Bible Verses About Backsliders

They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods that they didn’t know, to new gods that came up recently, which your fathers didn’t dread.

Of the Rock who became your father, you are unmindful, and have forgotten God who gave you birth.

The LORD saw and abhorred, because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.

He said, “I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end will be; for they are a very perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness.

They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God. They have provoked me to anger with their vanities. I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

For a fire is kindled in my anger, that burns to the lowest Sheol, devours the earth with its increase, and sets the foundations of the mountains on fire.

“I will heap evils on them. I will spend my arrows on them.

They shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat and bitter destruction. I will send the teeth of animals on them, with the venom of vipers that glide in the dust.

Outside the sword will bereave, and in the rooms, terror; on both young man and virgin, the nursing infant with the gray-haired man.

I said that I would scatter them afar. I would make their memory to cease from among men;

were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy, lest their adversaries should judge wrongly, lest they should say, ‘Our hand is exalted, The LORD has not done all this.’”

For they are a nation void of counsel. There is no understanding in them.

Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!

How could one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had delivered them up?

If you forsake the LORD, and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you evil, and consume you, after he has done you good.”

The people said to Joshua, “No; but we will serve the LORD.”

Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD yourselves, to serve him.” They said, “We are witnesses.”

“Now therefore put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD, the God of Israel.”

The people said to Joshua, “We will serve the LORD our God, and we will listen to his voice.”

So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem.

Joshua wrote these words in the scroll of the Torah of God; and he took a great stone, and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the LORD.

Joshua said to all the people, “Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us; for it has heard all the LORD’s words which he spoke to us. It shall be therefore a witness against you, lest you deny your God.”

But if you turn away from following me, you or your children, and not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you, but shall go and serve other gods, and worship them;

then I will cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have made holy for my name, will I cast out of my sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

Though this house is so high, yet shall everyone who passes by it be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land, and to this house?’