20:29. Then I said unto them, What is the high place whereunto ye go? And the name thereof is called Bamah unto this day.—In verse 29 Ezekiel speaks with contempt of the Hebrew apostasy. He uses a play upon words, not apparent in the English translation. He asks them, “Mah ba” (Where go?), and answers, “Ba-mah” (the high places) is the name to this day. Pastor Russell frequently spoke with contempt—deserved, from the Divine viewpoint—of the “high-place,” nominal church, her clergy and her laity, always going to the “high ones.”
20:30. Wherefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; Are ye polluted after the manner of your fathers? and commit ye whoredom after their abominations?—Again, in the phase of captivity in “Babylon,” the Lord's people were guilty of doctrinal and moral pollution and of illicit union of church and earthly power.
20:31. For when ye offer your gifts, when ye make your sons to pass through the fire, ye pollute yourselves with all your idols, even unto this day: and shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, saith the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you.—God will not even listen to the prayers of such professed Christians.
20:32. And that which cometh into your mind shall not be all, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone.—Their heart's real desire to become good-fellows in the world's fellowship (Jer. 44:17) shall fail.
20:33. As I live, saith the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule over you.—God began at the appointed time, 1914, to punish the accumulated sins of Christendom “with a mighty hand (power) and with a stretched out arm” (Christ present the Second time, Isa. 53:1), and with fury poured out “a great Time of Trouble such as never was” (Dan. 12:1), and which the Lord declared would never require a repetition.
20:34. And I will bring you out from the people, and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out.—But even this tribulation will be done in a Father's love and for the good of His erring children, to cleanse them. Through this trouble God will search out all professed Christians, make them manifestly separate from the openly worldly.—Z. '94-76.
20:35. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face.—God will bring them into a wilderness condition of separateness from the world and of ostracism and persecution by the revolutionary and anarchistic masses, and face to face He will plead with the nominal church to forsake evil and idolatry.
20:36. Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God.—As He did with the Hebrews in their trial time in the Wilderness of Sinai.
20:37. And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant.—God will cause His people, all those not utterly devoid of the Holy Spirit—“the Great Company” in the churches—to pass under the rod of correction and to resume their fidelity to their vow of consecration.
20:38. And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against Me: I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel: and ye shall know that I am the Lord.—He will permit conditions of persecution by Socialists, revolutionists, syndicalists, nihilists and anarchists, against persons professing Christianity (“the religion that got the world into trouble”), such that every person not possessing the Holy Spirit will renounce all pretense of being Christian and will get out of the deplorable condition (country) wherein the true Christians will be. This outcast class, being entirely “of the earth, earthy,” shall not enter the spiritual phase of the Kingdom.