Ezekiel Part 45

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Sunday school from September 1st, 2024

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Ezekiel Part 46

Ezekiel Part 46

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We are going to pray, and then we will get into our study. Lord Jesus, as we open your word, we ask that your
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Holy Spirit to rightly understand what is revealed there, so that we may properly believe what you have revealed, and confess the truth of your scripture, and do according to your will.
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We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, we are in Ezekiel.
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Last week we did the Ask a Pastor segment, and I would note, if I didn't get to your question last week,
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I kept the questions here in my drawer, and so the ones we didn't get to, we will get to in the next installment, so keep that in mind.
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All right, we, two weeks ago, were talking about Ezekiel 38 and 39, although we only read 38.
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When we read 38, I asked the question after reading it, what is this about?
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And I think it was Jeff Kenney, yeah, Jeff Kenney, who rightly said, it sounds like it has something to do with the end of the world, with eschatology, and he was absolutely right.
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And then you'll note, we took a look, using that wonderful interpretive method of scripture, interpreting scripture, we used that wonderful method to go into the book of Revelation and see how
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Gog and Magog are referenced in the book of Revelation, and that Revelation provides us with the proper interpretive keys to understand what the
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Gog -Magog prophecy of Ezekiel is about. And we, as a result of that, have been able to, with clarity, confidently say, this has nothing to do with Russia and Ukraine.
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Okay, just absolutely nothing to do with it. What will the dispensationalists say?
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Well, the dispensationalists should say, I was wrong, I repent. That's what they should say, just saying.
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Okay, so now there is an aspect then, and then you'll note the church historically has understood that the
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Gog -Magog war has an ultimate culmination at the end of the age, but the church historically has also understood that the
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Gog -Magog war, because it is ultimately a war, the Satan's war against the saints and against the church, that there are aspects of the
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Gog -Magog war that are in effect now. So every false teacher, all right?
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So you think of Benny Hinn, Ken Copeland, and the 150 -something people we've covered at Fighting for the
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Faith. These are all enemy combatants on the side of Satan in the Gog -Magog war, all right?
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And so you have to kind of think that, you'll note that oftentimes wars just don't spontaneously break out.
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There's like initial conflicts that will lead into the bigger campaign and things like that.
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So there is a correct way of thinking that Gog -Magog is now ongoing and has been ongoing since Christ has ascended, but it's really going to hit a fever pitch once Satan is loosed.
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And all I can say is that when Satan is loosed and Christians are being martyred around the world, our response needs to be, well, everything's going according to plan.
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Jesus told us this was what was going to be taking place. So I would note that one of the things
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I've said in the past, and I'll continue to reiterate this, and that is that those people who attend churches, and boy,
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I hear churches like Joel Osteen's church or Ken Copeland's church or any of the prosperity churches or so much of the
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NAR and the New Apostolic Reformation that have these messages of prosperity and everything going right for you in the here and the now, they are not in any sense of the word prepared for what is coming because they're not
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Christians in order to suffer at all. And so when bonafide suffering shows up, what you should expect from those people is they'll say,
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I'm not a Christian. I never was a Christian. I just went to Joel Osteen's church in order to get business contacts to build my
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MLM downline, you know, things like this. So that's what you should expect.
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So keep this in mind. It is not a bad idea that as we get closer to the return of Christ, if persecution really looks like it's about to break out, distance yourself from people like that because not only will they abandon the faith, they'll turn you in in order to save your bacon, their bacon.
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So just saying, okay, keep that in mind. Yes. I have a question about Satan. Isn't that a progressive loosening or is it all of a sudden he's bound and then he's completely free?
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So the scriptures do not say either way. The scripture doesn't say one way or another.
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It does talk about the fact that he will finally be loosed. And if I had to speculate, warning, this is all speculation.
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Okay. Since apostasy has been growing and growing and growing over the past few decades, there is a progressive, the apostasy itself is progressive.
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And clearly the scriptures teach that in the last days churches will be teaching doctrines of demons.
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Well, we're here now. So I don't think there's anything wrong with kind of thinking of it as a progressive loosening.
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That may not be the correct way to put it. You can say that Satan is progressively gaining control of more and more of the visible church.
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That I think you can make an argument for. And it's actually terrorizing when you think about it.
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It's terrifying because I was kind of musing about this just like not this week, but the week before that the
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Christianity, the evangelicalism of the United States that I grew up during, okay, the heyday of focus on the family, the heyday of Jerry Falwell and people like that.
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The reason why those people were as powerful and as influential as they were is because the bulk of the
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American population was still nominally Christian, or at least identified as Christian.
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And even though they were getting a lot of law in their churches, still the
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Bible was opened and there was preaching against sin. Now the gospel may have been difficult to see in many of these churches, but there was a sense in which the
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United States was kind of culturally Christian. And that is not the case anymore.
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Not at all. And this has happened not over the course of an entire lifetime, but in half of mine.
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That's assuming that I'll be alive next week. But you get the idea here. If I live the average length of time that most
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Americans live, I can expect to see my mid to late 70s, maybe my 80s.
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That being the case, I'm not dead yet. And so I can't imagine what the next half of my life is going to be as the apostasy grows.
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And there are certain things that I've been covering on Fighting for the Faith that had you told me I would have been covering things like this 10 years ago,
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I wouldn't have believed you. I would have said, no, the church isn't going to go that bad. It's worse than I could ever imagine.
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So yeah, Marilyn. 76.
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Marilyn, thanks for reminding me. I've got 20 years. So basically what you're telling me,
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Marilyn, is that I've only got 20 years left at Kongsvinger. So you're in the bonus round.
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She talks about it that way. Oh, you do. Okay. So anything above 76 is bonus.
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Got it. Okay. You're in overtime, so you better do something spectacular with that little extra bit that you get.
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You have the remainder. Got it. You're going to be 85 on the holographic
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YouTubes and it's just going to be still doing Prophecy Bingo. It's going to be great. Who's that crazy old guy doing
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Prophecy Bingo? Wow. Okay. And what's prophetic?
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Okay. I don't know why this thing keeps cutting in and cutting out. That's just crazy.
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No, not that I'm aware of. I have it fairly loose. No, no, no.
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I put in brand new batteries today. Turn it off and back on again. You know,
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Hannah, I understand why you think that that logic would apply. I'm sure it would work.
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I am not going to fault you for your logic there. Keep at it, because most of the time that actually works.
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Especially if it's my wife's computer, but that's a different story. Or her iPad or her phone. Okay. Anyway, let's take a look then.
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I'm just going to read it in one setting so we kind of get the grand vista then of what
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Ezekiel is prophesying regarding Gog and Magog. We know the proper interpretation through the book of Revelation.
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Let's hear the details again. So the word of Yahweh came to me, Son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshach and Tubal, and prophesy against him and say,
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Thus says the Lord Yahweh. Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshach and Tubal, and I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses, and horsemen, all of them clothed in full armor, a great host, all of them with buckler and shield, wielding swords.
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Persia, Cush, and Put are with them, all of them with shields and a helmet. Gomer and all of his hordes,
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Beth Torgama, from the uttermost parts of the north with all of his hordes, many peoples are with you.
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Be ready and keep ready, you and all of your hosts that are assembled about you, and be a guard for them.
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After many days you will be mustered. In the latter years you will go against the land that is restored from war, that's the church, the land whose people were gathered from many peoples upon the mountains of Israel, again that's a vision of the church, which has been a continual waste, its people were brought out from the peoples and now dwell securely, all of them.
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You will advance coming on like a storm, you will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all of your hordes and many peoples with you.
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Thus says Lord Yahweh, on that day thoughts will come into your mind and you will devise an evil scheme and say,
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I will go up against the land of unwalled villages, I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, having no bars or gates.
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Again, this is the church, we dwell in security and safety with each other, that's kind of the point. So it's an interesting picture how
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Ezekiel's prophecy is describing Christians and the church. To seize spoil, to carry off plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places that are now inhabited and the people who were gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and goods, who dwell at the center of the earth.
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Sheba and Dadan and the merchants of Tarshish and all of its leaders will say to you, have you come to seize spoil?
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Have you assembled your host to carry off plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods, to seize great spoil?
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Therefore, son of man prophesy and say to God, thus says the Lord Yahweh, on that day when my people
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Israel are dwelling securely, you will not know it. You will come from your place out of the uttermost parts of the north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great host, a mighty army.
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You will come up against my people Israel like a cloud covering the land. In the latter days
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I will bring you against my land that the nations may know me when through you, oh
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God, I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. Now a little bit of a note here.
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This might tell you more about me than anything in the scripture, but when I read this description it reminds me of a
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Mad Max movie. Okay, it just does. And you know, when
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I see these hordes, I don't picture them as military guys in shiny uniforms and I think of this motley, messed up, post -apocalyptic world and people going against, you know, it's the unwashed weirdos coming against the holy and the secure and the things like that.
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I think that's a good way to put it. Over and again, when you consider the stories that we tell each other, you know, in our movies, in our television shows and stuff like that, there's a whole genre now of television shows and movies and miniseries based upon the theme of post -apocalyptic.
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And they always try to give a vision of the future. There's been some event, there's been a nuclear exchange or society has broken down and now where civilization used to be at a high water mark, humanity has regressed.
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Technology is no longer a thing. We're back to horses and we're back to, you know, and people kind of getting along with kind of a blend between the old and the new and things have gone backwards and stuff like this.
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But I would note this. The scripture makes it clear we are presently living in a post -apocalyptic world.
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The apocalypse brought on by sin has done a number on our planet, on us, on the universe itself, so much so that God has ordained for it to die.
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And so the idea then is as we get closer and closer to the return of Christ, the hordes of Satan representing that crazy, out -of -control, satanic, self -centered world that we're in is going to get to the point where they're going to rage so hard against any vestiges of King Jesus that we're going to suffer greatly for it.
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And in the midst of this, God is promising ultimately to vindicate us, to rescue us. Even if we are martyred, we're rescued, right?
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And then the world that he will establish, the new earth, will be the
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Eden that is lost. Paradise lost, paradise then regained, and we will no longer live in a post -apocalyptic world.
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If you embrace the scripture's view of where we are and what's going on right now, we're in the post -apocalypse.
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In the Garden of Eden, that blew everything out. You know, the paradise of of the first earth before the fall, that's all gone.
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And all that's left is these ugly husks twisted by sin of humanity.
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And then you'll note that in humanity's history, there's always these kind of ebbs and flows.
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People will talk about the golden age of Charlemagne, that was a high watermark in the dark ages.
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And what happened to it? It just sunk back into the morass and the weirdness of sin.
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We've had the high watermark of kind of like 20th century civilization and things kind of bright after World War II.
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Humanity kind of hit a peak in the peace decades after World War II. But then you have the sexual revolution, which is still being waged.
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And it's just destroying what was kind of the high watermark of civilization.
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And we're sinking now into a post -Christian world. And the world in its post -Christianness is getting really gross, like legitimately gross.
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Not that I recommend doing this, but from time to time, I'll scroll through social media. I like watching reels on TikTok, I like watching reels on Instagram.
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And the other day I was scrolling through TikTok, and this woman pops up. She's in her vehicle and doing a
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TikTok inside of her car, and she's announcing that she's pregnant. But she's also announcing that her sister is pregnant, and her best friend is pregnant as well.
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They all found out they were pregnant at the same time. And the father of all three children is this woman's husband.
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And she's not even thinking about leaving him. And it's like, wait, what?
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What on earth is going on, right? And it's like, I got to tell you, if somebody did something like that in the 1980s, it would probably hit the national news.
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For sure, you'd end up on the Maury Povich program or something, right? And people would be sitting there going, this is really messed up.
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Now, when something like this happens, people go on social media and they think it's no big deal. I watch this and I'm just like, where is their sense of shame?
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How is it that you're announcing this to a whole bunch of strangers on social media? And this stupid video went viral with millions of views.
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Why? Why? What is going on here? Do you not even understand the basics of right and wrong?
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Yeah, Marilyn. Right, exactly.
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By the way, if you have kids and keep them off of TikTok, you don't want them on TikTok.
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You just don't. The algorithm has figured out that I'm a nerd, so I get pushed a lot of weird nerdy things, which is fine.
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But occasionally you get something Why is that being pushed at me? So, people are incentivized to say things in an inflammatory way to instill this outrage in people.
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It's not just the views that they're getting. Enjoying this, this is fun.
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They're also getting meaner. They're getting rage too.
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But any attention is good attention.
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So they're like, yeah, I'll take anyone. I'll link all their videos.
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That's a cynical approach, but you're probably right. You know, the reason why all this is going on is because people still make their money.
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So yeah, horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. Let's continue with our prophecy, shall we? So that says the Lord Yahweh, are you he of whom
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I spoke in former days by my servants, the prophets of Israel, who in those days prophesied for years that I would bring you against them?
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Who's he? Could it be Satan? I think we're kind of starting to make that illusion.
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But on that day, the day that Gog shall come against the land of Israel, declares the
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Lord Yahweh, my wrath will be roused in my anger. For in my jealousy and in my blazing wrath,
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I declare, on that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. The fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the fields and all the creeping things that creep on the and all the people who are on the face of the earth shall quake at my presence.
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Oh, wow. Okay. If that doesn't sound like the return of Christ, I don't know what does. And the mountains shall be thrown down and the cliffs shall fall and every wall shall tumble to the ground.
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I will summon a sword against Gog on all my mountains, declares the
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Lord Yahweh. Every man's sword will be against his brother with pestilence and bloodshed.
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I will enter into judgment with him and I will reign upon him and his hordes and the many peoples who are with him, torrential rains and hailstones, fire and sulfur.
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So I will show my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations.
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And then they will know that I am Yahweh. So you'll note that what's being revealed here is that in this pitched battle where Satan and his hordes are coming against the
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Christians, against the saints, in the final showdown, the thing that they never anticipated would happen, happens.
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Jesus shows up and boy is he ticked, right? So that's kind of the thing.
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You got to remember that God's normal state, loving, kind, patient, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.
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But when provoked, he will respond in wrath. And I can't think of a quicker way to get
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God provoked than to take the saints, his blood -bought children, and try to wipe them off the face of the earth.
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Go for it, buddy. It's not going to turn out well for you, right? But so when we see all this happening, we have to remember the promises.
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So if this happens in our lifetime, and I can't say it's going to or not, I mean, I just, I keep pointing out,
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I work in marketing and the management team, the Holy Trinity, they never let me know what's going on.
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They've given me standing orders and I just got to keep at it until the end of the world or I die.
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It's, you know, kind of those things. So I, but if we see stuff, if we see Christians being outright persecuted, and that's going to be happening in the future.
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Near? I don't know. We should sit there and go, yeah, to be expected.
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It's exactly what Christ said would happen. And boy, these people, they think that they're going to be establishing themselves on the earth.
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And that's really, if you kind of think about it, all the conspiracy theories, and there's some truth to them. Here's the thing, because some of these conspiracy theories really are kind of picking up on some of the
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Gnostic narratives. The Gnostics want to get rid of biblical Christianity, replace it all together, and build a new world without Christianity at all.
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It's ultimately an Antichrist religion. That being the case, and by the way, the
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Apostle John makes it clear that the Antichrist is a Gnostic. Just saying, read 1
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John. That being the case, when they've set about to build their new post -Christian world,
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Jesus is going to say, nope, and he's going to yeet them into the lake of fire.
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So just saying. Yeah, I'm trying to be relevant there. Do I sound relevant when I talk like that, or is it just too sus?
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That's so three years ago. So I'm a little behind on my riz.
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All right. And you, son of man, prophesy against Gog and say,
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Thus says the Lord Yahweh, Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.
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And you're beginning to get the idea that this chief prince of Meshech and Tubal is probably a stand -in for the
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Antichrist, for the man of lawlessness. I will turn you about and drive you forward, and I will bring you up from the uttermost parts of the north and lead you against the mountains of Israel.
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Then I will strike your bow from your left hand. I will make your arrows drop out of your right hand, and you shall fall on the mountains of Israel, you and all your hordes and the peoples who are with you.
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I will give you to birds of prey and every sort and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.
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You shall fall in the open field, for I have spoken, declares the Lord Yahweh. I will send fire on Magog and on those who dwell securely in the coastlands, and they shall know that I am
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Yahweh. This kind of reminds me of a song. Let me find this real quick. Here we go.
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Listen to this. See if this kind of fits the theme. Psalm 2. Why? Why do the nations rage?
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And why do the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against Yahweh and against his
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Messiah. That's what the Hebrew word is. Saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.
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Isn't that today? The nations raging, the peoples plotting in vain, everybody.
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We got to create a new world order in a post -Christian world, and we are envisioning a new world without religion as we know it.
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Right? Can you? That's right. Imagine there's no John Lennon.
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Anyway. There isn't. Yeah, right. But here's the thing. He who sits in the heavens laughs.
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The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me,
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I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. That's a reference to Jerusalem.
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I will tell of the decree. Yahweh said to me, you are my son today. I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession.
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You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
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Now therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned,
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O rulers of the earth. Serve Yahweh with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way.
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For his wrath is quickly kindled and blessed are all who take refuge in him. This text of the prophecy of Gog Magog fits thematically with this psalm.
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It's the same thing. And again, the apostasy we're living in right now is not merely governmental.
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That's just the symptom of the fact that the church is apostatizing against Christ and the wickedness is growing exponentially and the darkness is getting darker by the minute.
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And now you've got full -on nations plotting against and persecuting Christians in a soft form right now, which will turn into a hard form later.
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And what are they doing? They're plotting in vain against Christ. But God says, I have set my
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Messiah and he's going to be king whether you like it or not. And when
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Jesus shows up, then they will know that I am Yahweh. Right?
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Then they shall know that I am Yahweh. So you shall fall on the mountains of Israel, you and all your hordes and the peoples who are with you.
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I will give you to birds of prey, every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured. You shall fall in the open field for I have spoken, declares the
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Lord Yahweh. I will send fire on Magog and on those who dwell securely in the coastlands and then they shall know that I am
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Yahweh. And my holy name I will make known in the midst of my people and I will not let my holy name be profaned any more.
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Yes. Oh, no more false teachers, no more false prophets, no more breakthroughs and suddenlies and prophetic naggery and all that nonsense.
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Right? And then no more Semper Virgo. Right. And the nations shall know that I am
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Yahweh, the holy one in Israel. Behold, it is coming.
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It will be brought about, declares the Lord Yahweh. That is the day of which
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I have spoken. Then those who dwell in the cities of Israel will go out and make fires of the weapons and burn them, shields and bucklers, bow and arrows, clubs and spears,
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AK -47, M -16s. Yeah, you get the idea, right? And they will make fires of them for seven years so that they will not need to take wood out of the field or cut down any of out of the forest, for they will make their fires of the weapons.
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They will seize the spoil of those who despoil them and plunder those who plunder them, declares the
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Lord Yahweh. Now, here's an interesting thing. Have you all ever heard the prophecy of the great wealth transfer that's supposed to take place?
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Right. So in the latter reign,
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NAR, Charismatic Pentecostal churches, there's this long running, it's almost like a joke at this point.
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Back when Barb and I were in the latter reign, they were telling us about the great transfer of wealth that was coming.
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That pagans are going to show up at your doors and go, I heard you're a Christian. Here's my
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IRA. It has a million dollars in it. I'm just signing the whole thing over to you right now. Why are you doing that?
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I don't know. I feel compelled to do so. It's just nonsense.
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And it's based upon when the children of Israel were finally kicked out of Egypt, what did the
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Egyptians do? Get out of here. And here's our gold and our stuff like that. So that is a foreshadowing of the fact that with the new earth being created, we're the ones who have the spoils of all the ones who took everything from us, our money, our goods, our life, and things like that.
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And so this is basically a picture of the spoilers being despoiled themselves, and how
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God will make everything right. You killed my saints, and you took their houses and their cars and their property, and you seized it and made it your own.
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Well, guess what? I kill you, and I give them back their stuff, and I give them your stuff too.
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So the idea here is that there's a theme eschatologically of God basically saying, you guys, you inherit everything, and the great wealth of the earth becomes all yours.
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All right, cool. Anyone want to make dibs on some of those Florida shoreline houses and things like that?
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I don't think it works that way. I'm just saying. So that's the picture here.
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So on that day, I will give to Gog a place for burial in Israel, the Valley of the Travelers east of the sea.
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So basically buried in a potter's field. I will block the travelers, for there Gog and all of his multitude will be buried.
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It will be called the Valley of Haman Gog. For seven months, the house of Israel will be burying them in order to cleanse the land.
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All the people of the land will bury them, and it will bring them renowned to the day, on the day that I show my glory, declares the
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Lord Yahweh. They will set apart men to travel through the land regularly and bury those travelers remaining on the face of the land so as to cleanse it.
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Now here's the thing. Travelers usually, there's a tradition ever since Judas, and that is, especially in Christian nations, that cities have always had places of burial for people who are not from there, and they're called potter's fields.
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So if you were to come to the United States 150 years ago, and you were visiting
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Minnesota, but your home was like London or something like this, well, if you got hit by a buggy and killed, they're not going to ship your remains back to London.
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They're going to bury you in a potter's field. You get a common burial as a traveler.
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And so here's the interesting thing. This picture of them getting, they don't even get a proper burial.
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They all get thrown into a common grave, cough. That's hell. Okay. You'll note that this is a reference without fire referring to their burial in hell.
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That's what it's talking about here. So they will set apart men to travel through the land regularly, bury those travelers remaining on the face of land so as to cleanse it.
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At the end of seven months, they will make their search. And when these travel through the land and anyone sees a human bone, then he shall set up a sign by it till the barriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon Gog.
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Hamonah is also the name of the city. Thus shall they cleanse the land. As for you, son of man, thus says the
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Lord Yahweh, speak to the birds of every sort and to all the beasts of the field assembled and come gather from all around to the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you, a great sacrificial feast on the mountains of Israel, and you shall eat flesh and you shall drink blood.
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This is a reference to the marriage feast of the lamb. Okay. And you, well, actually a little bit, that is a reference to the marriage feast of the lamb, but the animal version of it is them kind of cleansing out the rest of the stuff.
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You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, he goats and bulls, all of them fat beasts of Bashan, and you shall eat fat till you are filled and drink blood till you are drunk at the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you.
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And who's the sacrifice? The wicked. You shall be filled at my table with horses and charioteers with mighty men and all kinds of warriors, declares the
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Lord God. Again, this is the animal version of that big feast. And I will set my glory among the nations and all the nations shall see my judgment that I have executed and my hand and my hand that I have laid on them.
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The house of Israel shall know that I am Yahweh, their God from that day forward. And the nation shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity because they dealt so treacherously with me that I hid my face from them and gave them into the hand of their adversaries and they all fell by the sword.
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I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their transgressions and hid my face from them.
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If this isn't eschatological, I don't know what is. Therefore, now here's the rest of it.
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Therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh, now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel and I will be jealous for my holy name.
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And the dispensationalist says, see this is talking about Israel. And we say, did you read
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Romans 9, 10, and 11 yet? Because all of us are grafted into Israel, okay?
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We are, in God's eyes, Israeli. We're part of the heritage of Abraham.
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We are the promised descendants of Abraham because the true descendants of Abraham are those who have faith.
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So they shall forget their shame and all the treachery they have practiced against me.
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So you're going to note here, one of the questions I get as a pastor, what are we going to remember of this life when we get to heaven and the new earth?
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One of the big fears that oftentimes women have is they're afraid they're going to forget their family members.
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It's an interesting anxiety that I see in multiple women. They'll come to me and say, are we going to remember our loved ones?
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Yes. What are we going to forget then? All of our sin, okay?
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Thank God, okay? When I'm finally done with this place, I ain't looking back.
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I don't want to remember all of my sin. I don't want to remember what a complete, idiotic, spiritual loser
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I was. So note, they shall forget their shame and all the treachery they have practiced against me.
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And when they dwell securely in their land with none to make them afraid, when I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them from their enemy's lands and through them have vindicated my holiness in the sight of many nations, then they shall know that I am
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Yahweh their God, because I sent them into exile among the nations and then assembled them into their own land.
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Now, note this theme right here. So Ezekiel is writing in exile.
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And he's describing God's people as being in exile. But clearly, in the context, this is not merely talking about the exiles in exile at the time.
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Which is why then, if we were to just jump to, let's go to 1
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Peter, shall we? Listen to the opening portions of the epistle of 1
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Peter. And you kind of see a big theme. It's a good one too. All right, here we go. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect, what?
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Exiles of the dispersion, Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, Oslo, Minnesota, Grand Forks, North Dakota, Thief River, right?
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We're exiles. This theme then, and you see it. Ezekiel in the exile.
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The exile is the type and shadow that we find ourselves in. So note, we have been exiled.
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Where have we been exiled to? Well, Minnesota right now. And North Dakota. There's worse places to be exiled to,
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I'm just going to say. Not much, especially at the end of January, beginning of February.
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Because all hell breaks loose back then. I'm convinced that for some, the fires of hell will not exist.
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It'll just be a Minnesota winter, forever. Can you imagine?
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Good grief. But the idea here is that God is speaking to all of his people here.
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And we presently are in exile. And we were born in exile.
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We've never been home, ever. And God is promising to gather us from exile and bring us into his holy land, forever.
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And so these are, you're going to, true biblical eschatology doesn't have you worried about, oh, is
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Barack Obama, is Michelle Obama the antichrist? You know, and things like this.
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You don't even have to worry about that nonsense. It has us focus on the terminus. Then you shall know that I am
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Yahweh their God, because I sent them into exile among the nations, and then assembled them in their own land.
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I will leave none of them remaining among the nations anymore, and I will not hide my face any more from them when
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I pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel, declares the Lord Yahweh. We will see the face of God.
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And you know, this text says, how come we don't see God? How come when we look at the
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James Webb telescope, we never see the face of God? Because it says right here, God's hiding his face from us because of our sin.
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Right? But God showed his face to us when Christ was born. The face of God could be seen in that child who was laid in the manger.
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The face of God was marred when people punched him in the face, and he was nailed to the cross. The face of God. We'll see.
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So that's where we're going to end today. Good, beautiful picture of the eschaton. And I will note, the remainder of Ezekiel is going to be just a flyover of the architectural details of what follows next, because I don't think you want me to just keep reading on and on and on and on and on and on about all these little architectural elements and details that are explained here, because it's just going to go right over our heads.
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Okay. So we'll talk about the significance then of the vision of the new temple. And this is not talking about a third temple being, you know, being rebuilt in Jerusalem, you know, by the
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Israeli government currently. That's not what this is pointing to. So we'll talk about that all, Lord willing, next week.