To start the ball rolling Pastor Barry gave on overview in terms of geographical & temporal locations. Also the Stature of Ezekiel exhibiting excellence in his prophetic role and the intensity of the content of the book (“not to be studied until reach age of 30”) were stressed.
Ezekiel doesn’t just talk, he acts, he demonstrates, he graphically portrays. With great persistence!
Three major events were prophesied: Seige of Jerusalem; acting out many small details; about Israel being scattered among the nations (The Gentiles).
Pastor Barry made the following points as he went along:
– Israel was to be scattered (across the world)
– Lots of laws about eating
– Cooking with dung as heat source (Ezekiel given the choice between two types!) – designed to provoke horror in the people who saw it!
– Activities were designed to attract attention and provoke strong reactions
– Rationing of food & water made obvious
-The various conditional rulings are also given (“if this then that, otherwise …!.!)
A large section is devoted to the arithmetic of the lengths of sections of the history of Israel and the detailed prophecies defining them. Pastor Barry even describes a computer program that is provided by astronomers for examining planetary and stellar movements and which he used for examining times between specified dates, or dates that arise after a specified number of days.
Several examples are presented and the correspondence between prophecies and the dates of recent events is “staggering”.
Ezekiel’s hair plays a prominent part in the next section. The prophetic significance of cutting it (the shock-value) is detailed. Other defilements and their consequences are outlined. The modern-day situation of the Jews around the world is mentioned.
By the end of chapter 5 the pile of many punishments has grown!
In chapter 6 the land itself is being prophesied against!
The comparison with today – the idols that people set up for themselves – is touched on next.
A working out of prophecies which began in 1867 is described in some detail next (right up to the 1948 climax).
The Lord’s lament over the behaviour of the Israelites is highlighted and then God’s motives in the events that He is going to bring about are noted (“God wants to bring Israel back to him”). The progress along the way to that goal is noted (i.e. “Still in progress”)
Pastor Barry finished with the current trend of history and the likely worsening of Israel’s problems (as foretold by Jeremiah “The time of Jacob’s trouble”) but with the hope of a good outcome.
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PS1 ::::: TRANSCRIPT OF THE SERMON
There is a “button” labelled “Save Video” (or “Download Video” sometimes). This is actually a text-file. It is a transcript of the sermon. At present it is at an experimental stage: it is an aid to getting the most out of the sermon audio. There is no substitute for listening to the verbal delivery of a sermon. However, searching through an audio file lasting the best part of an hour can be somewhat difficult. When you approach the search knowing that you’re sure you heard something about “redemption”, for example, then a transcript text-search can take you right there and show you the time in the recording where you will find it! The file is simple “text” rather than a more sophisticated form so that you can edit or reformat as you prefer. This transcript is in 2 forms (in the one file). One half consists of normal text arrangement of paragraph-blocks. These blocks have purely arbitrary boundaries (i.e. no attempt at grammatical accuracy). The boundaries are inserted at about 800 character intervals, purely to avoid having one huge unbroken deluge of text. The other section is short bunches of words (8 to 12 normally) beneath the TIMES at which they occur (for the whole sermon).
This facility is in development (“experimental” as mentioned above) so any feedback on usefulness, improvement suggestions, or whatever, would be most welcome.
