The garland must come to you, O inhabiter of the land, the time must come, the day is near. There is confusion, and not the shouting of the mountains.

He says that a “garland” is to encircle the head of the practicers of false religion. It will not be an ornament of the feasting idolaters, but a surrounding of the head with confusion, calamity.

False religion is not able to unite the people in helping themselves, even against the common enemy that is to come against them. The shouting then will not be that of religious revelers, but that of wild confusion. It will be the noise foretold for this time by the prophet Isaiah:

“There is a sound of uproar out of the city [of Jerusalem then, and of Christendom], a sound out of the temple! It is the sound of Jehovah repaying what is deserved to his enemies.”​—Isa. 66:6.

Stubborn, haughty ones who practice wrongdoing while thinking that God does not see or care must know that it is God who calls them to account. The apostle Paul spoke in his day of certain men who had “deviated from the truth, . . . and they [were] subverting the faith of some.” Then he said: “For all that, the solid foundation of God stays standing, having this seal: ‘Jehovah knows those who belong to him,’ and: ‘Let everyone naming the name of Jehovah renounce unrighteousness.”’​—2 Tim. 2:18, 19.

So, those who hypocritically name themselves as Christians and then do not live accordingly must know that they cannot practice unrighteousness and get away with it. Jehovah God must let them know, as he said: “You people will have to know that I am Jehovah doing the smiting.”​—Ezek. 7:9; compare 1 Timothy 1:20.