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#### Cause for Lamentation, Repentance, and Labor

{Since the Heavenly Trade Is the Best Trade…

Cause for Lamentation, Repentance, and Labor}

This calls for mourning over the great decays of this heavenly trade in the times and places in which we live. Loss of business is naturally resented as a bad thing, a troubling thing. People normally take hard times to heart when their investments are threatened or their earthly assets are lost. This is the case of most people today. All places are full of people’s complaints about their earthly affairs. There is a moth262 eating people’s labor and dealings, and it is easily seen and felt. The downcast looks and bearing of many people show that they feel the loss of earthly prosperity. They say that the times are hard, the nation’s commerce is slow, and similar things.263 But, alas! Where are the mourners of Zion?264 And who is afflicted in heart by the decay of godliness and the heavenly trade? Though there is nothing more visible and lamentable than the decline of [Bible-believing] Christianity, who lays it to heart? Who seriously takes to heart this important evil?265 Now, for the purpose of working toward a cure of this indifference and to awaken our hearts to a due appreciation of our evil situation, which is caused by the decay of godliness, I will:

1. Set forth some symptoms that are evidence that there is real and great decay of the heavenly trade in the time and place in which we live.

2. Show why this is cause for lamentation.

262moth: a clothes moth, an emblem of destruction in Ashwood’s time. See earlier footnote.

263As this editor works on Ashwood’s book, the COVID-19 virus has not only caused a fair amount of sickness and even death, but has created much fear, economic disruption, political turmoil, unemployment, bankruptcies, business failures, and loss of liberties. Yet, in any generation, Ashwood’s description of business conditions will be familiar to all but the youngest readers. Such times are experienced by everyone everywhere at some times in their lives. Some hard times are hard, and other hard times are really hard, especially when one personally endures loss, prolonged unemployment, and so on. “That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 NKJV). Such fluctuations are caused by both normal business cycles and changes in major fundamental conditions, such as war, conquest, trade disputes, the Industrial Revolution, the present ongoing Information Revolution, and so on. These are all in God’s regular providence, and sometimes in judgment and wrath.

264Zion (or Sion): literally, Mount Zion on which the Old Testament Temple was situated, but used throughout the Bible as a metaphor for God’s people, whether Old Testament Israel or the New Testament visible Church. It can refer to God’s people on earth, in Heaven, or both.

265Like economic cycles, there can be cycles in the spiritual state of a people group, such as a nation. Such cycles may be years long or span several generations. These may be clearly seen in the history of Old Testament Israel, particularly in the writings of the prophets.

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