Hosea, Chapter 4

Question:

Well, in Hosea’s prophecy he says when the animals, fish, birds are dying then it is the end times. But science tells us the earth has sloughed off all living things many times so it is not the earth that is ending but our world as we know it, it seems to me.

Comment:

The fourth chapter of Hosea is too long to include in this reply, but there are several points about it, and within it, that seem appropriate. The prophet Hosea lived and wrote in the Northern Kingdom of Israel before and during the time (722 BCE) when it was conquered by the Assyrian Empire to the north. It was a time of great fear, confusion and uncertainty. Hosea’s message was that the crisis at hand was the result of choices made in the kingdom’s collective consciousness—choices that put carnal pleasures and human appetites ahead of the spiritual covenant with the Power of God. "There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, killing, stealing and committing adultery; they break all bounds and murder follows murder" (Hosea 4:1-2 RSV). Hosea, himself married to a faithless woman named Gomer who bears children by other men, compares the Northern Kingdom to a harlot—"For a spirit of harlotry has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the harlot" (Hosea 4:12).   The prophet’s basic message is that choices have consequences. "Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beast of the field, and the birds of the air; and even the fish of the sea are taken away" (Hosea 4:3). Hosea doesn’t say that this is the end of times; he says it is the consequence of the nation’s negative choices. He makes it clear elsewhere in his work that it must be endured as the consequence of previous choices. But new choices will generate new consequences. A return to a commitment to God will allow us to move through this negative experience and create a new kingdom based on spiritual consciousness rather than human appetites. This understanding of the power of our creative choices to define the world in which we live is the heart of Unity’s spiritual approach and the universal principles on which it is based.   Blessings!

Rev. Ed