II Chronicles 36:17 Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged. He gave them all into his hand.18 And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princes, all these he brought to Babylon. 19 And they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels. 20 He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.
Israel had split, divided itself into two kingdoms. Eventually the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which left the People of God, faded away. But even those who remained did not remain faithful to God. When they fell, they did not just split, they scattered to Babylon, Egypt, and all over the empire. Though eventually some did return, they never fully recovered. Division, and the reasons we get there, should cause us to learn from History. Especially those of us who have been given a glimpse from heaven of how it all turns out - God bringing His people together to worship Him as worthy. Do our our petty "opinions" really matter in the light of eternity?
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