The LORD is not tolerant of syncretic worship. When Aaron built the golden calf he told Israel it was the god that had delivered them from Egypt, so Israel worshiped it (Ex. 32:4-6, 8a). Moses, speaking for the LORD, ordered the Levites to kill “every man his brother, companion, and neighbor” who worshiped it. About 3,000 men died (32:26-29). Balaam counseled the Moabites to seduce Israel into immoral perverted worship at Baal-peor (Num. 25:1-3). The Lord commanded the heads of the participants to be publicly hung and sent a plague which killed 24,000 people (25:4-11)! In the year before Israel entered Canaan (Deut. 1:3) the LORD forbid Israel to marry Canaanites or make covenants with them. He ordered the destruction of their idols and places of worship (7:1-5). Manasseh was Judah’s longest ruling and most wicked king. His promoted sins, listed in 2 Chron. 33:1-7, included necromancy, altars to pagan gods in the Temple (causing his children to be sacrificed to Canaanite gods), and other sins. These sins took root in Judah and were the reason for Judah’s destruction by Babylon in 586 B.C. (Jer. 15:4). Syncretism, the attempted union or reconciliation of diverse or opposite practices, especially in religion, is completely rejected by the LORD.
These commands and punishments were given Israel because God is holy, the nation was commanded to be holy (Lev. 11:44), and He viewed Israel as a holy nation (Deut. 7:6). The New Testament Church is commanded to be holy (Pet.1:16) and is called a holy nation (I Pet. 2:9). My pastor recently pointed out that only one N.T. book, Philemon, omits a warning against false teaching.
Second Corinthians 6:14-16 is the most important N.T. passage against the union of believers with unbelievers. It begins, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” A yoke pictures a close working relationship! Those who reject the Lord’s identification of Himself with Jehovah, the I AM of Ex. 3:14, are still in their sins (John 8:24). Those who deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ are not saved (Rom. 10:9). Since the early 1950’s, The National Association of Evangelicals has courted the cooperation of liberals, neo-orthodox, and similar organizations to join in evangelistic endeavors.(1) What is the difference between the unbelief of pagan Canaanites and modern unbelieving churchmen? The awareness of this unbiblical syncretism is mostly unknown and ignored today. Praise the Lord some have been saved, but people’s hearts are only opened by the Lord (Acts 16:14). Paul disavowed preaching with enticing words of man’s wisdom, (I Cor. 2:4) that the faith of the Corinthians “should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (2:6).
(1) Roland McCune, Promise Unfulfilled: The Failed Strategy of Modern Evangelicalism, (Greenville: Ambassador International, 2004), p. 51.