Ezekiel 27—Philosophy’s Utter Ruin
27:1. The Word of the Lord came again unto me, saying.—In Chapter 27 Christendom, regarded as an independent system of pagan philosophy, is represented as a gallant ship. Its component parts are represented symbolically (27:4‐7), as are its mariners and pilots (27:8‐9). In verses 9 to 25 the figure reverts to a mercantile city, and the sources of its articles of trade. It is again pictured as a ship, which is steered by its mariners into an angry sea, and wrecked.—Verses 26 to 36.
27:2. Now, thou son of man, take up a lamentation for Tyrus.—The man‐made system of Pagan philosophy must fall.
27:3. And say unto Tyrus, O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a merchant of the people for many isles, Thus saith the Lord God: O Tyrus, thou hast said, I am of perfect beauty.—O Christendom, thou that hast the entree to the ears of the peoples (sea), which art a salesman (merchant) of philosophical doctrines for the people of many revolutionary republics, thus says the Lord God: O Christendom, ecclesiasticism, thou hast regarded thy pagan philosophies as perfect, faultless and beautiful.
27:4. Thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty.—Thou, as an independent pagan religious organization or system, belongest among the disobedient children (sea) of the world. Thy philosophers, doctors of divinity, professors and writers, have perfected thy seemingly beautiful philosophy.
27:5. They have made all thy ship boards of fir trees of Senir; they have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee.—They have made as thy fundamental supporters (boards) believers in everlasting human life (firs, evergreen trees), in high stations in society (Mount Senir, or Hermon, “pointed rock” was in Benjamin, one of the Hebrew tribes, and type of the Great Company). They have taken as the support (masts) of thy seeming righteousness (linen sails) earth’s greatest men and the rulers, believers in inherent immortality (cedars), picturing them as from the loftiest, purest sources. (Lebanon, a great mountain range, means “white, snowy.”).
27:6. Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars; the company of the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought out of the isles of Chittim.—The prominent tares, leaders (oaks), whom other tares follow and worship, and who are fruitful in producing more tares (Bashan means fruitful), are the mechanism (oars) for making thee move and progress among the people. The company of free‐thinkers (Ashurite means freemen) have made thy white (supposedly righteous) seats (ivory signifies dreams—of immediate spirit life when they die) to be the seats (seats of the mighty), of the rowers who work the oars.
27:7. Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was that which covered thee.—Thy ensigns, banners, sails, over thee, to be driven by the winds of error, are false righteousness (linen), with innumerable works of self‐righteousness (broidered work), and of worldliness (Egypt); thou wast covered with the faithfulness (blue) and royalty (purple) of the worst of earth’s pagan peoples (Elishah, descended from Javan, European, the most cruel and ferocious people of earth, as shown by their history, including this furious world‐war.)
27:8. The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad were thy mariners; thy wise men, O Tyrus, that were in thee, were thy pilots.—The adherents of the belong‐ to‐a‐church or go‐to‐hell idea (Zidon meant “fortress,” and the idea is the fortress of ecclesiasticism), and the supporters of the falsely comforting refuge of Platonic immortality of the soul (Arvad means refuge, and Platonic heathen philosophy is the refuge of philosophic Christendom) were thy mariners, the ones who “worked” thy oars; thy philosophers (wise ones), from Plato to Nietsche, charted thy evil course, and were the real “sky‐pilots” for the rowers to row by.
27:9. The ancients of Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers; all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise.—The doctors of divinity (ancients of Gebal) (Psa. 83:7) and the creed builders said enough on both sides of any question for theological authorities (calkers) to keep the people (sea) from getting on the inside, or having any real participation in thy affairs. In the middle of verse 9 the figure changes back to that of the prosperous mercantile city that Tyre was. All the independent religious and philosophical churches and other organizations (ships) of the sea (peoples and nations) with their sky‐pilots (mariners) were in thee, O Christendom, thou aggregation of confused and contradictory philosophies, to receive, hold and disseminate thy teachings, doctrines, traditions, fables and philosophies (merchandise).
27:10. They of Persia and of Lud and of Phut were in thine army, thy men of war; they hanged the shield and helmet in thee; they set forth thy comeliness.—Believers in the hell‐fire superstition (Persians were fire worshippers), and middle‐course, conservative worldly men of sin (the people of Lud and Phut were dark‐skinned men, living probably west of Egypt, type of worldly compromisers with sin) were in thine army, those that fight the bad fight of error for thee; in thee they hung the shield of credulity (faith) and the helmet of a false salvation; they extolled the loveliness of thy philosophy.
27:11. The men of Arvad with thine army were upon thy walls round about, and the Gammadim were in thy towers; they hanged their shields upon thy walls round about; they have made thy beauty perfect.—The believers in human immortality, thy philosophic refuge (Arvad means “refuge”) with thine army just mentioned were the wall of thy defense and thy watchmen, college professors, economists (the Gammadim are thought to mean watchmen or guards) were in thy watch towers; upon thy walls, in the minds of thy supporters (walls) they hanged their shields of credulity; they have made thy philosophies and sophistries seem perfectly beautiful.
27:12. Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs.—Thy preachers (merchants, trading in philosophy for gain) were a hard proposition (Tarshish means hard), with an abundant supply of teachings regarded worth while by the world; with worldly truth—silver—with strong earthly authority—iron—with actually worthless philosophies (tin was as the dross of silver) and with downright wicked doctrines (lead symbolized wickedness—Zech. 5:7‐8) they taught and preached (traded) in thy preaching places (fairs).
27:13. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy merchants: they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market.—Believers in Greek philosophy (Javan represented the Greek race), and believers in the most far‐fetched and uncouth ideas, such as monkey‐born evolution (Tubal and Meshech were the remotest and rudest of nations), were thy preachers (merchants). They sold men into bondage to sin, and presented teachings of human perfection (brass) attainable otherwise than through Christ. Brass should be translated copper, and signifies perfect human nature.—T. 18.
27:14. They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules.—The representatives of the rudest and crudest ideas (Togarmah) preached in thy churches with doctrines (horses) and with followers of the doctrines and with mixed human and spirit nature ideas (mules).
27:15. The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles were the merchandise of thine hand: they brought thee for a present, horns of ivory and ebony.—Men of low ideals (Dedan means low) were thy preachers; many revolutionary republics (islands) were thy preaching places; they presented thee with dreams, visions (ivory) of power (horns), good and bad (ebony).
27:16. Syria was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of the wares of thy making: they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and flat linen, and coral, and agate.—Believers in doctrines of lofty self‐righteousness (Syria signifies high land) were thy preachers; they traded for gain in philosophies of eternal life (emeralds) without Christ’s purchase, with teachings of self‐kingship (purple), with works of self‐mastery (broidered work), with self‐righteousness (linen), with an imitation ransom (red coral), and imitation character jewels (agate).
27:17. Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants: they traded in thy market wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm.—With thine errors were mingled God’s Truth to make up thy mixed doctrines. Some of thy preachers were really believers in the Bible (of Judah and Israel), taught the wholesome spiritual Bible truths (wheat), good teachings for the natural man (Pannag means millet), and teachings about Christ’s Second Coming (honey), the anointing oil of the Holy Spirit (Rev. 10:9, 10), and the balm of the comfort of the Word of God.—Rom. 15:4.
27:18. Damascus was thy merchant in the multitude of the wares of thy making, for the multitude of all riches; in the wine of Helbon, and white wool.—Thy preachers (merchants) were among the chiefest of the lofty, self‐righteous, lordly ones (Damascus was capital of Syria, the high land), trading in all varieties of thy doctrines and philosophies, especially the mixed doctrines (wine) of earthly prosperity (Helbon, fruitfulness) and in natural human righteousness (white wool).
27:19. Dan also and Javan going to and fro occupied in thy fairs: bright iron, cassia, and calamus, were in thy market.—Apostate Christians (Dan was the seat of idolatry and types a class once spirit‐begotten but fallen away) and Grecian pagans (Javan represented the Greeks) preached in thy church gatherings; lordship, authority (iron), the claim of apostolic authority (cassia, deputyship), and a claimed knowledge of the Bible (calamus) were in thy churches (markets).
27:20. Dedan was thy merchant in precious clothes for chariots.—Preachers of low ideals (Dedan, low) preached that thy church organizations (chariots) should be made presentable by being robed in the embroidery of many works, church fairs and suppers, institutional work, and civic and social service (chariot clothes or robes).
27:21. Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats: in these were they thy merchants.—Thy preachers, with claims of consecration, separateness (Arabia, wilderness), and all the powerful right reverends, fathers, and other lords (Kedar, powerful), they traded (exchanged from one church to another) their converts (lambs), old church members (rams), and out‐and‐out tares (goats).
27:22. The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants: they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones, and gold.—The preachers in captivity (Sheba, captivity) to Satan, and those who tremble at Satan’s word (Raamah, trembling) set forth a counterfeit of the Holy Spirit (principal spices, Exodus 30:23), all kinds and degrees of self‐development of character (precious stones), and the alleged inherent spark of the Divine (!) in man (gold).
27:23. Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad, were thy merchants.—The preachers of New Thought, Theosophy, Christian Science and other phases of Spiritism, self‐styled, strong and enlightened (Haran), set up and distinguished (Canneh), and believers in delightful delusions (Eden, delight), are in captivity (Sheba, captivity) to Satan, and really without hope of Kingdom honors (Chilmad, level, plain, without mountains).
27:24. These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in blue clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords, and made of cedar, among thy merchandise.—These self‐reliance preachers set forth the robes of a counterfeit faithfulness (blue), fruitless works of self‐improvement (broidered work), and organizations (chests) offering an imitation righteousness (rich apparel), bound with cords of free‐thought love and a delusive hope, and represented as having eternal life (cedar).
27:25. The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market: and thou wast replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas.—The mighty independent religious sects (ships of Tarshish—Isa. 3:16) did preach of thy philosophies and thou wast richly supported (replenished) and made of great reputation (glorious) among the peoples and nations (seas).
27:26. Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters: the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas.—The picture changes back to a gallant ship. Thy strong preachers (rowers) have steered thee into angry seas (anarchy); the doctrines (winds) from the presence of Christ the Sun of Righteousness (east wind) have broken thy power in the midst of a time of anarchy (seas).
27:27. Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots, thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men of war, that are in thee, and in all thy company which is in the midst of thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of thy ruin.—Thy philosophies, thy churches, thy doctrines, thy preachers, thy philosophers, thy Doctors of Divinity (sky‐pilots), thy church members, all thy church workers, and all the multitude that come to church, shall fall in the anarchy in the day of thy ruin.
27:28. The suburbs shall shake at the sound of the cry of thy pilots.—Those affiliated with thee shall quake at the shoutings and threatenings of thy sky‐pilots.
27:29. And all that handle the oar, the mariners, and all the pilots of the sea, shall come down from their ships, they shall stand upon the land.—All those that work, the influential church members, the preachers, and all the sky‐pilots of the anarchistic masses (sea) (Rev. 18:17‐18), shall abandon their independent organizations or their heathen religions, and shall try to find more solid ground to stand on than thou wast on.
27:30. And shall cause their voice to be heard against thee, and shall cry bitterly, and shall cast up dust upon their heads, they shall wallow themselves in the ashes.—They shall speak against thee, and cry out with bitterness against thee, they shall show signs of grief.
27:31. And they shall make themselves utterly bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth, and they shall weep for thee with bitterness of heart and bitter wailing.—It was a custom in ancient times for those who had suffered great calamities to shave their heads. The Lord promises such an occasion for weeping to Zion, His professed people.—Isa. 3:24.
27:32. And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and lament over thee, saying, What city is like Tyrus, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea?—In their bemoaning the downfall of so‐called “Christian philosophy” they shall lament over thee, saying, What organization was ever like Christendom, like her who has been destroyed in anarchy?
27:33. When thy wares went forth out of the seas, thou filledst many people; thou didst enrich the kings of the earth with the multitude of thy riches and of thy merchandise.—When thy philosophies were accepted by the masses, thou didst satisfy many people. Thou didst enrich materially and mentally the rulers and the clergy‐lords of society with thy innumerable philosophies and thy doctrines.
27:34. In the time when thou shalt be broken by the seas in the depths of the waters, thy merchandise and all thy company in the midst of thee shall fall.—When thou shalt be broken and engulfed in the roaring waves of anarchy, thy doctrines shall cease and all thy supporters shall fall.
27:35. All the inhabitants of the isles shall be astonished at thee, and their kings shall be sore afraid, they shall be troubled in their countenance.—All the people of the revolutionary republics shall marvel at thy fall, and the rulers of that brief era shall be troubled and afraid of meeting thy fate in the anarchy.
27:36. The merchants among the people shall hiss at thee; thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt be any more.—The preachers (merchants) then taking their place among the unbelieving masses shall scoff at thee; thou shalt be a “worn‐out and wasted thing” (literal) and never shalt thou exist any more.
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O bliss of the purified! bliss of the free! I plunge in the crimson tide opened for me; O’er sin and uncleanness exulting I stand, And point to the print of the nails in His hand.
O bliss of the purified! Jesus is mine; No longer in dread condemnation I pine; In conscious salvation, I sing of His grace, Who lifteth upon me the light of His face.
O Jesus, the crucified! thee will I sing, My blessed Redeemer, my God and my King; My soul filled with rapture shall shout o’er the grave, And triumph o’er death in the “Mighty to save.”
Ezekiel 28—Destruction Of The Devil
28:1. The Word of the Lord came again unto me, saying.—Chapter 28:1‐10 depicts the destruction of priestcraft by the sword of revolution and anarchy and by the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.
28:2. Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God; Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God.—To the exalted class, the clergy (prince) of Christendom, as a system of paganized philosophy: Because of thy pride of heart, thou hast said through thy chief representative, the Pope of Rome, I am as a god, I am the vice‐ gerent of Jehovah, my seat is “upon many waters” (Rev. 17:1), upon “peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues” (Rev. 17:15), yet thou art man‐made, man‐ordained, and not of God, not Divinely ordained, even though thou set thine heart to pose before the people as Divinely ordained.
28:3. Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee.—Behold, thou thinkest that thou art wiser than Daniel (Z. ’05‐280); that through supposed Divine inspiration, the confessional and the universal clergy‐spy system, there is nothing in Heaven or earth which thou dost not know.
28:4. With thy wisdom and with thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures.—With thy false philosophy and thy misunderstanding thou hast acquired riches, much gold and silver into thy treasury—many, too, of both Little Flock (gold) and Great Company (silver) into bondage.
28:5. By thy great wisdom and by thy traffick has thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches.—By scientific suppositions of infidel Evolution and Higher Criticism, and by good salesmanship of these worthless goods, thou hast heaped up wealth; and thou hast become proud, because of thy riches of materials, doctrines and membership.
28:6. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God.—Therefore Jehovah says, Because thou hast set thyself up in pride to be as God, claiming to represent Him on earth as God’s vice‐gerent.
28:7. Behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness.—I will bring upon thee paganized anarchists, strangers to thy theories, the terror of the nations—and also My pilgrims and strangers, the sons of God, those whom thy philosophy dreadest; and the anarchists shall turn their weapons of destruction against thee, and the sons of God shall smite with the Sword of the Spirit thy falsely beautiful philosophy, and shall expose the real pollution of thy wisdom.
28:8. They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the sea.—They shall bring thee down to a dishonored oblivion, and materially and religiously thou shalt die the deaths of those slain in the roaring waves of anarchy.
28:9. Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? but thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee.—Though thou sayest to the anarchy that shall slay thee materially and to Him that shall destroy thee religiously, “I represent God!”—yet thou shalt be seen to be man‐made and not ordained by God, in the power of the destroyer appointed by Jehovah.
28:10. Thou shalt die the deaths of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God.—Thou shalt die the deaths of the wicked by the hand of the anarchists, and be destroyed religiously as one of unclean conscience (uncircumcised) at the hand of the sons of God, My strangers and pilgrims in the earth (1 Pet. 1:1); for Jehovah hath spoken it.
28:11. Moreover the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying.—Verses 11 to 26 deal with the destruction of the Devil, pictured as the King of Tyrus.
28:12. Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the King of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.—Satan, the Devil, the father of lies and king over Christendom’s system of pagan philosophy, is by nature the summation of perfection, the personification of Wisdom (Wisdom was one of the cherubs) and by nature perfect in the beauty of holiness.—Z. ’03‐135.
28:13. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering: the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.—Thou wast in the garden of Eden at the fall of man. Every good fruit of character wast thine adornment (Rev. 21:18‐21); with this perfection of character endowment thou wast created.
28:14. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou wast upon the Holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.—Before thy fall thou wast appointed the care‐taker (coverer) of the innocent pair in Eden. Thou wast the embodiment of Wisdom (cherub), and endowed with the Holy Spirit (anointed); and I so made thee. Thou wast in high position in the holy heavenly Kingdom of God (Eph. 6:12); thou hast had thy course of life among God’s holy angels (Isa. 14:13)—stars, fiery stones.
28:15, 16. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.—By their multitudinous trading in mixed doctrines (merchandise) “for revenue only” thy adherents, demons and clergy, have filled thy following with violence and warfare; and thou hast sinned unto death. Therefore I will cast thee as polluted out of the Kingdom of God (A. 318); and I will destroy thee from amongst My holy angels.
28:17. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness; I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.—Thou becamest proud because of thine endowment of beauteous character. Thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy conceited teaching of counterfeit wisdom (brightness); I will humble thee to the dust, and expose thy real character.
28:18. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick: therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.—Thou hast defiled the churches of Christendom by thine iniquitous doctrines and the teaching of them. Therefore I will utterly destroy thee with annihilation, and thy following with anarchy, in the sight of all that behold thee, in Heaven and on earth.
28:19. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.—All shall marvel at thy destruction; thou shall become wasted, devastated (a terror), and never shalt thou exist any more.
28:20. Again the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying,—Verses 20 to 26 relate to the destruction of organized Churchianity.
28:21. Son of man, set thy face against Zidon, and prophesy against it.—Zidon meant “fortress”; and the fortress of churchianity since the third century A. D. has been the doctrine that, to be saved, men must belong to a church organization. The King of Zidon typed the Devil.
28:22. And say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Zidon; and I will be glorified in the midst of thee; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be sanctified in her.—God says, I am against thee, organized churchianity, and I will be glorified and made holy in thee, only when I have executed retribution and justice upon thee.
28:23. For I will send into her pestilence, and blood into her streets; and the wounded shall be judged in the midst of her by the sword upon her on every side; and they shall know that I am the Lord.—For I will afflict thee with literal and spiritual sickness and death (shed blood).
28:24. And there shall be no more a pricking brier unto the house of Israel, nor any grievous thorn of all that are round about them, that despised them; and they shall know that I am the Lord God.—The adherents to the church‐organization idea have persecuted and dispersed both Jews and Christians, but they shall do so no more.
28:25, 26. Thus saith the Lord God; When I shall have gathered the house of Israel from the people among whom they are scattered, and shall be sanctified in them in the sight of the heathen, then shall they dwell in their land that I have given to My servant Jacob. And they shall dwell safely therein, and shall build houses, and plant vineyards; yea, they shall dwell with confidence, when I have executed judgments upon all those that despise them round about them; and they shall know that I am the Lord their God.—The Jews shall enjoy God’s earthly blessings, and the true Christians His Heavenly blessings, when He has executed justly earned judgments upon the people that have adhered to or taught the belong‐to‐a‐ church‐or‐go‐to‐hell idea.—Z. ’94‐76.
Ezekiel 29—The Egyptians A Type
29:1. In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month, the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying.—Chapters 29 to 32 are directed against Egypt, its king and people, and against the surrounding peoples. Egypt was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt, and was known as Mizraim, which meant “Middle Country,” and typed organized, entrenched and enthroned middle‐course worldliness. The word Egypt means “that binds or oppresses,” and signifies the bondage of the Lord’s people to the oppressive, enslaving spirit of the world—the spirit that slew our Lord (Rev. 11:8), and has enslaved and slain millions of God’s saints. Chapter 29:1‐7 represents worldliness as a crocodile, the dragon of Revelation 12:3, etc.
29:2. Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt.—This message is against Satan, the Devil, the king of this present evil world, and against all worldliness.
29:3. Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said. My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself.—Jehovah says, I am against thee, Satan (Pharaoh means the sun, the god of the sun worshipper, the Devil), the great wicked dragon, also called Pagan Rome (later Papal Rome), that dwells in the midst of the church denominations (rivers, channels of Truth), and says, The church system is mine own, and I (not God) made it for my own purposes.
29:4. But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales.—God will bind thy utterances (jaws) with a chain (hook means chain or ring) (Rev. 20:1), and will cause thy active worldly church members and other adherents in thy churches (rivers) to adhere to thy protecting doctrines (scales) and will alienate thy churches from thee (corresponds to drying up Euphrates) and from all thy active supporters.
29:5. And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee and all the fish of thy rivers: thou shalt fall upon the open fields; thou shalt not be brought together, nor gathered: I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven.—And I will cause thee to be forsaken (in the wilderness), thee and all thy adherents (fish). Thou shalt fall unprotected into the hands of a cold, cruel world (open fields), not to be established again in power, but to be destroyed by the evil revolutionary governments (beasts) of the world (field), in world‐ wide revolution, and by wicked criminals, jail birds (fowls) and anarchists.
29:6. And the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the Lord, because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel.—The worldly people who have been no real support to either Jews or true Christians (Isa. 36:6; Z. ’95‐144), shall realize that Jehovah is the Lord.
29:7. When they took hold of thee by thy hand, thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder: and when they leaned upon thee, thou brakest, and madest all their loins to be at a stand.—When they in their weakness sought some aid of thee, thou didst roughly abuse them; and didst try to destroy them in persecution.
29:8, 9. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will bring a sword upon thee, and cut off man and beast out of thee. And the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste; and they shall know that I am the Lord: because he hath said, The river is mine, and I have made it.—And worldliness shall be destroyed, and the people shall know Jehovah as He is; because Satan said, The churches are mine.
29:10. Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.—I am against thee and thy churches, and will utterly destroy worldliness from end to end.
29:11, 12. No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years. And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.—Christendom shall be uninhabited and desolate for forty years after its devastation.
29:13. Yet thus saith the Lord God; At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered.—After forty years God will gather into the Kingdom the scattered worldly people.
29:14. And I will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation; and they shall be there a base kingdom.—And will bring them back from the dead into their own country, where they shall be insignificant.
29:15. It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations.—This has been literally fulfilled upon Egypt, which for many centuries has not enjoyed self‐government.
29:16. And it shall be no more the confidence of the house of Israel, which bringeth their iniquity to remembrance, when they shall look after them: but they shall know that I am the Lord God.—Neither Jews nor Christians shall ever again look to the worldly people (Egypt), (Isa. 30:1‐5) for help; for the sight of the worldly will make them remember Christendom’s iniquity.
29:17, 18. And it came to pass in the seven and twentieth year, in the first month, in the first day of the month, the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled: yet had he no wages, nor his army, for Tyrus, for the service that he had served against it.—The forces of anarchy’s king, the Devil, will perform a great service in the Divine Plan of the Ages, but there will be nothing in it for the anarchists.
29:19. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will give the land of Egypt unto Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall take her multitude, and take her spoil, and take her prey; and it shall be the wages of his army.—Jehovah will give worldly Christendom to anarchy: and this shall be the material reward of the forces of anarchy.
29:20. I have given him the land of Egypt for his labour wherewith he served against it, because they wrought for Me, saith the Lord God.—God will give worldly Christendom to anarchy, for its labor in serving the interests of God’s plans against pagan religion masquerading as Christendom, because in doing so anarchy will do its part.
29:21. In that day will I cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud forth, and I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them; and they shall know that I am the Lord.—During the Time of Trouble God will cause the power (T. 42) of the Jews to bud forth in Zionism, and make known the glad tidings of the Kingdom, taught in Studies in the Scriptures.—Isa. 19:1‐25.
Ezekiel 30—Pharaoh’s Two Arms Broken
30:1, 2. The Word of the Lord came again unto me, saying, Son of Man, prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Howl ye, Woe worth the day.—Thus saith Jehovah: Weep, and cry! O woeful day!
30:3. For the day is near, even the day of the Lord is near, a cloudy day; it shall be the time of the heathen.—The day is near, the day of Jehovah, a gloomy day—the time of infidel anarchy!—Joel 1:15; Zeph. 1:7.
30:4. And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away her multitude, and her foundations shall be broken down.—The weapons of anarchy and the Sword of the Spirit shall come against worldly Christendom. Great distress shall be upon non‐church members (Ethiopia, black) socialists, laborites and revolutionists, when Christendom’s slain shall fall literally and spiritually, when her multitude shall abandon her, and when her foundations—social, economic, moral and religious—shall be broken down in war, revolution and anarchy.
30:5. Ethiopia, and Libya, and Lydia, and all the mingled people, and Chub, and the men of the land that is in league, shall fall with them by the sword.—The worst peoples, darker religiously and morally—the socialists, laborites and revolutionists, in touch with worldly Christendom—shall fall with Christendom by literal weapons and by the Word of God.
30:6. Thus saith the Lord; They also that uphold Egypt shall fall; and the pride of her power shall come down: from the tower of Syene shall they fall in it by the sword, saith the Lord God.—All supporters of worldly Christendom shall fall; her pride of power shall be humbled; from end to end of Christendom shall they fall.
30:7. And they shall be desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted.—Worldly Christendom shall be utterly desolated.
30:8. And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I have set a fire in Egypt, and when all her helpers shall be destroyed.—They shall know that Jehovah permitted anarchy to start in Christendom, and will recognize Him, when they see that all their helpers are destroyed.
30:9. In that day shall messengers go forth from me in ships to make the careless Ethiopians afraid, and great pain shall come upon them, as in the day of Egypt: for, lo, it cometh.—At the time of Christendom’s fall, the message from God shall be borne by independent religious organizations to the too‐confident socialists, laborites, and revolutionists that shall make them afraid of anarchy, and great distress shall ensue upon them, as in Christendom’s fall.
30:10. Thus saith the Lord God; I will also make the multitude of Egypt to cease by the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon.—God will make the multitude of adherents to worldly Christendom to cease adhering to her, by the power of revolution and anarchy and their instigator, the Devil.
30:11. He and his people with him, the terrible of the nations, shall be brought to destroy the land: and they shall draw their swords against Egypt, and fill the land with the slain.—Satan and his followers—devils and humans—the most terrible of all the nations—the anarchists—shall destroy Christendom’s worldly order of things. They shall attack Christendom with their weapons and fill the land with their slain—as will the Sword of the Spirit with those slain spiritually.
30:12. And I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked: and I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I the Lord have spoken it.—God will cause the denominations to become dry of members and of money, will give the order of things over into the power of the wicked anarchists, and will desolate Christendom’s order of things and all belonging to it, literally by the power of anarchists, strangers to the existing order of things, and spiritually by the sons of God.
30:13. Thus saith the Lord God; I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt: and I will put a fear in the land of Egypt.—God will destroy Christendom’s idols of love of gold, power, etc (Jer. 43:12, 13), and will cause these gods to cease among the more prosperous people of Christendom (Noph was the Delta and richer part of Egypt); and there shall be no more an exalted class, a worldly clergy class, in Christendom; but God will put in her fear and failing of heart.
30:14. And I will make Pathros desolate, and will set fire in Zoan, and will execute judgments in No.—God will make the upper classes (Pathros, upper Egypt), desolate, will permit anarchy and destruction to start among them (Zoan, capital of Egypt), and will execute retributive judgments upon the leaders of the upper classes (No, capital of Upper Egypt).
30:15. And I will pour My fury upon Sin, the strength of Egypt; and I will cut off the multitude of No.—God will pour His fury upon Papacy, the strength of worldly Christendom, and will cut off the multitudes that support the upper classes.
30:16. And I will set fire in Egypt: Sin shall have great pain, and No shall be rent asunder, and Noph shall have distresses daily.—God will let anarchy start in Christendom. Papacy shall have great distress; the upper classes shall be rent asunder, and the lower classes shall suffer daily distress.
30:17. The young men of Aven and of Pi‐beseth shall fall by the sword: and these cities shall go into captivity.—The young men who follow Christendom’s vain show (Aven, vanity), and her honors (Pi‐beseth, very exalted), shall fall by the sword of anarchy; for these things shall come to their end in anarchy.
30:18, 19. At Tehaphnehes also the day shall be darkened, when I shall break there the yokes of Egypt: and the pomp of her strength shall cease in her: as for her, a cloud shall cover her, and her daughters shall go into captivity. Thus will I execute judgments in Egypt: and they shall know that I am the Lord.—For the lower classes also (Tehaphnehes, in Lower Egypt), it shall be a dark day when God breaks the bondage imposed by worldly Christendom. Her pompous power shall cease. A cloud of trouble shall cover her, and her churches (daughters) shall be taken and lost in anarchy.
30:20, 21. And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first month, in the seventh day of the month, that the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and, lo, it shall not be bound up to be healed, to put a roller to bind it, to make it strong to hold the sword.—Ecclesiasticism, Satan’s right arm shall be broken, never to be healed. The Lord’s time for their punishment has come.
30:22. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and will break his arms, the strong, and that which was broken; and I will cause the sword to fall out of his hand.—God is against Satan, the mighty king of worldliness, and will break also the civil powers, and make him powerless to use his sword.
30:23. And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.—God will scatter the worldly people among the anarchists.
30:24. And I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and put My Sword in his hand: but I will break Pharaoh’s arms, and he shall groan before him with the groanings of a deadly wounded man.—God will strengthen the civil and philosophic (infidel, anarchistic religions) powers of Anarchy; and anarchy shall both use the Bible (God’s Sword) and shall wield the sword of earthly weapons, as His own sword; and this evil order of things, with powers broken down, shall utter its dying groans of distress.
30:25. But I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and the arms of Pharaoh shall fall down; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall put My sword into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall stretch it out upon the land of Egypt.—But this order of things, with powers broken, and the anarchistic state of affairs with strengthened power, shall realize that it is of Jehovah’s might, when anarchy grows in power and attacks the existing order of things.
30:26. And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse them among the countries; and they shall know that I am the Lord.—And the worldly peoples scattered everywhere, shall by the fulfillment of this prophecy know that Jehovah rules in the affairs of men.
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“Mine eyes can see the glory of the presence of the Lord; He is trampling out the winepress where his grapes of wrath are stored; I see the flaming tempest of His swift descending Sword: Our King is marching on.
“I can see His coming judgments, as they circle all the earth, The signs and groanings promised, to precede a second birth; I read His righteous sentence, in the crumbling thrones of earth: Our King is marching on.”
Ezekiel 31—Christendom Not To Endure
31:1, 2. And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the third month, in the first day of the month, that the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, speak unto Pharaoh king of Egypt, and to his multitude; Whom art thou like in thy greatness?—Chapter 31 represents Christendom as a cedar tree which is cut down. It opens with a message respecting Satan (Pharaoh, the sungod) king of worldly Christendom (Egypt) and her multitudes. What comparison could be made of her greatness!
31:3. Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of a high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs.—Behold, Satan and his counterfeit Christian system (tree; “Assyrian” should probably read “teashur,” a box‐tree), thought of as never to end (cedar, type of man with eternal life), and as a righteous kingdom (Lebanon, a mountain, white, snowy), having as members (branches, like the branches of Christendom) the great, the evil and the good, worldly people, with protecting power (shadowing shroud) and very prominent, with the greatest people at the very top.
31:4. The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field.—The peoples and the secular truth (waters) made Satan’s system great; the great nations and the apparently profound truths of liberty, fraternity and equality, made it prominent, with its roots (plantings) nourished by nations and sects (rivers) and sending out national and denominational influences throughout all the systems of the world.
31:5. Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth.—Therefore Christendom’s prominence was exalted above everything like it in the world; and its mighty members were increased in number and made of far reaching influence, because of the multitude of their people and of their teachings.
31:6. All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations.—All the jail‐birds (fowls) of the powers of spiritual control, made their church organizations (nests) among its members; and under the power of its membership (branches) did all of the governments (beasts) of this world (field) bring forth their progeny; and under its defense (shadow) dwelt all nations.
31:7. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by great waters.—Thus was it magnificent in its greatness, and in the extent of its ramifications; for it was rooted in great peoples and in great secular truths.
31:8. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches; not any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.—In Christendom’s egotism there was nothing equal to her in this age or the next.
31:9. I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches; so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.—Christendom felt itself the envy of everything, present and to come.
31:10. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because thou hast lifted up thyself in height, and he hath shot up his top among the thick boughs, and his heart is lifted up in his height.—Because of Christendom’s self‐ exaltation and pride.
31:11. I have therefore delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen; he shall surely deal with him: I have driven him out for his wickedness.—God will deliver Christendom into the power of the god (el, mighty one) of the heathen, the Devil himself; He shall surely deal vengeance to her; He will drive her out of existence.
31:12. And strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off, and have left him: upon the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the rivers of the land; and all the people of the earth are gone down from his shadow, and have left him.—The anarchists, the terror of the nations, will lay her low; upon the kingdoms (mountains), and among the people (valleys) her members (branches) will fall, and be broken off by her seceding denominations; all the people of this order of things will leave her protection, and abandon her.
31:13. Upon his ruin shall all the fowls of the heaven remain, and all the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches.—The jail‐birds of ecclesiasticism, and all the revolutionary governments of this state of affairs, shall profit by her ruin and through her members (branches).
31:14. To the end that none of all the trees by the waters exalt themselves for their height, neither shoot up their top among the thick boughs, neither their trees stand up in their height, all that drink water; for they are all delivered unto death, to the nether parts of the earth, in the midst of the children of men, with them that go down to the pit.—No other earthly system may follow her proud example; for all of them are delivered, as systems, into death, to a dishonored place among the lowest in society.
31:15. Thus saith the Lord God; In the day when he went down to the grave I caused a mourning: I covered the deep for him, and I restrained the floods thereof, and the great waters were stayed; and I caused Lebanon to mourn for him, and all the trees of the field fainted for him.—In the year 1918, when Christendom shall go down as a system to oblivion, (Sheol) to be succeeded by revolutionary republics, God will cause mourning. He will restrain and defer for a brief period the threatening waves of anarchy. He will cause the nations to mourn for Christendom, and all the man‐made systems (trees) of the world (field) to become weak on account of her fall.—E. 392, 372.
31:16. I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to hell (Sheol) with them that descend to the pit: and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, shall be comforted in the nether parts of the earth.—God will cause the nations to shake with gigantic revolutions, when He shall cast worldly Christendom, as an organized system, down to oblivion (as He did the Jews in the Dives parable).
31:17. They also went down into hell (Sheol) with him, unto them that be slain with the sword; and they that were in his arm, that dwelt under his shadow in the midst of the heathen.—But they also shall go down to oblivion (Sheol) (E. 392, 372), with Christendom, as well as those that were her power, that dwelt under her defense among the people.
31:18. To whom art thou thus like in glory in greatness among the trees of Eden? yet thou shalt be brought down with the trees of Eden unto the nether parts of the earth; thou shalt lie in the midst of the uncircumcised with them that be slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord God.—Though worldly Christendom is unsurpassed in glory and in greatness among other systems, yet shall she be brought down to be one of the most disesteemed grades of the social order; she shalt be counted as one of the ungodly. The Egyptians practiced circumcision, typical of worldly Christendom’s counterfeit ease of conscience through belief in error. This is said of Satan, the god of Christendom and all his multitude.
Ezekiel 32—Christendom’s Utter Downfall
32:1, 2. And it came to pass in the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, in the first day of the month, that the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou art like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a whale in the seas: and thou camest forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers.—In Chapter 32 Christendom’s destruction is depicted in several ways: as the catching of a sea monster (32:1‐6); as the putting out of her light (32:7‐8); also, in addition the downfall of her systems (32:9‐10) as a worldly system destroyed by anarchy (32:11‐16); as the going down of worldly Christendom to oblivion (32:17‐21); as the fall into oblivion of the anarchists (32:22‐23); of the Eastern mysticism in Christendom (32:24‐25); of her worst classes (32:26‐28); of the worldly religious people (32:29); of the church organization of ecclesiasticism (32:30), and of Christendom’s king, Satan, and all his multitudes. (32:31‐32.) The message begins with a lamentation over Satan (Pharaoh), king of worldly Christendom (Egypt), and his visible representatives, the apostate clergy. Among the nations they are as a lion in power and ferocity (lion also symbolizes the Devil); and as a monstrous power (whale) among the peoples (seas); they came with their sects (rivers), and muddied the Truth (waters) with their earthly‐ minded members, the clergy (feet), and filled their churches (rivers) with worldliness.
32:3. Thus saith the Lord God; I will therefore spread out My net over thee with a company of many people; and they shall bring thee up in My net.—God will gradually bring the Time of Trouble upon Christendom like a snare, as a movement toward liberty for the people, through a multitude of progressives, radicals, revolutionists and anarchists; and these shall ensnare her unknowingly in the great tribulation, and bring her up out of favor with the people (out of the sea.)
32:4. Then will I leave thee upon the land, I will cast thee forth upon the open field, and will cause all the fowls of the heaven to remain upon thee, and I will fill the beasts of the whole earth with thee.—Then God will leave her defenseless against the whole world, and will cause the worst classes (birds) of an apostate Christianity (heavens) to feed upon her, and will cause the evil revolutionary governments (beasts) of the whole earth to fill themselves up with her former members.
32:5. And I will lay thy flesh upon the mountains, and fill the valleys with thy height.—And her prominent members shall die, and of her lesser people a great number.
32:6. I will also water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest, even to the mountains; and the rivers shall be full of thee.—The loss of life shall extend to her highest government officials and rulers (mountain); and the churches shall be full of her dead.
32:7, 8. And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee, and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord God.—When God shall put out Christendom’s light in 1918, He will blind the minds of ecclesiasticism (heaven) (A. 318), and deprive their pulpit stars of wisdom from the true apostolic stars, the Apostles. (D. 591). He will darken the understanding of the Gospel (sun) of Jesus Christ (D. 590) with the cloud of the Time of Trouble; and the light (truth) of the Mosaic Law shall not shine forth in her.
32:9. I will also vex the hearts of many people, when I shall bring thy destruction among the nations, into the countries which thou hast not known.—God will also trouble the hearts of many other peoples, when He shall visit the same Time of Trouble upon other nations, where the clergy had no sway.
32:10. Yea, I will make many people amazed at thee, and their kings shall be horribly afraid for thee, when I shall brandish My Sword before them; and they shall tremble at every moment, every man for his own life, in the day of thy fall.—Yea, He will make many nations to marvel at Christendom’s fall; and their rulers shall fear and quake on account of her destruction, when they are threatened with destruction by anarchy. Every moment shall every man of them tremble for his life.
32:11. For thus saith the Lord God; The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon thee.—The destructive weapons of the Devil, the King of Confusion (Babylon), of Anarchy, shall be turned against worldly Christendom.
32:12. By the swords of the mighty will I cause thy multitude to fall, the terrible of the nations, all of them: and they shall spoil the pomp of Egypt, and all the multitude thereof shall be destroyed.—By the weapons of a mighty, revolted soldiery will God cause their multitudes to fall, even all the terrible men of all Christendom; and the anarchists shall take as their spoil the pomp of the nations, and all the adherents of the nations of Christendom shall cease to support them.
32:13. I will destroy also all the beasts thereof from beside the great waters; neither shall the foot of man trouble them any more, nor the hoofs of beasts trouble them.—God will destroy all of the ferocious governments from beside the great nations (waters); neither shall worldly men trouble the people any more, nor the down‐treading oppression of savage governments make them trouble.
32:14. Then will I make their waters deep, and cause their rivers to run like oil, saith the Lord God.—Then will God give the people peace (deep waters), and make their course to run with quiet smoothness. They shall know the deep things of God, and have the Holy Spirit.
32:15. When I shall make the land of Egypt desolate, and the country shall be destitute of that whereof it was full, when I shall smite all them that dwell therein, then shall they know that I am the Lord.—When God shall have made worldly Christianity desolate, and worldliness shall be destitute of its prosperous worldlings, when He shall have smitten with the great tribulation all that are at home in their worldliness, then, in the better days to come, shall they know Him as He is.
32:16. This is the lamentation wherewith they shall lament her: the daughters of the nations shall lament her: they shall lament for her, even for Egypt, and for all her multitude, saith the Lord God.—The heathen religions (daughters) shall lament worldly Christendom’s downfall, and the downfall of her adherents.
32:17, 18. It came to pass also in the twelfth year, in the fifteenth day of the month, that the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Son of man, wail for the multitude of Egypt, and cast them down, even her, and the daughters of the famous nations, unto the nether parts of the earth, with them that go down into the pit.—These verses depict the mourning for the multitudes of worldly Christians, tares, when they and worldly Christendom and the churches (daughters) of the great powers (nations) are cast down to the disesteemed lower strata of the social order, with those that die a disreputable death (pit).
32:19. Whom dost thou pass in beauty? go down, and be thou laid with the uncircumcised.—Worldly Christendom has imagined herself of unsurpassable desirability, but she shall go down to oblivion, with those regarded as polluted (uncircumcised).
32:20. They shall fall in the midst of them that are slain by the sword: she is delivered to the sword: draw her and all her multitudes.—Her populace shall fall by weapons of destruction, and by the Sword of the Spirit; she is delivered to destruction. They shall draw her as a system, and her adherents, as adherents, away for burial!
32:21. The strong among the mighty shall speak to him out of the midst of hell with them that help him: they are gone down, they lie uncircumcised, slain by the sword.—The one strong among Christendom’s great men, no longer men of power, and those that helped her shall speak of her downfall, in their fallen condition (Sheol); they shall have fallen from high positions, and be as men outcast and polluted, reduced to lowliness by the might of anarchy, and by the Sword of the Spirit.—E. 392, 372.
32:22, 23. Asshur is there and all her company: his graves are about him: all of them slain, fallen by the sword: Whose graves are set in the sides of the pit, and her company is round about her grave; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused terror in the land of the living.—The revolutionists (Asshur, Assyria, the revolutionary anarchists) in multitudes shall go down to oblivion, dead literally or dead to their order of things.
32:24. There is Elam and all her multitude round about her grave; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which are gone down uncircumcised into the nether parts of the earth, which caused their terror in the land of the living; yet have they borne their shame with them that go down to the pit.—There in oblivion shall be buried New Thought, Christian Science, and other forms of Oriental religion or Mysticism (Elam, Persia, home of Mysticism), and the multitude of their believers, ceased then to be mystics; all fallen by the literal sword or by the Sword of the Spirit.
32:25. They have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her multitude: her graves are round about him: all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword: though their terror was caused in the land of the living, yet have they borne their shame with them that go down to the pit: he is put in the midst of them that be slain.—The anarchists shall put Mysticism to rest in destruction.
32:26. There is Meshech, Tubal, and all her multitude: her graves are round about him: all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword, though they caused their terror in the land of the living.—There shall be the worst classes of Christendom, the anarchists themselves, in oblivion, all in disrepute, destroyed in the destruction they wrought.
32:27. And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war: and they have laid their swords under their heads, but their iniquities shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.—And they shall not be mentioned, not even with these great men who have gone down as evil but with some small degree of repute; and with them shall be the end of war (H. 16); but the very memory of the anarchists shall be as of iniquity personified.
32:28. Yea, thou shalt be broken in the midst of the uncircumcised, and shalt lie with them that are slain with the sword.—They shall be thought of as evil only, slain with the sword, and disesteemed by the Word of God.
32:29. There is Edom, her kings, and all her princes, which with their might are laid by them that were slain by the sword: they shall lie with the uncircumcised, and with them that go down to the pit.—In the general ruin shall be worldly apostate persecuting Christendom, slain by anarchy’s weapons and by the Word of God. They shall be polluted, and come to a disreputable end.
32:30. There be the princes of the north, all of them, and all the Zidonians, which are gone down with the slain; with their terror they are ashamed of their might; and they lie uncircumcised with them that be slain by the sword, and bear their shame with them that go down to the pit.—The great ecclesiastical lords (north) and all the adherents of the belong‐to‐ a‐church‐or‐go‐to‐hell doctrine (Zidonians, among whom was Jezebel) shall go to oblivion. Though a dreadful terror in their activities, they shall be ashamed; they shall go down, as polluted with iniquity.
32:31. Pharaoh shall see them, and shall be comforted over all his multitude, even Pharaoh and all his army slain by the sword, saith the Lord God.—Satan (Pharaoh), the god of worldly Christendom, then bound for a thousand years, shall see the fall of these his multitudes, slain by the literal sword, or by the Word of God.
32:32. For I have caused My terror in the land of the living: and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised with them that are slain with the sword, even Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord God.—Satan and his multitude shall cease to trouble the earth, gone down finally to oblivion, as one polluted with iniquity.
From chapters 25 to 32 Ezekiel prophesied against seven foreign nations (Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon and Egypt), indicating ALL non‐Christian elements.
Ezekiel 33—Why Ecclesiasticism Must Perish
33:1, 2. Again the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman.—A mutual responsibility exists between one of God’s watchmen and His people, the one to speak and the other to listen. (33:1‐19.) Ezekiel recites his warning of Jerusalem’s fall. (33:20‐29.) The people listen, but do not believe. (33:30‐33.) This chapter repeats the statements of 3:17‐21 and 18:5‐29 regarding the watchman set to warn the people of Christendom, his message and responsibility, and the responsibility of the Christian people toward the watchman—Pastor Russell, and his message and warning from God. “A man of their coasts” refers to the clergy class appointed and ordained by the people, and set by them as their watchman.
33:3. If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people.—Who of the clergy class have blown the trumpet of Truth and warned “their” people of the impending doom of Christendom?
33:4. Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.—The people who have heard the warning have only themselves to blame.—Isa. 58:1.
33:6. But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.—The clergy have an awful responsibility. Faithful watching on their part with their great influence among the people, would have saved tens of millions from physical death, and a host from the religious death that will overtake so many. The outraged people will turn on the clergy, as they did in the French Revolution, and in a frightful carnival will exact full toll for the lives lost in war. Responsibility for the Time of Trouble lies squarely at the door of ecclesiasticism; for had the clergy taken a united stand upon the Word of God against industrial, social, political, moral and religious evils, they could have reformed Christendom and prevented the world war and the ensuing revolution and anarchy. Our Lord said, prophetically, “Upon this generation shall come all the blood—to the blood of Zechariah, whom you will murder between the sanctuary and the altar.” (Matt. 23:35 Diaglott, foot‐note.) Josephus says of this man that he boldly accused the clergy of Jerusalem with being the cause of the trouble upon the city. He was tried, accused of inciting anarchy, was found innocent, and was then slain by the clergy class. His fate represents experiences coming upon the Lord’s true people shortly.
33:7‐9. So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at My mouth, and warn them from Me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood shall I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.—Pastor Russell faithfully taught that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), and not eternal torment. He also warned the wicked systems of earth, political, economic and religious, that they should surely perish from the earth, if they did not turn whole‐heartedly to Jehovah, the God of infinite Love.
33:10. Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?—The nominal Christians of our day were typed by the Hebrews who went to Ezekiel with insincere objections. They have treated Pastor Russell with a seeming but insincere respect. When they inquired into his writing and predictions, based upon the Word of God, they had no sincerity either in their questions or their professions toward him or the Word set forth by him.
33:11‐19. Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel? Therefore, thou son of man, say unto the children of thy people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression: as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live for his righteousness in the day that he sinneth. When I shall say to the righteous, that he shall surely live; if he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousness shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it. Again, when I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right; if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him: he hath done that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live. Yet the children of thy people say, The way of the Lord is not equal: but as for them, their way is not equal. When the righteous turneth from his righteousness, and commiteth iniquity, he shall even die thereby. But if the wicked turn from his wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall live thereby.—God has no pleasure in the destruction of Christendom. If it had turned from its spiritual idolatry and harlotry to obey God it would have been saved from its impending doom. Its destruction is traceable directly to a “small group of willful men,” leaders and guides of the masses; namely the pope, the cardinals, bishops, priests, ministers, revivalists and other religious leaders who have mistaught rulers and people, and by their combination of worldly and religious teachings brought the world into a condition where the social elements are working their mutual destruction. God pity the clergy for what is coming upon them; for the people will surely recognize the part they have signally failed to play in not, by concerted preaching of true godliness, checking the world’s mad rush to anarchy and annihilation.
Literally the Scriptures foregoing are an affirmation that any one who kept the Mosaic Law perfectly should enjoy life indefinitely as long as he kept the law. Spiritually it teaches the Christian that if he has turned from sin to serve God, under the spirit of the Divine Law of Love, he shall have life everlasting. (Rom. 8:13, 14.) Symbolically it speaks to this evil state of affairs, or world, especially to that wicked one, ecclesiasticism, and enumerates its iniquities: it has sinned before God: it has broken God’s Law of Love and every other Law, and excused the breach by sophistries. Romanism, with which Protestantism has linked hands, teaches the most iniquitous and wicked things.
“A culprit or a witness questioned by a judge, but in an illegal manner (of which the culprit, of course, is the judge) may swear that he knows nothing of the crime about which he is questioned, although he knows it well, meaning mentally, that he knows nothing in such manner as to answer.”—Alphonso Maria de Liguori, Popish theologian, bishop and founder of the order of Redemptorists, 1696‐1787.
Again “Saint” Liguori: “He may swear that he knows nothing, when he knows that the person who committed the crime committed it without malice; or if he knows the crime, but secretly, and there has been no scandal. When a crime has been well concealed, the witness and even the criminal, may and even must, swear that the crime has never been committed. The accused may deny his crime under oath, understanding that he has not committed this crime in such a manner as to be obliged to confess it. He who has sworn to keep a secret is not obliged to keep his oath, if any consequential injury to him or to others is thereby caused. If any one has sworn before a judge to keep the truth, he is not obliged to say secret things. (A woman who has really committed adultery may deny it under oath, provided she has been to confess: for then the sin has been pardoned, and has really ceased to exist.) It is right to advise any one to commit a robbery, or a fornication in order to avoid a murder. We may be allowed to conceal the truth, or disguise it under ambiguous or equivocal words or signs, for a just cause, and where there is no necessity to confess the truth.” And Liguori is still a “saint” in the Roman ecclesiasticism, “where Satan’s seat is,” and with whom Episcopalians, Church of England men, and Protestants generally, are trying to come together in a church union or federation, destined fortunately to an early decease.
“They are not to be called oaths, but rather perjury, which are in opposition to the welfare of the Romish church.”—The Lateran Council (“infallible”). “If any, either alone or before others, whether asked or of his own accord, or for the purpose of sport, or for any other object, swears that he has not done something else which he has done, or in a different way from that in which he has done it, or any other truth that is added, he does not really lie, nor is he perjured.”—Pope Innocent XI, another of the “saints.” 1611‐1689. “A man may swear that he never did such a thing (though he actually did it), meaning within himself that he did not do so on a certain day, or before he was born, or understanding any other such circumstances, while the words which he employs have no such sense as would discover his meaning.” “Promises are not binding, when the person in making them had no intention to bind himself.”—“Saint” Antonio Escobar of Mendoza, a Spanish Casuist and Jesuit, 1589‐1699 (“Papacy and Civil Power,” page 607). “I pronounce all Roman Catholic priests, bishops, popes, monks, friars and nuns to be the most deliberate and willful set of liars that ever infested this or any other country, or disgraced the name of religion.”—William Hogan, a prominent southern lawyer, formerly a priest, on page 172 of his book, “Popery.”
Stealing is authorized by Popish ecclesiasticism: “A servant has the right to rob his master, a child his father, and a poor man the rich. The poor man who has concealed the goods and effects of which he has need, may swear that he has nothing.” In Romish theology it is ordinarily a mortal sin to steal two pieces of gold; but, “If any one steal small sums at different times, either from the same or from different persons, not having the intention of stealing large sums, nor of causing a great damage, his sin is not mortal. If several persons steal from the same master, in small quantities, each in such a manner as not to commit a mortal sin, though each knows that all of these little thefts together cause a considerable damage to their master, yet no one of them commits a mortal sin, even when they steal at the same time. A son does not commit a mortal sin when he steals only twenty or thirty pieces of gold from a father who has an income of 150 pieces of gold.”—“Saint” Liguori.
Ecclesiasticism, the dominant power of the Gospel Age, authorizes murder: “A man who has been excommunicated by the Pope may be killed anywhere, because the Pope has an indirect jurisdiction over the whole world, even in temporal things.”—Dens, a Roman Catholic theological authority in his “Theologica Morales.” Pope Gregory VII (alias “Saint” Hildebrand), 1020‐1085, pronounced that it was no murder to kill an excommunicated person. “This rule has been for 700 years and continues to be, part of the ecclesiastical law. One of the later popes has declared that the murder of a Protestant is so good a deed that it atones and more than atones for the murder of a Catholic.”—Lord Acton in the London Times, July 26, 1872. Says Dr. Isaac J. Lansing in “Romanism and the Republic;” “Every person who had anything to do with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was a Roman Catholic. John Wilkes Booth was a Roman Catholic; Payne and Atseroth, also Dr. Nudd, who dressed Booth’s leg; Garrett, in whose premises he was killed; also Harold was a Roman Catholic; Mrs. Suratt and her son were Roman Catholics; their house was the headquarters for Roman Catholics and for the Jesuit priests. All this was brought out before the military tribunal which condemned some of them to death. When John Suratt fled from Washington he was taken charge of by Jesuits, and under a Jesuit convoy was carried to France.”—Page 272.
“Catholics who shall assume the cross for the extermination of heretics, shall enjoy the same indulgences and be protected by the same privileges as are granted to those who go to the help of the Holy Land. We decree, further that all who may have dealings with heretics, shall be excommunicated.”—The Lateran Council (composed of candidates for Roman Catholic “saintship.”).
Papacy, the mother of harlots, also permits her clergy to become criminals: “Were even the lives of her ministers debased by crime, they are still within her pale, and therefore lose none of the powers with which her ministry invests them.”—Catechism of the Council of Trent. “A mortal sin is that which kills the soul and deserves hell,” says Archbishop John Hughes, of New York. Papal ecclesiasticism controls the education of the nations under threat of mortal sin: “Catholic electors (voters) in this country, who do not use their electoral (voting) power in behalf of separate (religious public) schools, are guilty of mortal sin. Likewise parents not making the sacrifices necessary to secure such schools, or sending their children to mixed schools. Moreover, the confessor (priest) who would give absolution to such parents, electors or legislators as support mixed schools, to the prejudice of separate schools, would be guilty of a mortal sin.”—Right Reverend Charbonnel, Bishop of Toronto, Canada.
The chastity of an attractive and obedient young nun may hang by the following slender thread: “When a nun receives a precept from her prelate, superior, or confessor, she should immediately execute it, not only to please them, but principally to please God, whose will is known by their command. If then, you receive a command from one who holds the place of God (a man‐made priest!) you should observe it as if it came from God Himself. There is more certainty of doing the will of God by obedience to our superiors than by obedience to Jesus Christ should He appear in person and give His command. The nun shall be most certain of not having to render an account of the actions performed through obedience; for these the superior only, who commands them, shall be accountable.”—Liguori, “Saint,” in Popish constellation of fallen stars. According to Cardinal Manning, a bright star in the Roman Catholic heavens (page 89 of his “True Story of the Vatican Council”) the pope is infallible in matters of faith and morals: and the canonizing of “saints” comes under this head. Cardinal Newman on page 84 of his “Via Media,” 1887 edition, asserts concerning the canonizing of “Saints:”
“The infallibility of the church must certainly extend to this solemn and public act, canonization; and that because so serious a matter, affecting the worship of the faithful, the church, that is, the Pope, must be infallible.” One of the persons duly authorized by infallible Romish canonization is “Saint” Bridget, who lived in 1360. This “saint” says: “The Pope is a murderer of souls. He destroys the flock of Christ and fleeces it. More savage is he than Judas, and more unjust than Pilate, and worse and more wicked than Lucifer. He has exchanged all the ten commandments of God for this single one of his own, ‘Give me money, money, money.’ The Pope with his clergy are the forerunners of Antichrist, rather than the servants of Christ. The Pope’s court on earth plunders the Heavenly court of Christ. The clergy never read the Book of God; but they are ever studying the book of this world. I once loved priests more than men and even angels. The kiss of those fornicating priests is the kiss of Judas when he betrayed our Lord!”—Montagu, pages 305‐6.
An essential factor in the power of this evil one, and an important part of the iniquity of ecclesiasticism is the Romish confessional, which many Episcopal and Protestant ecclesiastics would, if they could, establish in the harlot daughters, the daughter churches, Protestantism. This feature is of Pagan origin. “Auricular confession was enjoined in the Elusinian mysteries, by Zoroaster in Persia, by Buddha in India, and was practiced by the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, the Mexicans before Cortez, the Peruvians before Pizarro, by the Japanese, the Siamese, and others.” The confessional has made of every priest a spy upon the privacy of the home, the inner secrets of business and the confidential affairs of city, state, province, and nation. Theoretically the confessions are confidential, as Dr. Dens says: “It is not lawful to reveal anything that is told in confession, though it be to avoid the greatest evil that can happen; but actually the secrets of the confessional are revealed.” “De Sanctis,” page 122, says:
“While the penitent arraigns his faults with all the fatuity of a simpleton, what is the confessor doing? Laughing at the simplicity of the penitent: and afterwards in the priestly orgies that follow a morning of great confessions, in the hilarity that flows from wine, amid coarse explosions of laughter, they describe the stupid folly of their penitents; and each priest vies with his fellows in rendering his own penitents more ridiculous than the rest. This breach of faith extends to the highest of Rome’s degraded ecclesiasticism.” History records that Pope Pius V, “saint” (1504‐1572) “for the punishment of certain offences took advantage of the confessional, which ought to be an inviolable sanctuary.” Pope Sixtus V (1521‐1590) told the under clergy that “they could make a report to the Pontiff, without any danger attached to revealing a confession, he giving them absolution for the whole.” Elliott, a former priest, in “Delineation of Roman Catholicism,” says, “All our conversation ran upon the stories he [another priest] heard in confession. It is the ordinary discourse of the priests, when they meet, to inform one another of what they have heard in confession. I was often present at such conferences, where the conversation was so indecent that even an honest pagan would have blushed.” “Every day they (the Dominican monks) came and talked most licentiously, relating things that had happened at the Holy office at Perugia, confessions they had heard, etc.”—Scipione Ricca, Bishop of Pistoria, and an Italian reformer, 1741‐1810.
Bishop Hugh Latimer, of England (1485‐1555), whom the Romish ecclesiasticism caused to be burned at the stake, said: “And so they came to know all the secrets that were in men’s hearts, so that neither emperor nor king could say nor do, nor think anything in his heart, but they knew it, and so applied all the purposes and intents of princes to their own commodities. And this was the fruit of their auricular confession.” Finally, from De Sanctis, page 133, etc: “Confession in relation to society may be defined as an universal spydom, organized and complete. Confessors are not content to know the sins of those who confess; but they must learn the regulation and management of the family; and when an ingenuous youth or innocent maiden comes under the fangs of a knavish confessor (and which of them is not a knave?) they do not escape until they have first revealed the secrets of the family circle—without, however, being aware of it.”
“De Sanctis” continues: “Encouragement is given to theft, as to every other crime, by the facility of obtaining pardon, and absolutions are given to robbers, usurers, murderers, without their having made any restitution whatever. They repair to the confessor, present him with a goodly offering for a mass; or, if they are robbers of celebrity, men abounding in wealth, they found a chapelry, a benefice, or something of the kind. At Rome, for instance, every one knows that Pius VII (1742‐1823) granted to all who hear confessions in the Holy house Ponterotto, the privilege of absolving from restitution all who have defrauded the Rev. Apostolic Chambers, or the government; and all defraud, and run there to receive absolution. But this is not enough. Leo X (1475‐1521), in his bull beginning with ‘Postquam ad Apostulatus’ gives confessors the privilege not only of absolving robbers, but of permitting them to retain in all good conscience, the fruits of their usury, robberies, thefts, etc., on condition that part of the goods be given to the church!”
Ecclesiasticism is a greedy robber: “By confession many families are immersed in poverty; because the grasping confessor, taking advantage of the weak moments of a dying man, has had the will made to the profit of the clergy; and facts of the kind may be reckoned by the million. The grasping cupidity of ecclesiasticism’s will‐hunters, and the consequent ruin of innocent and helpless families, formed the subject of an indignant remonstrance of the German princes at the Diet of Nuremberg. To such a length was this execrable practice sometimes carried that the last sacraments were denied to the dying man until he consented to make a will in the priest’s favor.”
Ecclesiasticism’s apostasy, in teachings and in life, has sown the seeds of the fiery harvest of anarchy: “The horrible consequence for religion is that infidelity advances with huge strides, especially in Roman Catholic countries. The enlightenment of the age no longer permits men to believe in the priests blindly, as in the times of ignorance. Free discussion alone could show that the doctrines of the Roman church are not those of the Gospel; discussion, as it would prove their falsehood to a demonstration, would establish the truth. Discussion being prevented, it follows that, seeing clearly the falsehood and iniquity of the Roman doctrines, men believe them, because they are not discussed, to be the doctrines of the Christian religion, and abandon them, and live in indifference and infidelity.” Protestantism, ecclesiasticism, has been an apt follower of Papacy in suppression of discussion. Witness the systematic world‐wide ban on any discussion of Present Truth as presented by God’s watchman, Pastor Russell! Ecclesiasticism, priestcraft, had for ages supplanted the worship of God with paganism, and in the Gospel Age has insidiously transformed the Gospel of Christ, has tried to destroy liberty and progress and has built up a gigantic system of oppression and destruction of the friends of the Truth. The most ferocious of the popes are made the “saints” of Satan’s church. And, says De Sanctis: “In canonizing such men, the Popes have canonized their doctrines; hence it cannot he said that despotism, obscuration [suppression of Truth], oppression of nations, and hatred for any kind of progress, exist through the mal‐practice of any one of the popes; they exist by the very system of the Papacy. The corruption of religion ought not to be attributed to abuse of it by the individual, but to the system; therefore the Gospel ought to reign in its purity, and ought to be delivered from this great enemy; and Italy and Rome ought to confer upon the world this great benefit of despoiling the popes of their usurped power.” Why not reform, purge, cleanse ecclesiasticism? As well try to reform cancer. The sole safeguard is the destruction, excision of the germs. Any real reform would cause the prompt dropping out of the system‐loving millions who would soon reorganize into another vicious system. The very constitution of ecclesiasticism forbids its ever being other than what the Wall Street Journal denominates, “that international nuisance, the church‐state.” Here are some of the articles of Papacy’s present, past and future constitution (infallible):
1. All human power is evil, and must therefore be under the Pope. 2. The temporal powers must act unconditionally, in accordance with the orders of the spiritual. 3. The Church is empowered to grant or take away any temporal possession. 4. The Pope has the right to give countries and nations which are non‐Catholic to Catholic regents, who can reduce them to slavery. 5. The Pope can make slaves of those Christian subjects whose prince or ruling power is interdicted by the Pope. 6. The laws of the Church concerning the liberty of the Church and the Papal power are based upon Divine inspiration. 7. The Pope has the right to practice the unconditional censure of books. 8. The Pope has the right to annul state laws, treaties, constitutions, etc.; to absolve from obedience thereto, as soon as they seem detrimental to the rights of the Church, or those of the clergy. 9. The Pope possesses the right of admonishing, and if needs be of punishing, the temporal rulers, emperors and kings, as well as of drawing before the spiritual forum any case in which a mortal sin occurs. 10. Without the consent of the Pope no tax or rate of any kind can be levied upon a clergyman or upon any church whatsoever. 11. The Pope has the right to absolve from oaths, and obedience to the persons and the laws of the princes whom he excommunicates. (Note. All Protestants are excommunicated.) 12. The Pope can annul all legal relations of those in ban, especially their marriage. 13. The Pope can release from every obligation, oath, vow, either before or after being made. 14. The execution of Papal commands for the persecution of heretics causes remission of sins. 15. He who kills one that is excommunicated is no murderer in a legal sense.“—The Canon Law”, by Dr. G. F. von Schulte, Professor of Canonical Law at Prague.
Here the crafty and wicked Mother of Harlots, ecclesiasticism, asserts her infallible right to permit, directly or indirectly, any and every crime possible for depraved humanity to commit.
Protestantism longs for the old‐time power of the clergy. It has the spirit, disposition, of spiritual fornication, goes to the limit in its efforts to control affairs through local, state, and national governmental agencies, and now is ready and willing to ally itself with liberty‐ destroying papal ecclesiasticism. It displays its true nature and its indifference to the good of the people in its willing eagerness to unite in any manner with the force which has for centuries throttled liberty, banished the Word of God, and stifled freedom in blood. Let not the people of Christendom overlook this when the Protestant clergy advocate church union, as they will. What can be done with such an organization as apostate ecclesiasticism? The truly Christian individual’s answer must be to obey the Divine command, “Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers [partners in] of her sins [outlined foregoing, ad nauseam] and that ye receive not of her plagues.” (Rev. 18:4.) The Lord’s people, all that really have the Holy Spirit, will and must “come out of her,” clean away from this unhallowed partnership and federation with iniquity. Ecclesiasticism, however, may rest assured that she will not suffer greatly in loss of members or of persons of wealth and power; for but few of the Lord’s people are in her. Each ecclesiastic can be assured that “his people,” the tares, the worldly church members, the Babylonians, the spiritual idolaters and fornicators, the congregation of Molech, will stick by him until the heat of the fiery trials of the time of trouble drives even “the clergy’s people” out into the open of worldliness.
Verse 13 shows that, in view of the enormity of ecclesiasticism’s iniquity, both Roman and Protestant, their partnership in criminality, and their stubborn and willful persistence in evil, “For his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die.”
33:20. Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. O ye house of Israel, I will judge you every one after his ways.—O house of nominal churchianity, the time has come for God to Judge you, to recompense you double, according to your ways!—Rev. 18:6.
33:21. And it came to pass in the twelfth year of our captivity, in the tenth month, in the fifth day of the month, that one that had escaped out of Jerusalem came unto me, saying, The city is smitten.—In 24:25‐27, after having cited the skepticism of the Jews as to Ezekiel’s message, it was stated that from the time of Jerusalem’s fall until the tidings of the fall should arrive, Ezekiel was to be dumb, having no new message to be heard by the people. The intervening prophecies, chapters 26 to 32 are not against the Hebrews, but against the heathen nations. The city fell in the eleventh year of Zedekiah’s reign, the fourth month, the ninth day (2 Kings 25:2, 3), from which to the coming of the tidings of the city’s fall, on the twelfth year, tenth month and fifth day, was one year, five months, twenty‐six days. On that momentous day came the tidings, “The city is smitten!” Pastor Russell’s voice was stilled in death on October 31, 1916. If an application of Ezekiel’s period of dumbness is valid here as a time feature, the tidings, the realization that Christendom is smitten by the onslaughts of revolution, might be expected to flash throughout the world on or about April 27, 1918, a year, five months and twenty‐six days after the death of God’s great watchman. As in Ezekiel 24:27, this would be a sign, an indication to Christendom of the truth of Pastor Russell’s commission from the Almighty.
33:22. Now the hand of the Lord was upon me in the evening, afore he that was escaped came; and had opened my mouth, until he came to me in the morning; and my mouth was opened, and I was no more dumb.—The Lord made good His promise while the news was approaching; and removed Ezekiel’s dumbness half a day before, in the evening, before the morning when the tidings arrived. It was on the same day; for in the Hebrew system of time, the evening began the day. This signifies that perhaps half a year prior to the general realization of Christendom’s downfall, Pastor Russell, though dead, shall again speak through this, the seventh volume of his Studies in the Scriptures—for this is but the completion of his great work of admonition and warning for the Church and for Christendom.
33:23, 24. Then the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, they that inhabit those wastes of the land of Israel speak, saying Abraham was one, and he inherited the land: but we are many; the land is given us for inheritance.—After Jerusalem had been sacked and King Zedekiah captured, as related in 2 Kings 25, “the captain of the guard left of the poor of the land to be vine‐dressers and husbandmen.” These (“those inhabiting those wastes of the land of Israel”) imagined that “the land is given to us for an inheritance.” They thought they would be left in undisturbed possession, but certain of them came into further conflict with the Assyrians. Then the land was made utterly desolate. This signifies, in fulfillment, that while the revolution overthrowing ecclesiasticism will make quite a clean sweep, there will still remain some of the more lowly adherents of ecclesiastical systems, who will imagine that they and their ideals are to prosper and spread even to the control of the revolutionary order of things.
33:25, 26. Wherefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Ye eat with the blood, and lift up your eyes toward your idols, and shed blood; and shall ye possess the land? Ye stand upon your sword, ye work abomination, and ye defile every one his neighbor’s wife; and shall ye possess the land?—But God knows their hearts, and is against them, for their continuance in the evil ways of ecclesiasticism.
33:27. Say thou thus unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; As I live, surely they that are in the wastes shall fall by the sword, and him that is in the open field will I give to the beasts to be devoured, and they that be in the forts and in the caves shall die of the pestilence.—A sad awakening awaits them. As Jehovah lives, those tares then surviving the ravages of revolution shall be slain by the sword of anarchy, and shall have taken away all pretense of being Christians. Those that have the spirit of earthly ambition shall be given to be destroyed by the savagery of anarchy; and those in the strongholds and in the protected conditions of revolution shall die literally of pestilence and be destroyed religiously by the pestilential teachings of those evil days.
33:28. For I will lay the land most desolate, and the pomp of her strength shall cease; and, the mountains of Israel shall be desolate, that none shall pass through.—God purposes to utterly desolate this evil order of things and to completely abase the last vestiges of its pride and pomp, and to cause the governments of this Age, even in their changed forms of revolution, to pass away.
33:29. Then shall they know that I am the Lord, when I have laid the land most desolate, because of all their abominations which they have committed.—Then at last the people that remain will realize that the war, revolution and anarchy, were the righteous judgments of the Almighty against the spiritual, political and economic abominations of Christendom.
33:30. Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the Word that cometh forth from the Lord.—Reverting to the present time, about contemporary with the realisation that Christendom is smitten, the hypocrisy of professed Christians is spoken against. The tares in their churches (houses) will talk of Pastor Russell and his works and words—they will read this book, and will urge one another to “hear what is the Word that cometh from the Lord.”
33:31. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as My people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them; for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness.—They will come in numbers, apparently “as My people;” and like all tares, imitation Christians, they will listen respectfully to God’s Words urging haste in consecration for the coming Kingdom; but they will not do the things they hear. They will manifest with their mouths great love for God, but will at heart be the self‐seekers they always were!
33:32. And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not.—To these people, in their insincerity and hypocrisy, Pastor Russell’s works will be scarcely a grade higher than an entertainment, a beautiful song, “the song of Moses and the Lamb,” well played on the many‐stringed harp, the Bible, but not heeded as of solemn import.
33:33. And when this cometh to pass (lo, it will come), then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.—But when the things predicted in the entire sens volumes of the Studies in the Scriptures come to pass, then shall the tares, too late, realize that a great and Divinely ordained preacher “hath been among them.”
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“Master, speak! Thy servant heareth, Longing for Thy gracious Word, Longing for Thy voice that cheereth; Master, let it now be heard. I am listening, Lord, for Thee; What hast Thou to say to me?”
Ezekiel 34—The Unfaithful Shepherds
34:1, 2. And the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?—God is against the clergy. Chapter 34 is a burning arraignment of ecclesiasticism. It is to be taken in a dual sense as concerning the clergy’s treatment of God’s true people, the true Church on the spiritual plane, and of the Jews on the earthly plane, both of whom the self‐ appointed shepherds, the clergy, have neglected, abused and scattered. (34:1‐8, 17‐21.) God will judge ecclesiasticism (34:9, 10, 16, 17, 20, 22), and will Himself, through His own agencies, regather and bless His true flock, Jewish and Christian. (34:10, 11‐17, 22‐31.) The words “shepherd” and “pastor” have the same meaning (D. 62; F. 287). Thus saith Jehovah God to the clergy, from Pope to preachers, Woe—in the revolution and anarchy, from 1918 on—woe to the clergy that selfishly look out for “No. 1,” that seek big salaries, live in tax‐free and rent‐free parsonages and rectories, that apply to themselves every promise of the Divine Word. Should not the clergy, the pastors, unselfishly feed the flock of God?
34:3. Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock.—Ye live on the choicest offerings of the people. Ye “fleece” the sheep of their golden fleece. Them that are fed to fatness with the Word of God, ye kill spiritually if ye can. Ye have literally killed over fifty millions in bloody persecutions. Ye have preached millions into a dreadful death in the trenches. Ye do everything to the sheep but feed them. Did I not command you thrice, “Feed My sheep?”—John 21:17; 1 Pet. 5:2.
34:4. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.—Those weakened by spiritual disease—by the pestilence of false doctrines—ye have not strengthened with the pure Word of God, the Bread of Life. Rather ye have thrown them poisonous, death‐dealing doctrines (1 Cor. 10:21) from the “table of devils.” Ye have not healed with the Divine Word of comfort (2 Cor. 1:3‐7; Rom. 15:4) those spiritually sick with temporary ailment of the soul. Ye have not bound up, with the strong promises of God, the broken in spirit (Isa. 61:1.) Neither have ye brought back into renewed faithfulness those driven away by your treatment, nor sought to find and bring to renewed relation to God those sheep that have strayed from him in life and doctrine. Rather than feed them, serve and shepherd them, ye have ruled them, lorded over God’s heritage (1 Pet. 5:3), as concerns both God’s true Christian sheep and His sheep of the Hebrew race.
34:5. And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered.—“My sheep know My voice [of love], and a stranger will they not follow.” (John 10:4, 5.) They were not kept together, cared for and cherished in the bonds of Christian love. There were not among you the true under‐shepherds having My Spirit of Divine Love; and you, adulterous priests of Baal, and of Molech—the cruel, fiery‐torment God—none having My Spirit could hear or follow. And when they were scattered, they, the inoffensive, unresisting ones, became the prey of every evil government and of every evil employer and corporation. Ye made them cannon‐fodder by the thousands for the blood‐guilty kaisers, czars, kings and generals of your evil order of things.
34:6. My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, My flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did search or seek after them.—My people wandered homeless and friendless throughout all the nations of this evil world. My flock of Apostles, martyrs, sacrificers, was scattered throughout all human society. Not one of the selfish, idolatrous clergy of either Romanism or Protestantism cared for them, or loved My beloved ones enough to seek after them; but rather ignored them, ostracized them, compelled their silence, drove them out from the churches, and stilled their voices in persecution and in death.
34:7. Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the Word of the Lord.—Ye have done this for centuries; and God permitted you to continue, because the time had not come. But now has come the hour of your judgment, ye popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, preachers, revivalists, and clergy of Baal, of every order and grade. Hear ye the Word of Jehovah.
34:8. As I live, saith the Lord God, surely because My flock became a prey, and My flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did My shepherds search for My flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not My flock.—As I live, saith the Living God, surely because My true flock became a prey, and was exploited by every evil ruler and employer, because there was no true shepherd among you, and you clergy did not love and cherish and seek for My beloved flock, but you loved and fed yourselves, and starved My true people with a famine for the hearing of the Word of God.—Amos 8:11.
34:9. Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord.—Therefore, ye clergy, hear the Word of the true God, Jehovah.
34:10. Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require My flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; for I will deliver My flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them.—Thus saith Jehovah God; Behold, I am against the clergy (H. 12), great and little, high and low; and I will exact from them an accounting for My beloved people; I will take My flock entirely from them. “Come out of her, O My people, and touch not the unclean thing.” (Rev. 18:4; 2 Cor. 6:17.) And I will cause the clergy to cease from feeding or attempting to preach to My flock, or any flock in My name; for in a Time of great Trouble I will deliver My people from the mouths of the clergy (Rev. 9:17‐19), that My flock may not furnish them support any more, that My people may not ever again be preached by the clergy into slaughter.
34:11. For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search My sheep, and seek them out.—Jehovah will ignore the hireling, faithless clergy, and through an agency of His own lowly despised, caluminated, ostracised will patiently, persistently, lovingly search for all His “little ones,” those having His Spirit, and will seek them out.
34:12. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out My sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.—As an oriental shepherd, who knows and loves his sheep and is known and loved of them, seeks them out, when they are scattered (John 10:4‐15), so will God seek out every one of His beloved ones, and will deliver them out of the condition of loneliness, distress, famine and persecution, where they have been scattered by the apostate clergy in the troublous and dark period of the Gospel Age.
34:13. And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country.—God himself will bring them together from the various paganized “Christian” denominations, into the joy and peace and love of a condition at one with Himself and with others of like precious faith. Upon the height of the Heavenly Kingdom will He feed them, by rivers of crystal clear Truth, and amid the rejoicing throngs of the Heavenly courts. His chosen people, the Jews, will God bring by the agency of the resurrected Ancient Worthies to Palestine, where He will feed them upon the historic mountains of that hallowed land, in the then great cities of a realized Zionism.
34:14. I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.—God will feed His Little Flock, first on Present Truth and then, at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb He will appoint their place as Kings and Priests of the Kingdom. He will make them abide forever in the place, the Divine spirit nature, which Christ went to Heaven to prepare. Upon the Word, fresh from the mind of God, shall they feast forever, in the spiritual phase of the Kingdom. To the Jews will be fulfilled these promises in the earthly phase of the Kingdom.
34:15. I will feed My flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God.—God will feed His Flock with Present Truth, and will give them the rest of “the peace that passeth understanding.”—Phil. 4:7.
34:16. I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick; but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment.—Not one true sheep shall be lost. God’s unerring eye will seek every one, and bring all back, first into the Truth, and then into the Kingdom. He will bind up the broken in spirit and strengthen the spiritually sick. In the latter part of this verse the picture of the shepherds is dropped and a new parable begins, likening the clergy and their strong supporters and “laity” to different classes of sheep and goats (cattle). God purposes in the impending revolution and anarchy to destroy all the fat priests and clergy of all grades—as priests and clergy, at least—and those that, like the Pharisees of old, are sure they will securely stand in the presence of the Lord. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” (1 Cor. 10:12.) He will feed them with famine and destruction, and with the judgments pronounced in His Word.
34:17. And as for you, O My flock, thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle, between the rams and the goats.—The nominal flock is made up of clergy and laity of sheep and goats. In the flock God discerns the weaker sheep and the stronger rams and the goats—the clergy, class‐leaders, etc.,—some of whom are real sheep and some goats, destined to the left side of disfavor. Many of these are even wolves in sheep’s clothing.—Matt. 7:15.
34:18. Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet?—The stronger ones have not helped the weak to feed and grow strong; but, as though it were a small matter, the clergy, have lived on the fat of the land, relatively to their poorer congregations. They have eaten up the good Word of God for themselves, particularly the Romish clergy; and what spiritual food they have given the laity, they have walked all over with muddy feet—mingled it with earthly doctrines, social and civic betterment and traditions of men. They have drunk of the water of Truth (C. 65) coming from the Bible, but have spoiled the waters by mingling it with Evolution and Higher Criticism.
34:19. And as for My flock, they eat that which ye have trodden down with your feet; and they drink that which yet have fouled with your feet.—And the laity, God’s flock, whom God commissioned the shepherds to feed with the good Word of God, have eaten and drunk spiritual food polluted by the clergy with doctrines of devils.
34:20. Therefore thus saith the Lord God unto them; Behold I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle.—Therefore God Himself is about to judge and make a manifest difference between the unfaithful, rich in learning and opportunity, and the poorer ones on whom they have imposed.
34:21. Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad.—Because the rich, learned and exclusive have shoved aside the weaker ones, and have, by their earthly power, pushed out of the churches all His flock, those not “at ease in Zion.”—Amos 6:1; Isa. 66:5.
34:22. Therefore will I save My flock, and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle.—Therefore will God Himself save His own in these troublous times, by teaching them Present Truth; and they shall “come out of her” (Rev. 18:4), out of the churches altogether, so that the clergy and the “best” people can no longer exploit them.
34:23. And I will set up one Shepherd over them, and He shall feed them, even My servant David; He shall feed them, and He shall be their Shepherd.—God has established Jesus (David) the Beloved (Jer. 23; 4, 5; John 10:11), and Pastor Russell as a faithful and wise under‐shepherd, to bring forth from the Bible Storehouse truths new and old, to feed the sheep.
34:24. And I the Lord will be their God, and My servant David a prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it.—Jehovah (not the eternal‐torment Molech God) will be their God, and His beloved Son and his under‐shepherds shall occupy exalted places among them. In the Times of Restitution the Beloved Christ, Head and body, (David, beloved) will be the true Shepherd to the earthly flock, the Jews.
34:25. And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods.—With the truly Christian flock God will make a covenant of the peace that passeth understanding (Phil. 4:7); and with the Jews will make the New Covenant through its Mediator, The Christ. He will cause the roaring lion (Isa. 35:9), Satan, to cease from troubling (Job 3:17), and will forever restrain in oblivion the evil governments. His flock shall dwell securely, even in the wilderness condition, until their change come (Job. 14:14), and shall rest in the cooling shadows (Cant. 2:3), in the refreshing truths brought forth from the Storehouse by righteous, strong teachers and leaders among them.
34:26. And I will make them and the places round about My hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.—The Lord will make the Truth people, His flock, and everything and every condition related to His Kingdom, a blessing to others (Mal. 3:10); they shall be the Seed of Abraham, to bless all the families of the earth. (Gal. 3:8.) God has caused showers of truth to descend upon His flock at their appointed times, down‐pours of spiritual blessing in the “Studies in the Scriptures.” At the appointed time of the beginning of returning favor to the Jews, 1878, the latter rains began to fall in Palestine, making that fertile land a fit habitation again for the chosen nation.
34:27. And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them.—Thinking, manly men, gathered into Present Truth from the world, yield their fruitage of spirit fruits of character; and the blessed condition in which they are yields its increase of spiritual blessing and food; they are safe in their place, “seated with Christ in the Heavenlies” (Eph. 1:3, 20), where they assuredly know God with heart knowledge. God has broken the bands of the heavy yoke of ecclesiasticism, and delivered them out of the hand of a clergy that lived upon His flock, calling it “their people.” For Fleshly Israel and those who shall become Israelites there shall be the blessings of an earthly Eden, with an abundance of fruitage from trees and soil (A. 192).
34:28. And they shall no more be a prey to the heathen, neither shall the beast of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and none shall make them afraid.—God’s flock of spirit‐begotten ones shall be no more preyed upon by paganized “Christians,” nor persecuted, devoured, destroyed, by the great “beast” of Christendom, the Papacy, with its “Holy Inquisition;” but they shall dwell safely in the hollow of His hand, His power, and none can make afraid those sealed in their foreheads with the Truth.
34:29. And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.—God raised up, in 1878, in the First Resurrection of the dead, the Body members of His Son, “the Stem of David,” and previously in 1874, had sent again His Son to feed the flock, to serve them (Luke 12:37), and sup with them (Rev. 3:20) in a feast of fat things spiritual—the Present Truth. Those in the Truth shall never again suffer from famine of the Word of God; nor shall they, when raised up to sit with Christ in power and glory (Matt. 19:28), ever again bear reproach from a paganized “Christian” apostasy.
34:30. Thus shall they know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are My people, saith the Lord God.—This is the way that the Lord’s Spiritual Flock and both Jews, and nominal Christians, shall come to know of a certainty that Jehovah is with them, that they are His people.
34:31. And ye My flock, the flock of My pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God.—This prophecy, this type, this symbolism, refers to the people who constitute God’s flock, Jewish and nominal.
Ezekiel 35—Edom A Type
35:1, 2. Moreover the Word of the Lord came onto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it.—Mount Seir and Edom are practically synonymous; for the Edomites inhabited the mountain range region along the east side of the valley, extending from the Dead Sea to the Elamitic or Persian Gulf. What Edom types Pastor Russell makes clear in volume IV of Scripture Studies, pp. 14, 20.
One of the features of the Time of Trouble will be upon the fleshly‐minded Christians, tares, who after the fall of ecclesiasticism, will repudiate Christianity, and take their stand as worldings, Edomites—the “people of Mount Seir,” mere tares. These, having assisted in the downfall of ecclesiasticism, will seek to take the place and power of defunct Christendom in an utterly Christless arrangement of things.
35:3. And say unto it, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out Mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate.—The godless nations that will succeed fallen Christendom will also find God against them, and that His power is stretched out against them and will make them, too, most desolate.
35:4. I will lay the cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord.—God will, through anarchy, lay waste the Socialistic, labor‐union, social‐democratic and other governments which will emerge as the outcome of the revolutions of Christendom.
35:5. Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end.—These economic‐ political movements—Socialism, labor‐unionism, syndicalism, nihilism, and others, but not including anarchy, which will swallow them up—have had a long standing hatred against ecclesiasticism, have spoken and worked against it, and against the social order characteristic of the past age. In the overthrow of ecclesiasticism, the fleshly‐minded tares, “Edomites” and the classes mentioned, will turn on the clergy and laity of the churches, as well as upon the Lord’s spirit‐begotten children—upon any remaining to profess Christianity, whether through adherence to the church systems or through consecration to God—and will slaughter them by thousands.
35:6. Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee; since thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.—In gatherings of Socialists, there is no end to the differences of opinion as to what Socialism is and how it is to be worked out in practice. This factional division contains the seeds of the destruction of the short‐lived governmental system of Socialism, under whatever name, for a bloody end. They courted revolution and shall receive of the same.
35:7. Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.—Thus will God cause the brief Socialistic phase of the Time of Trouble to become “most desolate.” Not one person connected with it shall escape the universal anarchy, the last and worst phase of the tribulation.
35:8. And I will fill his mountains with his slain men; in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword.—The Socialistic, labor‐ridden nations (mountains), shall be filled with the slain; among the upper classes of socialism, and among the more insignificant people (valleys) and in connection with all their channels of Socialistic truth (rivers), the people of that order of things shall be slain. In a sense the Sword of the Spirit, will slay them; it foretells their destruction.
35:9. I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.—The Socialistic state shall be utterly destroyed, and its various forms of government (cities) go to oblivion.
35:10. Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the Lord was there.—The then non‐religious Socialists, laborites, etc., will say: “These two systems (nations), Catholic and Protestant, and the condition of things characteristic of them, shall come under the sway of Socialism, and we Socialists, etc., shall rule over and control them”, whereas they will overlook the all‐important fact that God has been among these people, and they were called God’s people.—“The Lord was there.”
35:11. Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thine envy, which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them; and I will make Myself known among them, when I have judged thee.—Therefore as the Socialists, etc., will turn upon ecclesiasticism and Christianity in anger and fury and with hateful envy, so God will do to the Socialistic laborite order of things. As they aid in smiting down Christianity, so will the anarchists smite them down.
35:12. And thou shalt know that I am the Lord, and that I have heard all thy blasphemies, which thou hast spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given us to consume.—The laborites, etc., will learn that God rules in the affairs of men, and that the Almighty will pay attention to their utterances against the nations (mountains) of Christendom (Israel), when, after ecclesiasticism’s fall, the laborites shall say, “The nations have been desolated, and are given to us working people to divide up for ourselves.”
35:13. Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against Me, and have multiplied your words against Me: I have heard them.—The Socialistic and kindred movements, while speaking savagely against capitalism, and covertly against Christianity, have in reality been speaking against an order permitted by God, and in which God was—in the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, in such true Christians as were in the systems. In expressing the determination to lead the world out of the darkness of evil economic, social and political conditions, they unwittingly boast against God by presuming to perform what God previously planned to be done by His faithful Church, and which by any lesser agency is absolutely impossible of accomplishment, God will not pass by unnoticed the words of Socialists, syndicalists, laborites, etc. He will hear them, and remember them for just recompense.
35:14. Thus saith the Lord God; When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate.—When the Times of Restitution of all things come, one of the things not to be restored is the Socialist, laborite movement. When all society rejoices in the new order of things ordained of God, the Socialistic state will have been utterly and forever desolated.
35:15. As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do onto thee; thou shalt be desolate, O mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it: and they shall know that I am the Lord.—As the fleshly‐minded apostates from Christianity, siding with the radicals and revolutionaries, will rejoice at the inheritance of desolation that will be Christendom’s after 1918, so will God do to the successful revolutionary movement; it shall be utterly desolated, “even all of it.” Not one vestige of it shall survive the ravages of world‐wide all‐embracing anarchy, in the fall of 1920. (Rev. 11:7‐13)
Ezekiel 36—Christendom’s Early Restoration
36:1. Also, thou son of man, prophesy unto the mountains of Israel, and say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the Word of the Lord.—In Chapter 6 is described the iniquities of the nations of Christendom and their doom. Chapter 36 describes the rejoicing of the non‐Christian elements over her fall, and God’s jealous anger against them. It foretells the early re‐ peopling of the nations of Christendom, their conversion to true Christianity, and the reason for God’s action in behalf of the nations just previously destroyed. Taken literally, it foretells the same good future for His chosen but long‐chastised people, the Jews. This is the message to the nations (mountains) of Christendom, as the Word of Jehovah concerning them.
36:2. Thus saith the Lord God; Because the enemy hath said against you, Aha, even the ancient high places are ours in possession.—Because the revolutionists, who shall overthrow the nations of Christendom, shall say against them, “Aha, even the oldest and greatest nations of Christendom are under the control of us revolutionists, Socialists and laborites.”
36:3. Therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, and ye are taken up in the lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people.—Thus saith Jehovah God to the nations of Christendom: Because the revolutionists shall have justly made you desolate and overrun you in every direction, so that you might be ruled over by pagan, fleshly‐minded, infidel, revolutionary rulers, and because you shall be the subject of flippant discussion among the revolutionaries, and through your fall become infamous among all the heathen peoples of the world, in Europe, America and elsewhere.—Lam. 2:15, 16.
36:4. Therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear the Word of the Lord God; Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills, to the rivers and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes and to the cities that are forsaken, which became a prey and derision to the residue of the heathen that are round about.—Therefore, ye nations of Christendom, thus saith Jehovah to the nations, great and small, to the religious denominations, to the lowly members of society, to the masses wasted and desolated by war and revolution, to the governments, local and national that shall be abandoned, which shall become the victims of the Socialists, laborites and other revolutionists, who shall hold you in derision for your fall from eminence to desolation.
36:5. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Surely in the fire of My jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen, and against all Idumea, which have appointed My land into their possessions with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds, to cast it out for a prey.—Therefore, saith God, surely I am jealous over the reflections they cast upon Me, and at the mouths of many prophets have I foretold the destruction by anarchy of the rest of those who falsely profess My name and then help to desolate Christendom—the “Christian” infidels and all the former fleshly‐minded Christians (Idumeans) who shall have presumed, with malicious joy, to overthrow the order of things which bears My name—Christendom!
36:6. Prophesy therefore concerning the land of Israel, and say unto the mountains and to the hills, to the rivers and to the valleys, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold I have spoken in My jealousy and in My fury, because ye have borne the shame of the heathen.—O nations of fallen Christendom, My people, because you shall have borne shame and reproach from the ungodly revolutionists, I will bring My jealous fury to bear upon your destroyers.
36:7. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; I have lifted up Mine hand, Surely the heathen that are about you, they shall bear their shame.—Jehovah has sworn (lifted the hand) that the Socialists, laborites, etc., shall bear a similar shame and reproach, when their short‐lived order of things has in turn been desolated by the anarchists.
36:8. But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to My people of Israel; for they are at hand to come.—A branch signifies a person born from another; as, Christ was a Branch of David. Here the branches shooting forth from the mountains are the people of Christendom, slain in revolutions and anarchy, springing forth, rising from the dead, to people Christendom again. But you, O nations, of Christendom, your dead shall rise up from their sleep in the dust of the earth, to the earthly restitution—resurrection; you shall yield proper fruitage as the truly Christian people of Christendom; for they are close at hand to come back in the dust of the earth, in the mire of trenches, fortresses and battle fields. They sleep in death, ready to come, for “All that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth” to resurrection.—John 5:28, 29.
36:9. For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown.—Now that the Times of Restitution are at the door, God will be for them and will turn his favor unto them, and they shall be cultivated by truly Christian preachers commissioned by the resurrected Ancient Worthies at Jerusalem, and sown with the seed of the true Gospel of the Kingdom of restitution and blessing for all people.
36:10. And I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it; and the cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded.—The dead, fallen by the sword of war, revolution and anarchy, shall come forth from their graves to inhabit the earth. Thus, as they multiplied the dead, will God multiply the living, to the number of all the dead of Christendom, even every one of them; they shall become in His sight, not dead in trespasses and sins, but living, true‐blue, manly men for the Christ of divine love. The governments (cities) shall be reestablished; and commerce, transportation, industry and art, wasted by the Time of Trouble, shall be built up again, upon the foundation of the wholly righteous principles of the New Era.
36:11. And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and bring fruit; and I will settle you after your old estates, and will do better unto you than at your beginnings: and ye shall know that I am the Lord.—God will multiply useful workers in industries, and the invention of labor‐saving machinery—the beasts of burden and of the productive arts and trades. They shall increase in numbers and in service to mankind, and shall multiply the productivity of the workers, bringing forth with the busy, happy hum of industry, plenty for all, fruitage abundant for the needs of humanity. God will settle them, establish them in permanent conditions, and will do for them far better than He could do in the former days of Christendom, when the operation of His Spirit energizing mind and spirit in invention, art, industry, commerce and religion, was hindered by apostasy of clergy and rulers. Men shall learn by happy experience how good is Jehovah and how truly He is love, and not the fire‐god, eternal‐ torment Molech, whom they ignorantly worshipped, thinking they did Jehovah service.
36:12. Yea, I will cause men to walk upon you, even My people Israel; and they shall possess thee, and thou shalt be their inheritance, and thou shalt no more henceforth bereave them of men.—God will cause men, perfected by processes of restitution and resurrection, to live in the nations of resurrected Christendom. Men of this highly exalted type shall possess Christendom, when Christ’s Kingdom shall be inherited by the kingly men for whom it was prepared from the foundations of the earth. Never more shall the nations of Christendom bereave themselves of men, as they have done in centuries of oppression, misrule and persecution, and especially in the Time of Trouble.
36:13. Thus saith the Lord God; Because they say unto you, Thou land devourest up men, and hast bereaved thy nations.—Because the infidel revolutionists will throw at Christendom the taunt, “Your social order, economic, political and religious, eats up, destroys men, in industry, persecution, war, and revolution, and bereaves the nations of their best men.”
36:14. Therefore thou shalt devour men no more, neither bereave thy nations any more, saith the Lord God.—Never shall this be any more, says God.
36:15. Neither will I cause men to hear in thee the shame of the heathen any more, neither shalt thou bear the reproach of the people any more, neither shalt thou cause thy nations to fall any more, saith the Lord God.—Neither will God permit men to hear the infidel peoples put Christendom to shame, nor to heap reproach upon her; for Christendom shall be no more a reproach among the heathen, nor shall she cause her nations to fall again.
36:16, 17. Moreover the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their own way and by their doings: their way was before Me as the uncleanness of a removed woman.—While ecclesiasticism and its adherents control Christendom, they defile it spiritually by their traditions, doctrines and actions. Their spiritual condition is before God as a church polluted, unclean spiritually, unfit to touch, which ought to be “cut off from social privileges and her citizenship among God’s people put in abeyance,” as long as the spiritually unclean condition lasts, an uncleanness which may be removed only by a liberal application of “the waters of separation” (Lev. 15:19‐31)—the cleansing reformation of the pure, unadulterated, fearlessly preached and applied Word of God, “the water of the Word.”—Eph. 5:26.
36:18. Wherefore I poured My fury upon them for the blood that they had shed upon the land, and for their idols wherewith they had polluted it.—The penalty for wilful violation of the Hebraic precepts regarding uncleanness was the final cutting off of the culprit from the Lord’s people. Wherefore God shall pour out upon ecclesiasticism His fury in war, revolution, and anarchy, for the lives—physical and religious—taken throughout the lengths and breadths of human society, and for the idolatrous worship of Molech, the eternal‐torment God, and of Baal, the god of adulterous church‐state union, wherewith she has polluted Christendom.
36:19. And I scattered them among the heathen, and they were dispersed through the countries: according to their way and according to their doings I judged them.—God will scatter the church adherents among the revolutionists, and disperse them throughout a variety of infidel, Socialistic, laborite and other like conditions, judging the ecclesiastics according to their apostasy.
36:20. And when they entered unto the heathen, whither they went, they profaned My holy name, when they said to them, These are the people of the Lord, and are gone forth out of His land.—Wherever these fleshly‐minded Christians shall be scattered, they will blaspheme God’s holy name, with the reproach that though they had claimed to be Jehovah’s people, God had been unable to safeguard them and they had abandoned all pretense of being Christians.
36:21. But I had pity for Mine holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the heathen, whither they went.—But God will have regard for the prestige of His reputation for justice, power, love and wisdom, which the apostate of Christendom shall impugn during the revolutionary order of things.
36:22. Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for Mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went.—Therefore Jehovah says that what He is about to do, He will not do for their sakes, for they deserve nothing at His hand but the judgments justly visited upon them; but that He will do it for His holy name’s reputation, which they have persistently misrepresented and blasphemed.
36:23. And I will sanctify My great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.—God will make His name sacred, and forever hallowed, among the pagan peoples, the name which apostate Christians have profaned and defamed among them; and God will make the infidel peoples to know of a certainty that He is the all‐wise, just, loving and almighty Jehovah, when He finally converts all such to true Christianity.
36:24. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.—God will save His professed people from the faithless, unbelieving condition of the revolutionists and the professedly pagan peoples, and will gather them out of all the evil conditions into which they shall fall, into a condition of genuine conversion and consecration to Himself. How much like God! all will exclaim, who know Jehovah. What an example does the Father set to His children, the sons of God!—Eph. 5:1; Z. ’92‐63.
36:25. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.—Then will Jehovah wash His apostate people with the pure, unpolluted water of the Word of Truth; and from all their filthiness of flesh and spirit, of life and of doctrine, and from their idolatry of Molech and of Baal, will He cleanse them; and they shall be clean.—A. 333; Z. ’92‐64.
36:26. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.—God judges the thoughts and intents of the heart, and He will give His professed people a pure heart to serve Him and to love Him with fullness of consecration. He will take away from them the stony heart (Jer. 31:33), wherewith for sake of earthly emoluments and honor of men, they have resisted Him and hardened their consciences against His Truth. He will put within them a new spirit which they have not known—the spirit of willing service and obedience to Jehovah, the spirit of the truth, the spirit of wisdom, of courage, of a sound mind, and of Divine love.—2 Tim. 1:7; Z. ’99‐187; A. 310; Z. ’03‐171.
36:27. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them.—God will give them His Holy Spirit and cause them to walk in His “royal law of love” (Jas. 2:8), so that they shall keep that law and do it—Z. ’99‐138.
36:28. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God.—And they shall abide in the condition of Divine favor that the fathers walked in, and truly be God’s people; and Jehovah, the God of love—not Molech, nor Baal—shall be their God.
36:29. I will also save you from all your uncleanness: and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you.—God will save the people now constituting His professed, but apostate church, from all their spiritual and fleshly uncleanness. He will call for the wheat, the bread of life, the Word of God, and will give them to feed on this good Word, and will permit no more famine of the Word of God among them.
36:30. And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen.—God will multiply the fruits of righteousness, and cause the new social order to increase its character fruitage, so that Christians shall receive no more from the heathen the reproach that there is among them a famine of God’s Word, and that they fail to practise what they profess.—Amos. 8:11.
36:31. Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations.—Then, in the abundance of the wonderful and undeserved goodness and love of God, God’s professed people shall remember their former evil doctrines, that misrepresented His holy character, and their doings that were not good, especially their grasping for world power and their persecution of the sons of God. Then they shall loathe themselves for their iniquitous doctrines and for their sectarian abominations.
36:32. Not for your own sakes do I this, saith the Lord God, be it known unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel.—Be it known, in advance, that Jehovah will do these good things, not for their sakes in any sense; for they merit far different treatment at His hands. They shall be ashamed and utterly confounded at His goodness. Thus, with goodness and with love overflowing will God recompense the evil they have done Him and His true children.
36:33. Thus saith the Lord God; in the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded.—In the 1,000‐year day, the Millennium, the “Times of Restitution of all things” (Acts 3:19‐21), when God shall have cleansed those who are now His professed people from their iniquities, He will cause them to abide in new governments of the nations and cities of Christendom (Lu. 19:17), whose wasted arts, manufactures, industries, transportation and commerce shall be built up again.
36:34. And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by.—Christendom, utterly desolated in war, revolution and anarchy, and lying desolate in the sight of the whole world, shall be cultivated in the arts, sciences, trades and professions, and especially with the true Gospel of the Kingdom.
36:35. And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited.—And the infidel peoples shall exclaim, “Christendom that was utterly desolated, has become like the Garden of Eden!” For governments, national, city, and local, which were wasted, desolated and ruined, have been replaced by better and permanent (fenced) arrangements brought about by the mighty power of Jehovah’s Love.
36:36. Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I the Lord build the ruined places, and plant that that was desolate: I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it.—Then the unbelieving peoples will come to the realization that the One that shall rebuild ruined Christendom and plant the desolate people with the seed of the glad gospel of the Kingdom is Jehovah. Jehovah has spoken it, and will bring it to pass.
36:37. Thus saith the Lord God; I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them; I will increase them with men like a flock.—God will yet be supplicated by desolated Christendom to do this for them. Then, in answer to their prayers, He will, by awakenings from the dead, increase their numbers with men in multitudes.
36:38. As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall know that I am the Lord.—Like as vast flocks of sheep and cattle were gathered for sacrifice at the annual feasts at Jerusalem, so shall the devastated nations of Christendom be filled with great crowds of consecrated, holy men, each devoted as a willing thank offering forever to live for God. And they shall know, when God has brought them back from the dead, that He is Jehovah, a God of infinite Justice, Power, Love and Wisdom.
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Hail to the brightness of Zion’s glad morning! Joy to the lands that in darkness have lain! Hushed be the accents of sorrow and mourning! Zion, in triumph, begins her glad reign.
See the dead risen from land and from ocean; Praise to Jehovah ascending on High; Fall’n are the engines of war and commotion; Shouts of salvation are rending the sky.
Ezekiel 37—The Valley Of Dry Bones
37:1. The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones.—Chapter 37:1‐14 has a fourfold application: (1) to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the Adamic death, into which the Hebrew nation has gone; (2) to the captivity of the Hebrews in literal Babylonia; (3) the captivity of the Hebrews in Mystic Babylon, Christendom; and (4) the dead condition of the hopes of Christendom in and after the Time of Trouble. It is because the Jews were types of the Christians that the blessed fulfilment of this prophecy applies with peculiar force to Christendom in and after the Time of Trouble. The power (hand) of Jehovah was upon Ezekiel to enable him to see and expound this vision for the benefit of the Hebrews and their dead hopes in captivity (2) in literal Babylon, (3) in Mystic Babylon (Christendom) and (1) in the Adamic death. (Z. ’99‐190; ’01‐358.) The power of God is now upon His people to understand the application of the vision of dry bones as pertaining to the hopes of (4) the people of Christendom, who, though believers in God, have not the Holy Spirit to illuminate their mental vision, and who will find themselves in the depths (valley) of despair in and after the Time of Trouble.
The condition of the withered hopes of Christendom in the Time of Trouble and death is pictured by the Valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:2, 9‐14): “I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat [of judgment and death], and will plead [in war, revolution and anarchy] with them there for My people and My heritage Israel [the true Church] whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted My land [into several hundred denominations]. Proclaim ye this among the nations: Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up; beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak [Belgium, etc.] say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about; thither cause thy mighty ones [the Little Flock, mighty in the power of the Lord] to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen [in Christendom, and out] be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest [of the vine of the earth, (Rev. 14:19) Christendom] is ripe; come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision [for or against God and His Word] for the Day [of vengeance] of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.”—Joel 3:2, 9‐15.
Vast will be the slaughter, complete the devastation, heart‐rending the ruin and the desolation of the hopes and aspirations of Christendom in the dark and gloomy valley of the Day of Vengeance of Jehovah. It will indeed be a valley—a cast down, humbled, lowly condition, in which the people of proud Christendom will suddenly find themselves, a condition full of the memories of ruined hopes, (bones) (Mal. 4:1.) The valley is full of dried‐ up hopes (bones): (1) the twelve tribes of Israel in death; (2, 3) the Hebrews in captivity to literal and mystical Babylon; and (4) the hopes of Christendom.
37:2. And caused me to pass by them round about: and behold, there were very many in the open valley; and lo, they were very dry.—The hopes of the Hebrews, held out to them in Scripture, were very many, but until the regathering out of literal and mystical Babylon, and from the dead, were and shall be lifeless. Pastor Russell, in Volume IV of Studies in the Scriptures, compassed the entire range of the afflictions and desolated hopes of mankind in war, revolution and anarchy of the great Time of Trouble.
37:3. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live! And I answered, O Lord God, Thou knowest.—“Is there any hope for the scattered people of Israel, that they will ever be restored as a nation? Can the good hopes of Christendom, ruined by war, revolution and anarchy, be revived?” “O Jehovah God, Thou knowest and hast foretold the answer by the mouths of Prophets and Apostles, and Thine own Son!”
37:4. Again He said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord.—And God says about the Scriptural hopes of both Jews and of Christendom, whose fall, ignominy and captivity in literal Babylon, in mystic Babylon, in the Adamic death and in the Time of Trouble have caused, and will cause, so great sufferings and so many tears. “Hear the good Word of Jehovah concerning thy ruined hopes.”
37:5. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live.—Thus saith Jehovah God about the hopes of Christendom: Behold, in the blessed Times of Restitution, the time for His great love for men to be revealed, He shall cause the people that are left among the Hebrews and in Christendom to talk and pray about their good hopes for the uplift of themselves and all the world to better, higher things. And their hopes shall live again; for God will cause the spirit of life, life‐energy, to enter into their hopes and into their dead—those captive in the Adamic death and in the ruin of the great tribulation.—E. 341, 316.
37:6. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.—God will make their hopes strong; for His Word encourages their realization; and He gives them power, form and substance and protection, and will finally give them vitality, and they shall live, shall become a bright and vital reality. Then with thanksgiving they shall know Him truly as Jehovah.—E. 341, 316.
37:7. So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.—While Ezekiel was speaking there began “a shaking”—the commotion incident to the fall of Babylon and the transfer of the empire to the Medes and Persians, typifying the coming Time of Trouble. And while Pastor Russell was preaching there began—in 1914—the shaking of Christendom, in wars, revolutions and anarchy, preparatory to the transfer of the rulership from Mystic Babylon, Christendom, to the two‐phase, spiritual and natural, Kingdom of God; also the Zionistic hopes of the Jews began to assume definite, connected and Scriptural form. In due time, after the hopes of Christendom shall have been utterly ruined in the trouble, there will be “a noise,” as of the rushing wind of a second Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit “upon all flesh.” It will be upon all Christendom, where men will be awaiting it with prayer and supplication. And behold! all Christendom will be shaken with emotion and with a revival of hope; and all the good hopes of Christendom, whose realization hitherto had been vague and disconnected, will be seen in their proper and Divinely appointed relation (bone to his bone).—Z. ’99‐191.
37:8. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.—As a result of Ezekiel’s prophesying among the Hebrews captive in Babylon, hope grew strong and positive, and the protection of Jehovah (skin) was seen to be upon it, but yet there was no vitality to it. The time was not ripe for the fruition of hope. Pastor Russell, too, preached to the Jews about their Zionist hopes, and pointed them to the Hebrew Bible to understand the proper fulfillment of their hopes; and while he was preaching Zionism grew into a strong movement. There is a due time also for Christendom’s hopes to be strengthened by the books of Pastor Russell in millions of homes throughout Christendom. The surviving people of Christendom will read the Studies in the Scriptures during and after the time of the ruination of their hopes. But even then something will be lacking—the Spirit, power, to cause the fulfillment of hope.—E. 341, 316.
37:9. Then said He unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.—Ezekiel was commissioned to say, as the Word of God Himself, concerning the operation of the Holy Spirit (wind, ruach) or power of God, that the whole power (four winds) of God as concerned the Hebrew nation in captivity in literal Babylon should be exercised to cause the revival of their national and Messianic hopes. “The words that I speak, they are Spirit.” The whole Word of God (four winds, the whole Spirit) foretold the regathering of the willing and obedient of the Hebrews from Babylon to Jerusalem, after seventy years’ captivity. Pastor Russell, as Ezekiel’s antitype, was commissioned to say to the Hebrews, scattered throughout the world in captivity in Mystic Babylon, Christendom, that the whole Word of God pointed to two great blessings: (1) the revival of their Zionist hope and its realization in the regathering of many Hebrews to Jerusalem, and the founding there of the world‐wide Hebrew dominion over the whole world, into which should be gathered, out of Mystic Babylon, all the Hebrews in the world, wherever they might remain; and (2) the regathering of the Hebrews of all ages from the captivity of death—the tomb—to live on earth again in the earthly phase of the Kingdom of God, under the invisible spiritual dominion of Christ, Head and Body, and under the visible earthly rulership of the resurrected Ancient Worthies. Beginning in October, 1910, Pastor Russell called the attention of Hebrews by thousands, throughout the world, to the fact that the whole Old Testament foretold this as the legitimate aspiration of the Hebrews. For the Christian people of the world Pastor Russell has a similar message:
(1) For believing Christians having the Holy Spirit, he revived their hopes and pointed out clearly their gathering out from captivity in Mystic Babylon and in death, unto the glorious spirit phase of the Kingdom of God. (2) For the mass of professing Christians, who through some measure of unbelief or of unfaithfulness are not begotten of the Spirit to a change of nature from human to spiritual, He has a Divine message, which in due time will bring strong hope and comfort. As the Time of Trouble progresses, professing Christians by the millions, losing faith, as did the Apostles when, on the arrest of Christ they all forsook Him and fled, will forsake Christianity and all profession of being Christians. They will lose all the hopes they had as Christians. Then Pastor Russell’s message will preach to Christendom the necessity of receiving the Holy Spirit in its entirety, in order to realize their hopes; will turn the people to the whole Truth of the Word of God (the four Winds, all the Truth), all the witness of the Spirit for them, that “salvation cometh of the Jew” (John 4:22), and that they must connect themselves with the Ancient Worthies, resurrected and reigning at Jerusalem; for without these Worthies their hopes must remain inactive—through them alone hope can be vitalized. Then Christendom will pray to God, “We submit ourselves wholly to Thee in heartfelt consecration. Come, O Spirit, all the Spirit, in the appointed way, and breathe life into our hopes, that they may live at last!”
37:10. So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.—From paying attention to Ezekiel’s message, the Hebrews captive in Babylon realized their hopes at the end of the seventy years captivity. As a result of Pastor Russell’s teaching, Zionistic hopes have gained new vitality; and in due time the Hebrew dead will come forth from the Adamic death in multitudes. From his teachings to the true Church, captive in Mystic Babylon, Christendom, the Scriptural hopes of the Church were clearly seen, and vitalized for those in Present Truth. From his teachings hope will grow afresh in the hearts of the survivors of desolated Christendom; and as a result of their prayers the dead of Christendom will come forth, an exceeding great army.—E. 341, 316.
37:11. Then He said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.—The dried bones represent all the Hebrews, Fleshly Israel, and all the professing Christians, Spiritual Israel. As outlined foregoing, they say that their hopes are lost, and that they are cut off from Divine favors for their evil course in life.—Isa. 49:14; Z’99‐191.
37:12. Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, O My people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.—The various classes mentioned were to be brought up from their condition—dead as to their hopes—and brought, the Hebrews into Palestine; the true Christians, into the Spirit phase of the Kingdom; and the nominal Christians, into a place of favor in the earthly phase of the Kingdom.—Isa. 60:21; Z. ’99‐196.
37:13, 14. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up out of your graves, And shall put My Spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord.—They shall all know that God is the Jehovah of infinite Justice, Wisdom, Love and Power, when the wonderful power of God has thus wrought in them for their blessing.—E. 341, 316; Z. ’99‐190.
37:15. The Word of the Lord came again unto me, saying.—Verses 15‐28 recount the separation of the Hebrews into two distinct kingdoms; Israel, the corrupt ten tribes; and Judah, the less corrupt two tribes. In antitype it represents corrupt Catholicism, the larger branch of Christendom, and Protestantism, the smaller and less corrupt.
37:16, 17. Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel and his companions: And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.—By the power of God the two were to be made one nation in the return of the Hebrews from Babylonia, and again will be made one in their return from Mystic Babylon, Christendom, to Palestine. Likewise the denominational divisions of Christian people have been obliterated among those gathered out of Mystic Babylon into Present Truth, as they will yet be in the regathering of the dead of Christendom in the resurrection, and in the unifying influences that will work among the survivors of Christendom’s trouble. All these are to have as their Prince forever, the Beloved (David, beloved) of God, The Christ in glory.
37:18. And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt Thou not show what Thou meanest by these?—Both Jews and Christians have long inquired what God has signified by this prophecy.
37:19. Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in Mine hand.—The reuniting of the Hebrews and of the divisions of Christians will be by the power of God, and they shall remain one.
37:20. And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes.—The uniting of the Hebrews was apparently due to the prophecy of Ezekiel. That to come—of the Hebrews and of the Christians—will be in accordance with the teachings of Pastor Russell.
37:21, 22. And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all.—In 536 B. C. God regathered the Natural Israelites into Palestine as one nation, and will soon regather them out from all the nations of the world. He will gather true Spiritual Israel into the Heavenly phase of the Kingdom, where they shall ever be one people in mind in Christ, no longer separated as Little Flock, loving Heavenly things, and Great Company, loving the earthly. He will regather nominal Spiritual Israel from the dead and from their hopeless earthly condition, into the earthly phase of the Kingdom, no longer divided as Catholic and Protestant.—Jer. 50:4‐6.
37:23. Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will save them out of all their dwelling places, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be My people, and I will be their God.—God will cleanse them all from everything relating to this present evil age and will save them out of their dwelling‐places—the spirit children from their corrupt bodies; the Great Company from their spiritual bondage; the nominal Christians from their sects; and the Jews from their domiciles in all nations; and all classes from the sleep of death. They shall all be truly God’s people; and Jehovah, Just, Wise, Loving and Powerful, their God.
37:24. And David My servant shall be king over them; and they shall all have One Shepherd: they shall also walk in My judgments, and observe My statutes, and do them.—Over them as King shall be Christ Jesus, the Beloved Head of His Body the Church, and the whole Beloved Christ, Head and Body, for all the other classes. Christ Jesus the Head shall be the Shepherd of the Spirit classes; and The Christ, Head and Body, the Shepherd and Pastor of all the others. All classes in Heaven and on earth shall walk in the royal Law of Love.
37:25. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob My servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they and their children, and their children’s children for ever: and My servant David shall be their prince for ever.—The promise to Jacob is to be understood as both spiritual and earthly, a place spiritually typifying a condition. The Jews, living and resurrected dead, shall dwell forever in Palestine, given by God to Jacob, wherein their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, dwelt. The Little Flock and the Great Company will dwell forever in the Heavenly condition, where their great Father dwells. The nominal Christians will dwell in the whole earth, wherein their then Father. The Christ, Head and Body, dwelt in bodies of humiliation and sacrifice. The Christ shall forever be their King.
37:26. Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting Covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set My Sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.—God will make effective with the Jews the everlasting New Covenant, guaranteeing eternal earthly blessings to the willing and obedient; and the nominal professing Christians will come under the benefits of the Covenant. He will make effective the complete fulfillment of the Covenant of Grace for the Church in the spirit phase of the Kingdom. He will set both classes up in power—the Church as spiritual Kings and Priests unto God; and the Jews as the rulers of the earth. He will multiply their numbers by the resurrection. He will dwell in the spiritual class, making them His Sanctuary to the earthly class.
37:27. My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be My people.—God’s abode will be in the spiritual class; and they will be God’s Temple or Dwelling‐place, from which the Law of Love shall proceed for the earthly class.
37:28. And the heathen shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when My Sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.—Then will follow the conversion of the heathen peoples of the earth—“the residue of men, even all the Gentiles.”—Acts 15:17.
Ezekiel 38—Final Overthrow Of Pride
38:1, 2. And the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him.—The Truth people, the reformers, are to set themselves against the proud, lofty rulers (Gog, high, mountain, D. 554) of the revolutionary republics after the war and the fall of Christendom, and of the ignorant, degraded revolutionists. (Magog was Scythia, a rude, ignorant, degraded people, including the savages of Europe [D. 556], savage by nature and made doubly so in the most barbarous wars of history. Meshech, north of Armenia, and Tubal, south of the Black Sea, and also Spain, represented the remotest and rudest nations of the world.) The prophecy is to have a double fulfillment, for it refers also to the gathering, at the close of the 1,000 years, of Satan, and the deceivable among restored mankind against the camp of the saints.—Rev. 20:7‐10.
38:3. And say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.—God will be against the rulers of the worst of earth’s peoples.
38:4. And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords.—God will lead them on (Revised Version) and bring them forth to do this deed, them and all their multitude, equipped with every conceivable weapon of destruction.
38:5. Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet.—The dark peoples of Africa (descendants of Ham, typical of sinful, degraded peoples), trained and equipped in the European war.
38:6. Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands; and many people with thee.—The remotest peoples of Europe (D. 556) (Gomer was ancestor of the Celts, Scotch, etc.; Togarmah was north of Armenia) and their armies, and a multitude with them; and, a thousand years later, all whose heart attitude answers this description.
38:7. Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.—The foregoing and their savage multitudes of revolutionists are to be the vanguard of the evil host. These people symbolize also those after the 1,000 years whose heart condition will be like the actual state of these savages.
38:8. After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.—After the career of the Ezekiel class is terminated in the flesh, the nations of Europe (and after the thousand years are finished the hosts of Satan, unbound) shall be called to do their dreadful work. At the close of the turbulent revolutionary era Europe shall come against Palestine, then living in a peace contrasting with their turbulence; and, at the close of the Millennium Satan shall come against the Millennial order of things, abounding in holiness and peace.
38:9. Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee.—They shall make the attack in vast numbers.
38:10. Thus saith the Lord God; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought.—At the end of the revolutionary era turbulent Europe and Africa will be obsessed with an idea full of evil for them and for the Hebrews; and at the close of the Millennium Satan and the hosts in sympathy with his deceptions will dream of seizing the established Kingdom of God.
38:11. And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates.—They shall say that they will go up against Palestine, against the Hebrews living in unwonted peace in a turbulent world.—D. 553.
38:12. To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.—They will seek to plunder their property, to turn their weapons against once desolate Palestine, against the regathered Hebrews, enjoying some measure of prosperity. In like manner the hosts of Satan will seek to seize the restored Kingdom of God, at the close of the 1,000 years.
38:13. Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?—The people surrounding Palestine (D. 556), with their soldiers, will join in the plunder. After the Millennium all classes not in heart harmony with “the camp of the saints,” will seek to capture the Kingdom, to take captive the power of the Little Flock and the Great Company (silver and gold), and the masses of perfect humanity (cattle, etc.).
38:14. Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord God; In that day when My people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it?—When God’s people, the Hebrews, are living peacefully in Palestine, the fact will be well known by revolutionary Europe and Africa. After the Millennium Satan and his former associates, the apostate clergy of Christendom and the Hebrew Pharisees, bound for a thousand years, and loosed for a short time, will behold the prosperity of restored mankind.
38:15. And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army.—Europe’s hosts shall come from the countries north (D. 555) of Palestine with many people, riding on horses, motor cars and railroad trains, a vast and mighty army. And a thousand years later, Satan will appear, permitted to come by the spiritual phase of the Kingdom (the north), with many new, lying doctrines (horses) to deceive the people.
38:16. And thou shalt come up against My people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against My land, that the heathen may know Me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes.—The revolutionists will come against the Hebrews in the closing years of the Time of Trouble, just at the outbreak of anarchy (D. 555). This invasion will be permitted by God, that the peoples may know that Jehovah is God, when His mighty power shall perform a dreadful work upon these wicked peoples, raised up and set apart (sanctified) for the enhancing of Divine prestige. It will also be to demonstrate the Divine attributes that the Satanic hosts will be permitted later to conspire against “the camp of the saints.”
38:17. Thus saith the Lord God; Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by My servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years, that I would bring thee against them?—Jehovah declares that these evil multitudes, who will shortly organize a crusade against the Jews, will be the ones of whom, thousands of years before, the Hebrew Prophets wrote.
38:18. And it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that My fury shall come up in My face.—The Divine wrath of furious retribution will be against these classes.
38:19. For in My jealousy and in the fire of My wrath have I spoken, Surely In that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel.—In jealous love for His beloved people and in jealous destructive (fire) wrath against their assailants (D. 527) has God foretold a world‐ shaking holocaust of the hosts of evil in the land of Palestine, and a thousand years later of the minions of the Devil.
38:20. So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at My presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.—The result will be that the men (fishes, C. 214) not under religious restraint (Z. ’86:1), the most execrable of the people of the world (fowls, C. 162), the revolutionary governments (beasts, A. 261), and all the lowest of mankind shall be thrown into revolutionary commotion; and the nations (mountains, A. 318) shall be overthrown in anarchy, together with all the civil powers (walls, D. 40) of the world.
38:21. And I will call for a sword against him throughout all My mountains, saith the Lord God: every man’s sword shall be against his brother.—God will do His dreadful work of ending this present evil world, and will call for the universal arming of mankind with destroying weapons, so that every man’s weapons will be against every other man.
38:22. And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.—God will fight miraculously against the hosts of evil with pestilence and death, and will overwhelm them with a flood of Truth—with hard facts, to smite their hearts—and with anarchy, destruction, utter and complete. So also will the Almighty deal with the rebels of a thousand years later.
38:23. Thus will I magnify Myself, and sanctify Myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord.—So will God magnify His reputation as the One to be reverenced, and the fame of His power will spread throughout the world.
Ezekiel 39—Death Of Pride’s Multitude
39:1. Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.—This has a triple fulfillment: (a) the destruction of the literal armies that will attack the Hebrews at the beginning of the Millennium; (b) the destruction of their pride and their sophistries by the Truth; and (c) at the end of the Millennium the literal annihilation of the hosts that will then be deceived by Satan, and the destruction of their errors by the loyal members of the Kingdom. Jehovah is against these evil leaders and their multitude. The greatest curse of God’s people in all times has been pride.—Matt. 5:3; 1 John 3:12; John 8:44; Isa. 14:14; Psa. 119:113; Prov. 6:17; Psa. 101:5; Prov. 8:13; Isa. 2:12; Prov. 16:18; 2 Thes. 2:4; Mal. 3:15; Mark 10:43.
39:2. And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel.—Jehovah will lead them on (R. V.), controlled and directed by the spiritual phase of the Kingdom (north) to (a, b) bring a host against restored Israel; and (c) a thousand years later another Satanic multitude against the entire restored Kingdom.
39:3. And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.—God will (a, b) destroy the weapons and the power of the anti‐Hebrew crusade; and (b, c) He will also end, in those hosts, their hatred (bow) and their bitter words (arrows).
39:4. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field, to be devoured.—These evil hosts (a, b, c) shall die; and God will give the first one to be disorganized, disrupted and destroyed by the most execrable of mankind (birds and beasts); and He will deliver (b) both it and (c) the second into the power of the spiritual phase of His Kingdom, to be wiped out.
39:5. Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God.—They shall fall defenseless at the hands of their destroyers.
39:6. And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the Lord.—God will (a, b) send anarchy (fire) among the peoples of the revolutionary republics (isles); and literal miraculous annihilation upon the second uprising of Satan and his deceived followers.
39:7. So will I make My holy name known in the midst of My people Israel; and I will not let them pollute My holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel.—Through this miraculous deliverance (a) the Hebrews shall be converted to the Truth, so that they shall never again be a discredit to God’s name; and (b, c) all mankind also shall thereby learn fully to know God.
39:8. Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord God; this is the day whereof I have spoken.—It shall surely come; it shall be done; thus shall be the day of the end of evil and the final establishment of right, whereof God has spoken in His Word.
39:9. And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years.—The regathered Hebrews of Palestine (a) shall be seven years burning and destroying the weapons of war of this evil rabble, (a) The hosts of heaven and of earth (b, c) shall eternally (seven years) recount the lesson of the utter end of Satan’s deceptive doctrines, of credulity (shield) of hatred (bows), evil‐speaking (arrows) and other evil character‐fruits.
39:10. So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord God.—So numerous will be the weapons of war (a) of those Divinely vanquished armies that the Hebrews will need no other firewood, but will burn the weapons. They shall plunder those that plunder them. The innumerable sophistries (b, c) by which Satan’s legions shall seek to grasp the Kingdom power, and their miraculous overthrow, shall forever furnish lessons to help the inheritors of the Kingdom.
39:11. And It shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea; and it shall stop the noses of the passengers: and there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude: and they shall call it, The valley of Hamon‐gog.—God will give (a) the self‐exalted anti‐Semite crusaders a place of burial in Palestine. In the valley used as a highway east of the Dead Sea, the dead shall be a stench to the passers‐by; and there shall they bring the proud (Gog, high, proud ones) hosts to their end, and they shall call it the Valley of Pride’s Multitude (Hamon, multitude). Then, and a thousand years later (b, c), the memory of the proud dead shall be offensive to all that recall it.
39:12. And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.—For seven months (a) the Hebrews shall be burying the crusaders, that they may cleanse the land defiled by the dead. And then, and after the Millennium (b, c), for many years shall the spiritual members of the Kingdom be neutralizing the sophistries of Satan, that they may thoroughly cleanse the Kingdom of its spiritual defilement.
39:13. Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them; and it shall be to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord God.—Yea (a) all the nations shall bury the dead; and the day of pride’s (Gog’s) overthrow shall be a celebrated day among them. All the people of the Kingdom (b, c) shall loyally assist in cleansing their beloved Kingdom of the spiritual defilement. It will always be a day to be remembered.—Mal. 4:1.
39:14. And they shall sever out men of continual employment, passing through the land, to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months shall they search.—After the seven months (a) men shall be hired regularly to search through the land, in cooperation with any travelers, for any dead remaining on the earth, to thoroughly cleanse the land. And then, and after the thousand years (b, c) spiritual teachers shall be detailed to remove any remaining spiritual defilement, by teaching the Truth.
39:15. And the passengers that pass through the land, when any seeth a man’s bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon‐gog.—Any travelers (a) passing by, that see even a human bone, shall mark it for the buriers to bury in the Valley of Pride’s Multitude. And then, and a thousand years later (b, c) any one noticing any vestige of death‐dealing error shall mark it for the special teachers to cleanse away with truth.
39:16. And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they cleanse the land.—There shall (a) be a city there named Multitude (Hamonah, Multitude). Thus shall they cleanse the land; and then (b, c) and beyond the thousand years there shall be a perfect government (city)—not such a government as Satan would establish again, not usurped by the few, Satan and his agents, but a government, under God—of multitudes of restored and perfect men—a Divine Republic, called “Multitude.”
39:17. And, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord God; Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to My sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood.—God says: (a) When the proud revolutionists shall set themselves in array against His people, to call to the most execrable of men (fowls) and to the revolutionary rulers (beasts); Come to the great destruction of hosts of rebellious humanity, where you, in anarchy, shall destroy these people; symbolically (b, c) a call to the far‐sighted spiritual ones (eagles) and the believing ones of earth (beasts—members of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah) to gather themselves to feast upon, to destroy with the weapons of Divine Truth, the evil doctrines (flesh, as the flesh of Jesus symbolizes true doctrines) and the corrupting errors (blood) of Satan.
39:18. Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.—They shall (b, c) consume the sophistries of Satan (the mighty), and annihilate the errors of earth’s great false teachers and rulers—New Thought doctrines of devils relating to the attainment of perfection, to whatever kind and degree desired—to be as mature leaders (rams), among the sheep, as tender‐charactered lambs, as self‐willed, self‐masters through thought‐power (goats), or as perfect human beings (bullocks), all imagining themselves actually, fully developed (fatlings), under the delusions of Satan’s fruitful mind (Bashan, fruitful).
39:19. And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of My sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you.—They shall (b, c) with the Truth consume and destroy these false philosophies, until satiated with the glorious witness for God’s Truth.
39:20. Thus ye shall be filled at My table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord God.—Thus (b, c) at God’s table of spiritual food, His people shall have an abundant feeding upon the truths which shall destroy the errors of the Time of Trouble, the doctrines and the organizations actuated by these doctrines and the rulers, philosophies, teachers and workers in the cause of evil.
39:21. And I will set My glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see My judgment that I have executed, and My hand that I have laid upon them.—God will (a, b, c) make Himself renowned among all nations; and they shall realize that He shall have executed judgment upon them, and that it is His hand of Justice that has been laid upon them for their misdeeds.
39:22. So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day and forward.—Thus shall (a) the Hebrews and (b, c) all professing Christians know Jehovah as their God, from that time on forever.
39:23. And the heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against Me, therefore hid I My face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies; so fell they all by the sword.—The whole world shall know that the Hebrews (a) went into captivity to literal Babylon and to Mystic Babylon, and that the unfaithful professing Christians went into captivity (b) to Mystic Babylon and (c) to Satan’s deceptions, because they sinned against God. For this reason He disfavored them and gave them over into the power of their enemies. So shall they fall, by literal weapons of destruction and (b, c) be slain by the Sword of the Spirit.
39:24. According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions have I done unto them, and hid My face from them.—According to their physical, mental, moral and spiritual pollution, and to their sinfulness, God will recompense and disfavor them.
39:25. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and will be jealous for My holy name.—Then when the punishment is over (D. 557), will God (a) release the Hebrews (A. 300) from their captivity in Mystic Babylon and in the tomb, and antitypically that of Christendom. He will show His mercy and love toward all the Hebrews, living and dead (D. 557), and (b, c), toward all of Christendom, the quick and the dead, and will vindicate His reputation for righteousness.
39:26. After that they have borne their shame, and all their trespasses whereby they have trespassed against Me, when they dwelt safely in their land, and none made them afraid.—After they (a) have thus (D. 558) endured their shame and the punishment for all their sins, wherein they have erred against the Lord, while the Jews were peacefully dwelling in Palestine (b, c) and the professing Christians in Christendom, and while no one made them afraid, the sure results shall follow.
39:27. When I have brought them again from the people, and gathered them out of their enemies’ lands, and am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations.—In Zionism (a) God shall regather the Jews and (b, c) bring Jews and Christians alike back from the great enemy, death, and by their holy, consecrated lives, He will be hallowed in the regard of the whole world.
39:28. Then shall they know that I am the Lord their God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen: but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there.—Then shall they in humble thankfulness appreciate that God is the beloved Jehovah, the Just One, who shall have punished them with captivity among the nations, and then in infinite Wisdom, Power and Love shall have gathered all of them, living and dead, (a) back to their former homes in Palestine (b, c) and in Christendom, and shall have left not one in captivity any more.
39:29. Neither will I hide My face any more from them: for I have poured out My Spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God.—God will not disfavor them any more: for He will pour out upon them (a) Jews and (b, c) Christians together, His Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to abide in them forever.
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Great truths are dearly bought. The common truth, Such as men give and take from day to day, Comes in the common walk of easy life, Blown by the careless wind across our way.
Great truths are dearly won; not found by chance, Nor wafted on the breath of summer dream; But grasped in the great struggle of the soul, Hard buffeting with adverse wind and stream.
Not in the general clash of human creeds, Nor in the merchandise ’twixt church and world, Is truth’s fair treasure found, ’mongst tares and weeds; Nor her fair banner in their midst unfurled.
Truth springs like harvest from the well‐ploughed fields, Rewarding patient toll, and faith, and zeal. To those thus seeking her, she ever yields Her richest treasures for their lasting weal.