Why God Must Punish the Laodiceans

Revelation 3:17-18 show that the most tragic fault of the Laodicean Church is its 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.

The second chapter of the book of Lamentations 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 the word 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 proven 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 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 the same type of description as 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.

Also, in His anger, God 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 ministers have ridiculed the Philadelphia Church of God for making such strong statements. These are biblical statements! Some full-time ministers have stated that God would never send “strong delusion” to His Church. Others have said that God would never punish older “innocent” 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.” 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 is 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. That covenant was based upon 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 be 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 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 kid ourselves as to what causes God to act this way. God has poured out His revelation on the Philadelphian and Laodicean eras as never before. God 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.

But He will do that 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 this punishment about! 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 already rejected Malachi’s Message. Collectively, they have both reached the point of no return. 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 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 talking about here? Who does the work of the altar? It is the priests. This is a type of God’s ministers today.

Here God is reaching out to the members of His Church with the message of Lamentations, and then He makes this statement. What does God mean by saying He has cast off His altar? Cast off forever? It appears this means that many of the ministers might have already lost their eternal lives. If that is true, they have reached the ultimate point of no return!

God blames the ministers most of all for what happened in His Church. Very few of the Laodicean ministers have come into God’s faithful Philadelphia 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—what Revelation 11:1 terms “them that worship therein.” (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!

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

Here is what 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 of 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!

All you need do is ask someone who has visited the Pasadena auditorium recently to learn of the “wild clamor of heathen idolators”! It’s no wonder God spews the Laodiceans out of His mouth!

Verse 6 relates how 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 this chapter 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. They are raising up the ruins and building another house for God where God’s feasts will be kept. It is obvious why we must do so. (For more information, request our new booklet on Haggai.)

Who keeps the great feasts of God today? Only God’s very elect. And we will again 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 proven to people 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 say 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!

Even worldly commentaries understand a lot of the truth here.

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, and He is measuring His people.

But notice: It is measuring 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 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! This verse in Lamentations 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 false 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, as well as in the little book. 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!

Here 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 don’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 even 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, which keeps that law, also has all kinds of 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, just 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 just sit in the dirt—speechless. And the “virgins of Jerusalem,” or God’s true people (Revelation 14:4), just 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 the destruction of Judah. It deeply pained him to see that! This book describes better than anywhere in the Bible what is going to 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 pictures this author witnessed? We do not like to focus 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 became 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 Church will die of starvation. What has happened to 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 had to ask 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 have to come back to life 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? …” (verse 13). Here, through the prophet, God is saying, What can I do to you people to 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 for that word witness, “to turn back or to say again and again, to witness, to exhort, to testify, to bear witness, to admonish solemnly what they’re doing.” That’s the kind of witness God’s talking about. “To chastise, even,” Gesenius says. God’s going to do most of that Himself. “Solemnly to enjoin on any one a precept …” (ibid.).

Strong’s Concordance says it means to “admonish” or “give warning.” Who’s giving the warning? Does anybody outside the pcg get a message like that out of 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”! (verse 13). God has warned repeatedly. If they heeded that warning, it would bring them comfort, but the Laodiceans and nations of Israel refuse. 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 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 problems 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). The Laodicean leaders are the main cause of all this trouble inflicting 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—only 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, 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 bring extreme damage to God’s Church. The ministers are delusional, and the people love the smooth things.

Now the Church has gone too far to even bring the collective body back. Beware of false prophets and false teachers!

Here is what Lange’s Commentary says about verses 13 and 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.”

The pcg warning is the good news and hope here. Our message of hope has been rejected too long. The heinous damage done by the false leaders is too great now to turn them around. (That includes the nations of Israel.) They have reached the point of no return, but our message will help them immensely to repent in the Tribulation.

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”!

When God’s Church obeyed God under Mr. Armstrong 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 impressed even 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 because what they have desired for God’s Church has finally happened. But what the world does not see is that God’s Philadelphia Church is alive and 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.

“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, are 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 get the Church back on track to what it used to be! God will condemn His entire Church for getting away from 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 that “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 stops to help His people repent. Verse 20 shows that He will even allow some members to come to the point where they may be tempted to eat their own children because of their severe starvation.

Do God’s people really have to experience something so gruesome? 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, that makes us childlike and teachable. We will want God to correct us! That is our only hope!

The closing verses of Lamentations 2 show dead bodies 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 in the nations will eat their own nursing children. They will have been driven mad!

These are not pleasant prophecies, are they? But this is what the Laodiceans are going to experience. Should we not talk about it? If you have this delusional Laodicean attitude, you’d better brace yourself. If you’re into 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” (Lamentations 2:20). God is responsible for all of 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 came 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 have brought them to a point where they can be saved spiritually. In the Tribulation, Church members 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? It’s too late for the Laodicean churches and nations of Israel to repent. But it’s not too late for individuals like you.

Will you repent while there is still time?