3-4 The King of the Heavens, the God of the Church says to you: change your ways and I will let you remain in your place. Do not believe what some church leaders say: this is the house of the Lord, this is the house of the Lord, this is the house of the Lord!
5 If you truly change your ways, if you truly treat one another with justice, if you do not oppress the migrants, the single mothers, the poor, the marginalised, or commit violence in word or deed, and if you do not chase after idols like fame, fortune, force or fear, I will let you remain where you are Church, secure, in peace, prospering, where I gave your forefathers.
9 Will you steal, exploit, cheat, hurt or harbour anger and bitterness against others, lie, chase after idols of the world, and come and stand in your churches which are called in my name and say “We are saved!” only to go on doing these utterly detestable things? Have your churches become gathering places of evildoers?
18 The children study, the fathers slog, the women strive, to make offerings to the idols of the world, to provoke me to anger. Is it I whom they provoke? Is it not themselves, to their own shame?
23 But listen to this world I gave to them: obey my word, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in the all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you. But they did not obey or lean forward to listen, but walked in their own wisdom and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward.
34 And I will silence in your churches the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegrooms and the voice of the bride, for your churches shall become wastelands.
– the Word of the Lord to the Church from Jeremiah 7 (2016).