Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate because of thy sins.
The verse declares that God himself inflicts a sickening, smiting blow and brings sickness and ruin and desolation upon his own people because of their sins. The blow comes only after he has borne long with perversity, when boundaries are passed after departure from him through continual transgression and turning from his law and righteous government and rightful rule. Among prophecies concerning the world before the second coming, it describes what follows such turning from God.
In its context a divine voice cries out in the city, and men of wisdom discern his name and hear the rod and who appointed it. That rod belongs to his people and has come upon them. God has shown what is good and what he requires: to act justly and deal justly, to cherish mercy and love mercy, and to live humbly and walk humbly with God.
The specific sins that draw the smiting are treasures of wickedness and dishonest gain stored up in the house of the wicked, the scant and short and abominable and detestable measure, wicked balances and dishonest scales and the bag of deceitful weights, including unfair dealing and falsehood and robbery in trade and property and real-estate speculation and institutional management. With these go the violence of rich men full of violence, and inhabitants speaking lies with a lying and deceitful tongue in the mouth and deceitful speech.
The punishments are corrective warnings and corrections, yet when those who have had great light refuse to repent and be converted that Christ should heal them, fearful punishment falls upon them, and those who disregard correction will face heavier judgment when it will be too late to repent. The sickness is moral sickness from wrongful dealings and wrong transactions, leaving men unfit for the city whose builder and maker is God and in need of healing by a Physician higher than earthly skill and beyond human skill. Every false transaction stands recorded in heaven under divine condemnation.
The smiting expresses God's controversy with his professed people and is directed as a present call and present message especially to those in control and to every institution raised up among them to halt and stop, to take and stand on the highest ground and highest vantage ground, and to come under God's control and be controlled by God. It is directed to believers in Battle Creek for taking counsel and following counsel with men who have not walked in the counsel of the Lord and from those outside God's counsel. It declares much medical missionary work carried forward there unacceptable and not acceptable to God while led by and standing under a man at the head whose mind is continually filled with misleading sophistries and deceptions and who fails the divine requirement. The resulting desolation leaves the institutions and the cause weak and strengthless and moneyless and without funds, crippled and burdened and loaded with debt.
The verse declares that God himself inflicts a sickening, smiting blow and brings sickness and ruin and desolation upon his own people because of their sins. The blow comes only after he has borne long with perversity, when boundaries are passed after departure from him through continual transgression and turning from his law and righteous government and rightful rule. Among prophecies concerning the world before the second coming, it describes what follows such turning from God.
In its context a divine voice cries out in the city, and men of wisdom discern his name and hear the rod and who appointed it. That rod belongs to his people and has come upon them. God has shown what is good and what he requires: to act justly and deal justly, to cherish mercy and love mercy, and to live humbly and walk humbly with God.
The specific sins that draw the smiting are treasures of wickedness and dishonest gain stored up in the house of the wicked, the scant and short and abominable and detestable measure, wicked balances and dishonest scales and the bag of deceitful weights, including unfair dealing and falsehood and robbery in trade and property and real-estate speculation and institutional management. With these go the violence of rich men full of violence, and inhabitants speaking lies with a lying and deceitful tongue in the mouth and deceitful speech.
The punishments are corrective warnings and corrections, yet when those who have had great light refuse to repent and be converted that Christ should heal them, fearful punishment falls upon them, and those who disregard correction will face heavier judgment when it will be too late to repent. The sickness is moral sickness from wrongful dealings and wrong transactions, leaving men unfit for the city whose builder and maker is God and in need of healing by a Physician higher than earthly skill and beyond human skill. Every false transaction stands recorded in heaven under divine condemnation.
The smiting expresses God's controversy with his professed people and is directed as a present call and present message especially to those in control and to every institution raised up among them to halt and stop, to take and stand on the highest ground and highest vantage ground, and to come under God's control and be controlled by God. It is directed to believers in Battle Creek for taking counsel and following counsel with men who have not walked in the counsel of the Lord and from those outside God's counsel. It declares much medical missionary work carried forward there unacceptable and not acceptable to God while led by and standing under a man at the head whose mind is continually filled with misleading sophistries and deceptions and who fails the divine requirement. The resulting desolation leaves the institutions and the cause weak and strengthless and moneyless and without funds, crippled and burdened and loaded with debt.