Isaiah's End Times Timeline - Warning #3

Warning #3: Captivity by the King of Babylon
Jeremiah's message of warning was not just for Judah and Jerusalem - it was for our modern-day nations, too. God appointed Jeremiah as a prophet to the nations (Jer. 1:10), Jewish and Gentile. His message of warning is for any nation that does evil and does not obey God's commands, forgetting God and doing things their own way. This evil is not just found in unbelieving nations, but it is found in nations where the Church has made her home. You see, the Church is repeating Israel's history in the nations where she has chosen to live.

The Word which came to Jeremiah from Jehovah, saying, Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause you to hear My Words. Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he was working a work on the wheel. And the vessel that he made in clay was ruined in the hand of the potter; so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. Then the Word of Jehovah came to me, saying, O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter? says Jehovah. Behold, As the clay in the potter's hands, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. The instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck it up and to pull it down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have spoken, will turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do to them. And the instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build it and to plant it; if it does evil in My sight, not to obey My voice, then I will repent of the good with which I said I would do them good. Now then please, speak to the men of Judah, and to the people of Jerusalem, saying, So says Jehovah: Behold, I am forming evil against you, and devising a plan against you. Return now, each one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. And they said, There is no hope; but we will walk after our own ways, and we will each one do according to the stubbornness of his evil heart. Therefore so says Jehovah, Ask now among the nations; who has heard the like of this? The virgin of Israel has done a very horrible thing. Does the snow of Lebanon forsake the rock of the field? Or shall the cold flowing waters that come from another place be forsaken? Because My people have forgotten Me, they have burned incense to vanity, and they have caused themselves to stumble in their ways from the old paths, to walk in by-paths, not in the highway, to make their land desolate and a hissing forever. Everyone who passes by will be amazed, and will wag his head. I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy; I will show them the back, and not the face, in the day of their calamity. Then they said, Come and let us plot schemes against Jeremiah. For the Law shall not perish from the priest, nor wisdom from the wise, nor the Word from the prophet. Come and let us strike him with the tongue, and let us not pay attention to any of his words. Pay attention to me; O Jehovah, and attend to the voice of my foes. Should evil be repaid for good? For they have dug a pit for my soul. Remember that I stood before You to do good for them, and to turn away Your wrath from them. Therefore deliver up their sons to the famine, and give them over to the hand of the sword. And let their wives be bereaved, and widows, and their men be slain of death; let their young men be struck by the sword in battle. Let a cry be heard from their houses, when You suddenly bring a raiding party on them. For they have dug a pit to take me, and have hidden snares for my feet. Yet, Jehovah, You know all their counsel against me to kill me. Do not forgive their iniquity, nor blot out their sin from Your sight, but let them be overthrown before You; deal with them in the time of Your anger. (Jer 18:1-23 MKJV)

So says Jehovah of Hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring to this city, and on all its towns, all the evil that I have spoken against it, because they have stiffened their necks in order not to hear My Words. (Jer 19:15 LITV)

The Church hasn't learned from the mistakes of her Mother. The virgin daughters that make up the Church have done a very horrible thing by going back to their old ways, forgetting their King and all He has done for them, and for refusing to hear His voice.

(See these previous blog entries: The Ten Virgins, Laodicea, and Pergamum)

We have sinned as our ancestors did; we have been wicked and evil. Our ancestors in Egypt did not understand God's wonderful acts; they forgot the many times he showed them his love, and they rebelled against the Almighty at the Red Sea. But he saved them, as he had promised, in order to show his great power. He gave a command to the Red Sea, and it dried up; he led his people across on dry land. He saved them from those who hated them; he rescued them from their enemies. But the water drowned their enemies; not one of them was left. Then his people believed his promises and sang praises to him. But they quickly forgot what he had done and acted without waiting for his advice. They were filled with craving in the desert and put God to the test; so he gave them what they asked for, but also sent a terrible disease among them. There in the desert they were jealous of Moses and of Aaron, the LORD's holy servant. Then the earth opened up and swallowed Dathan and buried Abiram and his family; fire came down on their followers and burned up those wicked people. They made a gold bull-calf at Sinai and worshiped that idol; they exchanged the glory of God for the image of an animal that eats grass. They forgot the God who had saved them by his mighty acts in Egypt. What wonderful things he did there! What amazing things at the Red Sea! When God said that he would destroy his people, his chosen servant, Moses, stood up against God and kept his anger from destroying them. Then they rejected the pleasant land, because they did not believe God's promise. They stayed in their tents and grumbled and would not listen to the LORD. So he have them a solomn warning that he would make them die in the desert and scatter their descendants among the heathen, letting them die in foreign countries. Then at Peor, God's people joined in the worship of Baal and ate sacrifices offered to dead gods. They stirred up the LORD's anger by their actions, and a terrible disease broke out among them. But Phinehas stood up and punished the guilty, and the plague was stopped. This has been remembered in his favor ever since and will be for all time to come. At the springs of Meribah the people made the LORD angry, and Moses was in trouble on their account. They made him so bitter that he spoke without stopping to think. They did not kill the heathen, as the LORD had commanded them to do, but they intermarried with them and adopted their pagan ways. God's people worshiped idols, and this caused their destruction. They offered their own sons and daughters as sacrifices to the idols of Canaan. They killed those innocent children, and the land was defiled by those murders. They made themselves impure by their actions and were unfaithful to God. So the LORD was angry with his people; he was disgusted with them. He abandoned them to the power of the heathen, and their enemies ruled over them. They were oppressed by their enemies and were in complete subjection to them. Many times the LORD rescued his people, but they chose to rebel against him and sank deeper into sin. (Psa 106:6-43 GNB)

The majority of the Church today is showing herself more like a daughter of Egypt. Her pagan ways have weakened her defenses so the King of Babylon is coming to take her captive. He has already invaded other nations in the East. His eyes are set now on the nations of the West and he is sharpening his sword. There still is hope for the Church, though, if she would just confess her sins and soften her heart towards her King. He will remember His covenant with her and won't destroy her completely. He will rescue her from her captivity and will lead His chosen remnant to Zion.

"Don't make idols for yourselves; don't set up an image or a sacred pillar for yourselves, and don't place a carved stone in your land that you can bow down to in worship. I am GOD, your God. "Keep my Sabbaths; treat my Sanctuary with reverence. I am GOD. "If you live by my decrees and obediently keep my commandments, I will send the rains in their seasons, the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. You will thresh until the grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting time; you'll have more than enough to eat and will live safe and secure in your land. "I'll make the country a place of peace--you'll be able to go to sleep at night without fear; I'll get rid of the wild beasts; I'll eliminate war. You'll chase out your enemies and defeat them: Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand and do away with them. I'll give you my full attention: I'll make sure you prosper, make sure you grow in numbers, and keep my covenant with you in good working order. You'll still be eating from last year's harvest when you have to clean out the barns to make room for the new crops. "I'll set up my residence in your neighborhood; I won't avoid or shun you; I'll stroll through your streets. I'll be your God; you'll be my people. I am GOD, your personal God who rescued you from Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I ripped off the harness of your slavery so that you can move about freely. "But if you refuse to obey me and won't observe my commandments, despising my decrees and holding my laws in contempt by your disobedience, making a shambles of my covenant, I'll step in and pour on the trouble: debilitating disease, high fevers, blindness, your life leaking out bit by bit. You'll plant seed but your enemies will eat the crops. I'll turn my back on you and stand by while your enemies defeat you. People who hate you will govern you. You'll run scared even when there's no one chasing you. "And if none of this works in getting your attention, I'll discipline you seven times over for your sins. I'll break your strong pride: I'll make the skies above you like a sheet of tin and the ground under you like cast iron. No matter how hard you work, nothing will come of it: No crops out of the ground, no fruit off the trees. "If you defy me and refuse to listen, your punishment will be seven times more than your sins: I'll set wild animals on you; they'll rob you of your children, kill your cattle, and decimate your numbers until you'll think you are living in a ghost town. "And if even this doesn't work and you refuse my discipline and continue your defiance, then it will be my turn to defy you. I, yes I, will punish you for your sins seven times over: I'll let war loose on you, avenging your breaking of the covenant; when you huddle in your cities for protection, I'll send a deadly epidemic on you and you'll be helpless before your enemies; when I cut off your bread supply, ten women will bake bread in one oven and ration it out. You'll eat, but barely--no one will get enough. "And if this--even this!--doesn't work and you still won't listen, still defy me, I'll have had enough and in hot anger will defy you, punishing you for your sins seven times over: famine will be so severe that you'll end up cooking and eating your sons in stews and your daughters in barbecues; I'll smash your sex-and-religion shrines and all the paraphernalia that goes with them, and then stack your corpses and the idol-corpses in the same piles--I'll abhor you; I'll turn your cities into rubble; I'll clean out your sanctuaries; I'll hold my nose at the "pleasing aroma" of your sacrifices. I'll turn your land into a lifeless moonscape--your enemies who come in to take over will be shocked at what they see. I'll scatter you all over the world and keep after you with the point of my sword in your backs. There'll be nothing left in your land, nothing going on in your cities. With you gone and dispersed in the countries of your enemies, the land, empty of you, will finally get a break and enjoy its Sabbath years. All the time it's left there empty, the land will get rest, the Sabbaths it never got when you lived there. "As for those among you still alive, I'll give them over to fearful timidity--even the rustle of a leaf will throw them into a panic. They'll run here and there, back and forth, as if running for their lives even though no one is after them, tripping and falling over one another in total confusion. You won't stand a chance against an enemy. You'll perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will eat you up. Any who are left will slowly rot away in the enemy lands. Rot. And all because of their sins, their sins compounded by their ancestors' sins. "On the other hand, if they confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, their treacherous betrayal, the defiance that set off my defiance that sent them off into enemy lands; if by some chance they soften their hard hearts and make amends for their sin, I'll remember my covenant with Jacob, I'll remember my covenant with Isaac, and, yes, I'll remember my covenant with Abraham. And I'll remember the land. "The land will be empty of them and enjoy its Sabbaths while they're gone. They'll pay for their sins because they refused my laws and treated my decrees with contempt. But in spite of their behavior, while they are among their enemies I won't reject or abhor or destroy them completely. I won't break my covenant with them: I am GOD, their God. For their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I, with all the nations watching, brought out of Egypt in order to be their God. I am GOD." These are the decrees, laws, and instructions that GOD established between himself and the People of Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai. (Lev 26:1-46 MSG)

"In those days and in that time, declares the LORD, the people of Israel and the people of Judah shall come together, weeping as they come, and they shall seek the LORD their God. They shall ask the way to Zion, with faces turned toward it, saying, 'Come, let us join ourselves to the LORD in an everlasting covenant that will never be forgotten.' "My people have been lost sheep. Their shepherds have led them astray, turning them away on the mountains. From mountain to hill they have gone. They have forgotten their fold. All who found them have devoured them, and their enemies have said, 'We are not guilty, for they have sinned against the LORD, their habitation of righteousness, the LORD, the hope of their fathers.' "Flee from the midst of Babylon, and go out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as male goats before the flock.
(Jer 50:4-8 ESV)

I am the Good Shepherd, and I know those that are Mine, and I am known by those who are Mine. Even as the Father knows Me, I also know the Father. And I lay down My life for the sheep. And I have other sheep who are not of this fold. I must also lead those, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one flock, one Shepherd. (Joh 10:14-16 MKJV)