Ezekiel 13:6, commentary and pictures

The verse exposes prophets who see empty falsehood and deceptive divination, claiming the Lord has spoken when He has not sent them nor given them any message, while making others hope their false word will be confirmed and fulfilled. They are foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing, crafty and deceitful like foxes in deserts, evading truthful warning with private impressions that can contradict God's word. Their work is a wall built to suit themselves and daubed with untempered mortar, a self-devised structure whose arguments have no coherence or strength to make it firm, so that weak misleading reasoning will collapse. They fail to go up into the gaps and repair the breach for the house of Israel so the people can stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. That unrepaired breach is the removal of the seventh-day Sabbath from God's law and the teaching of Sunday in its place, and repairing it means keeping and teaching the Sabbath in the last testing message to the world. That day of the Lord is the second advent, when the battle of that great day of God Almighty is fought and God's wrath is poured out in the seven last plagues ending with great hailstones that sweep away the refuge of lies.

Words and Prophetic Picture

The verse describes seeing empty falsehood and deceptive divination, claiming the Lord has spoken when He has not sent nor spoken nor given any message, and leading others to hope that the false word will be confirmed or fulfilled. The visions and divinations are false and are lies, yet they encourage people to trust that the predictions will come true. Those who speak in this way proclaim false visions as messages from the Lord although He has not sent them or spoken through them, and upon them the Lord pronounces woe.

The foolish prophets follow their own spirit and have seen nothing. They are like foxes in deserts, crafty and deceitful, stealthily ensnaring victims and evading truthful warnings. They invent visions and divinations and declare to be the will of God what He has not spoken, including their own wishes and feelings, with private impressions that can contradict God's word. Those who turn from the Bible to trust tradition only and rest their case on human authority such as church historians, and those who put the Book of Mormon on a level with the word of God, show this same mark of following their own spirit with nothing truly seen.

The verse belongs to the picture of a wall built to suit themselves and daubed with untempered mortar. It is a self-devised work done instead of the work committed to trust, whose supporting arguments have no coherence or strength and cannot make the wall firm and steady. Weak misleading reasoning is therefore an inadequately built wall that will collapse, and the collection of arguments used to uphold Sunday keeping despite lack of biblical authority is like such mortar, unable to withstand judgment. Errors superficially covered rather than truly repaired are like a breach in a wall so daubed, and the supposed change of God's law and Sabbath is linked with this unsound claim that will fail. The coming day of God's judgment will expose and destroy this false shelter, and safety in that judgment comes from taking God's truth as shelter through obedience.

The prophets fail to go up into the gaps and repair the hedge or breach for the house of Israel so that the people can stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. They refuse the work by which God designs to protect His people, and instead do a work of their own devising. In failing to prepare God's people to stand, their false message of peace helps conceal the need for that preparation.

Because they speak emptiness and see lies, God is against them and His hand is upon them with woe. They will not be in the assembly of His people nor written in the writing of the house of Israel, which is the Lamb's Book of Life, nor enter into the land of Israel nor receive the inheritance, and they will know that He is the Lord God. Their wall falls in overflowing shower, stormy wind, and great hailstones falling in fierce anger to break it down, sweeping away the refuge of lies and overwhelming the hiding place.

Marks of False Prophets

The false prophets are a great company of hired ministers supposed to speak for God to the people, yet following their own spirit and having seen nothing, like foxes in deserts, failing to go up into the gaps or build up the hedge for the house of Israel so that Israel can stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. They see empty falsehood and deceptive divination, saying the Lord saith when the Lord has not sent them and has not spoken, and they make others hope that their word will be confirmed. They are light and treacherous, profaning the sanctuary, doing violence to the law, headstrong and despising God, causing His people to err, violating His law, putting no difference between holy and profane and clean and unclean, and hiding their eyes from His sabbaths. With lies they make the heart of the righteous sad and strengthen the hands of the wicked by promising him life so that he does not return from his wicked way, and though appearing gentle they harm and mislead the flock in deeds that cannot be hidden from God. Because they speak emptiness and see lies God is against them and His hand is upon them with heavy responsibility and coming indignation and judgment, and they shall not be in the assembly of His people nor written in the writing of the house of Israel nor enter into the land of Israel, and they shall know that He is the Lord God.

Their existence as counterfeits proves that there are true prophets, for they claim supposed intercourse with the dead though the dead know not anything. Their work continues in the last days in departing from Scriptural truth, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, and in false christs and false prophets showing great signs and wonders.

They declare to be God's will what He has not spoken, including their own wishes and feelings and private impressions that can contradict God's word. People who set Scripture aside to follow their own hearts in this way are not guided by God's Spirit of truth, and worship shaped by personal feeling and choice while disregarding God's commandments is will worship bringing God's woe rather than worship in the Spirit.

They misrepresent God's message and give false hope, superficially covering the church's errors rather than truly repairing them, like a breach daubed with untempered mortar that God's coming test will expose by revealing the true quality of each person's work. Those who spread such falsehoods leading others to trust in lies are under condemnation, while those who believe them are responsible for failing to find out what is true.

Religious and civil leaders speak vanity and lying divination in the Lord's name when He has not sent them, while the people look and long and hope that their leaders' words will be confirmed. That hope is vain and against hope, for the sun of those who trust in hollow counterfeits substituted for the righteousness ordained of God sinks toward night, when the judgments of God will reveal the wretched counterfeits and subterfuges. Their promise to confirm the word raises false hope that keeps people from acting on recognized duty, as when hearers expect confirmation of the prophetic word and are disappointed, or when a teacher promises to prove the change of the Sabbath after the danger is past yet refuses to stand and show it face to face while present.

End-Time Prophecy and Judgment

The verse describes an apostasy of wide extent developing at the end just before the coming of Christ, pictured under the symbol of a wall because it involves the law of God which to obedient people is like a great protecting wall about a city. The foolish prophets are a great company of hired ministers called prophets because they are supposed to speak to the people for God, yet they follow their own spirit and have seen nothing, are like foxes in deserts, and fail to go up into the gaps or build up the hedge for the house of Israel so that Israel can stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. They see empty falsehood and deceptive divination while claiming that God has spoken when He has not sent them and has not spoken, and they make others hope that their word will be confirmed. Because they speak emptiness and see lies, God is against them and His hand is upon them, and they will not be in the assembly of His people nor written in the writing of the house of Israel nor enter into the land of Israel, and they will know that He is the Lord God.

It is a prediction whose counterpart is fulfilled in present religious teachers who violate God's law, put no difference between holy and profane and clean and unclean, and hide their eyes from His sabbaths, bringing heavy responsibility and coming indignation. With lies they make the heart of the righteous sad and strengthen the hands of the wicked by promising him life, so that he does not return from his wicked way. They refuse to do the work due at that time, which is to build up the gap so that the people of God may stand in the battle in the day of the Lord.

The day of the Lord for which preparation is refused is the second advent, when the battle of that great day of God Almighty is fought and the wrath of God is poured out in the seven last plagues, ending with great hailstones from heaven, for which the saints need special preparation. Instead of preparing them, these teachers follow empty visions and false predictions while claiming the Lord sent them when He did not, and cry peace when there is no peace, which is the peace-and-safety cry belonging to the second advent. The verse is part of a prophecy of the restoration of the Sabbath in the last days, reserved for the last testing message to the world.

The passage through chapter 13 points to the same future worldwide destruction at Christ's second appearing, when the battle of the great day begins. It is connected with the seventh and last plague, when the voice of God is heard from heaven and the elements are thrown into commotion. The false prophets offer a refuge of lies that will not protect people from God's judgment, for the hail of the day of judgment sweeps that refuge away and the hiding place is overwhelmed.

The verse condemns prophets who claim that the Lord has spoken when He has not sent them or given them a message, whose visions and divinations are false and who lead others to expect that they will confirm the prophetic word. In this application, the prophets prolonged the fulfillment of the 2300-day prophecy by repeatedly saying its end was still in the future. The verse is grouped with prophecies about the same time and people: professed people of God who are misled by religious leaders and lulled by false assurances of peace while rejecting God's law, with warning that such people face judgment rather than safety. It is applied to nations proclaiming peace even though there is no peace, for this false assurance stands against the actual condition of growing preparations for war, since false prophets falsely claim to speak for the Lord and give unwarranted assurance of peace when danger is near.

The weak and tottering wall daubed with untempered mortar fits the attempt to change the Sabbath, for the wall is the change of the Sabbath built up in the religious world. The vanity and lying divination and making others hope for confirmation are the arguments used to bolster up the idea of a change, which are like mortar with no coherence nor strength that will not make the wall firm and steady. The illustration applies naturally and automatically to this work, even though the prophecy was not necessarily given specifically to predict it, just as New Testament writers apply prophecies with the words And to this agree the words of the prophet when that was not their original design.

Sabbath Law and Sunday

The unrepaired breach is the removal of the seventh-day Sabbath from God's law and the teaching of Sunday observance in its place, and repairing it means keeping and teaching the Sabbath rather than treating it as bondage or a yoke. This restoration of the Sabbath is reserved for the last testing message to the world, for the work due in the last days is to build up the gap so God's people may stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. That day is the second advent, when the battle of that great day of God Almighty is fought and God's wrath is poured out in the seven last plagues ending with great hailstones, for which the saints need special preparation, yet false teachers follow empty visions and false predictions while claiming the Lord sent them when He did not, and cry peace when there is no peace in the peace-and-safety cry belonging to the second advent. Their visions are empty and their divinations false, and their false message of peace helps conceal the need for that preparation while leading people to hope their false message will be confirmed. Those who do this are excluded from the writing of Israel's house, the Lamb's Book of Life, and from the inheritance, and through cunning they leave the people unable to stand in the day-of-the-Lord conflict after making a gap in God's law by rejecting the Sabbath precept and setting up a replacement.

The wall is the change of the Sabbath built up in the religious world, linked with the supposed change of God's law and Sabbath. It is a human institution with no word from the Lord to support it, and the illustration applies naturally and automatically to this work even though the prophecy was not necessarily given specifically to predict it, just as New Testament writers apply prophecies with words like And to this agree the words of the prophet beyond their original design. The vanity and lying divination and making others hope for confirmation are the arguments used to bolster up the idea of a change, which are like mortar with no coherence nor strength that will not make the wall firm and steady. Without a Thus saith the Lord, the collection of arguments used to uphold Sunday keeping despite lack of biblical authority are like untempered mortar unable to withstand God's judgment, and those who shelter in them will be ruined. Their teaching is a false shelter like a wall daubed with untempered mortar, and the coming day of God's judgment and coming storm will expose and destroy it, while safety in that judgment comes from taking God's truth as shelter through obedience rather than restoring obedience to God's law being neglected. Applied to Sunday observance, its supporting reasons are human inventions without Scriptural authority, and teachers who try to establish Sunday as the Creator's hallowed rest day give people confidence that their message will prove true.

The false doctrine exposed is that the ten commandments were abolished at the crucifixion and then nine were re-enacted by Christ and His apostles with the fourth commandment left out. That doctrine sets at naught the teaching that to break one is to break all and the testimony that whoever breaks one of the least commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. It is vanity and lies spoken in the name of the Lord without being sent, by which they make others hope their word will be confirmed, and their certain and awful destruction is hailstones falling on men, not on law-keepers but on law-breakers. The same condemnation falls on preachers who defend Sunday as the Sabbath by evading arguments for the seventh-day Sabbath with contradictory claims that the Sabbath was abolished at the cross, changed by Christ and the apostles, or merely means one day in seven, while encouraging people to trust those claims. Claiming that Christ blessed the first day above all others because He rose on that day and set it apart for His disciples to rest imputes to the Lord what He never spoke, since He rose on the first day but did not rest that day nor set it apart for rest nor intimate such blessing. His death and resurrection are memorialized in baptism, not by resting on Sunday.

Also condemned is teaching that Sunday was God's day of rest from creation and that at Israel's exodus God changed the Sabbath from Sunday to Saturday, the day of departure. That claim leaves the first six days of creation out of the first week's reckoning, so that Adam and his posterity formed the week by joining the last day of one of the Creator's weeks to the first six days of another, making a week that began with God's seventh day and ended with His sixth day. After Egypt Israel then kept the closing day of that week instead of the opening day, so that Saturday, the true sixth day, was kept as the seventh day while Sunday, the true seventh day, came to be called the first day. Teaching that God gave only one seventh portion of time for rest is the same vanity claiming divine authority for what God never said, since God plainly commanded the seventh day as the Sabbath of the Lord and neither God nor any inspired servant ever mentioned an indefinite seventh part of time. Refusing the commanded seventh day because the apostles did not repeat the command while urging the inferred theory is condemned, for the inferred theory always falls on the day made popular by tradition and human law.

Setting aside the fourth commandment thereby leads people into error, and claiming without scriptural testimony that the first day is holy or was hallowed by God, or has become a more sacred Sabbath than the seventh day, fulfills these prophetic words. This covers a town clergyman who promises to show the change of the Sabbath after the tent preachers are gone, yet refuses to take the stand to show it to the people while they are present, preferring to give warning only after the danger is gone. It exposes those who promise to test doctrines such as the change of the Sabbath by the Bible and then turn from the Bible to trust tradition only and rest their case on human authority such as church historians, and those who put the Book of Mormon on a level with the word of God, as following their own spirit and having seen nothing while claiming God spoke when God did not send them and did not speak. Servants of Christ who hide their eyes from God's Sabbaths and put no difference between holy and profane do this same false prophetic work of claiming divine authority for empty and lying messages when God has not sent them. Faith does not question God's commands or Christ's example but obeys because God has said it, unlike Eve over the forbidden fruit, Saul over obeying God's commands, Naaman over dipping in Jordan, and Nadab and Abihu over offering strange fire. The verse means the exaltation of hollow counterfeits, especially a counterfeit sabbath made a shibboleth by a formal church and enforced by the state for blessing to man in soul and body, while the people look and long and hope their leaders' words will be confirmed, but the hope is vain and against hope, for their sun sinks toward night when God's judgments will reveal the wretched counterfeits substituted for His righteousness.

False Hopes and Faithfulness

The verse denounces will worship, which is being guided by feeling and will while disregarding God's commandments and declaring to be His will what He has not spoken. Those who follow their own spirits in this way see nothing, yet claim true Christian liberty and true spirituality while calling obedience bondage and legal service and worship in the letter. Such voluntary worship brings woe, for instead of worshiping God in spirit they are vainly puffed up by the fleshly mind, the carnal mind not subject to the law of God, volunteering what God did not require and withholding what He commanded. It means seducing God's people by saying peace when there is no peace, like building a wall and daubing it with untempered mortar that shall fall in overflowing shower with great hailstones and stormy wind. This includes the false promise that everyone will have secure homes by the Lord's word, and national proclamations of peace that stand against the actual condition of growing preparations for war.

Hope for change or relief through evolution, resolutions, agreements, human laws, treaties, and peace conferences of civil governments can never abolish war, because war is inherent in the natural heart of man and only the creative power of the Creator through Jesus Christ can change the heart. The claim that the women of the temperance movement were chosen and trusted by God to deliver His reproofs and warnings faithfully as His prophets to the government, as Elijah was sent to reprove Ahab or Jeremiah to rebuke and warn the king of Judah, is false prophesying out of their own heart. Their prediction that the kingdom of Christ will come through the gateway of politics and that the good time they predict is coming will not come to pass. The verse shows ministers declaring God's word where He has not spoken and promising safety where there is none, in false smooth preaching that pleases the people by assuring wicked unrepentant sinners they are safe and saved. Such preaching even declares notorious worldlings, infidels, and lodge members to be in heaven, while joining hands with the ungodly in secret orders and taking a stand with sinners and scorners.

The passage predicts the work of much of the professed religious world in bringing law and government into contempt by ministers who ignore the basis of God's government, His holy law, call it Jewish, treat it with contempt, and set aside plain statements of Scripture. They abolish in one breath the law Christ lived and died to honor and magnify, and with the next demand that human governments enact their amended code into civil law, and by making God altogether such a one as themselves they bring law and religion into disrepute when they ought to uphold civil government by preaching the gospel to individual men. They sow the wind from pulpits, legislative lobbies, platform, and press, and will reap the whirlwind in the oncoming wars of anarchy. Professed visions, prophecies, and wonderful works in Jesus' name joined with breaking God's law are vain vision and lying divination, since God has not sent those who cry Lord, Lord while working iniquity, which is lawlessness, violation of the law, and disregard of God's commandments. Their claims to faith and the gifts of the Spirit are self-deception, their religion is vain, God does not bestow His precious gifts of the Spirit upon them, they have no true vision from God, they perish to hear Depart from me, for antinomian teaching that the commandments of God are abolished cannot go with the Spirit of God. Teachers who claim the Lord's authority for the soul's immortality have seen such vanity which the Lord has not sent them to speak, making others hope that at some future time they will confirm their word by proving it from the Bible.

The verse applies to softening or reinterpreting professed doctrine to make it more acceptable, thereby misleading others and making sin seem less serious. It also covers compromising the word of God by changing His law and breaking the everlasting covenant, building a wall and daubing it with untempered mortar by covering carnal division of I am of Paul and I of Apollos and I of Cephas and I of Christ with boasts of large charity and Christian tolerance and sectarian prejudice. Such incohesive work cannot make a permanent solid structure, and both the wall and those who daubed it come to ruin, in contrast to the true building fitly joined together growing into a perfect building in Christ when all are of one mind and one judgment and speak the same thing. It warns against lying by claiming the Lord has spoken or falsely representing what the Bible says to support error, including both those who knowingly deceive and those who could have known the truth but refused to learn it. It likewise applies when people impose their own selfish interpretation on instruction to declare what someone else must do, calling instead for applying truth to one's own life rather than using it to judge others. Safety in the coming judgment comes from taking God's truth as shelter through obedience rather than trusting a false shelter that will be exposed and destroyed. The church's errors have been superficially covered rather than truly repaired, like a breach daubed with untempered mortar, and God's coming test will reveal the true quality of each person's work.