34:31. And ye My flock, the flock of My pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God.—This prophecy, this type, this symbolism, refers to the people who constitute God's flock, Jewish and nominal.
Ezekiel 35—Edom A Type
35:1, 2. Moreover the Word of the Lord came onto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it.—Mount Seir and Edom are practically synonymous; for the Edomites inhabited the mountain range region along the east side of the valley, extending from the Dead Sea to the Elamitic or Persian Gulf. What Edom types Pastor Russell makes clear in volume IV of Scripture Studies, pp. 14, 20.
One of the features of the Time of Trouble will be upon the fleshly-minded Christians, tares, who after the fall of ecclesiasticism, will repudiate Christianity, and take their stand as worldings, Edomites—the “people of Mount Seir,” mere tares. These, having assisted in the downfall of ecclesiasticism, will seek to take the place and power of defunct Christendom in an utterly Christless arrangement of things.
35:3. And say unto it, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out Mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate.—The godless nations that will succeed fallen Christendom will also find God against them, and that His power is stretched out against them and will make them, too, most desolate.
35:4. I will lay the cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord.—God will, through anarchy, lay waste the Socialistic, labor-union, social-democratic and other governments which will emerge as the outcome of the revolutions of Christendom.
35:5. Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end.—These economic-political movements—Socialism, labor-unionism, syndicalism, nihilism, and others, but not including anarchy, which will swallow them up—have had a long standing hatred against ecclesiasticism, have spoken and worked against it, and against the social order characteristic of the past age. In the overthrow of ecclesiasticism, the fleshly-minded tares, “Edomites” and the classes mentioned, will turn on the [pg 541] clergy and laity of the churches, as well as upon the Lord's spirit-begotten children—upon any remaining to profess Christianity, whether through adherence to the church systems or through consecration to God—and will slaughter them by thousands.
35:6. Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee; since thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.—In gatherings of Socialists, there is no end to the differences of opinion as to what Socialism is and how it is to be worked out in practice. This factional division contains the seeds of the destruction of the short-lived governmental system of Socialism, under whatever name, for a bloody end. They courted revolution and shall receive of the same.