Ezekiel 7:8, commentary and pictures

Now God will shortly pour out His fury and accomplish His anger by judging according to ways and recompensing for all abominations. That judging and repaying is a full carrying out of anger upon each person for ways and abominations. The word rendered shortly means the time is near, very near, when this judgment will be accomplished, and it belongs to a future time of divine wrath.

In its original setting the imminent outpouring was upon Judah, yet the seventh chapter of Ezekiel is a graphic prophecy that reaches down to the present day. In that extended fulfillment the judgment belongs to events beginning in 1844 and extending to the closing scenes of the world, with its fulfillment near. The surrounding verses mark the end as having come and connect it with pride and rising violence. Applied to the last days, the prophecy means violence will fill the earth, making them exceptionally warlike and revolutionary, with murders and suicides as evidence that this condition has arrived.

Its setting is the end-time day of trouble and wrath, when the wicked face destruction and earthly wealth cannot save them. This judgment is connected with the close of probation and the events surrounding the Lord's coming. The verse is applied to the imminent beginning of a time of trouble, when divine judgment brings calamity upon the land. Ezekiel 7 is a prophecy of the coming time of trouble, when after the world has been warned and mercy has ended, God's wrath will fall on the wicked in the seven last plagues. In light of this judgment, God's people in the last days are required to heed the warning and to mourn and weep rather than joke and jest.