He was calling them sinners and covenant-breakers, guilty of pride, covetousness, contention, lying, stealing, moral uncleanness--and launching upon them the curse of Israel's God unless they should repent.
"It has been told you again and again," he thundered, "that if you wish to be great in the Kingdom of God you must be good.

It has been told you many times, and now I burn the words once more into the bones of your soul, that in this kingdom which the great Elohim has again set up on earth, no man, no woman, can become great without being good, without being true to his integrity, faithful to his trust, full of charity and good works.
"Hear it now: if you do not order your lives to do all the good you can, if you are false to one trust, you shall be stripped naked before Jehovah of all your anticipations of greatness.

And you have failed in your work; you have been false to your trust; you have been lax and wicked, and you have temporised, nay, affiliated with Gentiles.

I have asked myself if this, after all, may not have been the chief cause of God's present wrath upon us.

The flesh is weak.