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Royalty and Ruin
call to repentance, a divine intervention to save them from taking
the fatal step beyond the boundary of Heaven’s forgiveness.
Israel’s apostasy was an evil more dreadful than all the horrors
of famine. God was trying to help His people recover their lost
faith, and He had to bring great affliction on them. “‘Do I have any
pleasure at all that the wicked should die?’ says the Lord God, ‘and
not that he should turn from his ways and live?’” “‘I have no pleasure
in the death of one who dies,’ says the Lord God. ‘Therefore turn
and live!’”
Ezekiel 18:23, 32
.
God had sent messengers to Israel, with appeals to return to their
loyalty. But they had only become angry with the messengers, and
now they regarded the prophet Elijah with intense hatred. If only
he would fall into their hands, gladly they would deliver him to
Jezebel—as if by silencing his voice they could prevent his words
from being fulfilled!
For stricken Israel there was only one remedy—turning away
from the sins that had brought upon them the Almighty’s correcting
hand. God had given them the assurance, “When I shut up heaven
and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or
send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by
My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and
turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will
forgive their sin and heal their land.”
2 Chronicles 7:13, 14
. To bring
about this blessed result, God continued to withhold the dew and the
rain until a thorough reformation would take place.
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