16:27. Behold, therefore I have stretched out My hand over thee, and have diminished thine ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee, the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy lewd way.—God has now, since 1878, brought the powers of judgment against the apostate church and caused a famine of the Word of God within church doors. He has given her over to the encroachments of church daughters of aggressive worldliness and doctrines of devils (Philistines)—Christian Science, Theosophy, New Thought, Higher Criticism and Spiritism. Even these churches, founded on doctrines of devils, are ashamed of the worldly, self-debasing ways of the professedly orthodox Church of Christ.
16:28, 29. Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians, because thou wast unsatiable; yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet couldest not be satisfied. Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication in the land of Canaan unto Chaldea; and yet thou wast not satisfied herewith.—The Church has even sought union [pg 442] with the forces (Assyrians) destined to overthrow Christendom—Socialism, Communism, Industrial Workers of the World, Trade Unions, Syndicalists, revolutionists, anarchists,—insatiable in her desire for power.
16:30-34. How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord God, seeing thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman, in that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way, and makest thine high place in every street; and hast not been as a harlot, in that thou scornest hire, but as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband! They give gifts to all whores; but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom. And the contrary is in thee from other women in thy whoredoms, whereas none followeth thee to commit whoredoms; and in that thou givest a reward, and no reward is given unto thee, therefore thou are contrary.—How despicable is the attitude of the professed church! ... lower even than an harlot! For a harlot has some self-respect and gives herself only for gifts in return; but the “Christian” church has offered inducements to every possible kind and grade of governmental power to enter into Divinely condemned union of church and state.—Hos. 8:9.
16:35-37. Wherefore, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord God; Because thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness discovered through thy whoredoms with thy lovers, and with all the idols of thy abominations, and by the blood of thy children, which thou didst give unto them. Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated; I will even gather them round about against thee, and will discover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness.—Therefore God will cause the governments, with which the apostate church has made alliance, to hate and burn her with fire.—Rev. 17:16.
16:38-40. And I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged; and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy. And I will also give thee into their hand, and they shall throw down thine eminent place, and shall break down thy high places: they shall strip thee also of thy clothes, and shall take thy fair jewels, and leave thee naked and bare. They shall also bring up a company against thee, and they shall stone thee with stones, and thrust thee through with their swords.—By Moses' Law women that broke wedlock were stoned to death; in earlier days they were burned alive; and the [pg 443] guilty men also were killed. (Lev. 20:10, 14, 27.) Ecclesiasticism will be smitten down with the stones of hard facts, and be destroyed in the fires of anarchy, “with the fire of God's Jealousy.” (Zeph. 3:8.) She shall be stripped of her tinsel and gilt (imitation immortality), her purple (imperial) and scarlet (bloody) colors, and of her real and imitation jewels of Truth. The masses, incensed by vain sacrifices and privations of a world-war, will despatch her.
16:41. And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women; and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more.—Her houses (denominations) will be wiped out in the anarchy. She will receive her terrible judgments in the wondering sight of many heathen religions (women).
16:42, 43. So will I make My fury toward thee to rest, and My jealousy shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet and will be no more angry. Because thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, but hast fretted Me in all these things; behold, therefore I also will recompense thy way upon thine head, saith the Lord God: and thou shalt not commit this lewdness above all thine abominations.—Not till ecclesiasticism has perished from the face of the earth will God's fury and jealousy cease its retributions.
16:44, 45. Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter. Thou art thy mother's daughter, that loatheth her husband and her children; and thou art the sister of thy sisters, which loathed their husbands and their children: your mother was a Hittite, and your father an Amorite.—The Hittites, Amorites, Samaritans and Sodomites were all worshipers of Baal and Astarte, under one name or another, and were adepts in the heathen and immoral beliefs and practices of that religion, typical not of fleshly but of spiritual uncleanness, as explained in foregoing pages. The true Church's father was our Father, her mother the Sarah Covenant of Grace, and her espoused husband, Christ. Ecclesiasticism's parentage, as becometh the “dwellers in the summits,” the proud “best” people, was the proud, self-sufficient one, the Devil (John 8:44.) Romanism and Protestantism are begotten, not by the Word of God, but by the words of pride, of selfishness, of earthly ambition. Her mother was of the Hittites, a commercial people, descendants of Ham, under Divine disapproval; her spiritual mother was the false promises of human tradition, which would barter a Divine promise for an earthly meal; she loves compromise, and knows not principle. “Like mother, like daughter.”
16:46. And thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand; and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.—Samaria and Sodom were worshipers of Baal. With like parentage, ecclesiasticism is a sister religion with the heathen religions, even acknowledging in many volumes the unity of all religions, herself included. Samaria, the ten apostate tribes, mingled the religion of Jehovah with that of Baal—a fit religious sister of the “nominal church,” which reads the Bible and serves the god of selfishness. Samaria elsewhere types not merely ecclesiasticism's sister, but churchianity herself. Sodom, here named Jerusalem's (ecclesiasticism's) sister religion, is directly identified as churchianity in Rev. 11:8—“The great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.” It types professed Christianity in its lowest phase.
16:47. Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou was corrupted more than they in all thy ways.—As though the ill-fame of Sodom were not enough, (apostate) Christianity has excelled her in corruption; Sodom's literal depravity was “a very little thing” to ecclesiasticism's ways.