Bible Verses About Backsliders

They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear.

You ignored the Rock who brought you forth; you forgot the God who gave you birth.

When the LORD saw this, He rejected them, provoked to anger by His sons and daughters.

He said: “I will hide My face from them; I will see what will be their end. For they are a perverse generation— children of unfaithfulness.

They have provoked My jealousy by that which is not God; they have enraged Me with their worthless idols. So I will make them jealous by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation without understanding.

For a fire has been kindled by My anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol; it consumes the earth and its produce, and scorches the foundations of the mountains.

I will heap disasters upon them; I will spend My arrows against them.

They will be wasted from hunger and ravaged by pestilence and bitter plague; I will send the fangs of wild beasts against them, with the venom of vipers that slither in the dust.

Outside, the sword will take their children, and inside, terror will strike the young man and the young woman, the infant and the gray-haired man.

I would have said that I would cut them to pieces and blot out their memory from mankind,

if I had not dreaded the taunt of the enemy, lest their adversaries misunderstand and say: ‘Our own hand has prevailed; it was not the LORD who did all this.’”

Israel is a nation devoid of counsel, with no understanding among them.

If only they were wise, they would understand it; they would comprehend their fate.

How could one man pursue a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the LORD had given them up?

If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, He will turn and bring disaster on you and consume you, even after He has been good to you.”

“No!” replied the people. “We will serve the LORD!”

Then Joshua told them, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the LORD.” “We are witnesses!” they said.

“Now, therefore,” he said, “get rid of the foreign gods among you and incline your hearts to the LORD, the God of Israel.”

So the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the LORD our God and obey His voice.”

On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he established for them a statute and ordinance.

Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was near the sanctuary of the LORD.

And Joshua said to all the people, “You see this stone. It will be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words the LORD has spoken to us, and it will be a witness against you if you ever deny your God.”

But if indeed you or your sons turn away from following Me and do not keep the commandments and statutes I have set before you, and if you go off to serve and worship other gods,

then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and I will banish from My presence this temple I have sanctified for My Name. Then Israel will become an object of scorn and ridicule among all peoples.

And when this temple has become a heap of rubble, all who pass by it will be appalled and will hiss and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’