Laodicean Church
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them to discriminate between right and wrong. They have put out their
own spiritual eyesight. They may witness wrongs, but they do not feel
as did Joshua and humble themselves because the danger of souls is
felt by them.
The true people of God, who have the spirit of the work of the Lord
and the salvation of souls at heart, will ever view sin in its real, sinful
character. They will always be on the side of faithful and plain dealing
with sins which easily beset the people of God. Especially in the
closing work for the church, in the sealing time of the one hundred and
forty-four thousand who are to stand without fault before the throne of
God, will they feel most deeply the wrongs of God’s professed people.
This is forcibly set forth by the prophet’s illustration of the last work
under the figure of the men each having a slaughter weapon in his
hand. One man among them was clothed with linen, with a writer’s
inkhorn by his side. “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the
midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon
the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations
that be done in the midst thereof.”
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Who are standing in the counsel of God at this time? Is it those who
virtually excuse wrongs among the professed people of God and who
murmur in their hearts, if not openly, against those who would reprove
sin? Is it those who take their stand against them and sympathize
with those who commit wrong? No, indeed! Unless they repent, and
leave the work of Satan in oppressing those who have the burden of
the work and in holding up the hands of sinners in Zion, they will
never receive the mark of God’s sealing approval. They will fall in
the general destruction of the wicked, represented by the work of the
five men bearing slaughter weapons. Mark this point with care: Those
who receive the pure mark of truth, wrought in them by the power of
the Holy Ghost, represented by a mark by the man in linen, are those
“that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done” in the
church. Their love for purity and the honor and glory of God is such,
and they have so clear a view of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, that
they are represented as being in agony, even sighing and crying. Read
the ninth chapter of Ezekiel.
But the general slaughter of all those who do not thus see the wide
contrast between sin and righteousness, and do not feel as those do
who stand in the counsel of God and receive the mark, is described in