How is the faithful city become a harlot! The charity life cycle of the Church from dawn to night

 

Isaiah 1:21 - King James Version (KJV) <21> How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.

This is the basic coatrack on which all of the prophecies are hung like so many hats in their appropriate places. This is the Full and Empty of the Lord's Churches, which rise and fall in a predictable cycle akin to the course of daylight or the change in seasons. Hence does the Word frequently refer to the rise and degeneration of the charity in the Church using imagery of day to night and spring to winter.

As to this charity or love "upon which the law and prophets hang" (Matthew 22:40), charity is doing good because it is good to do so, and telling the truth because it is true, while doing the work of one's calling sincerely, faithfully and well in a spirit of service towards God and the neighbour. But when people no longer have charity, what they do instead is called  "murder", "theft", "following after a reward", etc.

Isaiah 1:23 - King James Version (KJV) <23> Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.

In the parable of 5 wise and 5 foolish virgins, the 5 wise had oil in their lamps and the 5 foolish did not. Those with oil in the lamps had charity in their hearts and charity in their hands. Those without oil in their lamps were those without charity, love, in their hearts; being that love which God actually wants:

Matthew 22:36-40 - King James Version (KJV) <36> Master, which is the great commandment in the law? <37> Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. <38> This is the first and great commandment. <39> And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. <40> On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Notice that "all the law and the prophets" hang on these two types of love, obeying God's commandments and serving the neighbour. The prophecies are almost entirely the working out of every implication of obeying or disobeying the greatest commandments in the law, the Lord, and being born again or not; and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which occurs when the fuel gauge nears empty on our diagram, symbolically represents the breakage of both these commandments by their murder both of God and Man simultaneously. This is otherwise known as "hurting (some versions say touching) the oil and the wine" here:

Revelation 6:6 - King James Version (KJV) <6> And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

This is important! This oil and wine are the conjunction of righteousness and understanding in the heart and practice of a believer which synchronise him or her with God. When this conjunction of oil and wine (also bread and wine, also bread and water depending on context) is in its strength, during the "faithful city" phase of each Church's trajectory towards Babylon, then you hear the joyous voices of the bride and bridegroom.

But when this conjunction between righteousness and understanding breaks down, then instead of jollity and the sound of the millstone heard there is instead the sound of bride and bridegroom heard no longer and the millstone not heard. This final state of ruin and desolation is the end point of the Jewish Church and the Christian Church, whose respective ruins are depicted in Old Testament and New Testament prophecy.

The beginning of a Church may be likened to a new bottle within which is new wine: a new vehicle for the practice of charity married to full understanding of what charity constitutes. The Lord did not reform Judaism but made a new religion, Christianity. He Himself explains the reasons which might guide such a choice to its fruition:

Mark 2:21 - King James Version (KJV) <21> No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse. <22> And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles.

By the way, that is why Jesus refers to the children of the bridegroom in the verses immediately preceding this parable:

Mark 2:19-20 - King James Version (KJV) <19> And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. <20> But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

Here, Jesus uses the bridegroom taken away from them to signify the voice of the bride and bridegroom being heard no longer as explained to you above, as disjunction. And of course the time when the bridegroom is actually with them is when the joyous sound of the bride and bridegroom is heard: conjunction.

Psalm 119:126 - King James Version (KJV) <126> It is time for thee, Lord, to work: for they have made void thy law.

That's that red bit there on our fuel gauge, when there is no more faith on Earth and when they render the commandments of God of none effect; that is, specifically the greatest commandments of the law; that is, specifically the moment when there is no charity in the Church and consequently no concomitant understanding. Consequently, the oil and wine are "hurt" and there is disjunction as well as annulment of a covenant: which the Word represents as desolation and owls, satyrs and djinn, among so many other ways of saying that the charity is dying now is dead in the Church. The old bottle and old wine are dead. Long live the mountain that fills the whole Earth.