“Son of man, the house of Israel has become waste metal to Me; all of them are bronze, tin, iron, and lead in the smelting furnace; they are the waste metal of silver. Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: ‘Because all of you have become waste metal, therefore, behold, I am going to gather you into the midst of Jerusalem. As they gather silver, bronze, iron, lead, and tin into the smelting furnace to blow fire on it in order to melt it, so I will gather you in My anger and in My wrath, and I will place you there and melt you. And I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of My wrath, and you will be melted in the midst of it. As silver is melted in the furnace, so you will be melted in the midst of it; and you will know that I, the Lord, have poured out My wrath on you.’” (v.18-22)

The words of the LORD are pure words; Like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, filtered seven times. (Psalm 12:6)

God’s wrath is poured onto both the righteous and the wicked. The righteous are purified like silver is purified because all the dungs (fame, wealth, worldly knowledge, etc.) we are proud of will be burned but the knowledge of God will remain pure as Christ is pure. For the wicked, there will be nothing remaining because they are not united with Christ through the Holy Spirit. Saints are saved by God’s grace. God’s wrath is, first and foremost, against false Christians who say that they believe in God and yet, seek after idols and abominable practices.

There is a conspiracy of her prophets in her midst like a roaring lion tearing the prey. They have devoured lives; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows in the midst of her. Her priests have done violence to My Law and have profaned My holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, and they have not taught the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they have closed their eyes from My Sabbaths, and I am defiled among them. Her leaders within her are like wolves tearing the prey, by shedding blood and destroying lives in order to make dishonest profit. And her prophets have coated with whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, ‘This is what the Lord God says,’ when the Lord has not spoken. The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery, and they have oppressed the poor and needy, and have oppressed the stranger without justice. I searched for a man among them who would build up a wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one. (v.35-30)

This prophesy reminds me of Sodom and Gomorrah. God made His plan of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah known to Abraham. Abraham was worried that God would destroy both the righteous and the wicked together. Abraham’s cousin Lot was living there.

Far be it from You to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly? (Genesis 18:25)

Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak only this once: suppose ten are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.” (Genesis 18:32)

The Book of Revelation also mentions of Sodom where the death of the two witnesses are mentioned.

And their dead bodies will lie on the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. (Revelation 11:8)

In Sodom and Gomorrah, the situations were not what Abraham hoped for. Indeed, God would not have destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah if there were ten righteous people living there. But the reality is that the evil people do not let the righteous live among them.

But they said, “Get out of the way!” They also said, “This one came in as a foreigner, and already he is acting like a judge; now we will treat you worse than them!” So they pressed hard against Lot and moved forward to break the door. (Genesis 19:9)

The only way to survive in Sodom and Gomorrah (and Egypt) is to become like the wicked. Therefore, false Christians often become worse sinners than the unbelievers because they try to save their lives by becoming like them.

Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever strives to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will keep it. (Luke 17:32)

“Now when the unclean spirit comes out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they come in and live there; and the last condition of that person becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.” (Matthew 12:43-45)

On the outside, these false Christians may appear to live a pious life and dedicate themselves to church activities and helping the poor. But they deny their Master who bought them (2 Pet 2:1). They deny Sola Gratia. They deny what the Bible truly teaches. Many Christians feel afraid of leaving their church because they think their comfortable life will end. They do not know that the adulterous church does not have God’s authority of saving people. The comfort they feel is not true comfort. Depart from the adulterous church and escape for your life. Yet, God knows that you will hesitate. God saves His chosen people by grace.

Then the two men said to Lot, “Whom else do you have here? A son-in-law and your sons and daughters, and whomever you have in the city, bring them out of the place; for we are about to destroy this place, because their outcry has become so great before the LORD that the LORD has sent us to destroy it.” So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, “Up, get out of this place, for the LORD is destroying the city.” But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be joking. When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.”  But he hesitated. So the men grasped his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his two daughters, because the compassion of the LORD was upon him; and they brought him out and put him outside the city. When they had brought them outside, one said, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the surrounding area; escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away.” (Genesis 19:12-17)

Abraham was a shadow of Christ. And Lot was saved not because of his own righteousness but because of Abraham. We are saved because of Christ. We must not forget our Lord who has saved us by grace. Denying Sola Gratia is denying our Lord.

So it came about, when God destroyed the cities of the surrounding area, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the destruction, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived. (Genesis 19:29)

Keep praying and reading the Bible so that you would not resist God when He tells you to leave your church.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, held for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example of what is coming for the ungodly; and if He rescued righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the perverted conduct of unscrupulous people (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from a trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt passion, and despise authority. Reckless, self-centered, they speak abusively of angelic majesties without trembling, whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a demeaning judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, using abusive speech where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions as they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having hearts trained in greed, accursed children; abandoning the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the reward of unrighteousness; but he received a rebuke for his own offense, for a mute donkey, speaking with a human voice, restrained the insanity of the prophet. (2 Peter 2:4-16)

I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive any of her plagues; (Revelation 18:4)