Death on Easter Island!

Death on Easter Island!



Robert Mandel

Introduction: Today, politics deeply divides Americans; and with the media having become the propaganda arm of the government, helping shape the political landscape, the debate over liberal vs. conservative views is at fever pitch.

I have seen their images for decades, but I only discovered their story just today. In the language of the natives of Easter Island, they are called "Moai". There are 879 of them still standing to this day all around the island. Radio-carbon dating suggests these giant stone heads to have been created about the year 1200 A.D. They were built by the natives of the island, called the "Rapa Nui", believed to have migrated from other Polynesian islands some 1,500 to 2,000 miles away.

The best information that we have about them actually comes from the oral histories taken by Christian missionaries in the 1860s. The natives of those days reported that the statues were memorial monuments to the dead ancestors of the original settlers. The Wikipedia website explains it this way…

"The most visible element in the culture was the production of massive statues called moai that represented deified ancestors. It was believed that the living had a symbiotic relationship with the dead where the dead provided everything that the living needed (health, fertility of land and animals, fortune etc.) and the living, through offerings, provided the dead with a better place in the spirit world."

In simplest terms, the Moai were worshipped as idols!

They were wondrous accomplishments of human ingenuity in their day, but they soon became the tombstones for the very people who created them to worship! Referencing Wikipedia one more time, we read that:

"…cannibalism took place on Easter Island after the construction of the Moai contributed to environmental degradation when extreme deforestation destabilized an already precarious ecosystem."

In order to build these huge idols, the Rapa Nui people had to clear hundreds of acres of critical forestation. Many species of trees were lost, especially those which had been used to build fishing boats. With the trees gone, several species of birds disappeared, removing another important link in the food-chain. The native population declined by some 85% over the next century and the culture was soon thereafter overcome by other Polynesian groups. Their ancestor worship disappeared with them.

Just as the worship of the One True God brings His blessing upon any people group around the world, the holiness of God brings judgment upon any people who worship false gods. This statement may sound harsh to the ears of modern man, even some Christians, it is no less true, biblical and historically well-documented. Proverbs 14:34 (NIV) says,

"Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people."

When Israel worshipped God in spirit and in truth, they prospered. When they did not, they suffered and declined. When the Reformation swept through Europe, it brought along with it blessings of prosperity and security. Now, as Europe has become greatly secularized, it is declining in both. Our own country, once made great by its devotion to Christian morality and principles is drowning in its own idolatry as it rushes to deconstruct the dikes of biblical safeguards. Ecclesiastes 10:8 (NKJV) warns us:

"He who digs a pit will fall into it, and whoever breaks through a wall will be bitten by a serpent."

and Proverbs 22:28 (NKJV) echoes the warning as well:

"Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set."

The ancient landmarks of Easter Island have never been moved and they carry a somber warning to those of us who are choosing to worship idols in place of the worship of the true God, Jehovah and His Son, Jesus Christ. If they could speak aloud they would say,

"Those who build and worship idols will be destroyed by the works of their own hands!"

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