he tongue is the most dangeous appendage of a person. For all the good it can do, it can do just as much evil. You, who use your tongue for evil should think of all the good it can do. Like a sword, the tongue can cut the cord of oppression. The words of a holy tongue can call rains down from the heavens and fire out from the land.
What I am asking is, truly, are you using your tongue for holy things or just to suit yourself? When a brother or sister cries out, do you go on about speaking from what you know instead of what is right? Does your tongue belong to God, or does your tongue belong to your earthly fathers?
If I would measure in all ways I have fallen flat, I would cry out for mercy saying, "Lord, please take your measuring stick away from me!" Yet, my people go on about their ways, laying in sackcloth and bending like reeds, but showing no true repentence. They hold no concept for what they've done. They are convinced in their own ways while heeping their sins upon those already burdened by the yoke of oppression.
Which of you has not oppressed the innocent? Which of you does not go about slanderous speech in the face of the messenger from the Lord? Who can stand up to the purity of the Lord?
I am calling out your haughtines! Those of my people who weild their swords saying, "I can see, I can see!" and commit themselves to circumsizing the innocent. These people say, "the Lord's Day has already come for me!" But they are blind because they strike down those who wait patiently for the Lord; in dust and rubble, they wait for the heir of the throne to call them to rise. Their actions testify that the Lord's Day has not come for them.
So the Lord says, "When I come, you will not see me. I will not answer your questions. I will not hand you water. I will not break your chains. My mercy will miss you. I will say nothing to you. I will pass over you and your Day of the Lord will be gone in the batting of an eyelash. Then, you will cry out, 'Lord, Lord!' But I will not return."
Yet more of my people grovel as though their words are meaningless. They hide behind their abbhorent philosophies that bind their tongues to their earthly fathers. They say to the oppressed, "Follow us, follow us! To the land of our fathers!" And the oppressed, weary for a drink of water, follow. They take the oppressed to their own houses, filled with lavish decorum of their own acheivements. There the oppressed are further tortured and ridiculed.
So the Lord lays a curse on their tongues saying, "No more shall your tongues do this. They shall be worthless in my sight. I shall break every bond you make. No words you say shall hold weight. When you call to an end of your famine, no rain shall come and you will go hungry. When you call out for me and your enemies surround you, I shall send no fire and they will devour you."
More of you scheme and are devils for your own gain. You are like vampire bats sucking at any thing with a bit of wet in it. You stalk the innocent like a jackel in the desert. You hunt and kill a rabbit that you may drink its blood. You get your fill and you do not even share what you kill, taking only for yourselves. All you are doing is seizing opportunity after opportunity.
So this is what the Lord says, "I am taking away your opportunity. You will hunt, but your jowels will catch air. You will look for food, but you will not find it. You will see your prey from afar, and you will run, but you will not catch it. For I have made your prey quicker than you. I will make it so that your body will waste away and you will hear the jackels laugh."
But now I call out to you Lord, "Surely I am not one of them! Lord, you have seen me. You have checked my heart and seen all that I have done. I am a weak, I am small. But you have lifted me up. It is you who took me out of the dung heap and you who washed me. You who clothed me. Check me Lord! You know what it is I have done. You know every intention of my heart, you have seen every place my feet have traveled."
"Yes I seen," says the Lord, "and that it why I have cut short your torment. When your enemies mock you, they are mocking me. They hated me before they hated you so they mock what they hate."
"I ask not more sacrifice from you, only that you come to me. Where you belong. Come at your own accord not at the calling of the jackel, crow or cricket. Come to me, for I am the knower of all things. I am the keeper of all things holy."
"I will call you to rest for a time where I will feed you. Do you remember when I fed your brother Elijah under the tree? Or when I gave your sister Hannah a son? I am not a capricious Lord, I love you with all my heart. Your enemies surround you because they hate me. They do not hate you for your own sake. For if they knew what I have created, they would not hate you. Because they do not know me, so they hate you, for you are the one I have created with by my own hand.
"And for the one that has laid a burden on your heart, I make you this promise: He has forgiven you for I have put the words in his mouth which bend to me. But he cannot be forgiven for I have given him over to the hated of his heart which blasphemed the Holy Spirit. Take this generous offering. Accept this mercy from the Lord.
"Accept this mercy into the Sabbath. When it comes time to fast, you will fast. Remember, it is I who has said, 'Any that attack you is not of me.' I am not a capricious Lord. Remember the rainbow I set before Noah when I promosed to never flood the earth again. This is what I have given to you upon my hilltop. Rest assured, none can escape my justice which is fair and uncompromising. For I have steadied my hand against this land and none shall over come it. No fortress wall can stand against me. The iron of the north cannot be overcome by the iron of the south. This is what I have promised."
So the Lord has said to me.