In Jeremiah, chapter seven, verse twelve, “But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.” Shiloh, about eighteen miles north of Jerusalem, housed the tabernacle during the time of the judges, as in Joshua eighteen, verse one. Jeremiah maintains that Shiloh was destroyed because of the sins of the people, as in verse fourteen, and chapter twenty-six, verse six, respectively. The same fate awaited Jerusalem and its temple if the people did not change their ways.
The history showed that a Temple dedicated to Jehovah could not be desecrated with impunity. Shiloh had been chosen as the centre of worship for the Israelites after the conquest of Canaan. And was reverenced as such through the whole period of the Judges. It had not, however, been a centre of light and purity. It had been defiled by wild dances of a half-idolatrous character; by deeds of shameless violence, as in Judges twenty-one, verses nineteen through twenty-one, and by the sins of the sons of Eli, as in First Samuel two, verse twenty-two.
People of God forgot that like sins bring about like punishments, and were startled when they heard that as terrible a doom was impending over the Temple of which they boasted. Today, there are churches like Shiloh. They have leaders who do not follow the Word of God properly and create their own way of life. In Revelation three, verse sixteen, “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” Believers must understand that God will not tolerate sin, nor those who live the way the world does: Either all in with God or not.