When God’s Installation becomes a Ruination, His Recommendation is Annihilation.

2 Kings 18:4 says; He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it.

What is this young whipper-snapper, inexperienced in the upholding of the tradition we have been doing for years doing demolishing the thing that God told Moses to erect, who does he think he is! Is he out of his cotton pickin mind, does he not know that the bronze snake had been an instrument of transformation. It got people healed and saved them from the consequences of their sin.

Why did he destroy it, because he had a clear picture of how it turned the people’s heart away from God, and because the people turned it into an object of worship making it into an idol, thereby ruining it and robbing it of its power. It wasn’t meant to be this way, but now it had become the accepted way of the people. But this one man, standing alone went against tradition and tore down the sacred icon of the people. Even though the people thought him a radical, he was God’s man and God supported him.

This is the essence of traditionalism. It’s not simply holding onto traditional preferences. It’s when we take things that may be good things or effective things, and we end up worshiping them instead of God. And it can happen to anything and that is what has happened to some religions.