Stage 1:
Previous announcements have outlined the
destruction that God will bring on the splinter “houses.” We originally
thought He would desolate the “houses” in two phases. It is now clear from Haggai—and this will be impossible to misunderstand when you see it—that there are three phases of destruction coming that are so complete they leave nothing remaining.
Referenced earlier, the first phase of punishment has been occurring for the last 21 years and is described in Haggai 1:6:
“You have sown much, and bring in little; you eat, but you have not
enough; you drink, but you are not filled with drink; you clothe you,
but there is none warm; and he that earns wages earns wages to put it
into a bag with holes.”
Haggai 2:16
is God recounting the same thing to the remnant—that they never got the
expected return on investment they hoped for over more than two
decades: “Since those days were, when one came to an heap of twenty
measures, there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for to draw
out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.” See the parallel!
Apparently Dave's stupid angry god has been punishing the true church for the last 1,900 years, because they have NEVER gotten it right!
Haggai 1:6
describes God’s long ongoing punishment on His people due to their
actions. When brethren and ministers began forming their own houses, God
cut them off from both His Holy Spirit and His blessings.
Their “works” never produced the expected return on investment because
they were cut off from these things. Verse 10
adds “Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew [blessings], and
the earth is stayed from her fruit [of the Holy Spirit].”
Dave is still pissed that the ministers in all the various COG's refuse to follow him.
This next phase is God intensifying His punishment—turning up the heat—in the face of the group’s continuing resistance to returning to His Church. What He brings to bear is SERIOUS. (We will see in a moment how serious.) Despite God bringing awful punishment on their houses, these ministers still did not repent and “turn to” God. Haggai 2:17 forms an instructive look-back to ministers who grew weak and confused for decades. God requires them to come to grips with how
their congregations and organizations fell into the horrible mess that
resulted. His warning is so that history will not repeat itself. Much is
at stake for these ministers in what is everyone’s last chance.
This is everyone's LAST chance? Really? How incredibly stupid that is. Dave's god is too impotent to do such a thing.
Mildew and storms will soon start devastating the various COG's:
God says in effect that He will bring to nothing the occupation, transactions, products and business of these “houses.” This describes the second phase
of punishment, when He begins breaking things up in the splinters with
what could be thought of as “plagues.” (Think of the period of parallel
with actions God had to use to bring Israel out of ancient Egypt.)
Little things start going wrong!
—contracts, actions, transactions, business, decisions, etc.—as God smites the remnant’s “labors” with what He calls blasting, mildew (fear) and hail. At some point in the future, thousands of brethren will begin wondering, “What is going on? What is wrong?”
Dave thinks his god is essentially going to scare the shit out of COG members:
God will send FEAR into these groups in an attempt to
WAKE THEM UP. The kinds of things God will do will leave people pale
with fear. GET THIS because conditions will eventually grow worse, then much worse. Think of it through the following analogy. God’s Church will be on an elevator going up, while the splinters are passing us on one going down.
Then Dave's god will have one final fit of fury directed at the splinters:
The word for “labor” here is different from the word for “labors” in Haggai 2:17. God is very careful with the words He uses. He tells us “every” one is “pure” (Prov. 30:5) and “purified seven times” (Psa. 12:6). “Labor” is a stronger word in Haggai 1:11,
and means “toil, your work, produce, property, your business, labor.”
In other words, God desolates EVERYTHING—not just actions, transactions
or little deeds. Haggai 1:11 is God’s third wave of punishment on the splinters. This is when God destroys EVERY element of the splinters. No wonder the people in verse 12 fear before God.
