Bible Believers' Newsletter 735
"We focus on the present Truth – what Jesus is doing now. . ."
ISSN 1442-8660Christian greetings in the precious Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This week we review our exposition of Ezekiel 35 and progress to chapter 36 which is a continuation of the present great theme of the prophet�Israel's prospective revival and prosperity as the Lord's Covenant nation�always with respect to the Messianic promises in connection with the millennial reign of the Good Shepherd in the office of Son of David. True Israel is contrasted with Edom, which is representative of the end-time apostasy of all of the (once) Christian nations of heathendom, including YOUR nation, whichever it is.
When you visit our Church Website you have the option of viewing "The Second Coming of Christ" or visiting the files. This is not the literal, physical return of the glorified Man from Galilee; His precious feet will not touch this earth before the millennium. This introduces His second or 'parousia' Coming promised throughout the New Testament. To view the presentation on-line, please click the image. If you would like to receive a free PowerPoint presentation on CD which you may study and copy for Christian friends and loved ones, please advise your postal address and we will send it in the mail.
This Newsletter serves those of like precious faith. Whoever will receive the truth is welcome to feed their soul from the waters of the River of Life. Everything here presented should be confirmed personally in your own Bible.
Your brother-in-Christ, Anthony Grigor-Scott
State Propaganda, Historical Revisionism, and Perpetuation of the 9/11 Myth
May 6, 2012 � In the immediate wake of President Obama's May 1, 2011 announcement of the alleged extrajudicial killing of Osama bin Laden by US military forces, a struggle reemerged over the official 9/11 myth that major journalistic outlets have been complicit in perpetuating over the past decade. The corporate media's reaction to the robust skepticism over bin Laden's assumed execution suggested a great deal about the extent to which they are locked in to upholding the broader 9/11 parable and serving the Anglo-American political-economic establishment and status quo.
After Obama's statement on bin Laden's fate citizen journalists and activists employing blogs and social media posed questions that should have been asked by professional journalists�specifically pointing to the need for further evidence supporting the president's claims and the Obama administration's curiously inconsistent description of events. Many cited reports and commentary by mainstream news outlets, such as CBS, CNN, and The New York Times, quoting government sources that bin Laden was in failing health and likely died in December 2001. Nevertheless, once a lie has been put in to motion and accepted as truth by the intellectual class it often becomes a de facto reality the broader society is obliged to endure, for better or worse.
In 2005 author and media critic Norman Solomon contacted the Washington Post to inquire whether its reporting of the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident alleging the North Vietnamese attacked US ships was ever retracted. Though later proven false: "I can assure you that there was never any retraction," said Murray Marder, who wrote much of the Washington Post's coverage of August 1964 events in the Gulf of Tonkin. . . A similar dynamic is at play in defending the 9/11 myth. Yet today public skepticism more forcefully presents itself as an unmanageable chorus of disbelief through the internet . . .
Intellectual cowardice is reinforced by a set of circumstances whereby even if alternative accounts questioning the official line are exhaustively researched and documented with credible information and sources, mobilization of the �conspiracy theory� label by state censors and their journalistic accomplices will render the counter-arguments suspect. And, in an on-the-go culture where citizens are heavily reliant for information on headlines and sound-bites versus deliberate analysis, such lines of reasoning are destined for the memory hole. Full story: globalresearch.ca
Comment: Like religion, modern history is composed of media lies and propaganda repeated into unbending tradition. "So you see, my dear Conningsby, the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes" (Benjamin Disraeli, Conningsby).
DHS Informant: 'We are preparing for Massive Civil War'
May 3, 2012 � "Folks, we're getting ready for one massive economic collapse," [Doug] Hagmann told TruNews host Rick Wiles. "We have problems . . . The federal government is preparing for civil uprising," he added, "so every time you hear about troop movements, every time you hear about movements of military equipment, the militarization of the police, the buying of the ammunition, all of this is . . . they (DHS) are preparing for a massive uprising."
Hagmann goes on to say that his sources tell him the concerns of the DHS stem from a collapse of the US dollar and the hyperinflation a collapse in the value of the world's primary reserve currency implies to a nation of 311 million Americans, who, for the significant portion of the population, is armed. . .
Through his sources, Hagmann confirmed Rickard's ongoing thesis of a fear of a US dollar collapse at the hands of the Chinese (US treasury bond holders of approximately $1 trillion) and, possibly, the Russians (threatening to launch a gold-backed ruble as an attractive alternative to the US dollar) in retaliation for aggressive US foreign policy initiatives against China's and Russia's strategic allies Iran and Syria. . .
Escalating preparatory activities by the executive branch and DHS throughout the last decade�from the Patriot Act, to countless executive orders drafted to suspend (or strip) American civil liberties "are just the beginning" of the nightmare to come, Hagmann said. He added, "It's going to get so much worse toward the election, and I'm not even sure we're going to have an election in this country. . . Full story: beaconequity.com
Comment: "A shocking US Army manual that describes how political activists in prison camps will be indoctrinated by specially assigned psychological operations officers contains numerous clear references to the fact that the policies do apply domestically to US citizens."
Because of 'the rising potential for civil disobedience within the inner cities' it is 'inevitable' the US Military will be employed more often within American borders. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced US Military wants to 'microchip' troops.
How Hitler defied the Bankers!
March 15, 2012 � When Hitler came to power, Germany was hopelessly broke. The Treaty of Versailles had imposed crushing reparations on the German people, demanding that Germans repay every nation's costs of the war. These costs totaled three times the value of all the property in Germany.
Private currency speculators caused the German mark to plummet, precipitating one of the worst runaway inflations in modern times. A wheelbarrow full of 100 billion-mark banknotes could not buy a loaf of bread. The national treasury was empty. Countless homes and farms were lost to speculators and to private (Jewish controlled) banks. Germans lived in hovels. They were starving. . . On top of this came a global depression. Germany had no choice but to succumb to debt slavery under international (mainly Jewish) bankers until 1933, when the National Socialists came to power . . .
Within two years, the unemployment problem had been solved, and Germany was back on its feet. It had a solid, stable currency, with no debt, and no inflation, at a time when millions of people in the United States and other Western countries (controlled by international bankers) were still out of work. Within five years, Germany went from the poorest nation in Europe to the richest.
Germany even managed to restore foreign trade, despite the international bankers' denial of foreign credit to Germany, and despite the global boycott by Jewish-owned industries. Germany succeeded in this by exchanging equipment and commodities directly with other countries, using a barter system that cut the bankers out of the picture. Germany flourished, since barter eliminates national debt and trade deficits. (Venezuela does the same thing today when it trades oil for commodities, plus medical help, and so on. Hence the bankers are trying to squeeze Venezuela) . . .
Full story: northerntruthseeker.blogspot.com.au
Journalist accuses Israel of Fukushima Sabotage
October 14, 2011 � According to Yoishi Shimatsu, a former editor of Japan Times Weekly, these nuclear materials were shipped to the plant in 2007 on the orders of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, with the connivance of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The shipment was in the form of warhead cores secretly removed from the US nuclear warheads facility BWXT Plantex near Amarillo, Texas. While acting as middleman, Israel transported warheads from the port of Houston, and in the process kept the best while giving the Japanese older warhead cores that had to be further enriched at Fukushima.
Shimatsu credits retired CIA agent and mercenary Roland Vincent Carnaby with learning the warheads were being transported from Houston. In a strange twist, Carnaby was mysteriously shot dead less than a year later by Houston police at a traffic stop. He was shot once in the back and once in the chest. He did not have a weapon in his hands. Intelligence sources said he had been tracking a Mossad unit that was smuggling US plutonium out of Houston docks for an Israeli nuclear reactor.
In an even more explosive charge, the journalist said that 20 minutes before the Fukushima plant's nuclear meltdown, Israel was so upset with Japanese support for a Palestinian declaration of statehood that it double-crossed Japan by unleashing the Stuxnet virus on the plant's computers. The virus hampered the shutdown, leading to fallout from a section of the plant housing uranium and plutonium retrieved from the warheads supplied in 2007.
While it is impossible to verify some of Shimatsu's claims, there was a massive cover-up at the time of the Fukushima disaster in March [image Reactor 4]. Explosions at the site were immediately downplayed. While it was subsequently reported that three reactors suffered meltdowns, Japanese authorities tried to rate the disaster as a Level 4 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, although outside experts declared it a 7, which is the highest level. . . A factor that undoubtedly would have encouraged the Bush-Cheney White House to provide Japan with the means to secretly build nukes was the growing power of China... Full story: americanfreepress.net
Comment: As the late Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen would say, "Don't you worry about that." Keep your eyes on God's Word for the sinking of Los Angeles and the cleaving of the Mount of Olives at the close of our dispensation.
The Greatest Story ever denied: Interdimensional Reality
April 15, 2012 � In this two hour video, film maker Jose Escamilla interviews retired US military men who had higher security clearances that any of the presidents of the United States to the Military-Industrial Complex which is part of the invisible government that rules this world and flies UFOs generations ahead of known technology, including over unity. The energy industry will not disclose knowhow to the public. NASA scientists and astronauts are introduced and 1970s plans for the invasion of Iraq are disclosed. There is considerable footage of interdimensional life as well as UFOs and the HOAX of the Moon landing is discussed. Full story: youtube.com Comment: Also see related files on biblebelievers.
To all Friendly Atheists & Agnostics
April 13, 2012 � The following references will provide positive information to what I have stated below; 'The Holographic Universe is an illusion, but consciousness isn't.' 'Beige the Colour of the Universe,' Holographic & Spherical Universe�Scientific America (August, 2003), fractal crystals and Wikipedia on fractals, and note the 'Koch snowflake' fractal.
Can the atheists or agnostics prove atheism? Can they also satisfactorily explain why time remains stable? Or why there are uniform, 'universal laws of physics'�such as, the speed of light or makeup of elements?
Some take for granted everything works by mere chance . . . dreamers!
Time must exist before matter can be created, and only an animate entity can conceive of space-time. Time must be a stabilized and uniform condition before matter can form, thus Monotheism is a Truth.
The Universe consists of space-time; which is functionally active and growing but remains stable. These combined characteristics are indicative of an animate entity only, thus Pantheism is a fact. [???]
As a consequence, all mortals' behaviours and attitudes become conspicuous by our Creator.
Reality is the dream of a Universal sentient being. Sensations of all mortals are merely light flashes within elongated fractal crystals, flowing in a white mist which is time itself; ensconced within a beige coloured and velvet textured Pearl, that is, a holographic universe.
If all electrical particles were in different time zones�matter would not form, thus time is a controlled electromagnetic radiation (energy) E = mc2. To be perfect�one must know the past, present and future, there is only one, the One who created Time. Full story: [email protected]
Ezekiel 35 � Part II
In Genesis 35:11 El Shaddai promised Jacob: "A nation [Israel] and company of nations [the federation of Israel's twelve tribal states] shall come from you, and kings shall come out of your loins." Esau "lived by his sword"�war, pillage and robbery supported him and chiselled the character of his descendants in a barren country, the antithesis of the fruitful land of Jacob. But Genesis 36:31-39 informs us that eight kings reigned over Edom before Israel's first king, so it would seem that "the wicked prosper"; the prosperity of the children of this world is often immediate and brilliant but it is temporal, materialistic and transitory, while that of the children of Light is slower in coming in order to try belief and mature faith, for character is not a gift but a victory that must be attained by the Overcomer. But faith in the revealed Word of God endures and abides forever (I Peter 1:23), and of the Kingdom of Israel's King Jesus Messiah there will be no end (Luke 1:33).
In commending "the unjust steward, because he had done wisely [or prudently in his own interest] his master observed: the children of this world are in their generation [or race alike in endowments, pursuits, and character; especially in the bad sense of a perverse race like Cain's accursed lineage] wiser [more intelligent, being prudent or mindful of their own interests] than the children of Light [truth and revelation]" (Luke 16:8). In His parable Jesus was unfolding the character of the Edomites to His disciples, and verse 14 states that "these idolaters heard all these things: and they derided Him. And Jesus said to them, You are such as the unjust steward; you justify yourselves before men; but God knows your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God." The Babylonian Talmud imparts the equivocating loopholes by which these hypocrites justify themselves before men with the distorted pietism of Judaism (then called Pharisaism) and pretend to follow Moses and the Prophets.
The Roman Catholic church organized at the First Nicaea Council in AD325 by "the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan" presents Judaeo-Catholics with similar loopholes of equivocation in a false baptism, the false new birth of 'confirmation,' the worship of pagan gods and the deceased, Nicolaitane priesthood, papal substitute for the Holy Spirit, Balaamism, confession to men, novenas, mythical purgatory, indulgences, unction, and the bloodthirsty martyrdom of over sixty million Christians.
In looking forward to the restoration of true Israel as a nation and the blessings of their elect IN Christ, God's curse is not so much upon the ignorant heathen world as a whole of whom multitudes whose names remain in the Book of Life will be granted into salvation by the saints at the White Throne judgment, but against the antichristian world within counterfeit Israel that stands against them as their type, Edom and the neighbouring nations stood against Israel, and resemble Edom's "perpetual hatred" (Ezekiel 36:7; Genesis 3:15).
The Jewish Encyclopedia says that "Edom is in Modern Jewry." This witness from the 1905 edition records the connection between modern day Jews and the race of Edom: "Some anthropologists are inclined to associate the racial origins of the Jews, not with the Semites, whose language they adopted, but with the Armenians and Hittites of Mesopotamia, whose broad skulls and curved noses they appear to have inherited" (Vol. X, p. 284). (This is corroborated by The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1925, Vol. 5, p. 41; The Biblica Enclyclopedia, Vol. 2, p. 1187; Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971) Vol. 6, p. 378; and The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (1977) p. 589). Thus Esau/Edom was now absorbed into the Canaanite people by means of his Hittite and Hivite wives. And according to Strong's Concordance the word Canaan means "trader or merchant" and the Phoenicians as Canaanites are derived from Ham's incestuous relationship with Naamah the sister of Tubalcain, the wife Noah took with him in the Ark (Genesis 9:18-27; 10:6, 15-19).
Owing to the intermarriage of their forefathers with Canaanites, there were probably few Israelites without Phoenician, that is, Serpent's seed blood in their veins. Judges 3:5-6, "The children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites: and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods." The Jews claimed to be the children of Abraham: that they were not true children of Abraham is certain when they say that they were never in bondage (John 8:32-33; Matthew 23:33-36).
In Ezekiel 35 Israel's Light is set in contrast with the Darkness of Edom's "perpetual hatred" against Esau's brother Jacob. And as Brother Branham said, "Israel types the Church," but also the church. As Israel in its apostasy united with Edom both naturally and spiritually, and Edom was predominantly physical and spiritual Serpent's seed, and more numerous than the Judahites, these Edomites "were hereafter no other than Jews" (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XIII, 9:1). This union emulated the miscegenation of the days of Noah for which God destroyed the world, and types the miscegenation prophesied for today (Matthew 24:37) called multiculturalism in the natural and ecumenism in the spiritual whereby the Absolute of God's unchanging Word is compromised all are called Christians when we do not share the "common faith," or all French, Americans, Australians or Germans and our nations are no longer one homogenous kindred race.
As God commanded Israel, "the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations" (Numbers 23:39), He commanded Christians to separate from worldly people and not reckoned among the denomi-nations (II Corinthians 6:14-18; Ephesians 5:17; Titus 3:9-11; Revelation 18:4).
II Thessalonians 1:6-10, "Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the Presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power; when He shall come to be glorified in His saints [the wise virgin], and to be admired in all them that believe [the foolish virgin] (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day".
Thus God contrasts Seir, the mountains of Edom with Zion, the mountains of Israel, promising to fill Esau's mountains with his slain men and He continues the metaphor in Ezekiel 35:8, 15; 36:4, 8, 12; 37:22; 38:8. Edom regarded the separated Israel and Judah as Goyim, and took to account Israel's sin regarding Jacob's injury to Esau but took no account of grace and the nation's eternal destiny guaranteed by God's Covenant. This was Edom's active atheism and heathen unbelief. Practical atheism in both cases.
In Ezekiel 35:10-15 God tells Edom, "Because you have said, 'These two nations and these two countries [Israel and Judah] shall be mine, and we will possess it, although the Lord was there.' Therefore, as I live, says the Lord God, I will deal with you according to the anger and envy which you showed out of your hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them when I judge you. And you will know that I am the Lord, and that I have heard all the revilings which you have uttered against the mountains of Israel saying, 'They are laid desolate, they are given us to devour.' And you have boasted against Me with your mouth, and multiplied your words against Me: I have heard it."
Verses 14 to 15 are the key: "Thus saith the Lord God, When the whole earth rejoices, I will make you desolate. As you rejoiced over the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I deal with you: you shall become desolate, Mount Seir, and all Edom, all of it. Then they will know that I am the Lord." These things could only meet their full and final accomplishment in Christ as they are of a higher order than anything that could be accomplished under the curse of the Law which was a temporary measure to chastise, teach and bring Israel to Christ that an election might be justified by grace through faith (I Chronicles 16:31; Psalm 97:1; Galatians 3:24). In Genesis 12:3 Abraham is to be a blessing "to all the [Adamic] families of the earth, through his Seed who is Christ" (Galatians 3:27-29).
"Mount Seir, and all Edom�all of it"�is contrasted to the inheritance of the house of Israel as "rejoice" and desolate" correspond to one another, for instead of joy all Edom will become desolate. Deuteronomy 32:43 (LXX), "Rejoice, you heavens, with Him, and let all the angels of God worship Him; rejoice you nations, with His people, and let all the Sons of God strengthen themselves in Him; for He will avenge the blood of His Sons, and He will render vengeance, and recompense justice to His enemies, and will repay them that hate Him; and the Lord shall purge the land of His people" (Isaiah 42:10-25).
AS WE DISCOVERED in Newsletter 734, in Daniel's Seventieth Week the whole apostate world will be as Edom: the "saved" and even the 144,000 elect Israelites will be martyred. The subject of rejoicing will be the glorious salvation that comes to Mount Zion and Jerusalem. Revelation 14:1-3, "Then . . . (write your name here) . . . looked and on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with Him a hundred and forty four thousand who had His Father's Name written in their foreheads. And I heard a Voice from heaven like the voice of many waters and like the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps, and they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders: and no one could learn that song except the hundred and forty four thousand who had been redeemed from the earth." Like the song of Moses theirs will be a revelation�the revelation of Israel's Seven Trumpet mysteries only the 144,000 can receive.
This review of chapter 35 leads us to chapter 36 which continues the prophet's theme of Israel's prospective revival and the essential distinction between Israel and Edom typing the apostasy of all of the (once) Christian nations of heathendom, including YOUR nation, whichever it is, because God concludes them all in unbelief (Romans 11:32; Galatians 3:22). That knocks British Israel/Christian Identity theory out of the water! Zechariah 14:1-2, "Behold the day of the Lord comes . . . I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle. . ." The nation of Israel comprising an election of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is distinguished from Edom, Britain, the USA, Kenya, Russia and every other heathen nation, since it has a Covenant with God ensuring it must revive and flourish after chastisement (Hebrews 12:5-8), so that the heathens' hope of securing possession of Israel's inheritance must fail, and they themselves be made desolate. Ultimately Edom types every nation, hence the Babylonian Talmud calls Rome Edom, and Rome will rule the world to the consummation, while the Bible calls the self-styled "Jews" heathens since they are impersonators of the children of Israel and of the faith of Moses and the prophets. So-called "Jews" are excluded from God's Covenant with Israel and all who are not baptized into Christ before the manifestation of the Sixth Seal and Seventh Trump will have no place in the new Jerusalem.
As in the former chapter the Lord spoke to Mount Seir personified as "all Idumea," here He personates the "mountains of Israel�specifically the ancient high places" of Zion and His Temple, the seat of everlasting dominion in the new heavens and new earth. Whereas "the everlasting hills" (Genesis 49:26) of Israel's elevation are moral and Spiritual, not merely material and physical like Edom's greater heights, "the enemy" representative of all of God's foes. Hence when Judah's inheritance was vacated by the exile of its inhabitants to Assyria and Babylon the Edomites exclaimed "Aha!" and claimed their Brother Israel's estate as if they had come to an end despite the Covenant and God's promise that after seventy years they would return from Babylon. As the brother of their father Israel, Esau is a nearer kinsman than Jesus whom Israel rejected and murdered as they killed Joseph. Moses prophesied Israel's idolatry, dispossession and tribulations to the return and redemption of the 144,000 in "the time of Jacob's trouble" (Deuteronomy 32:1-43).
Throughout this chapter Ezekiel qualifies his prophecy with "THUS SAITH THE LORD" to silence any gainsaying of the Adversary and to contradict what eyes tell doubting hearts. The completeness of the renewed blessedness of all parts of the land is implied: inanimate hills, rivers, desolate wastes and forsaken cities are personified and addressed, implying "the whole creation groans and travails in pain together . . . for deliverance from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Romans 8:19-21). And the Lord swears that Edom and the neighbouring heathens shall perpetually bear the shame of their reproach against Himself, the people and the land of the Covenant. Their enmity against Israel in not merely on account of Jacob's injury to their father, but on account of their heritage through his Canaanite wives, placing them in Cain's race which God set at enmity with Adam's race (Genesis 3:15).
Verses 6 to 15 declare a change of roles with honour restored to the land and people of the Covenant (Ezekiel 25:11-14). "You, mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to My people of Israel; for they will soon be coming home [twenty of the seventy years had already elapsed (Jeremiah 23:21), and the return from Babylon is an earnest of millennium blessings (Acts 1:6)]. For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you shall be tilled and sown. And I will multiply men on you�the whole house of Israel�all of it: and the cities will be inhabited, and the wastes rebuilt: I will multiply both man and beast in the land; and they will increase and be fruitful: and I will populate you as in your former times, and will do more good to you than ever before: and you will know that I am the Lord".
Verses 10 to 15 refer to (Isaiah 58:12; 61:4 and) Amos 9:11-14 studied in Newsletter 734, and Ezekiel 34:23,24 which we studied in Newsletter 733, where the Son of David, Jesus Messiah was introduced in connection with the millennial reign and restoration of the Good Shepherd. Thereafter the Israelites will possess and walk upon Mount Zion which shall no longer provoke God to bereave them of children (Jeremiah 15:7) as it shall be their inheritance and in the millennium there will be no more stumbling, the consequence of sin and cause of Israel's downfall and judicial punishments, sterility, pestilence, famine, and war.
The Lord overcame and dispossessed the Canaanites because they were an accursed race and He warned Israel: "You shall keep My statutes and My judgments, and do none of these abominations; neither the native nor any stranger who sojourns among you: (for the men of the land who were before you did all of these abominations so that the land became defiled); lest the land vomit you out, when you defile it, as it disgorged the nation that preceded you" (Leviticus 18:26-28; Numbers 35:34; Jeremiah 2:7).
Verses 16-21 trace the reason for the period of Israel's chastisement as if their connection with the Lord was a curse rather than a blessing to their incorrigible wickedness, and the necessity of God vindicating the cause of His holiness by exercising on them the severity of His displeasure at Israel's sin and the profanation of His Name. Israel was to be holy, separated from the nations and spiritually as clean as the driven snow but they themselves went to the heathen, profaning the Name of the Lord as in their own land, and giving the heathen a handle of reproach against God. "When they came to the nations whither they went, they profaned My holy Name. Naturally the heathen said of them, 'These are the people of the Lord who take usury, oppress, commit adultery, murder and idolatry and who, in such an abject plight, are "gone forth [as exiles] out of His land," as specimens of what Jehovah can or will effect for His people, and show what kind of God this so-called holy, omnipotent, Covenant-keeping God must be' (Isaiah 52:5; Romans 2:24)." As the Jews are the initiators of the desecration, although the heathen certainly desecrated His Name in their lips, they are not looked upon as desecrators of His holiness (Romans 2:24-29). Israelites like us Christians were God's representatives to the world, "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; to the praise of Him who has called us out of Darkness into His marvelous Light"
Verses 22-33 show that the purpose of the Lord is for Israel's good (Romans 8:28), but their sole and sure ground of hope was God's regard to "His own Name" as the God of Covenant grace (Psalms 106:45), which He must vindicate from the dishonor brought upon it by the Jews before the heathen. Hereby He will revive His cause among His people, and in the most effectual manner, by first renewing their hearts to holiness, and then restoring them to flourishing conditions outwardly.
He will sanctify Himself before the eyes of the rest of the world by taking and gathering them out of all nations and countries and placing them again as His people in the land of the Covenant. The return from Babylon was an earnest of this but though they put away literal idolatry they brought with them the Babylonian Talmud, the antithesis of the Law and the prophets "that makes the commandments of God of none effect" (Matthew 15:9). That took such a hold on them that when the Word of God manifest in Jesus Messiah, the nation called His blood upon their own heads and on the heads of their children as it is today (Matthew 27:25). "Cleansing from all their idols" such as covetousness which is idolatry (Colossians 3:5), and prejudices against Jesus Messiah which is blasphemy as He is God�both commended by the Talmud�await the midst of Daniel's Seventieth Week.
Throughout this Book Ezekiel is addressing the Israel nation and not individual Israelites although we recognize Romans 9:6-7, "It is not as though the Word of God has taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, who are of Israel, [and that eliminates Israelites from the election merely because their lineage from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is unsullied]: neither because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, 'In Isaac shall Your seed be called,' [and this eliminates Ishmaelites, Edomite and Khazar self-styled Jews from the Old Covenant]".
"When I the Lord God am sanctified [vindicated and manifest as holy] in the eyes of the Judeans in opposition to the heathen reproach upon My holiness brought on by the Jews' sins and their chastisement, then I will be regarded in your eyes as the Holy One, and righteous in My dealings towards you." God's self-sanctification is fulfilled primarily in the return from Babylon; this act forgave, justified and sanctified Israel before the heathen; but ultimately in the restoration "from all countries" in the first half of Daniel's Seventieth Week. His self-sanctification makes observable the infinite grandeur as well as the omnipotence which are able to secure due regard for themselves:
Malachi 1:11, "For from the rising of the sun even to the going down of the same My Name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered to My Name, and a pure offering: for My Name shall be great among the heathen, says the Lord of hosts".
Next Israel is brought to its own land, the forgiveness of sin thereby proclaimed and where it is sanctified in its separation from the surrounding heathen nations (verse 25). Then the heathen, understanding from their regenerated lives how holy God is, would perceive Israel's past troubles to have been only the necessary vindications of His righteousness. Thus God's name would be "sanctified" before the heathen, and His people prepared for outward blessings.
Moses prophesied, "Israel has moved Me to jealousy with their idols: and I will move them to jealousy with those who are no people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation" (Deuteronomy 32:21). As Paul expounded in Romans 10:19 and 11:11, "that through their fall salvation has come to the Gentiles, to provoke them to jealousy".
The sprinkling of clean water is signified as an act consecration. Jesus told Nicodemus "Except a man be born-again by water and the Spirit, He cannot enter the Kingdom of God . . . a truth a master of Israel should know" (John 3:5, 10). For Ezekiel clearly taught that Israel had to have a new heart and spirit and be sprinkled with clear water by the Spirit of God, and John the Baptist unquestionably adopted it to his rite of lustration.
Verses 26-27, "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you shall keep My judgments, and do them." The partial reformation at the return from Babylon was an earnest of the full renewal "in the last days" of redemption and completion under Messiah so that the Christian truth of the prophecies is to be regarded as their true and full reality (Joel 2:28).
From verse 29 we see the Messianic promise of Matthew 1:21, "She shall bring forth a Son, and you shall call His Name JESUS: for He shall save His people from their sins," as per the Messianic promise of the Good Shepherd, David's greater Son in Ezekiel 34:22-24 described in Newsletter 733.htm. However, if the New Testament regeneration were to be sought here we would rather expect to witness joy in the Spirit.
The outcome of the foregoing will impress upon minds of the heathen the power and goodness of God manifested so palpably towards the restored people with bounteous harvests and heartfelt remorse (36:30-38). The heathen once made Israel's desolation a ground of reproach against the Name of the Lord (verses 20-21); but since He has vindicated its sanctity (verses 22-23), and Israel once desolate is to be as "the Garden of Eden," these same heathen are constrained to acknowledge Israel's more than renewed blessedness to be God's own work, and a ground for glorifying His Name (verses 35-36; Isaiah 51:3).
Whereas the Lord had refused to be inquired of by Israel when the people were not in a fit condition to receive a blessing (14:3; 20:3), hereafter, as in the restoration from Babylon (Nehemiah 8:1 � 9:38; Daniel 9:3-23), God will prepare His people's hearts (verse 26) to pray aright for the blessings He is about to give, and resuming the imagery of Ezekiel 34:23-31, "I will increase them with men like a flock. As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall know that I am the Lord." And in the final verse the abundance of men of restored Israel is compared to the great abundance of sheep brought up to Jerusalem at the three great annual festivals, the Passover, Pentecost, and Feast of Tabernacles. nl735.htm
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Brother Grigor-Scott is a non-denominational minister who has ministered full-time since 1981, primarily to other ministers and their congregations overseas. He pastors Bible Believers' tiny congregation, and is available to teach in your church.
Bible Believers' Church
Gunnedah NSW
Australia 2380e-mail Bible Believers URL Bible Believers' Website
PowerPoint presentation The Second Coming of Christ
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