Hezekiah began to reign when he was twenty-five years old and he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD.  In the very first year of his rule he gathered the priests of Judah and spoke to them, saying,

“Hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the LORD God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place. For our fathers have trespassed, and done that which was evil in the eyes of the LORD our God, and have forsaken him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the LORD, and turned their backs.” (2 Chronicles 29:5-6 KJV)

Now, let’s apply this situation to today.  Is not the Church of Jesus Christ a place very like Judah and the temple of God in the beginning days of Hezekiah?  Is not every abomination known to man regularly practiced in and condoned by large segments of the Church?  Do not men and women regularly come into the doors of their church on Saturday or Sunday to get their spiritual “shot in the arm” so they can go back into the world and live like the world all the next week?  I could list the many individual sins that the churches and her people engage in day after day and which they teach others to do, but you know what they are and I have spoken of them before on these pages.  My point is that Hezekiah inherited a kingdom exactly like the so-called Kingdom of God on earth today, a kingdom of sin and debauchery.

Now consider the seer’s vision of the Church in the last days.  She appears in Revelation 17 and 18 as the harlot who rides the beast.  We find “Mystery Babylon” written upon her brow because she partakes of all the sins and supposed grandeur of the world. When John saw her he was amazed.  He marveled.  Then the angel proceeded to explain the vision.  Then another angel appeared to pronounce judgment and after that a voice spoke from heaven saying,

Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. (Rev. 18:4-8)

Observe that her punishment includes being burned with fire.  Why?  Remember, God always judges according to his law.  This particular judgment comes pursuant to Leviticus 21:9.  This verse gives God’s ordained punishment for a harlot who is also the daughter of a priest.  Throughout Scripture God calls the Church by various names, including his “virgin daughter.”  The Church, therefore, is God’s daughter and is not God Himself a priest? God called the Church to exemplify Him in the earth and to lead people in worship of Him.  Yet, when the world looks at the Church all they see is their own likeness, not the holiness of God. They see the unclean, not the clean.

And, it is the fact that today’s church is unclean that leads us back to the Second Passover that we first see celebrated by King Hezekiah.