That counterpart is Christendom, with nearly a billion church members all around the globe. In the face of Christendom’s impending calamity, we may ask, Where, then, is the mercy of Jehovah God to be seen in operation? Our further consideration of Jehovah’s dealings with his prophet Hosea will make this clear.

God’s Mercy on Display at Har–Magedon

1, 2. (a) In whose marriage affairs did Jehovah dramatize his own? (b) How did Israel turn adulterous in the days of King Jeroboam I?

MARRIAGES between men and women have run into difficulties during the reign of sin and wickedness on earth. That is what happened to God’s marriage with the ancient nation of Israel.

² God dramatized his own marriage affairs in those of his prophet Hosea. At God’s command Hosea had married Gomer the daughter of Diblaim. This pictured Jehovah’s marriage to ancient Israel by means of the Mosaic Law covenant at Mount Sinai in 1513 B.C.E. After King Solomon, the son of David, died in 997 B.C.E., the long-married nation of Israel was split up into two sections. The two tribes of Judah and Benjamin stayed together under the kingdom of Judah, the other ten tribes under the kingdom of Israel. The latter’s first king was Jeroboam the son of Nebat of the tribe of Ephraim. Under this Jeroboam I the kingdom of Israel broke its marriage contract with Jehovah; it boycotted His worship at Jerusalem and set up its own national worship with idolatrous images, two golden calves, one at Dan and the other at Bethel. Thus, like the prophet Hosea’s wife Gomer, the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel turned adulterous.

3. What did Jehovah say to call Gomer’s second child, and why?

³ After Gomer bore to Hosea a legitimate son named Jezreel, how did Hosea’s marriage affairs go in illustration of Jehovah’s affairs with the twelve-tribe nation of Israel? Hosea proceeds to tell the story, saying: “And she proceeded to become pregnant another time and to give birth to a daughter. And He [that is, God] went on to say to him [that is, to Hosea]: ‘Call her name Lo-ruhamah, for I shall no more show mercy again to the house of Israel, because I shall positively take them [the Israelites] away. But to the house of Judah I shall show mercy, and I will save them by Jehovah their God; but I shall not save them [the Judeans] by a bow or by a sword or by war, by horses or by horsemen.’”​—Hos. 1:6, 7.

4. Whom did Gomer’s daughter have as her father, and against whom was her name prophetically directed?

⁴ In the above case, Hosea does not say that Gomer bore “to him” a daughter. So it is generally understood that this daughter who was called Lo-ruhamah was a ‘child of fornication.’ (Hos. 1:2) Such a committing of adultery by Hosea’s wife Gomer matched the course of affairs in the marriage relationship between Jehovah God and the nation of Israel. Of course, in Hosea’s affairs, the vital thing here