RESTORATION PRINCIPLES - THEIR BIBLICAL BASIS (6)
RESTORATION PRINCIPLES - THEIR BIBLICAL BASIS (6)
by Yeow Chin Kiong
Within only 57 years of the death of King Hezekiah, who restored worship and service to God in Jerusalem according to Moses' law, his great-grandson, Josiah, had to undertake all over again the work of religious restoration in Judah. This was due to the U-turn in state-sponsored religion made by Hezekiah's son, Manasseh, and grandson, Amon, after Hezekiah's demise. That U-turn resulted in the thorough undoing of Hezekiah's restoration of true and correct worship, for Manasseh put into place again the false, idolatrous worship of non-Israelite gods Hezekiah had torn down. In disobeying God, Manasseh even angered God by placing carved images in the Jerusalem temple (2 Kings 21:6-7) and practiced such religious depravity (2 Kings 21:5) that what he did to his people was described as having "seduced them to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel." (2 Kings 21:9). Taking the throne of David in Judah after Manasseh's death, his son, Amon, walked in his father's ways instead of the Lord's way (2 Kings 21:19-22).
King Josiah's efforts at restoring, much as his great-grandfather, King Hezekiah did, was purely on his own iniative but with more throughness in bringing back true worship exclusively. There are two accounts of his work of restoration: 2 Kings 22:1 to 23:25 and its near-parallel, 2 Chronicles 34:1 to 35:19. After all is said and done, King Josiah was praised within scripture, "Now before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul and with all his might, according to the Law of Moses; nor after him did any arise like him." (2 Kings 23:25). As for Josiah's sons, Jehoahaz reigned in Jerusalem after Josiah's death but only for three months before being deposed by the king of Egypt and replaced, firstly by his brother Jehoiakim, who was subsequently deposed by the Babylonian king after an eleven-year reign to be replaced by his son,Jehoiachin, the latter two having done, "evil in the sight of the Lord his God." (2 Chronicles 36:5, 9).
King Josiah's restoration was thorough and began with the removal of the articles and physical infrastructure of idolatry (2 Kings 23:4-16) and the idolatrous priests (2 Kings 23:5) who served at those places after a Book of the Law (or Covenant) of Moses was found by Hilkiah the high priest while he was counting the people's contribution to the temple (2 Kings 22:3-10) and the Divine warnings in the Book confirmed by Huldah the prophetess (2 Kings 22:14-19).
Like his great-grandfather, King Josiah ordered the keeping of the Passover but precisely as dictated by the Book of Covenant (2 Kings 23:21-24; 2 Chronicles 35:1-19) as it had never been kept since the days of Israel's judges and kings (2 Kings 23:21-22),- not even by King Hezekiah who observed the holy days not according to the Israelite religious calendar (2 Chronicles 30:2-3) and participated by those yet unclean by the temple regulations ( with God's permission, Chronicles 30:18-20).
From the almost-similar restoration effort of Hezekiah and Josiah, we learn that, firstlyly, it requires initiative and helmsmanship by impassioned people with influence and authority, like royality in the Old Testament and elders of the churches in the Christian Age. Secondly, restoration needs an original, authoritative pattern or form of what is to be restored because it is needed to completely reverse the apostacy or deviance from the norm before enforcing the old paths, the Lord's way. Thirdly, restoration is a very comprehensive and energy-taxing effort of tearing down every error and replacing it with the true and correct. Sadly and lastly, restoration is never complete and final, because apostacy from a restored state may happen in time.