7:13. For the seller shall not return to that which is sold, although they were yet alive: for the vision is touching the whole multitude thereof, which shall not return; neither shall any strengthen himself in the iniquity of his life.—This indicates the languishing and eventual decline and cessation of business. (Isa. 33:8.) Symbolically, it represents the ceasing of the clergy from “selling” religion and the people from buying. “Success consists in knowing how to be discreetly dishonest” is now a common [pg 406] rule of practice; but the time is at hand when iniquitous practices and precepts will no longer profit any.
7:14. They have blown the trumpet, even to make all ready; but none goeth to the Battle; for My wrath is upon all the multitude thereof.—There are other trumpets than the trumpet of Truth. Established error has its trumpet message. Ecclesiasticism, capitalism, and governments together have blown the trumpet of the Divine right of kings, magnates, and clergy, of the civic-betterment gospel and of “preparedness.” Labor leaders have rallied the people to fight for their unions. Trumpet messages will summon the people of the world to yet other strife. But so furious and heart-breaking will be the trouble that none will have the spirit to respond. There is a hint here that conscription will meet with opposition.
7:15. The sword is without, and the pestilence and the famine within: he that is in the field shall die with the sword; and he that is in the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him.—Worldly people in Christendom, not professors of Christianity, will be pressed into the active fighting of the Time of Trouble and will perish. (Deut. 32:25; Jer. 14:18.) Those in the city refer to the professors of Christianity—church members.
7:16. But they that escape of them shall escape, and shall be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, every one for his iniquity.—There will be survivors of the Time of Trouble who will live on into the Millennium proper. Those of dove-like character will be most likely to survive. The dove has a mournful note. This class will appreciate their iniquity, repent of it and pray for forgiveness and deliverance.—E. 231, 212.
7:17. All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water.—The hands symbolize power. The people of Christendom will realize their helplessness. The extremity of the situation will weaken the strongest.—Zeph. 1:14; A. 315.
7:18. They shall also gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads.—In mourning for their dead, men's minds and hearts will revolt at the horrors of the calamity. All will realize with shame that by drunkenness with Babylon's mixed teachings (Rev. 17:2) they have brought the trouble on themselves. In grief the Hebrews shaved the head.—Isa. 3:24.
7:19. They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed; their sliver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill [pg 407]their bowels; because it is the stumbling-block of their iniquity.—With the demonetization of silver, gold has become as a thing unclean (is losing its purchasing power). All forms of money, bonds, stocks and valuables will be worthless when governments are gone and whole nations are starving. (D. 45.) There was a literal fulfillment of this Scripture in 1898 when in Italy a miller who had publicly thanked the Virgin for dear bread, literally threw gold and silver to a crowd in the streets in a vain endeavor to pacify them. They demanded his life and took it.—Z. '98-331.
7:20. As for the beauty of His ornament, He set it in majesty; but they made the images of their abominations and of their detestable things therein; therefore have I set it far from them.—“Jerusalem is a crown of glory and a royal diadem”. (Isa. 62:3.) Christianity, the embryonic Kingdom of God, was originally “His ornament,” in the apostolic age of the Church. Literal images were set up by the Hebrews in secret places, and to this day are worshipped by Romanists literally. Romanists and Protestants alike worship the images of world-power, wealth, state-church affiliation, clergy lordship, eternal torment, human immortality and trinity, all alike detestable to a jealous God. The actual ornament of God, His jewel, His diadem, is the true Church, composed mostly of the poor, rich in faith (Jas. 2:5)—of the reform element who since 1878 have been withdrawing from ecclesiasticism and coming to God.
7:21. And I will give it into the hands of the strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil; and they shall pollute it.—The nominal jewel, churchianity, has become the prey of clerical and social anarchists.—D. 550.
7:22. My face will I turn also from them, and they shall pollute My secret place; for the robbers shall enter into it, and defile it.—The secret place is the condition of consecration, which an apostate clergy pollute by misrepresentations, such as that bravery in battle, suffering in the trenches, devotion to a falling order of things (Hab. 2:13), win a place in Heaven—won only by loyal devotion to God's Word, and by the spirit-begotten alone. “I am the Door. He that entereth in by another way is a robber.”—John 10:1.