Audio Download

The Book of Amos – Chapter 5:1-27: Israel Has Not Returned to the Lord

[Aired December 21, 20 24]

As an oft-repeated adage, it was our habit to indifferently look upon the statement, “Israel has not returned to the Lord”, since we drearily thought that it was Old Israel’s problem and irrelevant to us since the cross. However, since we have been given the keys to understanding that we are the pattern of the heavenly, we are ravished to see that everything in the Old Testament directly corresponds to us spiritually. We are gladened to see that fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, while instantly gratifying, are temporary and boring, just as our classically represented Ohola and Oholibah discovered upon satiating their overwhelming lusts, yet, without the holy spirit, found it impossible to return to the Lord. They, like Israel, died undesirable old harlots.

Eze 23:43  Then said I unto her [Ohola and Oholibah – Israel, and us in our time] that was old in adulteries, Will they now commit whoredoms with her, and she with them? [Yes, of course!] 
Eze 23:44  Yet they went in unto her, as they go in unto a woman that playeth the harlot: so went they in unto Aholah and unto Aholibah, the lewd women.
Eze 23:45  And the righteous men [the Elect of God today within themselves], they shall judge them after the manner of adulteresses, and after the manner of women that shed blood [false doctrines]; because they are adulteresses, and blood is in their hands.
Eze 23:46  For thus saith the Lord GOD; I will bring up a company upon them, and will give them to be removed and spoiled.
Eze 23:47  And the company shall stone them with stones, and dispatch them with their swords; they shall slay their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses with fire.
Eze 23:48  Thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be taught not to do after your lewdness.

That statement “that all women may be taught not to do after your lewdness” is speaking to the Elect of God today for them representing the first fruits of Christ to experience consistent unrighteousness, chastisement and change. It ultimately represents all the Babylonian churches of the world who will likewise, in their time and order in the Lake of Fire, learn ‘not to do after our lewdness’, we having been ‘the degenerate virgin of Israel’, and live. The judgment of the world is most humiliatingly executed by the Christs whom they once mocked. In the meantime, that virgin is us who need to diligently seek the Lord and live to be accomplished to show our old harlot sisters of the world the path to righteousness.

Significations:

Seek the Lord and Live

Amo 5:1  Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel. 
Amo 5:2  The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up. 

Even while we were in Babylon without the holy spirit, we were totally acquainted with Israel’s whoredoms. So, why would the Lord preposterously equalise her as a virgin!? It is because the Lord is recreating his Bride and she is a work in progress seeking how to please her husband and fully receive her espoused inheritance in and with him. The major part of that answer in the following, verse 18, is speaking directly to the Lord’s Elect, even though they are hidden within Israel, with the indictments seeming to point only to Israel, which we now see represents Gentile Christianity. Every detail incriminates the Lord’s Elect residing in Israel, Egypt, Sodom, and collectively called Babylon.

Every detail and practically every noun in each sentence directly impeach the budding Elect of God. If we read the following verses only as stated, we do not see that every incident stares us in the face as the offender.

Isa 1:2  Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
Isa 1:3  The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.
Isa 1:4  Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.
Isa 1:5  Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
Isa 1:6  From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
Isa 1:7  Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
Isa 1:8  And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.
Isa 1:9  Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.
Isa 1:10  Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.
Isa 1:11  To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
Isa 1:12  When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?
Isa 1:13  Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.
Isa 1:14  Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.
Isa 1:15  And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.
Isa 1:16  Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
Isa 1:17  Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Isa 1:18  Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Isa 1:19  If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:
Isa 1:20  But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

The simple answer to that first question is that the miracle of God-given obedience establishes our virginity, even as our sins were scarlet. Christ’s belief infused in us is a God-given miracle, which is the obedience old Israel was never given through the might and power of the holy spirit in Christ.

Joh 14:12  Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
Joh 14:13  And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
Joh 14:14  If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.

Of course, we know that the devils also believe that Christ is the Son of God and thus tremble. They, as did Old Israel, and we, when in Babylon, found it confoundedly impossible to desire to obey God.

Jas 2:19  Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

The missing link is the problem of the very same blackness of understanding Solomon, with his God-given infinite wisdom, couldn’t understand that his creation of the perfect wife in the Shulamite, too, would be just like Israel and his 1,000 devious wives. He saw himself as akin to God, but mankind represented by his ensnaring wives were all innately corrupt. So, his conundrum of gaining a virtuous wife he found was impossible. What he possibly didn’t see in that profound reality is that he, being equally born of corruptible flesh, was equally subject to marital disunity and is a key for an Elect married male to deeply ponder.

Ecc 7:29  Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made [a] man [Adam, representing the New Adam, Christ] upright; but they [mankind] have sought out many inventions.

Hence, his Shulamite creation was enigmatically “black” to his wisdom, and him not know that God would have to come first in the form of Christ and the holy spirit to correct man’s waywardness. Consequently, Christ’s Bride is being remoulded a “virgin”.

Eze 16:1  Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Eze 16:2  Son of man, cause Jerusalem [the budding virgin Bride of Christ] to know her abominations,
Eze 16:3  And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father [Satan] was an Amorite, and thy mother [Israel] an Hittite.
Eze 16:4  And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.
Eze 16:5  None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the lothing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born [revealed to the world and why she is chosen over Solomon’s 1,ooo wives representing Christianity who loath her]. 
Eze 16:6  And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.
Eze 16:7  I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare.

Amo 5:3  For thus saith the Lord GOD; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel. 

Isa 37:31  And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward: 
Isa 37:32  For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of mount Zion: the zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this.

Mat 22:14  For many are called, but few are chosen.

Joh 15:18  If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
Joh 15:19  If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Amo 5:4  For thus saith the LORD unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live: 
Amo 5:5  But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought. 

In being commanded to seek the Lord and live, rather than Bethel (= house of God), covertly meaning the old house of God; or Beersheba (= well of the sevenfold oath) or Gilgal (= a wheel, rolling.
1. the first site of an Israelite camp west of the Jordan, east of Jericho, where Samuel was judge, and Saul was made king; later used for illicit worship), …means to Israel that she has colloquially ‘done her dash’; she has shown herself to God that she is incorrigible, hence God’s certainty that the entire nation will eventually go into captivity and is indicative from where the Elect of God has fled.

The Bride, in being given by God to follow her husband, who likewise was first to be given by the Father to seek him and live, she, too, seeks him and lives eternally with him. However, she is warned not to seek how the 1,000 wives of Solomon’s harem (“daughters of Jerusalem”), referred to as “Bethel”, used their time-honoured (Gilgal = ‘revolving wheel’ of) sexual ensnaring hearts, expecting him to bow and be captive to their rulership. To Solomon’s lamented conclusions in the Song of Solomon, his wisdom did “come to naught” with his mystification of how to find a physical wife who would perfectly match his Shulamite creation. He certainly did not want his pretty smiling assassin wives dictating their time-honoured traditional sensualities to him how to awaken his love for his newly created wife. He had a new method whereupon his wife would worship him instead of her proudly ruling him with her 6,000-year-old sensual dainties that always ended in the disunity of mind and spirit.

Son 8:4  I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please.

Son 1:5  I am black [unfathomable because the holy spirit had not yet come], but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon [veiling his understanding of the Bride of Christ he, by the holy spirit created]. 

Amo 5:6  Seek the LORD, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel [house of God]. 

Joseph represents the Lord’s Elect, and paradoxically, she is learning to love the fire devouring her false doctrines for the creation of the new ‘Bethel,’ the Heavenly Jerusalem within. She doesn’t want that fire quenched. She is given to ravish her husband’s heart to acquire the far greater ravishing fiery love, his word.

Son 4:9  Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.

Son 8:7  Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.

Amo 5:7  Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth, 
Amo 5:8  Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name: 

The Bride formally embittered her husband in the wilderness since she haughtily dismissed his arousing kisses, knowing from experience that if she continued, he would only get more aroused and roll her eyes at his single-eyed desire for her. She, and by Eve’s curse, intrinsically ruled his ardour, keeping him at a distance. Of course, the Lord designed her to first, perfectly in the flesh, correspond spiritually that self-elevation and rulership (‘I sit as a queen…Rev 18:7). She thus turned her Lord’s kisses to wormwood within her ‘earth’.

Col 3:18  Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
Col 3:19  Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.

The Seven Stars represent the Bride’s seven trumpets, woes and viles first to foreshadow her death of the old man. It is pictured as the literal constellation of Orion and the coming of Christ prior to the Seventh Day figurative Sabbath in the One Thousand Year reign when mankind will be forced under the rod of iron into an uneasy peace. It will be an uneasy peace since the holy spirit is not given to mankind in that age, and thus, a foreboding shadow of death makes their heavens dark of understanding. At the end of that metaphorical timeframe of 1,000 years, fire will engulf and utterly consume mankind as it did in Sodom, first prefigured by the waters of Noah’s flood pouring upon the face of the Earth. Mankind will, upon the death of all flesh, instantly reawake in Satan-like corrupted eternal life in the Lake of Fire to begin his re-creation by acknowledging his transgressions and taking on the Lord’s incorruptible spirit.

Rev 3:14. nd unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;

Joh 10:34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

1Ti 2:3  For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;
1Ti 2:4  Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

Satan has Seven Crowns ruling the Ten Horns of mankind all the way to the beginning of the One Thousand Year reign. Although he, “the shadow of death”, is chained up at the beginning of that Seventh Day, which marks mankind’s enforced rest from their labours, his 6,000 years as the father of corruptible flesh will be reactivated upon his release at the end of the One Thousand Years. After that, he will once again rule for a little season. Though Christ’s Elect do not go into the Lake of Fire, mankind’s death at the figurative ninth hour on this ‘Sabbath’ parallels Christ’s death (Mark 15:33-39) preceding his resurrection on the Eight Day.

Rev 20:1  And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
Rev 20:2  And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
Rev 20:3  And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.

Amo 5:9  That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress. 
Amo 5:10  They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly. 

At the end of the figurative One Thousand Years spiritually for us today, we are learning to joyfully abhor the spoiled that come upon our stubborn fortress within and call upon Christ (Joh 15:5) to rebuke the devils hammering at our gate. What causes those many desiring to look into Christ’s word confusion is that we also are the ‘Lord’s spoiled’, having had our self-righteousness violently destroyed off-site in the earth of our flesh today before entering the gate of the Heavenly Jerusalem.

Rev 20:9  And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.
Rev 20:10  And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

Those dreadful tribulations we are first to experience, we quickly learn to strengthen us to spoil the strong man, Satan, our first father within. No greater spoiling of the strong will happen than fire coming down from heaven to utterly consume mankind, making the physical heavens and Earth disappear following mankind’s rebellion at the gate to the Eighth Day.

We are to have nothing of the flesh ruling our hearts and minds, regardless of how seemingly innocuous a sin may be.

Dan 11:3  And a mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will.
Dan 11:4  And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; and not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled: for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others beside those.
Dan 11:5  And the king of the south shall be strong, and one of his princes; and he shall be strong above him, and have dominion; his dominion shall be a great dominion.

Amo 5:11  Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. 

Rom 6:14  For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.

Amo 5:12  For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. 
Amo 5:13  Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time. 
Amo 5:14  Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. 
Amo 5:15  Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph. 
Amo 5:16  Therefore the LORD, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing. 
Amo 5:17  And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the LORD. 

Interestingly, being “skilful of lamentation to wailing” is typical of our spiritually juvenile responses. Our fleshy conscience first wants to excuse our sins and accurse some external source for its incitement rather than easily acknowledging them. Consequently, we are precisely like Adam and Eve continued in Cain’s intrinsic skill of lamenting and moaning about his chastisement. Typical of us is Leah, too, skilfully wailing for years that Jacob didn’t love her when she was just as blind as Solomon’s 1,000 wives, none of whom knew how to have unity with him and ‘live’. Of course, it is Israel who was most glaringly skilful of lamenting and wailing with her constant sea-sawing from semi-righteous living and physical riches to downright harlotry and inevitable chastisement.

A notable example of insincere expressions of grief can be found in various tribal customs. For instance, in Papua New Guinea and among Australian Indigenous people, there is often an elaborate display of sorrow at the funerals of community members. If those who are not close to the immediate family do not dramatically wail or lament, the family of the deceased may well accuse them of casting witchcraft upon the individual for his demise and implement the custom of vengeful ‘payback’ injury or death. Around the campfires, the memories of such events are etched into everyone’s hearts for years, where forgiveness is unheard of. Such are the depths of Babylonish confusion when foreign gods and mysticism are 200,000,000 strong.

Conversely, the Elect of God, too, are skilful of relatively short-term ‘lamentation to wailing’ preceding their joyful acknowledgment of their sins. She is the first to see that she was just as much Babylon the Great as her sisters in Israel. And now, having come out of the Great Whore, her short-term weeping and wailing are turned into joy by having her love awakened by her Lord’s kisses better than wine (Son 1:2). Her daughters of Old Jerusalem (Son 8:4), the symbolic 1,000 wives of Solomon’s court and the church’s of the world today, have no wit of their far more tribally dramatic ‘lamentation to wailing’ in the Lake of Fire.

Php 3:18  (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:
Php 3:19  Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)
Php 3:20  For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 
Php 3:21  Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. 

Rev 18:19  And they [Gog and Magog, the world of Babylon the Great as many as the stars of the heavens] cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.
Rev 18:20  Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.

The Biblical saga is all designed for the Lord’s Elect to see unsurprising justice rolling down first upon her. Again, and in the following verses in Amos, the scriptural symbolism for Gentile Christianity is ‘blindness in part’, and they understandably, as we once did, throw up their hands in lament and defeat in attempting to understand the Lord’s word. If they hear that we actually ‘desire the day of the Lord’, our breath to them stinks (Job 19:17), manifested in their contorted facial expressions for their impossibility of understanding Christ’s word.

Let Justice Roll Down

Amo 5:18  Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light. 

To the world, it is oxymoronic that the Lord’s Elect actually desire the dreadful day of the Lord. Nonetheless, they, too, once looked upon that term with foreboding because they did not understand its meaning; even though their wolves referred to it in sheep’s clothing ministers in the world’s churches, their befuddled explanations further consolidated their namesake: Mystery Babylon the Great. What Christ did give his remnant is to be deeply inquisitive to find out the matter, one by one, as did Solomon, as to why he could never find a wife who would be gloriously unified in mind and spirit with him. It is the Elect of God who are not afraid of the cold nights and go out to fight the evil in their land, knowing that their Lord and Husband will be their haven and guide. Consequently, it is their unafraid desire to know the dreadful day of the Lord.

2Pe 3:10  But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
2Pe 3:11  Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,
2Pe 3:12  Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? 
2Pe 3:13  Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Amo 5:19  As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. 
Amo 5:20  Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it? 

After narrowly escaping a trial with a symbolic lion, it is common for the remnant to encounter an even worse fate with a raging bear, followed by a manifestation of Satan. All seems grim, as some members of the Body of Christ are experiencing similar struggles at this moment. Nonetheless, every trial is for the entire Body’s sake in building up each jewelled joint in the Bride reflecting her Lord’s glory.

Psa 139:11  If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
Psa 139:12  Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. 

Of course, being bitten by the Serpent, Satan, is part of the storyline we endure, knowing that our Lord has the might and power on our behalf to shake him off into the fire by which we are baptised.

Mar 16:16  He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
Mar 16:17  And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
Mar 16:18  They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

Amo 5:21  I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. 
Amo 5:22  Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. 
Amo 5:23  Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols [‘senseless, be foolish’. A sounding board or a skin-bag or pitcher of a stringed or wind instrument]. 

Right now, it is only a couple of days away from that senseless, dreariest day of all, Christmas Day, an alleged time of peace and goodwill to mankind, as the laity of gentile Christianity over-eat, get drunk, snap and snarl at each other and go home covertly pleased that it is all over… until Easter, and again, feel virtuous about taking communion and washing each other’s feet while deludedly musing that Christ died so that they, unwittingly, don’t need to spiritually die daily (1 Cor 15:31).

Deu 12:29  When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land;
Deu 12:30  Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.
Deu 12:31  Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.
Deu 12:32  What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it. 

Amo 5:24  But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. 
Amo 5:25  Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? 
Amo 5:26  But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch [‘king’] and Chiun [an image or pillar] your images, the star [numerous gods] of your god, which ye made to yourselves. 
Amo 5:27  Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the LORD, whose name is The God of hosts. 

And, of course, we know what is “beyond Damascus” in Syria; it is a place called Babylon, intrinsically the same as Egypt, Sodom and Old Jerusalem by whom that great city we derive our name, Mystery Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots. The irony is that before being gloriously enslaved in Babylon, we were already harlots while in the wilderness and continued in the Promised Land, and though greatly diminishing, even to this very day.

The Lord’s Elect have learned to glory in judgment; acknowledging one’s sins is a highly liberating experience. Israel’s and our experience is that hiding our nakedness from the Lord only produces mental and spiritual torture. However, we have to be wary of vain repetition of saying that we are sorry when our subsequent actions demonstrate otherwise.

Mat 15:7  You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied correctly about you:
Mat 15:8  ‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.
Mat 15:9  They worship Me in vain; they teach as doctrine the precepts of men.'”

Due to our hardened hearts, the Lord lessens constant judgment and chastisement, knowing that our land will be overwhelmed and ultimately consume us. He relinquishes us to Satan for continued but milder afflictions that should prick our impenitent conscience since we do know what the scriptures say. And so,

Rev 22:11  He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

However, for the slothful “At ease in Zion”, their lethargic desire for the Resurrection to Life, even though subsequently sort with tears, for now, insidiously slips from their grasp (Heb 12:12-17). Our Lord knows our hearts and answers us before we commit transgressions, and we dolefully remain bewildered as to why we are not blessed.

Gal 5:16  This I say then, Walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
Gal 5:17  For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. 

Rev 22:12  And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.