Chapter 3: ‘I Remember You’

We must always try to get God’s perspective. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

God’s thoughts are so much higher than ours. But He gives us a great deal of help to rise to His level of thinking so we can better understand Him and reason like Him.

We need to break out of our limited thinking and view our lives and this world through God’s eyes.

This is especially important in this end time, when the world is in the final stages of this age of man and about to destroy itself—and when God’s Church is in the Laodicean era, in a terrible spiritual condition that it cannot even recognize.

The early chapters of the book of Jeremiah can help us understand God’s thinking much more deeply, especially about the spiritual state of the Church today.

Consider the historical context of these chapters. Jeremiah began his prophetic warning message in the 13th year of King Josiah’s reign (Jeremiah 1:2; 25:3), which was around 627 b.c. The messages of Jeremiah 2-6 were during Josiah’s reign (e.g. see Jeremiah 3:6).

Josiah was a righteous king, committed to returning Judah to live according to God’s law. However, God’s warnings and correction through Jeremiah show that not everyone agreed with Josiah’s religious reforms. There were serious problems in the nation God was trying to correct. But there is still hope expressed in these chapters that the nation would respond to God’s warnings and be saved from destruction (see Jeremiah 3:22; 4:4).

Today, we still live in a time of material prosperity, but the curses are intensifying. Most of God’s people have turned away from God, and time is rapidly running out for them to repent and turn back.

Study these chapters of Jeremiah, and you see a heart-wrenching, agonizing plea from God to His own people—those who know Him, or knew Him, but are failing spiritually.

These chapters contain powerful, searing correction for God’s people. God knows this correction can be hard for us to take. So throughout this passage, He also powerfully emphasizes His love for those He is correcting.

To whatever extent we need to be corrected and prodded, anyone who studies these chapters in Jeremiah with spiritual thinking and honest self-examination will be moved emotionally! It should drive us to our knees in repentant prayers!

After Jeremiah 1, God speaks directly to the Laodiceans, giving them a strong warning. Will you consider what God says and take it to heart? Each of us needs to examine ourselves in light of this passage of Jeremiah’s prophecy.

Jeremiah 2 begins, “Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem …” (verses 1-2). Jerusalem here is a prophetic term that includes America and Britain, as well as Judah (the Middle East nation called Israel). But the real focus of this message from God is on spiritual Jerusalem: God’s own people.

Before God gives the warning to His people, He explains a most inspiring truth—a spiritual reality that should move all of us!

Christ Loves His Bride

“… Thus saith the Lord; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown” (Jeremiah 2:2).

“I remember you,” God says! If you were a member of God’s Church, He has had a close relationship with you—and He remembers you! Sadly, many of those He is speaking to have forgotten Him—but He has not forgotten a single member or former member!

In this end time, thousands of God’s people have rejected Him. We can recognize the magnitude of their betrayal only if we see the magnificence of God’s calling.

The Revised Standard Version translates this verse as, “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride ….” The first thing God talks about here is a bride. Wow! This is about family—the very Family of God. Anciently, Israel and Judah were married to God. But that was only a letter-of-the-law type of the Church’s marriage to Jesus Christ in this end time.

This is the most exalted calling God can give a human being! There never has been, and never will be, a nobler office than that of the Bride of Christ!

Note God’s passion and emotion. He remembers how devoted His people were at the beginning of their conversion when they were Philadelphian—before they became Laodicean (Revelation 3:7-20). He remembers their love for Him in the early days of their conversion. He remembers the day you were begotten and all your history with Him.

God remembers “when thou wentest after me.” Do you remember when you were first called? Your joy at discovering God’s truth for the first time? The hours you put into prayer and Bible study? God is joyful when His people go after Him! He wants us to pursue Him like a physical bride should go after her husband-to-be. Christ wants passion in His Bride, like a young physical bride with intense emotions preparing to marry her beloved husband. Christ loves that passion directed toward Himself, like any normal husband does.

What a wonderful beginning to this message from God! These chapters give us profound insight into God’s beautiful thinking.

But that makes them all the more painful to read because of the contrast with the faithlessness and rebellion of the people He is reaching out to! These people have rejected their Husband and rebelled against Him. The betrayal wounds Him personally.

How passionate are you for God? He has given you a lot, especially if you have received the Holy Spirit and are part of that Bride-level calling. Are you really going after God, fervently showing your love as a bride? Are you walking with Him? Are you passionate about what God is passionate about?

Tragically, the vast majority of God’s people are not! This is why Christ is so upset. Most of His Church has turned away. They had a history of going after Him, but they are no longer doing so. And most of them are blind to their own spiritual condition. God really wants to shake His people out of a deadly spiritual lethargy!

Don’t assume you are OK. We all must grow in the ardor described in Jeremiah 2:2. Some of us are letting our love wax cold (Matthew 24:12) and are not reciprocating God’s love!

Set Apart

Here is another beautiful statement: “Israel was [that should read is] holiness unto the Lord, and the firstfruits of his increase: all that devour him shall offend; evil shall come upon them, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 2:3). God is emphasizing the special position of His firstfruits and assuring them of His protection. They are God’s first harvest—those He calls ahead of the rest of the world to share the throne of David with Jesus Christ Himself for all eternity! These saints will have the honor of helping God instruct the whole world in righteousness and then harvest them—the fall harvest pictured by the Feast of Tabernacles. What a vision!

God says these firstfruit saints are “holiness.” That means they were set apart by God the Father. We cannot come to God unless He does that. Then Christ takes these firstfruits, whom His Father chose for Him, and harvests them to be His Bride!

If you really grasp this vision, it almost makes you faint! We have been set apart in a way that people who lack God’s Holy Spirit cannot understand. They will later, once they repent and are converted.

Christ is calling the firstfruits to be united with Him in marriage as His “help meet” (Genesis 2:18). We have the glorious honor of helping the Father and Christ harvest their children—their Family—and then introduce them to the entire universe. That is when God’s Work really begins!

Think about the last half of Jeremiah 2:3. What is God saying? This shows you how devoted to and fiercely protective He is of those He sets apart in this special category! Meditating on that statement will help you recognize God’s abiding love for His people. When people attack them, God takes that personally. You see this in Genesis 12:3, where He told Abram, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.”

There are prophecies of how severely God will correct His lukewarm people in this end time. But did you know there are also prophecies of how harshly God will then punish those who punished them? (e.g. Isaiah 10:12-19; Isaiah 13-14; Jeremiah 25:12-14; Jeremiah 50-51). “Evil shall come upon them,” God says! When His people need to be corrected, God watches over that correction very carefully and holds those who give it accountable.

What does it mean to you to have the Almighty God so protective over you—even when you really don’t deserve it? (And none of us does.) It is imperative to stop and think on the profound love God has for His people.

‘What Sin Have You Found in Me?’

Now God begins His correction—and He does so with a heart-wrenching question: “Hear ye the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel: Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?” (Jeremiah 2:4-5). What a disturbing question! What fault did they find in me that they left me? God asks.

Ask yourself: Have you given God any cause to ask such a question of you?

None of us has any excuse to treat God in such a way. Humans sin and make mistakes that might give others cause to turn away from them. God never does! He is the perfect Father! Christ is the perfect Husband!

Yet people have gone far from God and “walked after vanity.” They have become vain—of no spiritual value, worthless to God.

“Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit” (verse 11). Think seriously about that statement: My people, the great God says, have changed their glory for something worthless! These are God’s own people. They had wonderful spiritual glory. Sadly, they now have little glory to speak of, if any. They have embraced vanity. They have put the things of this world above their heavenly Father.

After all that God gave them—including their wonderful calling as Christ’s Bride—they have gone back to the world like a dog returning to its vomit! (2 Peter 2:22).

Fountain of Living Waters

What these people have done deeply hurts God. “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

God is the fountain of living waters! The living water is the Holy Spirit of God, which can be flowing in our lives if we yield ourselves to it. What a spectacular gift from God! Do you have that fountain of spiritual power flowing in your life?

How tragic for anyone to forsake the loving, generous God who gives abundant life! God says not only have many of His people forsaken Him, they have also created their own religious work and their own beggarly doctrines and ideas—“broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

Do you know a spiritual fountain when you see one? This passage speaks of people who can’t discern the difference between God’s “fountain of living waters”—a powerful flow of God’s Spirit—and a broken cistern! That shows profound spiritual blindness.

“Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, when he led thee [past tense] by the way?” (verse 17). God Himself ruled, governed and led His people. Then they rejected God’s government. Many people have a history that condemns what they are doing today. Their history with God is past. Now they are rebelling. God can no longer lead them. This is a catastrophe!

Was there a time when God led your life? Evaluate whether He still is.

There is a faithful remnant Work that God still leads today. Every one of us needs to find that Work!

“And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?” (verse 18). These people who have access to the living waters of God are drinking instead from the poisoned wells and rivers of this world. Egypt and Assyria are two powers that enslaved the people of God anciently—like this world enslaved us today, until God freed us. Are you seeking worldly entertainments or refreshment? Are you going after the wisdom of this world instead of the living waters of God? The questions of verse 18 are ones we should all ask ourselves regarding the filth and toxic influences of Satan’s world.

This is a prophecy for our time today. Verse 15 speaks of cities becoming “burned without inhabitant.” Only nuclear war can produce such devastation! This passage is clearly for the present day, over which the apocalyptic shadow of nuclear war looms.

Do you have the courage to face this terrifying truth about nuclear war that will strike very soon? People must be warned! Do you “sigh and cry” for the abominations in the land? (Ezekiel 9:4). Do you love people enough to warn of the nuclear holocaust about to shock this world?

A Noble Vine

Jeremiah 2:21 contains yet another majestically inspiring statement from God regarding His elect people, whom He personally called and chose out of this world: “Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed ….” God’s people are a noble vine, planted by God Himself! How precious! Only God the Father begets His sons (John 6:44; James 1:17-18). Not even Jesus Christ does that. What a noble vine!

The firstfruits are the most noble vine God will ever plant throughout eternity! There is only one group of firstfruits. Once Christ returns, that invitation will never be offered again.

This truth should be real to you—and more real all the time. This is the most critical moment for the firstfruits in the history of the universe! We must not let this opportunity slip away.

God then asks this heartbreaking question: “[H]ow then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?” (Jeremiah 2:21). What a tragic failure! God’s noble vine turned into a degenerate plant, a strange vine. That is God’s view!

Do you remember your spiritual beginning—the time God planted you—a “wholly right seed”? You have a glorious history. How does that history compare with the present?

If you remember a time when you were once right with God and when fountains of living waters flowed in your life, and you recognize that those times have ended, there is good news. You can get back to God. But you must do it His way.

“Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, says the Lord God” (verse 22; rsv). God says you cannot wash yourself of these sins, no matter how hard you try. Only God can cleanse you. Yet for Him to do that, you must submit and allow Him to rule you.

These people say they are not polluted or Satan-inspired (verse 23). They disagree with God! They talk back to Him. God demands, “[S]ee thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done ….” They need to face what they have done! They must understand the towering sin they have committed.

Again you see God’s emotion and ache as He describes His people turning away from Him—their living Father who loves them—to false gods: “Saying to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ And to a stone, ‘You gave birth to me.’ For they have turned their back to Me, and not their face. …” (verse 27; nkjv). What spiritual madness! It is painful to even imagine people committing such an outrageous offense against their heavenly Father! But just as it did with our ancient forefathers, it has happened in our day—both in the physical nations of Israel and in spiritual Israel during this final era of God’s Church, on a shocking scale!

The nations of Israel and the lukewarm saints will see how helpless their false gods are when the devastating nuclear holocaust is upon them (verse 28). But God desperately wants them to repent before then. He says they have as many false gods as they have cities! They will call on those gods to save them, but only the true God can actually save.

Are you sure you are worshiping and trusting in the true God? How much do you really trust God to save you? Can you trust God to heal you? (Physical healing is a type of spiritual salvation.) We must be trusting God in our daily lives to build a saving faith. Sadly, far too many of God’s people today lack such trust in Him.

A Bride’s Attire

In Jeremiah 2:32, God makes clear what He thinks of a church that once trusted Him but has turned to its own way: “Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.”

The bride’s attire is her righteousness (Revelation 19:8). Can a bride really forget that? Would any bride come to her marriage naked? Spiritually, that is what the Laodiceans are doing to God! The picture in Jeremiah 2:32 illustrates just how absurd what God’s own people are doing really is.

Jesus Christ is going to rule His wife. Is that negative? To become Christ’s Bride is the most awesome opportunity offered to any human being for all eternity! Yet this bride has “forgotten” her Husband! God will never give such an indescribable, glorious reward to anyone who is rebellious against Him.

Physical marriage is a type of that glorious marriage to Christ. What a difference it makes in a marriage when a husband and wife fully understand that their union is a God-plane relationship!

The world does not understand this. Most women today rebel against the husband being the leader in marriage. Sadly, even most of God’s own people have lost this spectacular vision of godly submission. The Laodicean bride refuses to let her Husband be the Head. She doesn’t want to be His helpmeet.

When physical marriages fall apart, the cause is often rebellion against government. Many wcg ministers allowed their wives to rule them—and that is what they tried to do spiritually with Christ! But He will not allow it!

“How well you direct your course to seek lovers! So that even to wicked women you have taught your ways” (verse 33; rsv). Another devastating condemnation: Christ’s Laodicean bride has become expert at finding “love” anywhere but with God! He says that even prostitutes could learn a thing or two from them!

This is tough correction to take. The easiest thing to do is to brush it off: That couldn’t apply to me! Yet God speaks in such dramatic terms to try to wake us up to a deadly situation.

Think deeply on what God has given us. He has invited us into His Family, even at the cost of the life of His Son. The Word, who existed from eternity, risked eternal death—the God Family put everything on the line to make your calling possible, and they were happy to do so. No wonder God responds with deep emotion when those He loves so much casually set this aside!

‘Return Again to Me’

In Jeremiah 3, God continues speaking about His wife. Again this shows how deeply emotional He is about this relationship.

“They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 3:1). This applies to the nations of Israel in a general way, but only God’s Church is Christ’s wife in this end time. These people have greatly polluted themselves, yet still God pleads with them to return to Him!

Can we even begin to comprehend God’s unending love and mercy? Are we truly thankful for the forgiveness He offers when we simply turn to Him in repentance?

In verse 2, God makes a grotesque comparison: He says His people are spiritually like an animal in heat! He then says, “[T]hou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed” (verse 3). This is why we cannot get together with Laodicean splinter groups. These people are shamefully committing adultery, they have betrayed their Husband, Jesus Christ—and they show no shame about it!

Verse 3 begins, “Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain ….” Showers and rain are types of God’s Holy Spirit. God has withheld His Spirit from these rebellious people. The power of the Holy Spirit is no longer with them. They do not receive God’s revelation anymore. They are in grave danger of losing their eternal lives!

Considering what an unparalleled honor God is offering them—to be part of the very Bride of Jesus Christ—isn’t God justified in this punishment? Christ’s wife will be judged far more severely than anyone else because of the knowledge and the opportunity she has. How could He do otherwise?

God fervently wants to give them spiritual “showers” and the “latter rain,” but their attitude has made that impossible.

Do you realize that your attitude determines the flow of God’s Holy Spirit in your life? When we become hard, the flow of that Spirit stops! That is a dangerous condition to be in once we have received that spiritual begettal.

Think on this aching question: “Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?” (verse 4). They have turned from God the Father, their Guide in former days, and forgotten their history with Him! How could the Father not be hurt?

In verse 6, God calls these people “backsliding Israel”—people of spiritual Israel, the Church, who knew God and then began to backslide.

“And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not …” (verse 7). Even after all the sin they have committed, God cries out for them to return. Verse 12: “Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord, and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever.”

This has been God’s consistent message to His Laodicean people since this Church era began—using the Philadelphia Church of God: Turn back to me! God pleads with them to acknowledge their sin (verse 13). Sadly, very few have humbly heeded that admonition.

Verses 20-22 have the same message: God’s people are treating Him “as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband.” They “have forgotten the Lord their God.” Yet still God pleads: “Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.” Now is the time to return!

Birthing Her First Child

Jeremiah 4:31 has another reference to God’s firstfruits. This analogy also shows how precious we are to our Father: “For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers.”

Zion in the Old Testament represents God’s Church. This woman is God’s own Church—but here it is His lukewarm, rebellious Church. They are portrayed as a woman giving birth to a child. This is a painful firstfruits’ birth—the birth of the saints who are called before Christ returns. The firstfruits’ birth is likened to the birth of a woman’s first child. The spiritual firstfruits are born first into God’s Kingdom.

Isn’t a firstborn child cherished by his parents? God certainly feels that way toward His firstfruit saints.

But the reality, and the picture in this prophecy, is that the firstborn is generally the most difficult to deliver. That is definitely true spiritually! The process of bringing us to the birth is far tougher and more painful than it will be for the children born into God’s Family later.

This is especially true of the Laodiceans! These people will be sent into German concentration camps because of their evil. The Laodiceans cry out, “Woe is me now!” They do not think they deserve anywhere close to that level of punishment. But they rejected the most precious calling ever offered to man! However, God will do anything to wake them up and win them back. God wants you in His Family and would rather send you to die in the Tribulation, and save your eternal life, than lose you forever. You will read more about that later in this book. They have to die to prove their faith in God. Appallingly, half of them will lose their eternal lives because they refuse to repent!

The Tribulation is likened to birth pangs. And the birth it pictures is far greater than anything physical! Their salvation is at stake. That is not true of the nations of Israel, since God has not yet called them. But God’s Church has been called. His people are being judged now (1 Peter 4:17). And He must punish them this way to save 50 percent of them (Matthew 25:1-10). The other 50 percent will die the second death and be lost forever! (Revelation 20:14). What a painful birth. But God never gives up. Only men do.

Despite that pain, in the end this is good news. Zion is giving birth! Though labor pains are terrible, it certainly is worth the pain if you see the eternal majesty in God’s Kingdom. God’s repentant Laodiceans are to be born into God’s Family—eternal glory! That is the greatest news we could hear!

Turning your life around now may seem hard, even impossible. But it is infinitely easier to repent now instead of in the Tribulation. And with God, all things are possible.

‘Shall I Pardon You?’

God is abundant in mercy and eager to pardon. In Jeremiah 5:1, He told Jeremiah to search throughout the streets of Jerusalem; if he could find even one man executing right judgment and seeking the truth, God would spare the city!

You can be sure that God never punishes without cause. The magnitude of the correction described in these chapters in Jeremiah and other prophecies shows just how deep is the sin within God’s Laodicean Church and in the nations of Israel; both have a history with God. Remember, Israel is the only nation on Earth that has ever been married to God! The people of Israel failed God anciently; their modern descendants are shamefully ignorant of their history and are still rebelling today.

“And though they say, The Lord liveth; surely they swear falsely” (verse 2). These people talk about God and religion, but it is devoid of substance. You see a lot of this kind of religion in the world today. Jesus Christ asked, “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). Talk about God is worthless if you do not obey Him! Sadly, this type of religion is also common in the Laodicean churches.

Jeremiah 5:3 shows that God is cursing these people in an effort to turn them around, “but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return.” “Refused to return” shows this is primarily talking about His Spirit-begotten sons who left Him. Only they can truly return to Him.

Verse 5 reads, “‘I will go to the great, and will speak to them; for they know the way of the Lord, the law of their God.’ But they all alike had broken the yoke, they had burst the bonds” (rsv). This is talking about “the great,” or the leading ministers of God’s Laodicean Church. They have known “the way of the Lord” even better than the lay members, so God will hold them more accountable! But they decided they would no longer submit to God’s government. They would not allow Him to bridle them. This is the greatest sin of all!

To be bridled and led by God is the only way we can avoid these catastrophic curses! Do you want to go your own way? Do you want to live according to the ways of ignorant, foolish, proud, presumptuous men? That always leads to disaster!

The Anchor Bible explains their rebellion this way: “The people are like oxen who have escaped their master’s yoke—and his protection”! The Laodiceans who fail to repent before the Great Tribulation are going to be ripped in pieces (verse 6). Without God, any one of us is as helpless before Satan as a small deer before a hungry, roaring lion! Even now, spiritually, God’s Church is being “torn in pieces” by Satan and his demons. And if members don’t change course, they also will be “torn in pieces” physically! Revelation 12:12 warns that it will happen soon! This is a stinging warning to the Laodiceans. Do they comprehend that their physical and eternal lives are at stake?

“How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery …” (Jeremiah 5:7). This is talking spiritually—about God’s own Family. The word children should read sons. God is re-creating Himself in man. What a goal! Even God can’t achieve anything more magnificent. He took such care of them—He “fed them to the full” with the truth He gave them through Herbert W. Armstrong. Never has God’s Church been so richly fed spiritually!

But how did they respond? In the most shameful way imaginable: They forsook the true, all-powerful, living God and turned to “them that are no gods.” And they “committed adultery” spiritually! Christ’s own wife turns to Satan’s ways and self-reliance rather than submitting to God!

This passage has Father and sons as well as Husband and wife. God is a Family! The Laodiceans have lost the God Family vision. What a shameful loss!

Again, please try to see this from God’s perspective. “Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?” (verse 9). Isn’t God right to be indignant? How could He not send punishment?

Even so, in verse 10 He tells those who will inflict this punishment to “make not a full end.” As in Jeremiah 4:27, it would be even worse if not for God’s mercy. It grieves Him to see people suffer. But He will do whatever it takes to try to turn them around so He can spare their eternal lives!

‘What Will You Do in the End?’

Jeremiah 5:26-28 describe more sins of the Laodiceans, particularly the ministry. They are dishonest. They deceitfully and treacherously set snares and traps for people. Some ministers have drawn followers to themselves by telling lies. They are selfish and greedy; they don’t stand up for the fatherless and needy. “Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?” (verse 29).

“An astonishing and horrible thing Has been committed in the land: The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule by their own power; And My people love to have it so. But what will you do in the end?” (verses 30-31; nkjv). Leading Laodicean ministers prophesy and teach falsely; lower-ranking ministers follow along. They establish their own government, not God’s rule. And sadly, the people “love to have it so.” Instead of standing up and refusing to follow such evil in the ministry, the people go right along because they don’t love God and His government!

Can you recognize what a colossal disaster this prophecy describes? And it has come to pass among God’s people in our day exactly as God said it would!

God has a piercing question for all these people: “What will you do in the end?” What will they do when the nations collapse? God’s prophecies will come to pass—and the lies of these ministers will be exposed. Reality will replace deceit and delusion. When the Great Tribulation comes, these people will have no protection from God! That is the nightmare they are about to face!

God is reaching out to His lukewarm sons! He aches with longing for them and grieves at what they are doing. He wants so much to reach them and turn them around so they can enter His eternal Family.

Examine yourself! How much worldly Protestantism has rubbed off on you? How many of these Laodicean tendencies have you picked up? This message from God should remind every one of us that we need to be continually looking to God to show us our sins and working to repent, improve and grow! Especially when God is so bold and direct in passages like this, speaking to His own people, we do not want to assume we are free of these sins!

If any Laodicean who has any spiritual thinking left at all would sit down and study these chapters in Jeremiah and honestly examine himself, I think he would be unable to control his emotions!

Repentance

There is great suffering ahead for so many of God’s people. Thankfully, that suffering will lead some back to God in repentance.

“A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the Lord their God. Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. …” (Jeremiah 3:21-22). What a promise from our loving, merciful God!

At that point, verses 22-25 give us the encouraging words of those who repent: “… Behold, we come to thee; for thou art the Lord our God. Truly the hills are a delusion, the orgies on the mountains. Truly in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel. But from our youth the shameful thing has devoured all for which our fathers labored, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us; for we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day; and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God” (rsv).

How God longs to hear those words! And He would respond with overwhelming mercy to anyone who sincerely confesses his sin to God and repents this way!