Lamentations is a unique biblical book. Many scholars believe it is the Bible’s most poetic book. It is the most elegant poetry in all the Bible.

What makes this so unusual is that this sophisticated message is profound correction from God.

The Hebrew text doesn’t actually have a title for the book of Lamentations. For many books, the first Hebrew word is used as the title. The first word in Lamentations is how, but according to the Companion Bible it can also mean alas, or an exclamation of pain and grief. Terrible events are prophesied in this book.

The Talmud calls Lamentations kinot, which means dirges or elegies. A dirge is a song or hymn of grief or lamentation intended to accompany funeral or memorial rites. An elegy is a song or poem expressing extreme sorrow or lamentation, especially for one or more who are dead. In a sense, the book of Lamentations is like a funeral dirge. It’s about dying and death. God is showing us reality—a terrible picture of what is about to transpire in the Great Tribulation.

Still, in that dying and death, we see the most inspiring hope ever!

The nations of Israel are going to die (Ezekiel 33:11). But this funeral dirge in Lamentations is far worse than that. The nations of Israel will be resurrected to life again (Ezekiel 37). That is not the case with spiritual Israel, or God’s Laodicean Church. Fifty percent of the Laodiceans are going to die and be resurrected into the lake of fire—eternal death! They will be forever dead!

That will undoubtedly be the single worst funeral dirge ever! There has probably never been such a towering spiritual funeral in God’s Church—never a spiritual disaster of such magnitude before.

The other 50 percent of the Laodiceans will repent in the Tribulation and be resurrected at Jesus Christ’s Second Coming. They will then rule with Christ forever. The hope of God will fill the Earth forever!

The book of Lamentations is aimed primarily at God’s lukewarm Church that has fallen away from Him in our day! Secondarily, this book is for modern-day Israel—three nations in particular: the United States, Britain and the Jewish state. (Study The United States and Britain in Prophecy to prove these nations’ identities; all our literature is free.) Lamentations explains why God is going to severely correct these nations as well. It is a book of end-time prophecy.

The book of Lamentations has five chapters, and you could say it is five elegies, each one a complete poem. It’s a book with unusually bad news. But it also contains a lot of good news you won’t see unless you have a childlike mind that enables God to reveal this book to you (Matthew 11:25).

If you read Lamentations closely, you will discover that it is actually a detailed explanation of the prophecies of Matthew 24:21, Daniel 12:1 and Jeremiah 30:7. It describes the worst time of suffering in human history!

Ezra had this book read to Israel on the 10th day of the fifth month, Ab, because it marked the anniversary of the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century b.c. (The Jews today still read this book on the anniversary of the temple destruction.) “Now in the fifth month, in the tenth day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, came Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, which served the king of Babylon, into Jerusalem, And burned the house of the Lord, and the king’s house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, and all the houses of the great men, burned he with fire: And all the army of the Chaldeans, that were with the captain of the guard, brake down all the walls of Jerusalem round about” (Jeremiah 52:12-14). This fact should be of interest to all of us, because in a.d. 70 the temple was also destroyed on the 10th day of the fifth month. That was not a coincidence.

That destruction was a type of what is about to happen in this end time.

Lamentations is primarily about the destruction of another temple: the spiritual temple of God.

God says those people who turned away from Him were, spiritually, “The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth” (Lamentations 2:15). God had the greatest of praise for them! Never has there been such a powerful message delivered to this world by God through His Church! Yet look what happened. They turned away from being “The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth,” and turned toward sin and selfishness! The Work of the great God was destroyed.

God emphasizes “The joy of the whole earth” during the worst suffering ever on Earth!

That description is also a prophecy of what will happen in the World Tomorrow: God’s people will once again be “The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth.” What a beautiful prophecy.

If you go through the book of Lamentations line by line, word by word, you’ll see that God’s spiritual temple, those people of God, is completely shattered. No people have ever been punished more than those who are discussed in this book. Their falling away was a spiritual disaster of astonishing proportions.

Still, the central theme of this book is an expression of hope—a people waiting for God’s “perfection of beauty.” The light in all of that black, black darkness is that God is getting His people ready for a marriage! Sometimes it is very difficult to do that, as illustrated in the book of Lamentations, but God knows what His people need. He will do everything He can to bring them into His Family.

The Bible’s Most Elegant Poetry

All the way through the book of Lamentations, Lange’s Commentary refers to the author as “the poet.” The Bible doesn’t say for sure who wrote it, but most scholars believe Jeremiah did. I believe the Bible clearly shows us that Jeremiah was the author, though he could have directed his scribe, Baruch, to do much of the writing. Perhaps Baruch was a great poet.

Lamentations is the most elegant poetry in all the Bible. Lange’s describes it as “the most perfect product in regard to the external artistic structure of the Old Testament scriptures.”

Adam Clarke’s Commentary says, “The composition of this poem is what may be called very technical. Every chapter, except the last, is an acrostic. … The third chapter contains [66] verses, each, as before, formed of three hemistichs, but with this difference, that each hemistich begins with the same letter, so that the whole alphabet is thrice repeated in this chapter. … I have called this an inimitable poem [inimitable means it can’t be imitated!]; better judges are of the same opinion. ‘Never,’ says Bishop Lowth, ‘was there a more rich and elegant variety of beautiful images and adjuncts arranged together within so small a compass, nor more happily chosen and applied’” (“Introduction to the Lamentations of Jeremiah”; emphasis mine throughout).

This is worth thinking deeply about. Why would God invest so much into this book, making it the most poetic book in the Bible? The answer to that question is deeply moving. We must see it from God’s point of view.

Most scholars, past and present, think the book of Lamentations was finished shortly after the fall of Jerusalem, around 585 b.c., when the kingdom of Judah went into captivity. That may be right. But there are references in the book to the kingdom of Israel. In Lamentations 2, for example, God is warning of destruction and makes several direct references to Israel (even “the habitations of Jacob” in verse 2 is talking about the northern kingdom). Israel had already been in captivity over 100 years, so it was hardly a warning for Israel anciently.

Most Bible prophecy is dual. Request our free book Jeremiah and the Greatest Vision in the Bible. You will see that the book of Jeremiah is primarily for this end time. The same is true of Lamentations.

Jeremiah was clearly an eyewitness to much of the tragedy in Jerusalem! Smith’s Bible Dictionary states, “The poems belong unmistakably to the last days of the kingdom, or the commencement of the exile …. They are written by one who speaks, with the vividness and intensity of an eyewitness, of the misery which he bewails.” The Jews were under siege by Nebuchadnezzar for 19 years before Jerusalem fell. Jeremiah was imprisoned by the last Jewish king, Zedekiah, during the siege. When Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, Jeremiah was released. (For more information, request our free book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.) Baruch, Jeremiah’s scribe, undoubtedly experienced some or all of that 19-year siege with Jeremiah. Clearly, someone could have been an eyewitness to much of that suffering. God’s in-depth revelation is certainly adequate to write the book of Lamentations, but an eyewitness account could have added to the drama. What description there is, particularly if you really understand poetry! You won’t find anything quite like it elsewhere in the Bible.

Clarke’s says, “Misery has no expression that the author of the Lamentations has not employed.” It also quotes a man named Dr. South as saying, “One would think that every letter was written with a tear; every word, the sound of a breaking heart: that the author was compacted of sorrows; disciplined to grief from his infancy; one who never breathed but in sighs, nor spoke but in a groan.”

Lamentations is the expression of profound godly emotion! Because, most of all, it is about God reaching out to His own Spirit-begotten children, whom He loves with a Father’s love, and who have turned away from Him! God loves His people, and He’ll use everything He possibly can to reach out to His Family members! God will do all He can to impact them with a powerful message!

The Laodicean rebellion is probably the worst spiritual disaster ever in God’s Church. God has prophesied that half of the Laodiceans won’t make it (Matthew 25:1-12). But the other part of the picture is, half of the Laodiceans will make it! And that doesn’t include those who repent before the Tribulation. Clearly, God still wants the Laodiceans to repent so He can prepare them to marry His Son!

Jeremiah was sent to the nation of Judah in the years leading up to its fall in 585 b.c. He warned the people of Judah and wrote the warnings in a book, which he addressed to all Israel. Since the book of Jeremiah is clearly an end-time message for all Israel, it is logical that Lamentations is as well. But there is a difference.

The book of Jeremiah gives the overview of Israel’s fall. Lamentations gives the horrendous details of what the fall and enslavement are like.

‘As a Widow’

The book of Lamentations uses Jerusalem and Zion interchangeably. Zion in prophecy refers to God’s Church. Here, Jerusalem also refers to God’s Church; Galatians 4:26 describes “Jerusalem which is above” as “the mother of us all,” which is the Church. Lamentations is mainly about the Church.

Notice the first verse: “How doth the city [that is, Jerusalem] sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!” (Lamentations 1:1).

You will see as we proceed that Lamentations is a book of end-time prophecy. Where do you see a widow in this end time?

Verse 1 is talking about a woman who once had God’s protection, was once led by God, was protected and watched over by God—who was, in fact, the very wife of God! Only those few who receive God’s Spirit during this present age are considered Jesus Christ’s Bride (e.g. Romans 7:4; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:31-32; Revelation 19:7-8). That unparalleled honor will never be extended to anyone else.

But something happened to this Bride: She became as a widow! Jerusalem—God’s Church—was “full of people,” or Spirit-begotten Church members, and then became as a widow. This is about the falling away of most of God’s Church members—the Bride of Christ!

There is good news, however. Notice that she is become “as a widow.” It is worded that way because she still has the potential to return and be the wife of Christ! Half the Laodiceans will repent and make it back.

There is even better news. There is a small remnant Bride who remains loyal to her Husband. She is delivering this painful message of Lamentations for Jesus Christ. That is the best news of this book, which is often overlooked.

Nobody would even understand the book of Lamentations if God did not have an obedient very elect (Matthew 24:24). This elite group will be rewarded with headquarters positions in the Kingdom of God, serving with Christ forever. The Laodiceans who repent in the Tribulation will lose that inspiring reward.

Remember, Lamentations applies first of all to the Spirit-begotten people of God; it also depicts the suffering to occur in the nations of Israel, of which Jerusalem, the ancient capital of Israel, is a type. Lamentations 1:1 also warns us that soon the great cities of our nations will become desolate through a nuclear holocaust. The cities that once were full of people and successful with much commerce will be destroyed and the people slain. Those who survive will be enslaved.

Weeping in Bitterness

Notice immediately the mourning and woe in the book of Lamentations. “She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies” (Lamentations 1:2). During the night, when she ought to be resting, this widow weeps sore. No Husband is there to comfort her. The picture is getting worse and worse.

Verse 3 speaks of Judah. Elsewhere in Scripture, God describes His people as being of the tribe of Judah spiritually—or spiritual Jews (e.g. Romans 2:28-29; Revelation 3:9). The reference to Judah in Lamentations 1:3 is primarily to God’s own people who turned away from Him: “Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.” The Laodiceans are in captivity before (spiritually) and during the Great Tribulation. God’s people find no rest when they should be finding rest.

Lamentations 1:4 specifically mentions Zion—again, God’s own Church. “The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts ….” “Solemn feasts” refers to God’s annual holy days, which His faithful people observe year after year to this day. But no one is coming to these festivals. The Laodiceans have lost God’s solemn feasts! Most of them don’t observe God’s holy days anymore, and those who do certainly don’t keep them the way God commands or with the understanding that God gave His Church through Herbert W. Armstrong.

God is addressing the outer court, not the inner court of His temple, or Church (Revelation 11:1-2). The Laodiceans have rejected or watered down these holy days and refuse to enter the inner court where God dwells. Christ leads the inner court to keep His solemn feasts His way. None of the Laodiceans come into God’s presence! God is showing them that they are rebelling against His solemn feasts. So in all this bad news, we see the shining hope of God’s very elect.

Lamentations 1:4 also says that “all her gates are desolate.” The Laodicean churches have opened their doors to allow anybody to come in. They are trying to love the world by welcoming the world into God’s holy temple. (Verse 10 describes the same problem.) These people heard for years that God simply does not operate that way in this world, and they ought to know that! But they think they have a better way than what God’s apostle taught them—and as a result, their gates are desolate.

Look at the result of such policies: “… her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness” (verse 4). These people should be full of festive joy—the joy of God’s feasts! The very elect of God’s people who continue to build their lives around God’s holy days are filled with joy! But this woman who has become as a widow sits afflicted and in bitterness. Here God portrays His own people caught in the terror of the Great Tribulation and in the worst mourning ever! The ministry is sighing, the Church’s young people have been physically harmed, and the entire Church is in bitterness. Why? Because they think God has forsaken them. In reality, it is they who have forsaken God. God must use the Great Tribulation to teach them this lesson.

Her Beauty Is Departed

“Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy” (Lamentations 1:5). God is about to afflict the Laodiceans for the multitude of their sins—rebelliously breaking His law. This verse shows that even the young children of the Laodiceans will be taken into captivity and experience the horrors of the coming holocaust because of the transgressions within “Zion.” It is all extremely tragic. Church members will have to watch their own little children suffer. They all could have been protected by God.

In verse 6, we see that “from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed.” What a towering calamity!

Do you realize how beautiful God’s faithful people are to God? The obedient remnant retains “all her beauty.” What makes God’s Church beautiful? Its godly way of life and character. Yes, we have our trials and tests, but how beautiful the very elect are to God! It is only when Christ’s Bride turns away that this precious beauty departs.

That is what has happened to most of God’s people. In God’s eyes, they are no longer beautiful as they once were. They had spiritual beauty, but it “is departed.” They have forsaken God’s truth! Watering down doctrine cannot produce the beautiful character that God desires. The Church has become spiritually ugly.

Verse 6 concludes, “her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer.” In the Tribulation, the Church’s princes, or ministers—those who led the way in weakening the people—will become as deer who have been weakened by starvation. Then the “harts” are easily caught by the hunter—they cannot save themselves from destruction!

“Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old …” (verse 7). Yes, “in the days of old” these people of God had pleasant things—all the wonderful truths God gave His people through Mr. Armstrong. But they let those things slip long ago. They have a terrible punishment awaiting them as a result. Their misery is excruciating because while they suffer, they remember the “good times” when God did help them.

The good news is, this punishment will cause a large number of them to return to God. But will you heed God’s warning now so you don’t have to experience such suffering?

The Widow Speaks

As you read Lamentations 1, you begin to feel the mental anguish of the people. They struggle with the question why? Why is all this happening to us? God begins to show them in verse 9.

“Her filthiness is in her skirts,” He says. Their sin is so great, it is like filth that has been ground into clothing so thoroughly that it has become part of the cloth.

The verse continues, “she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter.” God tells them that they didn’t consider the end of all their ways. Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). A lack of repentance brought them to this point and remains the real issue with the Laodicean Church (Revelation 3:17). Since the Laodiceans would not hear Christ knocking on their door (verse 20), they must experience extreme suffering at the hands of the enemy.

At that point comes this statement: “… O Lord, behold my affliction …” (Lamentations 1:9). This is the voice of the “widow.” The rest of the chapter is mostly her words—God’s Church prophetically speaking for herself in the midst of her future tribulation.

Verse 11 shows that circumstances become so bad that the people die of starvation. The people are willing to give up their “pleasant things”—their silver and gold—for bread in order to stay alive. The expression “to relieve the soul” means to bring back to life. The people become diseased and sick because they lack food. They realize they have become vile.

A Grievous Realization

“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger” (Lamentations 1:12). As God afflicts the Laodiceans, they’re going to be asking, Is there any sorrow like my sorrow? Is there any pain like mine?

The entire world was shocked by the photographs of the Nazi concentration camps. Yet the scenes from Lamentations are far worse! As Matthew 24:21 states, there was not a time, nor will there be again, like the coming Tribulation. Can any human mind imagine anything worse than the Nazi concentration camps? Yet, God says that things will get far worse! Lamentations 1:12 states there is no “sorrow like unto my sorrow”!

This is the last time ever that God’s own Church or the nations of Israel will be punished like this. Christ is going to stop the rebellion and rule forever. This is an endless hope and will soon be reality.

Why do the Laodiceans suffer pain as no other group? Because they knew God’s truth and prophecies. Theirs is a sorrow unparalleled—not just because of the grievous nature of the punishment, but because they will recognize exactly what is happening! They should have escaped the Great Tribulation, but they rebelled against God. They know the prophecies about the Tribulation that Mr. Armstrong taught them—and they realize they could have avoided this punishment completely if only they hadn’t rejected that instruction.

And realize: God is the one afflicting them! God will use Germany and a united Europe as a club in His hand. It is the day of His fierce anger (Isaiah 10:5-6).

But there is hope! Lamentations 1:12-18 show that the people finally begin to REALIZE that God is the one afflicting them.

Most of the time it takes so long before sinners understand that God is warning and cursing them!

Elohim and Adonai

Note that the Hebrew word for “Lord” in Lamentations is Adonai, which means the God that rules. The word Adonai is used 14 times in Lamentations. God is teaching those caught in this sore trial that He is going to rule His Church and nation! He will do anything to bring His people under His rule so that He can bring them into His Family! The Laodiceans have rejected Adonai—the God that rules!

The Anchor Bible states: “The Lord Adonay [Adonai] occurs 14 times in Lamentations …. Rather strikingly, Elohim, ‘God,’ does not occur at all.”

There is a horrendous warning in that omission.

Elohim is a plural noun like church or family, a group with more than one member. Elohim is the word we associate most of all with God’s Family and honoring the Father. The Laodiceans are condemned for not honoring their Father (Malachi 1:6). They rejected the Head of the Family.

It is also rather striking that Lamentations uses the word Adonai exactly 14 times. Seven is the number of completion in the Bible. Here we have double completion. It’s as if God says, Teach the Laodiceans a strong message about how Adonai rules. Then double that message and hammer it home! Only by heeding this message can they be saved.

(In addition to Adonai being used 14 times, yhvh is used 32 times, Elyon (Most High) twice, and El (God) once—right in the center of the book. That means names for God appear 49 times in Lamentations—seven times seven. Truly this is a precisely structured book!)

Perhaps the strongest warning in this book is what is not stated. Normally, Elohim would be used numerous times in this book. It is used hundreds of times in the Old Testament. But here it is not mentioned even once. Why? The Elohim name for God shows us that God is a Family. This understanding is the heart of the gospel: the good news of the coming Kingdom, or Family, of God, which administers the government of God.

The Laodiceans have lost the gospel. They have lost their thirst for understanding the Bible and why they were created.

The omission of Elohim from the book of Lamentations is universe-shaking! The Laodiceans are headed for the lake of fire. Only the Great Tribulation will save 50 percent of them.

What warning could be stronger than the omission of Elohim?

This understanding helps us to see how God rewards in-depth Bible study and how deep the Bible truly is! We need to know what the Bible says—and often what it does not say!

“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33). Paul clearly taught about God’s astonishing depth and how shallow mankind is apart from God.

No strongly corrective book of the Bible is more precisely structured than Lamentations. We must comprehend this message, or we will suffer as nobody has ever suffered.

I believe there is an alarming message in the number of times God inspired the word Adonai. His own Laodicean Church has refused to be ruled. God will not receive anybody into His Family whom He can’t rule!

How about you? And me? Do we love Adonai? Do we love God’s government that enforces His law?

There is a strong warning for all of us—and a magnificent lesson—in the word Adonai. God is going to rule His creation and His Family. He is agape love (1 John 4:8, 16). He gave His only Son to die to pay for our sins. Christ was marred more than any man ever to open up salvation to us—but we must let Him rule!

Lucifer rejected Adonai. He refused to administer God’s rule on this Earth and was rejected forever. Now you and I have the opportunity and honor to be ruled by Adonai. Now we have the potential to replace Satan’s rule over this Earth—if we will allow Adonai to rule us. Then we can rule the Earth with Christ.

What a breathtaking opportunity we have! Do we comprehend how awesome this is? And how much suffering we can avoid by submitting to Adonai now?

No Comforter

The Laodiceans’ dirge continues in Lamentations 1:16: “For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me ….” What do they mean? Jesus Christ referred to God’s Holy Spirit as “the Comforter” (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7). The Laodiceans know, in the midst of the Tribulation, that the Holy Spirit is not there to comfort them as it should be! They’re not being comforted because God’s Holy Spirit is far from them. Lamentations 1:9 says, in fact, that they have “no comforter.” God gives His Spirit only to those who obey Him (Acts 5:32). By failing to obey, the Laodiceans quenched the Spirit that God had supplied to them (1 Thessalonians 5:19).

God’s faithful people ought to truly rejoice because we do have that Comforter! When we pray for God’s help in facing our trials and problems, we have this Comforter. We know God works miracles in our lives. What a blessing to have the Comforter working in your life!

Lamentations 1:16 continues, “… my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.” This is God warning of a truly tragic aspect of their punishment: having to see their little children experience lamentations, mourning and woe! And all because of their own disobedience! They are the cause of their own misery! They are guilty.

There is hope within these lamentations. In verse 17, the Laodiceans realize that God has commanded this punishment, and they begin to repent. The widow says, “The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment …. I have grievously rebelled …” (verses 18, 20). This punishment from God brings many of God’s people to repentance. They recognize where the correction is coming from, and they submit to it. They admit to God that they have rebelled against His commandments. They recognize that they rejected God’s end-time type of Elijah, Mr. Armstrong. They begin to realize that Malachi’s Message was a warning sent from God (Malachi 2:4). They recognize that they have “grievously rebelled” and that their just punishment is death.

Now notice Lamentations 1:21-22. The Church also begins to warn its enemies to take caution because the punishment that came onto the Church will soon come upon them. The Gentile nations have also sinned, and God will punish them too.

This is also a very hope-filled development. It demonstrates the repentant Laodiceans’ renewed faith in God’s prophecies, and their willingness to once again step out and speak on God’s behalf. It took correction of unparalleled severity, but God was finally able to bring these errant sons back into line with His loving family law.

Thus ends the first of the five elegies of the book of Lamentations.

Revelation 3:17-18 show that the most tragic fault of the Laodicean Church is spiritual complacency. The Laodiceans are blind to their wretched spiritual condition. In setting their own spiritual standards, the Laodiceans have grown so far removed from God’s standards that they cannot imagine how God could possibly be angry with them. In their deceived minds, they feel they are growing and on-target spiritually. In reality, the Laodiceans are in serious rebellion against God, and He is very angry with them.

Lamentations 2 describes the lamentable future awaiting the people of God who have rebelled against Him in this end time.

It is important to remember that the tragedies it describes represent God’s efforts to correct these people and bring them into obedience to Him. Throughout these graphic and disturbing prophecies are statements that serve as shining signals of God’s unparalleled love for the people He is trying to reach.

Black Cloud Over Zion

Lamentations 2 begins, “How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!” (verse 1).

God has cast down the beauty of Israel from heaven. Now God is cursing the Laodicean Church. At one time that Church was the beauty of this Earth! God’s Spirit flowed from heaven with God’s new revelation. The Work under Herbert W. Armstrong glorified God. Now that beauty has been cast down by the great God!

The glory of God’s Church comes from heaven. We must never forget that. Anciently, the temple was called the house of our glory. The temple today is God’s Church, and its beauty comes only from the northern heaven where God dwells. It is the spiritual house of our glory.

This chapter mentions Zion seven times (more on this later). Herbert W. Armstrong taught God’s people that Zion always refers to the Church today. This can easily be proved from your Bible. This verse refers to “the daughter of Zion,” which is specifically the end-time Church of God.

It is clear God is intensely angry at this church’s deeds. By the time of the Great Tribulation, God is so angry with His Church that He has covered it with a cloud and cast it down to Earth! Rather than covering His people with a cloud of protection as He did in ancient Israel, God is covering them with a black, ominous cloud symbolizing His anger! To cover with a cloud means that God is placing thick darkness between Himself and His Church. God is no longer leading this group of people. He has cut off His guiding light. It is similar to removing a “lampstand,” as found in Revelation 2:5. It is also similar to God sending “strong delusion” to His Church as revealed by the Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:11.

God, in His anger, casts His Church, “the beauty of Israel,” down to Earth. This is similar to what Michael and the angels did to Satan in Revelation 12:7-9. But here in Lamentations, God does the casting out. Are we surprised by this? Remember, Jesus Christ spews the Laodicean Church out of His mouth (Revelation 3:16). What does this mean for God’s Church? In the Tribulation, God will not lead them, until they repent. Though His people make many prayers, God will not deliver them from severe punishment.

This all seems unthinkable to many of God’s people today. Many Laodicean ministers have ridiculed the Philadelphia Church of God for making such strong statements. These are biblical statements! Some ministers have stated that God would never send His Church “strong delusion.” Others have said that God would never punish “innocent” older people and children. Could God allow His people to “believe a lie” by sending them “strong delusion”? Will God severely punish the elderly and children? The book of Lamentations clearly says He will! Why? Because there is something very wrong in Zion, and it must be corrected!

Notice, however, as in Lamentations 1:6, how God speaks of the beauty of His people—“the beauty of Israel” (Lamentations 2:1). They once had—and should still have—dazzling beauty! God gives them that label here because He is trying so earnestly to restore that beauty to them!

The “footstool” mentioned here can refer to the ark of the covenant (e.g. 1 Chronicles 28:2). For God to “remember not his footstool” means that He will no longer abide by His covenant. There is only one reason why God would not keep His covenant: His people have broken it! What has gone wrong in Zion? God’s people are breaking God’s covenant! Malachi 2:8, 14-16 show that God’s own ministry is causing an entire Church era to “stumble at the law” and to break His covenant! God’s own ministry is committing treachery against God’s true religion.

When we were baptized, we made a covenant with God, which was based on obedience to God’s truth. It was God’s truth that brought us to repentance and baptism. God will not give salvation to any individual who doesn’t deeply love His truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10). He gets very angry when His Church does not love truth above all else.

“He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about” (Lamentations 2:3). God has cut off Israel in His fierce anger. This refers to His rebellious Laodicean Church—spiritual Israel.

God also “burned against Jacob like a flaming fire.” This is anger that consumes and devours! Jacob was Israel’s name before he was converted. So God is addressing the nations of Israel. The young and the old lie in the streets—young ladies and young men have been slain (verse 21). God has shown them no pity!

Do you have any concept of the raging, flowing fury God is about to inflict on the Laodiceans and nations of Israel? Nuclear fire is about to be unleashed.

God—the Church’s Enemy

Three times in Lamentations 2:4-5, God says what He will do if His rebellious Laodicean sons do not respond to His correction: “He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary …. The Lord was as an enemy ….” God becomes the Church’s enemy! Woe unto anyone who becomes God’s enemy!

Like an angry warrior with a taut bow, God begins to deal with the Laodicean Church—“the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion.” This is not about ancient Zion; it is prophecy for the end time and is directed at “the daughter of Zion.” This says He “slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire. … [He] hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation” (verses 4-5). Oh, how God will take vengeance!

We shouldn’t deceive ourselves about what causes God to act this way. God has poured out His revelation on the Philadelphian and Laodicean eras as never before. He holds us responsible for every word. He must severely punish all who take His truth lightly.

All that was “pleasant” to the Laodicean Church He begins to destroy. God does not hold back His anger. He pours it forth like a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29) because the Laodiceans rejected His truth.

He does this because the Laodiceans’ only hope is to heed God’s warning and respond to His punishment!

“And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest” (Lamentations 2:6). This is a monstrous crisis. Could anyone believe that God would destroy His own tabernacle?—His own “places of the assembly”? This is what God inspired the prophet to write for us. Where is God’s tabernacle today? God revealed to us through Mr. Armstrong that it is the Church (Ephesians 2:21-22). This is where God dwells, unless His people drive Him out!

Notice—it says the feasts and Sabbaths are forgotten in this sinful Zion. Jeroboam, when he became king, changed the Sabbath and the holy days for the nation of Israel. The Worldwide Church of God leaders did the same thing inside God’s own Church, and Satan took them all captive! Soon, you will see a great false church establish a false sabbath in many nations and enforce it—what Scripture calls the “mark of the beast”—on threat of death! (Request our free reprint article on this subject.) The Laodiceans who recognize what they have done, and determine to obey God and refuse to accept that mark, will be martyred. That act will require a deep, deep repentance.

Realize, God is bringing about this punishment! Yes, the great God of love is doing it—because the people of God must never let God’s truth be compromised again.

‘The Lord Has Cast Off His Altar’

The message in Lamentations is directed at the lay members of the Church. Most of the ministers and members have rejected Malachi’s Message. Revelation 11:1 shows that when God wants His temple measured, “the altar,” or the ministry, is measured before “them that worship therein,” or the Church members. Lamentations shows that God is in that final stage of measuring.

Lamentations 2:7 begins with this frightening statement: “The Lord hath cast off his altar ….” Who is the author referring to? Who does the work of the altar? It is the priests. This is a type of God’s ministers today.

God blames the ministers most of all for what happened in His Church. Very few Laodicean ministers have come into God’s faithful Philadelphian remnant. It was to them that we sent the little book in the first place; Malachi’s Message is aimed directly at the ministry. And there God says they are in danger of losing their eternal inheritance completely! That is what is at stake! Because they led the Laodicean rebellion against God, they will be cast off. Because they were ashamed of God and His truth, they will be put to shame. God will cause them to fall into the hands of their enemies.

Verse 7 continues, “[God] hath abhorred his sanctuary, he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast.” “His sanctuary” refers not to the ministry but to the people: “them that worship therein” as Revelation 11:1 says. (This shows a strong relationship between the book of Lamentations and Malachi’s Message—a connection I will stress later. Please request a free copy of Malachi’s Message if you don’t have one.) This says God absolutely abhors what His sanctuary is doing!

Lamentations 2:7 states that it is “given up into the hand [power or authority] of the enemy the walls of her palaces ….”

Lange’s Commentary says about this verse: “He hath given up—He gave up—into the hand of her enemy the walls of her palaces. The connection requires us to understand by the walls of her palaces the walls of the sanctuary. (The altar is treated with contempt, the holy places are defiled, the edifice itself is given into the power of the enemy, and where we once heard the voices of a worshiping people, is heard now the wild clamor of heathen idolators.)”

The word palaces literally means high buildings. But the context of these verses is God’s temple. They refer to a physical edifice that has walls and other buildings that are used for the temple or Church work.

The most important building is the one where God dwells in spirit. All the worship revolves around that building.

This can only refer to God’s physical house in Pasadena, California. At one time the voices of God’s loyal people were heard singing and rejoicing on God’s holy days. But now we hear only the “wild clamor of heathen idolators”! What a prodigious catastrophe!

Ask anyone who has visited the Pasadena auditorium recently and you will learn of the “wild clamor of heathen idolators”! It’s no wonder God spews the Laodiceans out of His mouth!

Verse 6 relates that God has “laid in ruins the place of his appointed feasts” (Revised Standard Version). So the subject here is a spiritual and physical house of God where His people rejoiced on the holy days—in “the place.”

Prophetically, we must look at the book of Lamentations spiritually in this end time. But verses 6 and 7 in chapter 2 are dual in this sense: They apply to a spiritual and a physical house. All of the spiritual worship revolved around that physical house.

The people Jeremiah addressed anciently did not have God’s Holy Spirit. Today, God’s people who built that physical house were given the Holy Spirit. But after Mr. Armstrong died, they rebelled.

The expression appointed feasts means something fixed, in the sense of a fixed or set time for meeting together for worship. This is obviously referring to God’s holy days—His annual festivals!

This was the place of His—God’s—appointed feasts! This clearly refers to God’s own people being conquered by the enemy spiritually! The mighty feasts of God are no longer kept in what was once God’s house.

The Laodiceans know what God’s appointed feasts are! Mr. Armstrong made certain of that.

This is also a coded message telling us where God’s very elect are today. We have raised up the ruins and built another house for God where God’s feasts are kept. It is obvious why we had to do so. (For more information, request our free booklet on Haggai.)

Who keeps the great feasts of God today? Only God’s very elect. And we keep them in God’s physical house.

How do we know that God has cast off His altar? Malachi’s Message proves that to be true. Also, many other booklets we have published have proved why God abhors the lukewarm sanctuary. God has revealed these truths to us.

Verses 6 and 7 are an end-time prophecy. What else could it apply to except what was once God’s house in Pasadena? It’s a perfect description of what that auditorium has become!

Does God have His eyes on His people and His Work? Is He deeply concerned about us and what we do?

What a shocking contrast between the former, joyful feasts of God and now the noises of pagan idolaters!

The owners of that house today claim they are doing an Elijah work, which we have abundantly proved applied to God’s Work done through Mr. Armstrong. That same Work is continued today in the pcg. Was that group led there by happenstance? Or did Satan conquer God’s people and replace them with his own sick, perverted Elijah work? How Satan hates and taunts the living God! And God’s flowing wrath is about to consume the Laodiceans for what they have done!

Measuring With Precise Destruction

Lamentations 2:8 shows a measuring just like in Revelation 11: “The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.” God has stretched out a line to measure; He is measuring His people.

But notice: The measuring is taking place in the midst of destruction. God has precisely “stretched out a line” to destroy the Church! Just as a builder must lay a straight line to erect a sturdy building, God lays a straight line to bring the Church down. God will not stop until the Church repents! God is measuring in the only way these people understand: in a time of lamentations, mourning and woe. Do you want to be in the inner court or the outer court? Fifty percent of those in the outer court will be measured out in this terrible violence! It will be violence as never experienced before on this Earth!

As terrible as this destruction will be, however, it will not be indiscriminate. God builds with precision. When He used Zerubbabel to build His temple, He used a plummet—a measuring instrument to ensure the utmost exactness (Zechariah 4:10). What is interesting is that God also destroys with precision! Lamentations 2:8 shows God precisely measuring the destruction of “the daughter of Zion.”

God knows the Laodiceans’ eternal lives are at stake! God doesn’t destroy in a fit of anger! It is calculated to be of exactly the right intensity and duration and power! (You can see similar uses of a plummet in 2 Kings 21:13 and Isaiah 28:17.) They will either make it into the Kingdom now, or they won’t make it at all—they have no other opportunity.

The Law

The next verse reveals a great difference between Mr. Armstrong and the rebellious churches that turned away from him—as well as the difference between those churches and God’s faithful remnant today. Anyone should be able to discern this: It is like a towering monument showing where God is working today.

“Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord” (Lamentations 2:9). This is a marvelous and most revealing verse! It tells us who is in darkness and who is in the light!

This curse is mentioned several times in the Bible. Because of their rebellion, the Laodiceans lose their focus on prophecy and are caught off guard. The prevailing attitude is, “My lord delayeth his coming” (Matthew 24:48). Then the Tribulation crashes in around them when they could have escaped.

God has stopped giving revelation to His rebellious people. When people stop receiving new revelation, or vision from God, it’s because “the law is no more”—they are not keeping God’s law!

In Lamentations 2:9, God is saying to the Laodiceans, I will not speak to you until you repent of breaking my law!

If we reject the law, which the Father gave us, then we won’t have revelation or the God Family vision. That comes from the same source that the law came from: the Father. Only God’s true Church keeps God’s law.

Under Mr. Armstrong, the Church received all kinds of revelation! That is because Mr. Armstrong established the law when he restored all things (see Malachi 2:6-7). The Laodiceans stumbled at the law. The law is the foundation of “all things”! (Matthew 17:11).

God’s faithful remnant keeps that law and, therefore, has all kinds of new revelation! Anyone should be able to recognize that as clearly as a shining beacon in a dark night.

The beauty of this truth is that it tells you where God is. The flow of His revelation shows where God is working! It identifies His very elect. New revelation keeps flowing abundantly into the Philadelphia Church of God! That should make us deeply grateful to be a part of this Work. We are the wife of Jesus Christ, and there is nowhere else on Earth that people are receiving new revelation.

This is a monumental point. God either speaks to His Church through new revelation or He does not! God always speaks to His Family—His sons—if they are obedient to His law. The Source of the law and new revelation is the same.

“The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground” (Lamentations 2:10). While in the Tribulation, some of the ministry will begin to repent. This verse says “the elders,” or ministry, sit in silence. This is an enormous change for the Laodicean ministers. Prior to the Tribulation, they were very talkative. They “wearied” God with all their words. They were quick to give their opinions and even spoke against God (Malachi 2:17; 3:13; Revelation 3:17). The ministers who gave their own human reasoning for changing God’s truths now sit in the dirt—speechless. And the “virgins of Jerusalem,” or God’s true people (Revelation 14:4), hang their heads. They know that no one but God can save them now!

Sick at the Sight

Again, the author of Lamentations, undoubtedly Jeremiah, was eyewitness to much of the destruction of Judah. It pained him deeply to see that! This book describes better than any other book in the Bible what will happen to Israel and to the people of God during the Tribulation.

Notice this intense reaction: “Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people …” (Lamentations 2:11).

Can you vividly imagine the horrible scenes this author witnessed? We do not like to dwell on dreadful events—but we need to face the reality of what is coming. What this man envisioned and perhaps witnessed made him physically sick! His eyes were blinded by his many tears. His grief and crying were so bad, his eyes became swelled shut! His bowels wrenched in pain and he had to vomit because of the horror! The Church, “the beauty of Israel,” will be destroyed. It will not be a pretty sight.

It is important for all people to think deeply about these prophecies. The warning they contain should motivate all people to seek God in repentance.

“[T]he children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers’ bosom” (verses 11-12). What a sickening scene! The young children and infants of the Laodiceans will die of starvation. What has happened in many African nations will happen to God’s own people. Can you see God’s once vibrant people crazed with starvation? Church members’ children about to die ask their mothers, “Where is the corn and wine?” Imagine emaciated little children asking their mothers for food, and there is none to give them! The infants look at their mothers, longing for food, as they die upon their breasts.

This tragedy will be awfully difficult to endure. Who wouldn’t become sick at such images? The author of Lamentations must have asked himself why the parents allowed this to happen to their children. Church parents will have to realize that they brought this on their children. Many if not all those children will probably miss the Millennium and will be in the second resurrection. No wonder this prophet became so stressed by these events. It should not have ended that way.

God Wants to Comfort Them

Is God trying to hurt these people? “What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee [unparalleled rebellion], that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? …” (Lamentations 2:13). Through the prophet, God is saying, How can I comfort you? He wants to comfort them, but they need correction because they have pushed Him away. What will it take to reach these people? Prophecy shows that God won’t be able to reach half of the Laodiceans even with the Tribulation!

This verse describes a “witness” against them. The Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon says of that word witness: “to turn back, … to say again and again, to witness, to exhort, … to testify, to bear witness, … to admonish solemnly.” That’s the kind of witness God means. Gesenius’ Lexicon even describes it as “to chastise.” Most of the chastisement will come from God Himself. “Solemnly to enjoin on any one a precept,” it also says.

Strong’s Concordance says it means to “admonish” or “give warning.” Who has been giving the warning? Is anyone or any organization, other than the pcg, delivering a message from Lamentations? Who is giving that warning to God’s Laodicean people who turned away from God’s house and have allowed Satan himself to get control of God’s house?

The word witness means “to say again and again”! God has warned repeatedly. If they heed that warning, it will bring them comfort and fill them with hope—but the Laodiceans and nations of Israel refuse to heed. God can’t comfort them because He can find “no equal” to their stubbornness and rebellion! And they won’t repent. They are being cursed by God and still refuse to believe what we are telling them!

Lange’s Commentary paraphrases the verse: “I have no message of comfort for thee, and thy misery is so great that I can find no likeness or parallel to it, wherewith to assuage thy sorrow. For your breach is great like the sea—for great as the sea is thy ruin, or injury; who can heal you?”

You won’t read in any book of the Bible about suffering like this book. Where is there another one like it?

Verse 13 concludes, “for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?” The breach is the afflictions and devastations the people are suffering. It’s not like a creek or a river—it’s a vast sea of tribulation!

False Prophets

What caused all this trouble for the Church? Jeremiah lays the blame where it belongs! “Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment” (Lamentations 2:14). Laodicean leaders are the main cause of all this trouble afflicting the people. These false prophets will not tell people the true cause of their problems. Instead of God’s warning, they preach only deceit and smooth things—what the people want to hear.

Because they refused to prophesy what God taught, these ministers convinced the people that the horrible end-time events were far into the future. By not prophesying the truth, Church leaders actually gave false visions. What they did not say led people to be grossly deceived. The false ministers did not do their job in warning members of the coming punishment for sins. They ridiculed God’s truth about a place of safety. They failed to teach the people about a future captivity and holocaust. The Anchor Bible calls their message “so much whitewash. Hebrew [phrase], literally, [means] ‘emptiness and whitewash,’ as applied to visions by false prophets ….” It compares this image to the one in Ezekiel 13:10-15, where people are trying to fix a rickety wall by just painting over it.

The false prophets have seen “vain and foolish things.” There is no English word to express both of these ideas. The expression means delusive folly or foolish delusions that cause extreme damage to God’s Church. The ministers are delusional, and the people love the smooth things (Isaiah 30:10).

Lange’s Commentary says of Lamentations 2:13-14: “In these two closely connected verses, the poet expresses the thought that the true prophets cannot repair the injury the bad prophets have caused. He greatly desires to comfort Zion, by way of prophetical testimony in her behalf and by way of comparison to her advantage with other sufferers. But it is impossible: For immeasurable and irretrievable injury has been done by the false testimony of her prophets.”

Let’s not overlook the hope. It is there for all to see, but they have rejected it!

God’s love has been there for them to accept or reject. They made an evil choice.

Smooth things don’t help anybody. What we need is the truth from God! That is how we really receive comfort. After all, God is building His Family! He made us in His own likeness and is developing us in His image—the very character and mind of God! That is reality! We really are going to be in God’s Family and sit on the throne with Jesus Christ!

The Joy of the Whole Earth

“All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?” (Lamentations 2:15). Clearly this is describing a time of woe, when God’s people and the nations of Israel are being trampled. But again, notice God’s heartfelt description of His precious people! At one time, they were “The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth”!

How awesome and majestic! When God’s Church under Mr. Armstrong obeyed God and fulfilled its commission, God was enamored by its beauty! That is God’s assessment of His loyal remnant even today as we fulfill the job He has given us. That is also a prophecy of how, in the Kingdom of God, the glorified saints of God will bring joy to the whole Earth!

Sadly, that “perfection of beauty” is departed from the church Mr. Armstrong founded. The college campuses that exuded such excellent standards, the golden character of the students and instructors—the beauty that even impressed noted world leaders—are gone. Most of those young people have since turned away from what they learned! What would King Leopold, who said that the day he spent on the Ambassador campus was the happiest of his life, say if he saw those people today?

Verse 16 reveals that the Church’s enemies rejoice when what they have desired for God’s Church finally happens. But what the world will not see is that God’s Philadelphia Church is alive in a place of safety.

God’s Anger Complete

The entire second chapter of Lamentations discusses the destruction of “Zion,” or the Church. I mentioned earlier in this booklet that the word Zion is mentioned seven times in Lamentations 2. This signifies that God completes His wrath against His Church.

There are many more sevens in this book. Jerusalem is mentioned seven times in total. Four of the chapters have 22 verses (the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet), but Lamentations 3 has 66 verses—three 22s—making a total of seven times 22 verses in the book overall. And 154 verses is 77 plus 77. This supports the idea that the poems illustrate complete destruction and the completion of God’s punishment.

“The Lord hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries” (Lamentations 2:17). This is all God’s doing. God is fulfilling His word that He commanded in the “days of old.” Why would God mention the “days of old” at this point? God is telling the Laodiceans that what Mr. Armstrong taught in the old days, or the Philadelphia traditions, is right! God wants the Laodicean Church to admit that what He revealed through Mr. Armstrong should not have been changed. It was the absolute truth of God.

In the Tribulation, God will put the Church back on track to what it used to be! God condemns His entire Laodicean Church for abandoning the old ways!

“Cry aloud to the Lord! O daughter of Zion! Let tears stream down like a torrent day and night! Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite! Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street. Look, O Lord, and see! With whom hast thou dealt thus? Should women eat their offspring, the children of their tender care? Should priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?” (verses 18-20; rsv).

Satan has broken down the wall of Zion, or God’s Church. And what a price the members must pay. Tears are going to run down like a river!

The Apostle Paul warned us, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). God loves His Church so much that He will pull out all the stops to help His people repent. He will even allow some members to come to the point where they will be tempted to eat their own children because of their severe starvation (Lamentation 2:20).

Do God’s people really have to go through such gruesome experiences? Is that the only way God can reach them and finally comfort the half of them who repent? Is that how hard and self-willed they are?

We cannot afford to be hard! If we use the Spirit of God, we will be childlike and teachable. We will want God to correct us! That is our only hope!

The last two verses of Lamentations 2 describe dead bodies strewn everywhere. It is a tragic scene, worse than any human mind can imagine. How horrible! But it is necessary to wake people up!

Nobody is exempt—not even the nursing children. Mothers will eat their own nursing children. They will have been driven mad!

These are not pleasant prophecies, but this is what the Laodiceans are going to experience. Should we not warn of it? If you have this delusional Laodicean attitude, you’d better brace yourself. If you’re in this state of delusion, God is going to remove it or else.

Here is the real shocker: “Behold, O Lord, and consider to whom thou hast done this …” (verse 20). God is responsible for all this suffering. It’s the only way He can save 50 percent of the Laodiceans!

“The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied” (verse 21). The prophet—moved by God’s Spirit—called the people in the midst of this tribulation “my virgins and my young men.” He was intensely, personally moved by the utter destruction God brings against them.

“Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the Lord’s anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed” (verse 22). This verse speaks of “terrors round about”—they are everywhere. And none—not a single one of these Laodicean rebels—will escape! God “swaddled and brought [them] up” through Mr. Armstrong. He handled them like a mother handles a little baby, when they would allow it. Still, this is the terrible end they come to.

There is still hope for God’s people in the Tribulation. Some will begin to see their desperate need for repentance. God’s anger will bring them to a point where they can be saved spiritually. In the Tribulation, they will realize that they cannot be saved physically. Some will repent and be granted salvation—though they still must die for God’s truth! Those who don’t repent will die in the Tribulation or the Day of the Lord; their fate is eternal death.

What a bitter price this church must pay for its rebellion. No one will escape alive. Yes, God will severely punish both the young and old, the infants and children. God is going to force people to the point of death to get them to listen.

Wouldn’t it be much better to listen now—while there is still time—than to have to go through this tragedy?

Will you repent while there is still time?

God revealed through Herbert W. Armstrong that the United States and the British peoples are prophetically known as the nations of Israel in the Bible. Others understood that truth, but only in a shallow way compared to Mr. Armstrong. God also revealed to Mr. Armstrong that the modern-day Israelis are prophetically known as Judah in the Bible.

These are God’s own nations, called to set an example for the world. Our nations have failed miserably to live up to God’s standards. Our crime rates are some of the highest in the world—and our morals are the lowest in the world!

And now even God’s own Church, God’s spiritual nation, has fallen away from God’s truth. Chapters 3 and 4 of Lamentations describe in vivid detail how God is going to punish His nations and Church for their many sins. They contain very bad news for our nations and the Laodicean Church.

The author of Lamentations felt this pain personally! He speaks for God’s nations and Church.

Israel—Mauled by a Wild Animal

Lamentations 3 begins, “I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light. Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day. My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones” (verses 1-4).

It appears from these scriptures that this prophet experienced some of the horrors described in these verses. Perhaps God’s Philadelphians will also. In verse 1, the Hebrew verb for “seen” is ra’ah, which implies personal experience. The author saw some of these events firsthand. He may have added some of what he saw and experienced to the book of Lamentations later. He felt the agony that God’s nations and Church will feel when God completely turns against them.

Verse 2 shows God is going to totally abandon His people. The word “led” is the Hebrew word nahag and means driven. This doesn’t describe God leading His Church by His Spirit—it shows that God is driving His Church and nations completely away from His blessings and protection into the worst curses ever.

Verses 3 and 4 reveal that God’s lukewarm people will be put through exceptional suffering. They will experience intense mental agony knowing that God is doing this to them. They have become victims of the very prophecies they once believed! God will wear them out, making them look like old people even though they may be very young. Their pain will be so great, it will be as if every bone in their bodies had been broken. That is acute pain!

Verses 5 to 9 show that none will escape. God has caused His people to be taken captive. They are locked, like a captive in chains, into the Great Tribulation—“that I cannot get out” (verse 7). Though God’s people make many prayers, God will not deliver them (verse 8). They have nowhere to turn.

“He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old” (verse 6). Some Laodiceans are already in dark places. In Hebrew, “dead of old” means dead forever! Those who don’t repent in the Great Tribulation shall be dead forever. Fifty percent of them are going to experience that very fate! What a seriously dangerous calling we have been given by God. All Church members who find themselves in the Tribulation will know that they must either repent then or die forever!

This spiritual knowledge is about eternal life and eternal death. How real is this to you?

Verse 9 states that the Laodiceans are “inclosed … with hewn stone.” It is as if they are in a stone tomb. They must either repent or be in the blackness of darkness forever. Repentance is the only escape.

Never has suffering been expressed in such stirring poetry. It is like a symphony of horror.

The author recognized that even if God’s people could find a path out of the maze, God is still waiting to destroy them. “He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places. He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate” (verses 10-11). God is going to punish His nations and Church so severely that they will appear as if a bear or lion mauled them! What a horrible sight! Can you imagine the horror? A severed hand here, a severed leg there! This is God’s doing. Clearly, it is better to heed God’s warning message today.

“He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins” (verses 12-13). Like a skilled archer, God is waiting to destroy His people with many arrows. For what reason?

Jeremiah spent many years of his life warning the people of their coming doom if they did not repent. But they rejected his messages. “I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day” (verse 14).

Anciently, the people rejected the warning—and their punishment descended on them quickly. They were starved, taken captive and brutalized! Why is God going to punish His Laodicean Church? Because it has rejected Mr. Armstrong and the messages God gave the Church through him. It has also rejected the prophecies of Jeremiah and the prophecies revealed to the pcg.

God has been an ugly derision to the Laodiceans. They deride Him by scorning His message delivered by the pcg.

God is going to punish His nations, the Church and eventually the entire world until they admit that what Mr. Armstrong taught was truth revealed from God. It should not have been changed—but believed!

God’s People Repent in the Tribulation

“He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord” (Lamentations 3:15-18). The Laodiceans had strength and hope in God, but lost it. There is always hope in God. The greatest tragedy is losing that hope. However, 50 percent of God’s own people will repent and be able to reestablish that hope—this time forever!

Can we see why God has to punish them in the worst suffering ever on this Earth? It is the only way to save them so they can be born into His Family.

The Laodiceans still remember God’s truth. “My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope” (verses 20-21). As they remember and repent, their hope in God returns.

God has to plunge them into the Great Tribulation to resurrect their hope! There is finally a breakthrough, and they will be saved from being forever dead! If there is any way God can get us into His eternal Family, He will do it.

What a marvelous hope there is in our fiery trials.

“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him” (verses 22-24). The God of hope is our portion. We are never without hope if we walk with God.

The very elect keep their hope in God—set the example and continue declaring the hope that will finally bring the Laodiceans back to God.

God gives us eternal hope. When we are born into His Family, our eternal lives will be filled with hope.

God is a God of hope forever!

“The Lord is my portion” is a powerful statement. All we need is God. Stay close to Him and our lives are filled with blessings. Nothing matters but God! This calling is the greatest thing that can or ever will happen to you! Everything else is trivial by comparison. Hang on to God!

“The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him” (verse 25). Can we wait for God in hope—without grumbling and giving up? If we wait for God, even in death, we still have a magnificent hope.

Sometimes God has to put us into the fiery furnace to remove the dross from the spiritual gold. There is glorious hope in the fiery furnace!

“It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord” (verse 26). We must “hope and quietly wait” for salvation—without moaning or groaning! That is a real battle.

“He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him: he is filled full with reproach” (verses 29-30). Sometimes we must find hope by putting our mouth in the dust—in the worst suffering ever. Whenever God smites, it is for our own good—always!

Jeremiah suffered through the 19-year siege before Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah. Much of that time he was imprisoned and even in a dungeon.

“For the Lord will not cast off for ever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men” (verses 31-33). God does not afflict willingly—He always corrects His sons in “the multitude of his mercies.”

That is often the way He restores or builds hope.

The leaders in God’s Church who were very quick to speak—to publicly preach wrong doctrine—will be silent in the Tribulation. Finally, they will learn the lesson that it is better just to put their mouths “in the dust.” But it will take great punishment to bring them to this point. God’s Laodicean people will be willing to give their lives over to their captors—give their “cheek to him that smiteth”—because they realize the depth of their sin. They recognize that even though they must die, they will make it to the first resurrection and will be born into the Family of God. In all the tragedy, God’s people still find great hope.

“To turn aside the right of a man before the face of the most High, To subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approveth not” (verses 35-36). The Laodiceans have worked to “turn aside the right of a man.” Lange’s Commentary says this expression refers to legal rights. This is about our six-year court case against the Laodiceans. They fought “before the face of the most High,” and God gave us even more than we asked for in the court case.

These are scriptures about God’s very elect who stood up for God. They stood up before the face of God and represented God and were given victory because they did, and the fruits are there for all to see.

The expression “in his cause” can refer to a lawsuit. The Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible calls it “litigation, a judicial cause. The expression, used 60 times in the Old Testament, covers the entire process of adjudication.” Adjudication means to hear and decide a case or to serve as a judge. Then the Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible discusses “various parts of a lawsuit” and gives a list of scriptures.

God is giving the antichrists (1 John 2:18), who fought in court against Christ as the Head of the very elect, specific reasons why they must experience the Tribulation. God will show them what real justice is!

He is telling them, Read in the book of Lamentations what is about to happen to you! I will not let you get away with that! You’re going to experience lamentations, mourning and woe from me!

How dare they fight before the face of the Most High? How could anybody possibly win that battle? God says He’s going to take vengeance, and the book of Lamentations makes that vengeance painful to think about! What will it be like if we find ourselves in that Babylonian captivity because we didn’t obey God? What will that be like—that Lamentations experience? How mad with starvation does a mom have to be to eat her own nursing child?! How mad will your brain, your psyche, become as you go through something like that?

There are terrifying penalties for fighting against God and for failing to fight for Him in court! God is about to take vengeance. At the same time, those members who fight for God are going to escape Satan’s worst wrath. They are the ones who keep God’s law and continually receive new revelation from God, like the revelation in this booklet you are reading. This truth is from the Most High God! (Lamentations 2:9). When God gives new revelation, the very elect deliver the message so you can receive and understand God’s revealed warning. It is abundantly clear where the very elect are.

Turn Again to God

“Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?” (Lamentations 3:39). There is no need to complain about the punishment of sin. It is a time to repent—not complain. That is where the Laodiceans get into more trouble. They grumbled and groaned because of their punishment. They should have been repenting of their sins!

In the midst of all the tragedy of the Tribulation, many of God’s people will repent and turn back to Him. “Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens. We have transgressed and have rebelled: thou hast not pardoned” (verses 40-42). God’s people begin to “search and try” their ways. They will return to the truth as taught by God’s end-time Elijah (Malachi 3:18). In the Tribulation, God’s repentant Laodiceans will proclaim that what Mr. Armstrong taught, and what the Philadelphia Church of God held fast to, is the truth!

They begin to search their ways and “turn again” to the Eternal. These are God’s own people who had turned to Him and then shamefully turned away.

Jeremiah says to all of us, “Let us search and try our ways.” This is how we keep from turning away from God in the first place. This is something we must do all the time to avoid spiritual disaster.

Are you and I doing this now? Every day?

The Laodiceans will finally admit they have transgressed God’s law and rebelled. They will learn deeply that God will not pardon unless they repent.

“Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people. All our enemies have opened their mouths against us. Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction. Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people. Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission, Till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven” (Lamentations 3:45-50). Israel has gone from possessing fabulous wealth to embracing the dunghill. Its desolation is not hidden. The whole world sees it, and many of them help to punish Israel.

Tears are going to flow from many eyes like rivers of water. And those tears won’t stop until God intervenes for Israel and all of mankind.

“Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my city. Mine enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause. They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me” (verses 51-53). This is indescribable suffering, and the daughters don’t escape.

Enemies of the Laodiceans and nations of Israel busy themselves all day long singing about their destruction! (verse 63). They love seeing Israel in this unparalleled Tribulation. They love it so much that they sing about it throughout the day! This is the evil world in which we live.

Gold Becomes Tarnished

Chapter 4 of Lamentations supplements the lessons of chapter 2 by bringing into sharper focus the main cause for the Church being led into the Tribulation. The author shows that the main problem lies with the ministry.

“How the gold has grown dim, how the pure gold is changed! The holy stones lie scattered at the head of every street” (Lamentations 4:1; rsv). This verse prophesied long ago that the majority of God’s end-time ministry would become Laodicean, as well as the members who followed them. God compares the end-time Laodicean ministry and members to gold that has become tarnished and to “stones of the sanctuary” (King James Version). These people had God’s precious truth and then corrupted themselves.

The gold that “has grown dim” undoubtedly refers to the 50 percent of the lukewarm Laodiceans who will repent in the Great Tribulation. The gold has become tarnished, but it is still gold. The stones that have been thrown into the streets surely refers to the other 50 percent who refuse to repent and are cast into the lake of fire. They are no longer spiritual gold and have no value to God.

But verse 2 shows that God’s very elect are doing a work at the same time. “The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!” The very elect have remained humble so God could shape and mold them.

Look at how God talks about those precious sons of Zion! In the Revised Standard Version, this is the most powerful kind of poetry: “The precious sons of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold, how they are reckoned as earthen pots, the work of a potter’s hands!”

How does God look upon His people? Precious! Fine gold! God wants us to understand how He loves us! The saints of God are like pure gold! Do we see how precious that character is that God is building in us? The ministers spoken of here are referred to as “fine gold,” a term similar to that of the “jewels” in Malachi 3:17. God esteems His Family very highly, for they are rare—the Eternal’s most precious possession. These ministers have remained close to God and are upholding His truths.

Verses 1 and 2 of Lamentations 4 are more proof that a Church split was prophesied to occur. Verse 1 refers to a group of ministers as gold that became dim—or Laodicean. They were ministers of God who became tarnished! Verse 2 refers to the precious sons of Zion, who are compared to fine gold! They have surrendered to God and have been refined spiritually by Him.

That is how God viewed all His people—but as you can see in verse 1, many of them have grown dim, and that pure gold has changed. What happened to those precious sons of Zion? They were deeply precious to God—noble, golden, pure gold—and then that gold degenerated.

It is totally contrary to the nature of gold to change like that! It should also be contrary to us. Woe be unto us if we allow golden character to tarnish or become like common stones.

Is our nature golden like God’s? Oh, how God loves the golden character that is preparing us to marry His Son!

Laodicean Ministry Cruel

The next verse gives another example of how the ministers have degenerated. “Even the jackals give the breast and suckle their young, but the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness” (Lamentations 4:3; rsv). The Laodicean ministers are cruel like ostriches. Compare this scripture with Job 39:13-18. Ostriches are very careless with their eggs, and if there’s any danger, they’ll just run off and leave their young. An ostrich becomes “hardened” against her own young, treating them as if they were not hers. Even the ugly old jackal will suckle its young and fight for its young.

This is a very true picture of what happened within the Laodicean churches! The Laodiceans let their love wax cold (Matthew 24:12). The Laodicean ministers did not take care of their members as they should have. They passively allowed God’s people to be fed false doctrine. The Church is to be the “mother” of us all—a place where people can grow up in God’s precious truth. Who can grow under the tutelage of confusion? Many pcg members, before they left the wcg, were dealt with very harshly for questioning the many changes.

The Laodiceans have lost their love of God—and their love for God and for man. They won’t reach out to mankind with God’s wonderful message. They are doing a great disservice to our nations. They no longer thunder out a warning message about the coming punishment for sin. Prophecy has been intentionally pushed aside and suppressed! They fail to warn our nations that great trouble is on the horizon because of our corruption.

Lamentations 4:4-5 show that our nations’ children will starve to death. Even though the United States, the British peoples and modern-day Israel (biblical Judah) have enjoyed the greatest wealth, our people will soon embrace “dunghills”—they will pick through garbage to survive.

Our people will be punished more than Sodom (verse 6) because our sins are worse. Sodom was not destroyed by men; it was destroyed by fire from heaven (Genesis 19:24). In this end time, calamities linger—famine, pestilence, starvation, race wars, lamentations, mourning and woe! It’s all about to spring upon us. We must be ready. Sodom was destroyed in a moment. But those who survive the nuclear attack must suffer 21/2 years in the Tribulation or until they die.

Most people don’t like to read of such horror. But it is better to read about it and repent than to experience it!

Verses 7 and 8 of Lamentations 4 show that the Levites, or ministry, must shoulder the blame for this trouble. The Nazarites are a type of God’s ministers today. Our ministers, like the Nazarites, are set apart by God to sacrifice for and serve God. They were “purer than snow.” They were spiritually very beautiful, like red rubies and highly polished sapphires. But they became good for nothing. They stopped doing their job of warning the world—now they too must share in its bloodcurdling punishment! Verse 8 reveals that the ministers’ skin becomes black with famine. They are no longer seen out in the streets with God’s people. They become so thin, they look like sticks.

“Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger, who pined away, stricken by want of the fruits of the field” (verse 9; rsv). Yes—there is coming a time when to be killed right away will be a far preferable fate.

“The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people” (verse 10; rsv). This will happen in the Tribulation—and these are not the cruel women, these are the compassionate women! This is how even the compassionate ones act!

This is terrible news—but we cannot turn away from it. We must face it because God wants His people to reach out and warn the Laodiceans and try to shake them one last time!

Zion’s Foundations Are Burned

“The Lord gave full vent to his wrath, he poured out his hot anger; and he kindled a fire in Zion, which consumed its foundations” (Lamentations 4:11; rsv). Here is another depiction of Zion’s total destruction. When a building is burned, usually the foundation is left standing. But with Zion, God will burn even the foundation! You cannot build on sin, you cannot build on evil, and you cannot repent 90 percent of the way. God says it will all be the pure character of God, or He’s going to destroy it right down to the foundation. That is the only way to create the perfection of beauty.

God’s Church has never been punished more severely! Even the kings of the Earth will be amazed at the destruction! (verse 12). The world cannot imagine the utter destruction coming on the Laodiceans and the nations of Israel.

Why did the Church have to endure such punishment? “This was for the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed in the midst of her the blood of the righteous” (verse 13; rsv). It is primarily because of the sins of the ministers! The ministers loved to speak smooth things, and the people loved to hear it—and look what happened.

Instead of warning people of the coming punishment for sin, the ministry led the people into sin!

God is going to put the blood of His people on the heads of the Laodicean ministry (Ezekiel 33:8). God likens the Laodicean ministers to murderers. As God views it, they “shed the blood” of the Church members and the nations of Israel (Lamentations 4:13).

“They wandered, blind, through the streets, so defiled with blood that none could touch their garments. ‘Away! Unclean!’ men cried at them; ‘Away! Away! Touch not!’ So they became fugitives and wanderers; men said among the nations, ‘They shall stay with us no longer’” (verses 14-15; rsv). God’s Laodicean people will be shunned like despised lepers.

The next verse shows who is behind all this tragedy: It is God Himself. “The anger of the Lord hath divided them; he will no more regard them: they respected not the persons of the priests, they favoured not the elders” (verse 16). Jesus Christ has officially divided the ministry and the Church. The final separation of the Philadelphian and Laodicean ministry and members began on December 7, 1989, when the Philadelphia Church of God began as a separate entity from the Worldwide Church of God.

Verse 22 shows that the punishment for falling into Laodiceanism will come. It will be fulfilled to the precise letter. Why allow yourself to go through such torture—and far worse, lose your reward in God’s headquarters throughout eternity?

“The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the heathen” (verse 20). God’s Church, the ones called out of this world now, are God’s anointed. This is “one of the most important words in the Bible” (Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible). The kings and high priests were anointed ones. Already, God has anointed us kings and priests (Revelation 1:6) to help Him rule this world. We are the very Bride of Christ in embryo. We are in God’s true Church for the most special purpose you can imagine. We are God’s anointed ones!

Lamentations 4:22 also ends with splendid hope: The people will never be exiled again.

Learn the Lesson of History

Lamentations 5 is a poem of 22 verses. It has the same number of verses as letters in the Hebrew alphabet. It is a precisely structured book recounting the history and prophecy of God’s people being destroyed.

Mr. Armstrong taught that one third of the Bible is prophecy and that 90 percent of those prophecies were written for our day. Anciently, God’s people were severely punished for rejecting God and His revealed truth. The punishment of the Laodicean Church and our nations is in the immediate future.

We all need to learn the lesson of history. We need to take warning that history is also prophetic—it’s about to repeat itself.

“Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach. Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us. Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest” (verses 1-5). Conditions are about to become terribly bad—our wealth will be enjoyed by others; our families will be destroyed by famine and war. People will have to buy water, and their own wood will be sold back to them. Once the Tribulation starts, these conditions will not end until God’s fury is spent. There will be no rest.

Verse 6 shows that our people will be enslaved by the Assyrians and the Egyptians. We know the Assyrians prophetically are modern Germany. Our nations will soon be subject to them. Anciently, the Assyrians were well known for their cruel, torturous practices. Verse 11 shows they will even be permitted to rape the women of the Laodicean Church! Could it be any worse? The leaders of our nations and the Laodicean Church—the “princes” of verse 12—will be tortured. All the people, young and old, will be subjected to hard labor.

Not many will survive! Please read the entire chapter.

Verse 18 describes Zion being inhabited by wild animals. This is a picture of what the Laodicean churches look like to God today: a desolate city filled with wild jackals scavenging for food and shelter.

Although this is a terribly tragic scene, there is still hope. God’s people will be brought to repentance. God’s people and nations will finally learn that sin brings destruction (verse 16). They will turn back to God and realize that He will again give them a future place of prominence in the World Tomorrow and in His Kingdom. He will restore the former glory of our nations. God’s people will realize that God will not forsake them forever (verse 20).

“But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us” (verse 22). God is very wroth or wrathful against us. It is time each one of us understands the God of love—and of wrath! Look at world conditions! Does anything good await us in the future, under the rule of mankind? There is only blackness and ugliness before us as long as men are in power!

Let us be sure to do our part to prevent this tragic fate from happening to ourselves, our families and our loved ones. Those of us who have come into the pcg will continue to warn the Laodiceans and the world of the coming Great Tribulation.

We must tell the world what is about to occur! It is time for all of us to stand up for God’s precious truth!