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The waters of Shiloah are taken to be those which came down from the Spring of the Virgin to the Pool and moved on to the Kidron. They are symbolic of peace, and gentleness and essential supply, quietness and confidence, as in Isaiah 30:15.

It is conspicuously noteworthy that WHEN the Lord speaks of those waters of Shiloah which "flow softly" in Isaiah 8, and again of the fact that "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength" in Isaiah 30:15, two lovely and desirable ingredients, things to be found and not lost, THEN Israel in both cases is saying NO! with no thank you.

What is the point of telling me about ancient Israel and what it did NOT do! someone may expostulate. Tell me about something which I should do, and I might listen.

Listen then. What was done at that former time, in terms of a nation, towards the God of creation, of covenant, of sacrifice and of pardon, of peace and of joy in life, because when HE is back of it, it IS joyful, is what may be done by any personal being on this earth right now.

Again, you may say, What is the good of telling me about what they did, when it was to negate, as you have surely just said, the thing in view, to be desired ?

Firstly, this is not the main focus (like a tyre with a hole in it, may require attention, but is not the main focus for the trip). Secondly, if you are caught, spoiled, misused, broken or spoilt (like the tyre), you need to be fixed; and if you disdain fixing, then you are merely exercising an option in the negative. THAT to be sure, is your affair; but it does have results which are neither necessary nor desirable. The tyre MUST be considered as it is, before we can look to the journey which requires it. One trusts the point is taken. What Israel refused, is what you have not taken. Focus on that: WHAT did it refuse ?

Since we are looking at what happened with a view to finding what is now to happen, and the better to understand just as medical students cut up corpses, not for love of the objects in their deceased state, but for love of the life which knowledge of corpses the better confers: then attention must be directed first to the negative. Love life ? then do not disdain a little time on the topic of cancer, if you have it.

This world has a spiritual cancer. It is not in need of knowing how to live with it, and die with it as it is so rapidly managing to do, but how to live without it. For that you need to be rid of it. For that you need to know where it is and what is its cure. It is worse than useless to ignore it.

It is unnecessary once more to rehearse this world's problems, and tragedies and curse (Romans 5:1-12, 8:17ff.), for this has been done before, and the daily news is full of it, though not under its right heading. The heart of man is mangled, and when it congratulates itself on its savvy, it is the more so. Pride comes before a fall, and what there is to be proud of - that is something difficult to find.

For my own part, I am intensely proud, but of nothing in this world. I am proud of Jesus Christ, and His peace is one of my possessions, His rest is another and His righteousness is a third. It is not that I am peculiarly holy or noble, but graciously granted gifts. One is that of HIS righteousness: I did not attain it, or qualify by merit (Ephesians 2). It was handed over (II Corinthians 5:17ff., Romans 5:17), gladly, necessarily; for without that, I simply could never be an inhabitant of heaven.

An inhabitant of heaven ? someone may snarl (people become shadowy and dark at times, feeling sadly cynical and clinically sad, being smitten with sin cf. SMR Ch. 3). Do I want heaven ? the interlocutor may exclaim.

If you do not, then forget it! is the reply. Your heart is earthy and set on the present, unwisely dispensing with life. SO be it. It is sad.

But ponder it further. Is this your heart's desire ? A little longer to be deluded on this earth ? It is no massif of marvel that you seek, but if you like anaesthesia (I personally detest it, having been brought up on odious things like chloroform with the option of ether, later on), that is for you. You DO wake up in the end, you know.

ALL I WANT, says one, is a bit of peace and security. But what peace is in this world, where islands are overflown, and become militant in their keyed up occupants, and mad mangles are available in the skies, spreading disaster, and dictators constantly seek to fulfil their dreams ? And what security is there in a life which is ready to stop at any moment ?

Indeed, life IS an issue because is susceptible to peace and war, marvels and mangles, anaesthesia and spirited liveliness, cancer of mind, spirit and body, and health. It is unwise to pre-empt for pollution.

In the case of Isaiah 8, there was on the one hand, the waters of Shiloah, the natural, the near, the gentle, the quiet, the fruitful, the known, and on the other, there were "the waters of the River, strong and mighty". This in context (which moves to Assyria) is the Euphrates, symbolic of imperial passion, horrendous cruelty, a sense of mandate and mockery of what does not have power. You find it treated in Nahum! It is the old-time Hitler complex, the I AM idea, or MY RACE IS, or MY WORLD IS, sort of concept. WE will do this and that and achieve mighty things, being knowledgeable and realistic and down to earth! That is the concept which is being contrasted with the quietness and confidence and rest in the Lord.

Is there, then, some value in this, doing racial or political wheelies for ever and ever, as if permanently adolescent, and in that class of people, permanently mentally maimed!

But Israel would not listen. Some of course did so, and what wonderful spirits some of them came to have, as like Simeon, they waited on the Lord. You can just see that venerable old man, much in the Temple, often in prayer, seeing the offer of the coming Messiah, set in vision of God and delighted in appetite for the glory to come, led by the Lord to find Jesus, the Saviour to be sent, at last come, and to hold Him in his arms! (Luke 2:25-35). Let us look at him, since we want something more positive, even at this stage.

Note that it was not just for Israel, that this offer came; it was to the other nations as well, as Isaiah was careful to make clear, and Simeon after him. The presentation of Isaiah is immense on this theme and is covered in many Chapters in this site^*1.The Self-Sacrificing Saviour, victim in swallowing up the guilt of sin, in love SENT by His Father in heaven, with whom He had always been as His personal Expression, Word (cf. Hebrews 1, John 8:58, Isaiah 40:10), in love responding (as in Psalm 40), despite the heavy burden, which was almost enough to split His earthly soul, when incarnate, into two (Hebrews 5:7, Luke 22:39ff.)

Why did it seem like this ? It was because He became very heavy at the immediate prospect, seeking any other way, but finding none, met it all with that lovely grace of spirit and wonder of life which has gripped the world, so that many have received Him for millenia. At the payment prospect to savage His soul, He was heavy, the night before in this vast prayer time, burdened even to death, for sin separates from God (Isaiah 59:1-2); and this was the prelude to the performance of the passion to clear the books for man, meet justice, bring peace instead of deserved divine wrath and heaven instead of hell: but on ONE condition.

What then is that one, since we wish to be positive as much as possible, and much is possible ?

Given a prescription, you can feel confident, and leave it in the drawer in case you ever feel you must, that there is no other option. Again, you may take it to the chemist, and have it made up, and then put that in a drawer until you must take it, finding you have no other option. Again, you may take it in your hand, and inspect it, re-read the dangers and difficulties, sum it up and not take it, hoping against hope, and having concerns about the medicine.

None of this does the slightest good, and is a psychological excursion instead of a taking possession and imbibing.

It IS necessary to possess your possessions, and while it is only in the most remote sense that anyone outside the kingdom of heaven, the salvation of Jesus Christ, can 'possess' these things, yet they ARE at hand, for God is nearer than hands and feet, when the will does not place and posit its carnal impasse, whether with gleeful gliding or snarling snapping or the implements of the devious dealings of man. In I Timothy 4:10, we learn that God is the Saviour of all men, especially of those who believe.

Now to be sure, there is a big difference in the 'all' situation and the 'especially' one. Thus Paul spoke sharply to one group, who did not come to the Lord, telling them that since they deemed themselves unworthy of eternal life, he would go to the Gentiles with the Gospel (Acts 13:46), and his first Chapter of II Thessalonians makes an atomic fire seem bland by comparison, when the Lord is exposing impenitent man to the fury of his follies, after so long a time.

God has offered salvation to Jew and to Gentile. Many Jews formed the first Christian Church, and the apostles were both Jews (in race) and Christians (in grace). The nation of Israel rejected Christ and the nations of this earth, virtually without exception (and that partly a matter of form) have done the same. The squalling squabbles and sinister passions, for money, land, superiority, pre-eminence, glory, gain, make of this world a pan on the gas, for frying, while the cook looks longingly at what is to be put in it, forgetting that the recipe calls for himself.

Imagine now someone in that situation, with the recipe calling for himself, and cooking industriously as if deprived selectively of sight, so that he can see the other ingredients, but quite literally, forgets himself. He takes no steps to hide, to escape. He is bound to the recipe by his charter, and there is no escape. You would expect he would look carefully for escape, rather than dwelling, drooling on the imagined food; and if there is to be food, it is not such as he could eat, since by then he would be physically deleted, and available for some other fangs.

"HOW shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation!" - we read in Hebrews 2.

God promised blessing to mankind back in Abraham's day (Genesis 12; 22:16-17). "In your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed," He guaranteed, swearing to it. God's word is invariable, in the first place, for He is sure; and in the second it was further confirmed, this being man's only hope.

We who do not trust in our world or our selves or our own thoughts, on finding the Lord, do not put the offer in a drawer, or hold it in the hand. We flee for refuge, being spiritual refugees, not to some island, but in heart and in spirit and in mind, we turn to our Creator-Redeemer, who died for us, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God (II Peter 3:18). It IS very consoling, for it is good not to find that in the execution of the end of history, our own lives are as good as executed, without the solace of death, being caught in justice and judgment. I for one, have no desire for that. It is good that being born a sinner, I have found the Saviour, or rather He has found me!

It is this which fires the heart, being testimony of better things than facing fire, that is, impervious testing, imperial rejection and the fuel of folly, in rejecting it, to add to its burning.

It is good to be loved, without some desire for gain. It is far better to be loved by God in just this way, for we read in Romans 5, this: "... while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." That is, like the sacrifices of Israel at the Temple, the death is FOR (on behalf of ) ALL, but takes effect only where it, being received, like medicine, is DISPENSED. The heart of GOD is for all; but the MODE of mercy is for those who receive it; and the METHOD of mercy is through the death in abhorrence as an alleged criminal, of the Saviour, a picture of our deserts and of His diagnosis. It is not, to be more positive again, as if He in jaunty or dauntless precision and off-hand determination, like some Communist dictator, or puerile bounder seizing power as with some of the Rulers in Europe in past days, slams down the judicial fist. It is not as if capricious, wilful, He feels somewhat quirkish and says, Condemn them! Remove this refuse from the earth!

On the contrary, while the diagnosis is yet more lethal, in that it is true, the cure is in the hand of the Judge, Jesus Christ, the Just One who was put to death according to the very plan of God, who used the hatred and envy of sinners to enact HIS operation, on HIMSELF, when HE took the place in Christ, incarnate as Jesus, and bore sin for all whose sins are not proudly kept to themselves (John 8:24).

Now note this further, that those who have NOT in some way, been confronted with His words and deeds, DO have some excuse, not for the sin, but for the working of mercy; but those who HAVE BEEN, have not. His love is such that HE would have all, but would NOT have ANY who do not desire Him. He has known who these are from before time in our sense, even was (Ephesians 1:4).This, however, is not as if to reject any in advance of His knowing them, or to accept any for what they do, for this is expressly excluded (Titus 2-3). Indeed, as to His own, He knew them BEFORE OUR TIME EXISTED.

Divine predestination is to ensure the perfection of the divine attainment in the atonement, which brings home all who are His. It is marvellous: you do not need to say in your mind, I bet He finds a way to ignore me! as some negative thinkers may prefer to imagine. On the contrary, it would be far more reasonable for some watching angel to say of any man, if that angel were given to betting, which is of course not the case: I bet this fellow will find some way not to take the prescription, even though it is already made up with the blood of Christ!

This means, when it IS taken, that His death avails in spiritual substitution for your worst errors.

It does NOT mean that it invades your mouth and harasses your gullet, forcing the salvation on you!

THAT is the sense in which the salvation is already for you; and it is also the sense in which, should you reject it, it has no bearing on your outcome. What would you ? to become a Nanny-man, or parallel woman, with no heart, supervised in some sickness centre for the soul ?

You have only one barrier, and it is your self. Certainly, the devil would like more companionship, but you have no need to be indulgent to his vices and devices. It comes back to your heart.

Now, you may say, Alas, for the waters of Shiloah, which run softly, my heart is more the Euphrates, strong and more violent! A good point well made. However, you are not expected to engage in your own rebirth. What you are expected to do is to CALL on the name of the Lord, and to ENTER the door to the kingdom of heaven, which is Jesus Christ Himself, sacrificed and now risen, His very body the trophy of divine power, His life eternal. You say, But what if I were not predestinated for this ?

Nonsense! Predestination does not even come into it, at this level (Romans 8:29ff.). It is FOREKNOWLEDGE on which it waits. It seals; but WHAT it seals is what is foreknown.

You say, Well, I was not there, so perhaps, since it's all over, I need give it not thought. What will be, will be.

If you deem yourself unworthy of eternal life, that is, indeed, your option. Remember, however, we were discussing the outcome, and for that the income is your CALL.

It matters entirely, since WHAT God has foreknown includes ANYTHING you now do. How else could He foreknow!

But it does not depend on my works, is that not so ? Would it not be a 'work' if I called upon Him, now ?

It would be a work, indeed, but a work of God! (John 6:29). It is for ourselves, NOT OF WORKS (Ephesians 2), but it is equally BY HIS WORKS, that we come to believe; yet this is not so that our own wills are irrelevant (quite the contrary, John 3:19), but in His encompassing love (John 3:16, Colossians 1:19ff.), HE is not willing that any should perish (II Peter 3:9), and that in the context of two entities, GOD on the one hand, and heaven and earth on the other. If then it is a work of God, and it is not a work of man, and He knows the heart, not dwelling on its merits and achievements, attainments, but how it is set before Him, who has known it before time was and before therefore sin ever entered, then what ?

Then it is well to realise that what you do now is what in His face, truly is responsible. HE will not let you be confused, but will enable what HE knows is not a matter of divine force, but of actual responsible preference. He activates truth, intimates results, penetrates obstruction, discerns all.

What then ? DO YOU want this grace ? No, then no argument, You consign yourself to death, willingly, wilfully.

DO YOU WANT this grace, divine mercy, gift of eternal life, ? Then leaving God's affairs to Him, act, CALL on His name, accept His salvation, enter that door.

Then ? Then the waters, the natural, the close, the local, the proper, the quiet waters of Shiloah are for you, and you are led by the still waters as in Psalm 23.

But what of Haggai 2:6ff.. That tells us that there is One (who was then to come, and has now come these two thousand years!) who is the DESIRE OF THE NATIONS.

What! you may explode. Christ, the often predicted Messiah, called the DESIRE of the nations. How so!

It is in two senses that this is the case, and if there is with the positive announcement, a measure of irony,
so be it.

Have you ever desired a lake-side walk, in some retreat, and yet ignored it because of the PRESSURE OF THINGS ?

Good then you desired it, but did not take it. Competitors for your time, they won out in you.

Of course not; but your desire for money, or work, or success, or pleasure or whatever, this took precedence. This does not DELETE DESIRE, which could then come as a pang for lost opportunity, from time to time, when you have time, to consider your times, not just those of this world, but of your own own psyche, your soul!

The nations from time to time, and underneath in much of the time (not in the heady dreams of insatiable leaders, but in the populace), want peace, want even brotherly love. You object ?

Consider then World War I. How many times, as these young men were so close, even within sight at times in the trenches, who were butchering and carving and hurling hellish missiles (this does not mean that defence is wrong but that the war might have been avoided) at each other, did they not have other feelings, and thoughts and desires.

They often did. Thus they might exchange on occasion, this or that food for variety, or have various forms of muted fellowship, or have extreme distaste and almost unbearable loathing for what they were doing, and wish they could instead consort with other young people in pleasanter ways, with kindly relationships, and mutual respect for co-ordination. But they were driven differently!

The adulterer may at times reflect on his REAL desire, as even in some cases, he or she might muse, for sound marriage, good relationships with the wife and children, paternal or maternal fidelity; but for all that, engage in preposterous actions, being driven by desire, boredom, self-expression or some other silly substitute for reality. Express yourself ? WHAT self ? The burning stub of a cigarette, penetrating your thumb, while yet you hold it as if it were some treasure ? It is not more excellent in wisdom than is that!

Christ is the desire of the nations, His peace, justice, equity, loving regard, kindly realism, power to purge, discipline of what pollutes, self-restraint in not losing His temper and so forth. They often formulate things (without Him, normally) which include such things, like a child who INSISTS on having sweets without brushing his teeth for days, instead of a delicious apple. Unreason propels him, desire snatches his attention, and wisdom is far from him.

No wonder the child is shaken; but more literally, God advises us in this very passage of Haggai, that He is going to shake the heavens and the earth, and confirms this in Hebrews 12:25-28. He is going to shake the things that can be shaken, so that the things which CANNOT be SHAKEN may remain. It is flake out or shake out. Things happen. God acts: "for our God is a consuming fire," as Hebrews 12:29 reminds us. Freedom is a glorious thing, background required for love; but when it is set on fire, and lust takes over, then the gear involved sooner or later, will burn. It is changed by yielding, and without remedy, is no more what it was, like chaff. It is changed from the day it was involved with ... wheat (cf. Matthew 3:12).

Come out of her! That is found in Revelation 18:4-9, and before we proceed, let us look at it.

As seen in SMR pp. 946, the city concerned is Rome (cf. Revelation 17:9), the imperial power of that day, whose empire had outcomes which have been traced above, as predicted by Daniel, in our Ch. 3. The time is that impending on the end, as in Revelation 18 (more on Rome's fires) and Revelation 19 (the claim of Christ to restore the kingdoms of this world to God, to Himself as in Revelation 11:15). It is near the time, then, when

"The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ,
and He shall reign forever and ever!"

WHY should the Lord's people leave this finale of Babylon's fame (that is, the great whore as Revelation 17:1) ? It is because this is a book statedly of things to come, and what is to come, as Daniel pointed out (Ch. 3 above), is this that the last imperial power set in spiritual significance before Christ returns is the Roman one, which went on from Christ's time on this earth, as traced in Ch. 3, in varying ways, being described as partly strong and partly fragile, to the time of Napoleon, flowering again in Hitler, and having had many subsidiary kingdoms, empires even, such as those of Portugal, Spain, France, Germany (all part of Europe), and lastly and somewhat more blessedly because of its partial association with the Bible, that of Great Britain.

Europe has flowered and failed in the Empire of Rome at the first, in the Holy Roman Empire, and many other forms till now it is found in the EU.

It is however specifically the founding Empire which gives the bond of meaning, and that is of Rome; and it is accordingly, as we come to Revelation 17, to be found that this is still the meaning for this last phase, the city of the seven hills. It has not lost its touch, whether in the days of the papacy, with here its headquarters, in the Inquisition, suffered by Rome, and leading to perhaps many millions of sufferers, in various sub-empires, or in the EU. The mystery Babylon of Revelation 17 has also been explained from the time of the SMR (pp. 729ff.), Babylon being identified as Rome.

The spirit of that empire being seen as the 'mystery Babylon' of Revelation 17, with Rome all but the ending of the whole matter, before the nations dispense at last with her imperial parasitism, and she is removed from being on the back of the beast as 'its lady': Rome, then, is replaced in the final furore by the spirit of rebellion with even less limits (cf. SMR pp. 911ff.). Accordingly, the Roman format^*3, now seen in a number of 'kings', without the burden of the unlovely lady, unleashes its final power, for a short time, when they have "one hour with the beast" (Revelation 17:12). Like many 'one hour' themes, it is disastrous, and the Lord, as in Revelation 19, rescues the earth from this incinerative display, but not without a burning of dross, in the fire of His coming (II Thessalonians 1).

This leads to the millenium as shown in Revelation 20, when at last, not in mere presentation, but in precipitation, the earth now is filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea, and the evil no more prosper, for the Lord "shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth", so that "with righteousness He shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth," a thing monstrous even to conceive, at the present time!

But as the angel told Mary at the time of the incarnation of the everlasting God, even through a womb, With God nothing shall be impossible", (Luke 1:37).

It is not, indeed, the difficulty of the good, but the enormity of the evil which astounds; but then, freedom has its lusts, and love has its restraint, and in the end, all is tried, tested and resolved, and the free salvation which was given in grace, is received; and as to God, HE is not deceived.

Before, however, this which precedes the new heavens and the new earth (Revelation 20, II Peter 3), there is NOW, the present time. What does the Lord say ? It is this, relative to Rome, in its two faces, the imperial and the ecclesiastical, "MY PEOPLE COME OUT OF HER!"

Now here the importance of realising the depth of the MYSTERY BABYLON counts very much indeed. It is not only from the famous religion of Rome, Roman Catholicism, that His people are to COME OUT! as He cries, as indeed He did to Lot's wife. It is from the entire surrounding mystery of it, namely the court of the harlot, as Revelation calls her, from the similar bodies of a similar mind for variation from, addition to, subtraction or violence towards the word of God, to His people, to His direction, HIS pre-eminence. This is biblically and actually such that with Him, there can be NO man whatsoever in a position of ANY primacy, as if elevated above the brethren with any suggestion of being master. This is the case, Christ indicated, since ONE is your master, teacher, ONE is your Father, and NO OTHER. Hence you do not even call any man on earth, in the spiritual sense, 'father'. That is the law of God.

This principle is what Jesus Christ stated, as seen in Matthew 23:8-10. As He moreover said, covering male and female alike, WHOEVER DOES THE WILL OF GOD, this is His brother and mother (Matthew 12:48-50). There is no regality on earth or in heaven which is other than that of the Trinity on the one hand, as Lord, and no queen or criterion on the other, who bears power of remission or authority (cf. I Timothy 2:5). In the manner and mode of mediators, you can search through every galaxy and grace, and find nothing between God and man; you can investigate cathedrals and works of philosophy, but nothing can appear. There is one, between God and man, to whom this role if provided, that of mediation. Any other is fraudulent; as any other master is fraudulent. It is an imposition, not by Mary, but by those who misuse her name; just as it is an imposition, not by Christ, but by those who misuse His name, to pretend to have the position of master, master-teacher or the like (cf. I John 2:27).

This, it of course applies to theologians and to philosophers, elders and would-be apostles, to all who exalt themselves (I Peter 5). IF it is giving a REASON for the faith as specifically authorised (I Peter 3:15) in word and by example (II Corinthians 10:5, I Corinthians 11:1), well; and it is merely providing the sense of what is written, with no addition or subtraction, what is either written or demonstrable from what is, beyond rational question, again well. If not, then out of her, be the offence in the specific Roman format or any other. It is all 'mystery Babylon', the continuation and proliferation of the spirit of Babylon, essentialised as we see, in Rome.

Now here the importance of realising the depth of the MYSTERY BABYLON counts very much indeed. It is not only from the famous religion of Rome, Roman Catholicism, that His people are to COME OUT! as He cries, as indeed He did to Lot's wife. It is from the entire surrounding mystery of it, namely the court of the harlot, as Revelation calls her, the similar bodies of a similar mind for variation from, addition to, subtraction or violence towards the word of God, His people, His direction, HIS pre-eminence with NO man whatsoever in a position of ANY primacy, since ONE if your master, teacher, ONE is your Father, and NO OTHER. This Jesus Christ stated, as seen in Matthew 23:8-10. As He moreover said, covering male and female alike, WHOEVER DOES THE WILL OF GOD, this is His brother and mother (Matthew 12:48-50).

There is one God, one Lord, one Master, one faith, and it is forbidden to add, subtract, meddle (II Corinthians 4) or otherwise ladle man's things into those of God (cf. also Proverbs 30:6, Revelation 22:18-19). HE as sovereign needs no priming. HE is His own counsellor, and only those who have been eternal in the heavens, never sinned, been born of a virgin, and bodily resurrected need apply for a post as another Mediator, director of mind for man to heed (Isaiah 40), as authoritative in person. As to those, since the only One of this sort is already in heaven, it is useless for those on earth to lay claim.

Worship therefore God alone, and nothing visible, or sinful, or that has ever known sin, nor heed the commands of any who is not God. In convenience, to be sure, arrangements may be made to enable the commands to be carried out (Church at this or that time, and such things), but the case is clear. There is no commanding authority (cf. I Peter 5), given to man, except to Christ. Administrators do not make rules; teachers do not instal commandments; directions are not found in some other authority. If it is not in the word of God, the Bible, only presumption, thing of Babylon, not now quite so mysterious, is its source, and judgment its result.

The revelation of the deep thing in a mystery, therefore, in mystery Babylon, is far from unclear, as were other 'mysteries' (e.g. Matthew 13:11); but it does bring depths to light, and themes to the understanding (cf. I Corinthians 2:9-13).

It is time to come out! Is it not like the voice to Lot (Genesis 19:12-14). "Get out, get out of this place!" they cried, in the face of imminent destruction coming to Sodom.
The case is not different today; for dwelling a little, leaving the prescription on the mantel-piece, dreaming a little, it leads on and on. Act therefore, and seek fellowship with the people of the Lord where HE is the only Master, HIS WORD, the Bible is the only authoritative book, all else being merely for help, not for addition or subtraction, not bound as it is. Avoid entanglements with Babylon in her many tentacular displays, like 200 foot octopus trailings, squelching through the oceans of life, waiting for the skin to seize.
Note the urgency with Lot. Observe how at that, his wife had been polluted irreparably, and was lost, looking back to Sodom as she was leaving it, EVEN AT THAT LATE DATE! and the follies which followed with Lot and his daughters, when they made him drunk.
The time to close with Christ set to return; it is near: and His word, and His lordship, and His salvation appeal like a lighthouse on a dark night, as you sail on the seas nearby, when you strike the rocks, and look find His rescue in His salvation which HE bought. Make haste therefore! Follow the light to the shore, in the small but crucial boat of faith.

The Jewish Temple had an inner sanctum called the Holy of Holies, or Very Holy, so that amid what was holy, this was as it were in a dimension above dimensions, the intense focus of it all. Here there was an altar on which blood sprinkled, on the Mercy Seat, indicated an admission of sin's guilt and the meeting of wrath and justice, by death. It was a symbolically substitutionary sacrificial death, in which life was given for life, the blood typifying life and being a convenient instrument for transfer, being take to the altar (cf. Leviticus 4, 17).

Each year the blood was taken into the Holy of Holy, separated from the rest of the Temple by a heavy, beautiful curtain. On the mercy seat it went, with the law actually below in the large box, or ark, and above, golden angels or cherubim with wings stretching to the limits of the temple, signifying that divine response to the message thus transferred for the people, in mercy.

In Hebrews 6:19, the concept is that not only is the blood behind the veil, as for the Day of Atonement in its yearly advent, but there was an anchor; and this, it was not in some inner part of the Temple merely, but in heaven, that is, in what the Holy of Holy symbolised. It is there steadfast and sure, and certain to hold.