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The Wicked Slay Each Other, October 13
I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith
the Lord God: every man’s sword shall be against his brother.
Ezekiel 38:21
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The wicked are filled with regret, not because of their sinful neglect of
God and their fellow men, but because God has conquered. They lament
that the result is what it is; but they do not repent of their wickedness. They
would leave no means untried to conquer if they could....
Ministers and people see that they have not sustained the right relation
to God. They see that they have rebelled against the Author of all just and
righteous law. The setting aside of the divine precepts gave rise to thousands
of springs of evil, discord, hatred, iniquity, until the earth became one vast
field of strife, one sink of corruption. This is the view that now appears
to those who rejected truth and chose to cherish error. No language can
express the longing which the disobedient and disloyal feel for that which
they have lost forever—eternal life. Men whom the world has worshiped
for their talents and eloquence now see these things in their true light. They
realize what they have forfeited by transgression, and they fall at the feet of
those whose fidelity they have despised and derided, and confess that God
has loved them.
The people see that they have been deluded. They accuse one another
of having led them to destruction; but all unite in heaping their bitterest
condemnation upon the ministers. Unfaithful pastors have prophesied
smooth things; they have led their hearers to make void the law of God
and to persecute those who would keep it holy. Now, in their despair, these
teachers confess before the world their work of deception. The multitudes
are filled with fury. “We are lost!” they cry, “and you are the cause of our
ruin”; and they turn upon the false shepherds. The very ones that once
admired them most will pronounce the most dreadful curses upon them.
The very hands that once crowned them with laurels will be raised for their
destruction. The swords which were to slay God’s people are now employed
to destroy their enemies. Everywhere there is strife and bloodshed.
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