NO INTERVENING FOR HYPOCRITICAL CHRISTENDOM 8 Christendom parades the name of Christ. But will he intercede for such a religious system that has persisted in mixing Bible teachings with pagan religion for more than 16 centuries? No, indeed, for he is in perfect accord with his Heavenly Father, Jehovah God. Said he: “I cannot do a single thing of my own initiative; just as I hear, I judge; and the judgment that I render is righteous, because I seek, not my own will, but the will of him that sent me.” (John 5:30) Six centuries before Christ, in the days of Jeremiah, Jehovah said with reference to the prototype of Christendom: 9 “If Moses and Samuel were standing before me, my soul would not be toward this people [Israel]. There would be a sending of them away from before my face, that they might go out.”—Jer. 15:1. 10 Moses, who had been used to give the Ten Commandments to Israel, had interceded with success for them. As for Samuel of four centuries later, he began a special line of prophets that included Jeremiah and that continued till the prophet Malachi. (Acts 3:22-24) Samuel also interceded for the nation of Israel, especially after they asked for a visible human king. But now, more than four centuries after Samuel, not even intervention by him or by Moses would avail with Jehovah. So away with unrepentant Israel! 11 Away to where? a person sympathizing with Christendom might ask. We have a prophetic indication of whereto in what Jehovah said to Jeremiah: “And it must occur that should they say to you, ‘Where shall we go out to?’ you must also say to them, ‘This is what Jehovah has said: “Whoever is for deadly plague, to deadly plague! And whoever is for the sword, to the sword! And whoever is for the famine, to the famine! And whoever is for the captivity, to the captivity!”’ ‘And I will commission over them four families [or, four kinds],’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘[1] the sword to kill, and [2] the dogs to drag away, and [3] the flying creatures of the heavens and [4] the beasts of the earth to eat and to bring to ruin. And I will give them for a quaking to all the kingdoms of the earth on account of Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem. For who will show compassion upon you, O Jerusalem, and who will sympathize with you, and who will turn aside to ask about your welfare?’ ‘You yourself have deserted me,’ is the utterance of Jehovah. ‘Backwards [from me] is the way you keep walking.’”—Jer. 15:2-6; also 16:4. 12 Deadly plague (or, pestilence), sword (or, war), famine (or, food shortage) and captivity! These words spoken to Jeremiah regarding Jerusalem during her time of the end (647-607 B.C.E.) in his day were words also used by Jesus Christ in his prophecy concerning the “time of the end” of Jerusalem in the first century of our Common Era. (Matt. 24:3-7, 21, 22; Luke 21:10, 11, 20-24) Also, in his prophecy in the last book of the Bible the same things are called to our attention by the use of illustrations, including the wild beasts of the field. (Rev. 6:1-8) That last prophecy carries the fulfillment of those calamitous predictions beyond the writing of Revelation in 96 C.E. down to our own “time of the end,” from 1914 C.E. onward. (Dan. 12:4) So the prophecy, in its final fulfillment, applies to the present doomed system of things, including apostate Christendom. 13 Should any of us blind our eyes to the fact that since the end of the Gentile Times in 1914 we have had war (the sword), famine, pestilence, also earthquakes in undue measure? It has been just as predicted, as illustrated in the case of the Jerusalem of Jeremiah’s day and the Jerusalem of the days of Jesus’ apostles. 14 Christendom, the modern antitype of apostate Jerusalem and Judah, has not been any exception to the suffering of such calamitous things. The prayers of her clergymen have not availed for her. The reason for this is the same as that in the case of the Israelites of Jeremiah’s days: “‘I have taken away my peace from this people,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘even loving-kindness and mercies.’ For this is what Jehovah of armies, the God of Israel, has said, ‘Here I am causing to cease out of this place before the eyes of you people and in your days the voice of exultation and the voice of rejoicing, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.’”—Jer. 16:5, 9.
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 04:15:54 +0000
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