the case, that the iniquity of this world is not yet
full, or are we approaching that moment when God will finally act?
By way of
comparison with what is around us, it may be as well to remind
ourselves of the abominations for which the Amorites forfeited the
land: “When thou art come into the land which Jehovah thy God giveth
thee, thou shalt not learn to do according to the abominations of
those nations. There shall not be found among you he that maketh his
son or his daughter to pass through the fire, that uses divination,
that useth auguries, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer,
or one that inquireth of a spirit of Python, or a soothsayer, or one
that consulteth the dead. For everyone that doeth these things is an
abomination to Jehovah, and because of these abominations Jehovah
thy God doth dispossess them from before thee” (Deut. 18: 9-12).
Again, in Leviticus 18, Jehovah details the immoralities that “the
nations which I am casting out before you made themselves unclean”
(v24), including incest (see vs. 6-18), adultery (see v20),
homosexuality (see v22) and bestiality (see v23).
It is sobering to
consider that this world (and western culture in particular) has
embraced much of what is described—but it should not surprise us for
the Bible describes a moral collapse in the last days (see 2 Tim. 3:
1-5). Now we need to be sober as to the moral trajectory of things
around us but let us not be occupied with the progress of evil. Our
proper occupation lies in another Man in another world.
