The Backsliding Heifer

Note to readers: I feel the following article is of upmost importance, especially today. As a dear pastor friend (James Barnes) said to me many years ago, “Brother Sandlin, what passes for my best members today would be considered backsliders twenty-five years ago.”

“For Israel slideth back as a backsliding heifer.” Some believe this to mean withdrawing the neck from the yoke of service; still others that it is a regressing when being offered up for sacrifice. To be sure, the heifer is not submitting to what her master has planned for her. God is simply telling us that His people were unruly and ungovernable.

The word “backsliding” (in one form or another), is found seventeen times in the Old Testament. It is not used in the New, though the principle is. Oswald Chambers gives us a good definition of the word: “Backsliding is turning away from what we know to be best to what we know is second-best.” Or as another prolific writer says, “Good can be the enemy of the best."

Whenever we go from God we go to something or someone else. The backslider deliberately forsakes God. There is no nice way of putting it. It is a hideous sin! And the depth to which the backslider falls will be in proportion to the height he or she has gained. Lucifer’s original lofty height is a good example of the depth one can fall to spiritually.

An old preacher once said, “Never paint a picture of a forest without painting a way out.” And so I close with God’s promise to all those in this dire condition who are longing to return to the Lover of their souls, “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.”