We are surrounded by the most amazing technology, right? Imagine trying to explain to someone just 30 years ago what a “cell” phone is…or explain “the internet” to them. Technology is changing so fast that it’s almost impossible to keep up. Now the rage is 5G… I couldn’t tell you the difference between 4G and 5G because I have no idea what the difference is between 3G and 4G… I don’t even know what the “G” stands for, to be honest. We have gone from floppy disks to hard drives to the “cloud”… from “kilo” bytes to “mega” bytes to “giga” bytes and “tera” bytes.
Now it seems that the computer or the Internet is able to read or anticipate your thoughts. I start to type a sentence in an email and before I type two words, it is finishing the sentence for me. The same thing happens when I start typing an internet search. I start typing “hurricane” and he immediately asks me if I’m looking for the latest information on Hurricane Laura…and he’s right 85% of the time. What’s a little creepy to me is how…whatever it is…it keeps track of my queries and selections and then makes recommendations. “Hey Gordon, you like this movie, we think you might want to see this movie or these movies.” YouTube does that…and sometimes they put on a little sneak peek. “Hey, Gordon, do you want to see who wins a fight between a lion and a hippo?” I got caught with that one.
I wish I hadn’t seen it for two reasons. One, it was pretty brutal. Lions are tough enough, but the hippo in the video just decimated the poor lion. I felt guilty for seeing it. I don’t like to see anything die… and I especially don’t consider it “entertainment”.
I wish I hadn’t seen it for another reason. Since I watched it, YouTube started flooding me with more videos of wild animals attacking other wild animals…the combination was amazing. “Jaguar attacks crocodile”… “Tiger attacks python”… “Python attacks tiger and then lion, water buffalo, crocodile and another python”. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, they have tons of videos of crocodiles attacking every creature you can think of. They have videos of octopuses attacking sharks…bears attacking cougars…baboons attacking lions…and hippos attacking…you guessed it…crocodiles.
The result of these “encounters” can be quite surprising. . Sometimes the predator wins… and sometimes the prey wins. Like I said, it’s usually pretty graphic stuff. I only saw that video of the hippo and the lion and they finally stopped sending more after about six or seven months…I don’t remember exactly when they stopped…I’m glad they stopped…well they almost stopped. . Every once in a while, they try to tempt me with something like a “chicken vs. rhino” video or a “duck vs. crocodile” video, but I don’t take the “click bait” as they call it.
There was… or still is… I don’t know if it’s still on the air or not… some sort of human version of this show called “Deadliest Warrior.” The purpose of the show is… or was… to scientifically find out who would win if they ever went toe-to-toe: Roman foot soldier vs. Viking warrior…Japanese shogun warrior vs. medieval knight…ninja vs. cowboy. It turns out that no matter how good you are with Chinese throwing stars, bow and arrow, or num-chucks… a Colt. . 45 wins every time.
Lions, bears, hippos, crocodiles, Roman soldiers or ninjas… as a king discovered in the Bible… nothing on this earth is a match for “El Elyon”… “The Most High God.”
“El Elyon” is probably not a name many of you are familiar with but…like all the other names we have studied so far…it is another one of those interesting and unique names for God. You must recognize the first name or word… “The”… the generic Hebrew word or name for “God”. “Elyon” is a qualifying noun meaning “high”. It comes from the Hebrew verb “alah”… which means “ascend” or “mount”.
This is the “follow me and pay close attention” part of my sermon. “El Alah” means “Ascending God” but when you convert “alah” from a verb to a noun… “elyon”… means “Most High God”… “Supreme God”. God is not “alah”… “ascending” in the hierarchy of gods… He is the superior God. There are no other gods above Him. He is the one that the other gods aspire to… who wish to rise above. The other gods may try to “alah”… to “ascend”… to His height, but there is no other god where He is and there is no other god higher than Him. “El Elyon”… “The Most High God”… the God supreme… the one that all the other gods are trying to surpass but can’t because he is so above all the other gods that they have no hope of ever coming close to reaching Him… much less take and surpass him.
So far, it seems that the name “El Elyon” suggests that there is some kind of hierarchy of other gods. We know that it does not exist… but we must take into account when this name first appeared… El Elyon…. Apart from Judaism, all other religions in the Middle East were pagan. Judaism alone was unique in its belief that there was only one God…but it was a new and difficult concept for a people of pagan origin to grasp. When God challenged the gods of the Egyptians, he knew it would not be a contest because there were no Egyptian gods…no Ra…no Isis. God’s purpose was twofold… to show the Egyptians the power of the One True God of Israel and, at the same time, to show the children of Israel that their God, Yahweh, is their God… that Adonai, the Lord, is One! !
When the prophet Elijah went to Mount Carmel and challenged the priests of Ba’al, Elijah was able to rebuke Ba’al without fear of reprisal because there was no Ba’al…there never has been…there never will be. God’s victory over Ba’al was assured from the beginning…but again, Jezebel, Ba’al’s followers and Yahweh’s children needed to be reminded of the reality and power of “El Elyon”…the One True God .
This is the year 2020, right? America! One nation, under God… in God we trust, amen? Everyone knows that God is “El Elyon”… Most High God… Supreme God… because there are no other gods, right? Oh, if you believe that, you are sorely mistaken, my sisters and brothers.
You don’t believe that God is “El Elyon” if you are a wiccan. Wiccanism is the modern or updated version of witchcraft… actually a mixture of witchcraft, paganism and deism. They believe that “the spirit of the One, Goddess and God, exists in all things…in the trees, the rain, the flowers, the sea, and in each other and in all the creatures of nature.” This from their official website. You heard what I just said, didn’t you? They have an official website. On their “official” website they state the following: “We recognize the cycles of nature, the lunar phases and the seasons to celebrate our spirituality and worship the divine.” Wiccanism, they say, is “a belief system that allows the witch to work with”…listen very carefully… “is a belief system that allows the witch to work with…not in supplications to…deities with the intent to live in harmony and achieve balance with all things.” Did you catch it? They work “with”…not in “supplication to”…deities. In conjunction with…not in supplication with their deities…making them co-equal with their deities…meaning that their deities are no better than mere morals or that witches have powers equal to their deities…or that the goal of Wiccanism is learning to become partners with their gods…either their gods are not towering “elyons” or Wiccans are towering “elyons”.
Millions of people around the world practice Santeria. Most of you probably don’t know anything about Santeria, but it was developed as a clever way for African slaves in Cuba and the Caribbean to practice their pagan religion while practicing Catholicism at the same time. Instead of calling one of their African gods “Bablú Ayé”, who is associated with illness, they call him… or so… “St. Lazarus.” The priest is happy to have a statute of Saint Lazarus enshrined on a table in the corner of his house, but in reality he is both Saint Lazarus and Bablu Aye. By the way, if the name “Bablu” sounds familiar to you, Ricky Ricardo… you know… Lucille Ball’s husband on the Lucy Show… he was from Cuba and the song that made him popular, “Babalu”, is, in fact, a song about the god of Santeria “Bablu Aye”.
This is a very superficial explanation of Santeria. Basically, Santeria is a polytheistic religion practiced quite widely in Latin countries and in Latin communities, like Miami, in the United States. Their gods are called “orishas”. According to some of the websites I read, there are hundreds of “orishas” or gods in Africa, but within Santeria, there are only seven main orishas. Do you hear that? There are only seven “major” gods… with many, many lesser gods.
According to their official North American website, “each orisha has their own distinct personality and a wide range of strengths, weaknesses, and interests.” Hmm… a god with weaknesses. They go on to say on their website that “in many ways, understanding an orisha is like understanding another human being.” So, within the complex hierarchy of Santerian gods, there are some gods that are higher or stronger than others and others that are lower or weaker. For a Santerian, the divine creator “Olodumare”, would literally be “El Elyon”…the Most High God…of the hundreds of Santerian gods who are “Elohim Alah”…or “ascending gods” as they try to surpass each other and ascend in the hierarchy of the Santerian gods. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Orisha traditions are likely to continue to grow and be recognized as one of the major African contributions to world culture” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Santeria).
Satan…one of God’s angels…aspired to be “Elyon”…the “Most High”. Listen to what God said about Satan in Isaiah 14:12-14: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who weakened the nations. But you said in your heart: ‘I will go up’… alah… ‘to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the Mount of Assembly in the depths of the North. I will go up”… ‘alah’… above the heights of the clouds; I will become like ‘Elyon’…the Most High.’”
Instead of “alah”…ascending…above God to become “El Elyon”, Satan is thrown into Sheol by…