Sermon on 2025-09-21
The Book of Ezekiel
Part 2: Introduction (Second Half)

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So last week we started our study, our journey through the book of Ezekiel. We got a little way through, almost halfway through the introduction. Just giving you a summary of the book. Let me just remind you some of the things we said because it's important to go over this just to get the flavour of what we're looking at here. Commentator John Patterson said this, There's probably no book of the Old Testament that is as little read as his, and it may well be the least popular as it is the least known of the Old Testament. And there's probably truth in that statement. Not sure how many of you read through the book of Ezekiel, but it's an interesting book. Plumptre said this, he said, His book is difficult, obscure, and tantalizing. That's a great summary. It is. It's difficult. There's things in here that we just don't really get, we don't understand. Ezekiel is explaining to us visions he had that are just so outside of our regular experience. And it is obscure. He says, but man needs it just as much as the Hebrew exiles needed it. And we'll see there are many parallels with the lives that we are living today in the world today with the things that are going on in Ezekiel's time. And what Blackwood said this, he said, Ezekiel has something almost completely missing from modern thoughts, the element of hope, and how we need that. In the world that we live in now, in the world that Ezekiel lived in, they needed that. They needed that hope. We need that hope. Again, he was a prophet. He was a preacher. He was from the tribe of Levi, so a priest. As a prophet, preacher, writer, and watchman of souls, Ezekiel stands with the greatest of the Hebrews. He is at once one of the most mysterious, yet one of the most entrancing of the Hebrew seers. One commentator said. And then another says, Ezekiel stands forth as the most powerful figure during the years of Jewish captivity in Babylonia. He kept alive in an alien land the faith which had made Israel. He deserves credit for leading the exiled nation safely through their ordeal. And that's exactly what he did do.
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 Again, he was a prophet to the exiles in Babylon, taking captive in the second siege of Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian king, famous from history, lots of historical evidence. You need to go to the British Museum and you'll find all sorts of evidence of this time. He laid siege to various cities and towns and then got to Jerusalem. And in 606 BC, so that's before this, laid siege, the first siege. And Daniel and many of the princes were taken away captive to Babylon. And then in 597, he comes back again because the king at the time had rebelled. And so Nebuchadnezzar comes to sort the problem out. And this time, a number of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were taken away captive. And Ezekiel is among those that are taken. He lived at the same time as Jeremiah. Jeremiah was older and then Daniel also. Daniel was, as I said, preceded him to Babylon. But he was very much influenced from what we understand and the things he writes by Jeremiah's preaching. I love Jeremiah. You know, when we get to heaven, I've said this a number of times probably, that I want to sit down and have a coffee, and I do hope there's coffee there. I will sit down and have a coffee with Job and Jeremiah. These two characters. You know, Job lost everything, but he never gave up on God. Jeremiah, the least successful of all the prophets in the Bible. I mean, never converted a soul as far as we are aware in his ministry. Nobody wanted to listen to him. They just wanted to silence him. They put him down a dungeon. There was actually one character that he influenced for good that we read of in his book. But as far as Jeremiah knew, his whole ministry was pretty pointless. Nobody listened. And he even has this argument with God on one occasion. He says, you know, Lord, this is ridiculous. People want to kill me. What's the point? And I love the verse that God comes back to him and says to Jeremiah, if you've run with the footmen and they've wearied you, how will you contend with the horses? What a great word of encouragement. In other words, you think this is hard? It's going to get much harder than this. If you can't cope now, you have no idea what's coming.
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 And the funny thing is, God goes on. Rather than putting his arm around Jeremiah and saying, don't worry, it's going to be alright. He goes on and says, you think people want to kill you? They do. Do you know there's people in your own household that want to kill you as well? And God really kind of lays it on. And Jeremiah's like, oh, okay. And in a sense, we need those things sometimes. Because sometimes we try and fight in our own strength and we get weary and we think we're going to give up. And that's the moment God says, great, I'm waiting for you to give up because when you are weak, then I'm strong. And we sometimes need to come to the end of ourselves. The end of our own confidence, our own abilities to recognize that we need God. Without him, we can do nothing. But as we read in Philippians 4, verse 13, through Christ I can do all things. Ezekiel taught and prophesied to his people for 22 years. During a really turbulent time, in a sense. And people have said, and it's probably true, that he's the most dramatic of all the prophets. The things we read in his classes, as we said last time, he's one of the major prophets. Because the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are the four major prophets. And their class is such because their writings typically are longer than the others. Again, Jeremiah was declaring the imminent fall of Jerusalem from within the city. Ezekiel was predicting the same, but from the land of Babylon. And Daniel, by now, was elevated to a place of prominence in Nebuchadnezzar's government. The Lord had these three men. Daniel was God's prophet to the Babylonian rulers. But Ezekiel to the Hebrew captives. The key phrase is, over a hundred times we see the expression, Son of Man. And it stresses the humanity in contrast to God's sovereignty. Interestingly, it's a phrase that Jesus uses of himself. To identify his humanity. And then 49 times we get this expression, The Word of the Lord came unto me.
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 So much of what we read in Ezekiel is not just these prophets' thoughts or musings. This is what God has said and it's recorded for us. And then we get this statement, And you shall know that I am Jehovah. It's used over 60 times. And then in the first 11 chapters, 12 times, we find the expression, The Glory of the Lord. There's hope in that statement. The key thought that we've seen already is that Ezekiel taught Israel, that before they could ever return to their homeland, they must return to God. And we went through looking at this last time. We talked about the call of Ezekiel. The judgment that God was bringing upon Jerusalem. And that was given before the siege. And then we kind of got partway through looking at the judgment of the surrounding nations that God was prophesying through Ezekiel. And we'll see that from chapter 25 through 32. That was given during the siege. And then the last section of the book is the prophecies and the promises that God gives that were after the siege, which he gets in the land of Babylon when he's there. So we're going to jump back in partway through where we got to. Just briefly again, the judgment of the nations that we'll see prophesied refer to the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, Philistines, the land of Tyre and Sidon, Egypt and Ethiopia and Libya and Lydia, that whole region. And you will see why God is going to bring judgment as we go through and look at these. You know, it's one of the constant challenges of the critics. That God is a tyrant and a misogynistic bully and so on. He tries to wipe out all these tribes. Because people don't understand the background. They don't understand what was going on. They don't understand quite how evil and wicked these things were. We are starting to get a glimpse with some of the things I've already shared this morning. With things that are going on right now. With things that we're hearing going on, for example, in Nigeria.
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 You're starting to get a glimpse. And we know that it's young children, barely old enough to walk, that are being trained to use guns in some of these places. And that helps us, hopefully, to kind of comprehend a little bit about why God was bringing judgment on these nations. God is a loving God. He's a gracious God. He's a merciful God. But at the same time, He's also a just God. I'm going to pick up just a little bit here. Because this is exciting. It's a wonderful prophecy. You may be familiar with this. It's one of the wonderful prophecies that we find in the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel prophesied that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the city of Tyre. Tyre was a major seaport, a trading place. It was a place of industry and business and so on. Very, very well known at that time. He prophesied that many nations would be against Tyre. He prophesied that the dust would be scraped from the surface of Tyre and it would become like a bare rock. I mean, that's unthinkable. You know, that's like us saying about London will be levelled and there'll be not a building left there and it'll be just barren. And you think, well, you can imagine all sorts of things and catastrophes and calamities and so on and terrorist attacks, whatever. But it's hard to imagine that kind of city being reduced to nothing. And that's what was prophesied. And yet, bizarrely, Ezekiel also prophesied that the fishermen would spread their nets on the remains of Tyre. And that's one of those, it's like, well, I can't even see how that would work because you've got the city, which is okay by the coast, but why would the fishermen wouldn't spread their nets? You know, it's just one of those bizarre things. Ezekiel prophesied that the stones BPBPBPBPBP
 and the timber would be thrown into the sea and that Tyre would never be rebuilt. In fact, it was prophesied that Tyre, the city, would never be found again. And again, it's easy for us looking back historically, we can understand how these things have played out. But on the other side of that, three years after this prophecy, Nebuchadnezzar did indeed come up against the city of Tyre. There was a 13-year siege, and Nebuchadnezzar finally broke the gates down, only to find the city almost deserted, much to his surprise. The people had all actually fled to an island about a half mile off the coast. This new Tyre, as it became known, was almost impenetrable because it was off the coast, it was in the sea, it was an island, very difficult to attack, and so on. We then go a little bit down the line historically, and we come to the time of Alexander the Great. So from Babylon, you had the Medo-Persian Empire that becomes the dominant empire after them, and after the Medo-Persian Empire, it was the Empire of Greece under Alexander the Great. And he's the next one to have a go at Tyre, if you like. And in order to take this new city of Tyre that had been built on this little island, he had to build a causeway out from the mainland, literally build a kind of bridge to get there. He literally scraped the remains of the old city into the sea and left just bare rock, exactly as Ezekiel had prophesied would happen. Now, there are people who may say, well, of course, it's easy for Ezekiel to prophesy that Nebuchadnezzar was going to attack Tyre, he was in that kind of mode, he was this king that was defeating everybody, so it was kind of a safe guess to suggest that was happening. Well, all right, I'll give you that, that's a possibility. But how on earth could Ezekiel prophesy about Alexander the Great? A couple of hundred years down the line. And interestingly then, it was those rocks that were left there that fishermen even to this day would lay their nets on to dry out,
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 just as Ezekiel had prophesied. Over the next 1600 years, many nations attacked and destroyed Tyre until a final destruction in 1291 during the Crusades. And you can see on the picture there, on the left, the causeway that Alexander built out to this city, this new Tyre, if you like, was built. And over the years, the land has been kind of filled in, and so now it's actually part of the mainland, that whole area has just been filled with rocks and rubble and so on. Floyd Hamilton, in The Battle for the Christian Faith, states the following. It is also written, thou shalt be built no more. Other cities destroyed by enemies had been rebuilt. Jerusalem was destroyed many times, but always has risen again from the ruins. What reason was there for saying that old Tyre may not be rebuilt? But 25 centuries ago, a Jew in exile over in Babylonia looked into the future at the command of God and wrote the words, thou shalt be built no more. The voice of God has spoken, and old Tyre today stands as it has for 25 centuries, a bare rock uninhabited by man. Today, anyone who wants to see the site of the old city can have it pointed out to him along the shore, but there is not a ruin to mark the spot. It has been scraped clean and has never been rebuilt. The great freshwater springs of Resolene are at the sites of the mainland city of Tyre and no doubt supplied the city with an abundance of freshwater. These springs are still there, they still flow, but their water runs into the sea. The flow of these springs was measured by an engineer and found to be about 10 million gallons daily. It is still an excellent site for a city and would have fresh water enough for a large modern city. Yet it has never been rebuilt. Thus, this prophecy has stood true for more than 2,500 years. What a wonderful thing it is when we find scriptures, prophetic scriptures, and we can look back historically and we can see the fulfilment of them. 
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 What this should do is give you great confidence in the word of God. There isn't a single prophecy that has not been fulfilled, that should have been fulfilled by now, and all the ones that are yet to be fulfilled, we're seeing things take place now that are in fulfilment of these prophecies. We're seeing the foundations being laid for all that the Bible says is going to occur in the last days. We don't need to doubt God's word, we can have great confidence in it. Well, let's move on then to the final section in a sense. This is the prophecies regarding the restoration of Israel. And this on its own is a staggering thing to comprehend. And I encourage you to read Deuteronomy 28. Deuteronomy 28 is one of the most amazing chapters in the Bible because it details the future of the nation of Israel. From the time of Moses, all that would take place, all the problems that they experienced during the time of the judges, and then during the time of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, all that whole period of history is all prophesied in advance. And then including the time when the Romans would then subdue them, and that the Jews would be dispersed around the world, and then ultimately in the last days that their life literally would be hanging in doubt. When we saw that with the Holocaust, we're seeing it again now. Deuteronomy 28 is one of the most amazing passages in the Bible. And if anybody says to you, oh, I don't believe the Bible, just read Deuteronomy 28. You cannot deny that God has done this incredible thing in preserving the nation of Israel, which by all accounts should have been destroyed by now. Show me one other nation from that period of history that still exists. I mean, maybe you could argue that Egypt is still there. Yes, they are. But all the surrounding nations, the ones we saw on that list earlier, the Moabites, Jebusites, Hittites, all those from that period of history and before, but Israel still exists.
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 Chapter 36 is another one of these incredible chapters in the book of Ezekiel. And in fact, in the entire Bible, this is a wonderful chapter. It speaks of the regathering. Let's just read some of the text. Verse 24 of chapter 36 is this. For I will take you, this is Israel, from among the heathen and gather you out of all countries. All right. At the point that Ezekiel is writing this, the northern kingdom has been taking captives to Assyria. Assyria was then conquered by Babylon. So many of them had ended up in Babylon anyway. And then Nebuchadnezzar comes and takes the remnant to Babylon. Some of them travelled down to Egypt to try and escape and so on. And they were judged for their unbelief and rebellion against God there. But this is saying, not I'm going to bring you back from Egypt and from Mesopotamia, but from all the countries where they've been scattered to. Well, now with the hindsight we have, we look back through history, we know that the Jews were scattered around the world. And much of that really didn't take place until AD 70 and then AD 132 to 135 when Emperor Hadrian finally came and got rid of the Jews from the land and renamed the land Palestine after Israel's ancient enemies, the Philistines. He did it on purpose to annoy the Jews. And so the land became known as Palestine. The land became known as Palestine. But notice it was because of Hadrian's rebranding the land. There was never a Palestinian people. This is a complete media invented fiction. I said before, the Palestinian orchestra was a Jewish orchestra. The Palestinian Post that published this wonderful event when Israel in 1948 became a nation again, the Palestinian Post was a Jewish newspaper. So somehow we've gone from understanding that Palestine just referred to the land to starting talking about a Palestinian people and a Palestinian state. Now this is all a media fiction.
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 There's a wonderful book by, in fact a number of great books by Dave Hunt, and he deals with a lot of these things. One of the best and clearest is a book that Dave Hunt wrote called Judgment Day. Now if you want to understand the details of why things are as they are, I would really encourage reading that book. But let me just carry on. Let's look at this prophecy. God has promised to take them from the heathen, bring them back into their own land. Notice what God calls it, their own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you. 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. This work that God is promising to do in the people of Israel. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statues, and you should keep my judgments and do them. And you should dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, that's to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so on. And you shall be my people, and I will be your God. What hope is there for the Jews? That's what God is going to do. In chapter 37 we have this incredible vision that Ezekiel gets of this valley, or so of the dry bones. It's a vision of the restoration of Israel. Firstly brought back to life in the flesh, and then later breathed upon with the spirit. Isaiah 11.11 tells us the Lord shall set his hand the second time to recover the remnant of his people. That was part fulfilled in the first half of the 20th century. The remainder of the Jews are already going back to the land, and at the second coming the Lord will bring them all from around the earth back into the land, and that will be the fulfilment of that prophecy from Isaiah. So the Lord through Ezekiel proclaims to Israel the coming resurrection of her national life.
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 And that restoration is to do with both the national entity of Israel, as well as a spiritual revival or restoration which the Lord announced, as we saw back in chapter 36. And he foretells by
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 the symbolic act of joining two sticks together, the union of the two kingdoms, under one head. David, he says. Now some commentators of the scholars will see this if the Lord tarries and we get there, we've studied through this. Some commentators think that David is a reference to the son of David, as in the Messiah. Other commentators, and we'll explore and look at the reasons why, believe this will literally be David, King David, resurrected, and given a position of authority during the millennial reign of Christ. And that may well be the case, because the number of times that occurs. But Ezekiel sees this vision of these two sticks, one representing Judah, one representing the kingdom of Israel, these two, the north and the southern kingdoms, bringing them together, making them one again. And then we get to chapter 38 and 39. And this, again, may well be imminent. And when I say imminent, we can see that this week. As we've said already, it may be the rapture takes place this week. But if the rapture doesn't take place this week, and the Lord, in his mercy and grace, again, he's not wanting that any should perish, he's giving people time to come in, but there will be a cut off, it could be this week. But if that doesn't happen, because of all the other things that are going on, it may well be that we will see this. There's a number of us that believe that we will see this event before the rapture of the church. We might be wrong. But it would seem to be, for a number of reasons. And we'll look at this again, if the Lord tarries, we'll go through this. And we'll look at it in detail. But it's an incredible couple of chapters that speak of an invasion. Now, probably 30, 40 years ago, there were believers that were teaching these things, and sharing them, and Christians throughout the centuries that held to God's word. But even then, people would have been a little more sceptical.
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 But now, this is just like the newspapers we're picking up, or the TV reports we're hearing all the time, or the things on the radio. Nobody is going to be surprised at all, if suddenly, Russia invade Israel. We know that they've been doing military exercises in Syria. Why? We know that Putin has been flexing his muscles a little bit recently, don't we? We've seen it with these planes that have been flying through Polish airspace and other areas. And there is a genuine concern about what is actually going on. So, if something were to escalate, and because of all that's been going on with the war in Gaza, these things would no longer be a surprise. But bear in mind, Ezekiel was prophesying this stuff 2,500 years ago. This whole couple of chapters deal with the occasion in which God himself is going to intercede and intervene to stop, to quell, an ill-fated invasion of Israel by somebody described in the text as Magog and his allies. Now, Magog is a term that we maybe don't understand. I'll explain where the name comes from in a moment. But we're talking about Persia, what you and I today would refer to as Iran, Iraq. Kush, well that would be, again, northern Africa, down as far as Ethiopia. Libya, we do recognize. Goma, the area of Germany, to Gama. Meshach and Juvel. Many commentators believe that the individuals that have come from these names, and I'll show you where they come from in a minute, it goes all the way back to Genesis, that's referring to Russia, parts of Russia. The passage seems to indicate the use of nuclear weapons. And this is not a full study of this this morning, we'll deal with it, we'll go through it when we get there, and look at all the details. But this is imminent. Back in Genesis chapter 10, and it's reiterated in 1 Chronicles as well, we have a genealogy, we have the sons of Noah that are given to us. Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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 Now these were incredible characters, they obviously were with Noah on the ark, and they came off the ark and they helped to repopulate the earth. But they lived for a long time. The earth, the climate was very different. And so they lived for a long time. And so they became very well known, revered, respected. So much so that actually their names get twisted and used in other cultures as the languages change, and particularly from the time of the Tower of Babel as all the languages changed. Japheth becomes known as Jupiter. And various of the Romans and Greek gods and so on. We know that the descendants of Japheth are those that populated the area we refer to as Europe. Magog being one of those. The area of Russia. The Scythians were those that lived in that region, from this descent. Ham was his descendant. In fact, Ham becomes known as Hermes. The son of Ham was Cush. And then Misrim and Futh and Canaan, all this line. Bacchus, the Roman god, son of Cush, Bar Cush, which is Nimrod, by the way. All the Greek mythology and the Egyptian mythology, it's all linked back to this. If you want to dig into it and you want to get some nice bedtime reading, there's a wonderful book called The Two Babylons by Reverend Alexander Hislop. It's still in print. It's kind of heavy going, but it is fascinating as he shows you where all of these things tie together. And how all these gods, probably when you were at school, you probably heard about some of the Greek gods and so on. Everything links back to these three, Shem, Ham and Japheth. And you kind of understand it. These very, very famous great grandparents who were men of stature, respected, and they lived a long time. And then, of course, you have Shem. Shem, his descendants are the Shemites, which is where we get the term anti-Semitism, Shemitism. That's where it comes from, the descendants of Shem. They lived in various areas, Elam, Asher, Afak, Sedlad, Aram, and of course, Israel, the area that we know as Israel today.
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 But they're the names. These are just simply the names that are given to us in Ezekiel 38, are simply the ancient names of these groups of people. And you think, well, why doesn't God just use the names we know today? Well, the problem is we keep changing names. You see, there's a place that we refer to today as Istanbul. It used to be known as Constantinople. You know, there's many places that you look at around the world that we have changed the name. Leningrad is another case of a city that's changed names numerous times in history. And simply as generations have gone down, various geographical regions have changed the name, but they're the same geographical area. If we were to look at this on a map, you can see Israel in the centre there. There where these nations are. So typically we've got due north of Israel, we've got this area. In fact, Moscow is due north of Israel, which is interesting, where a number of these prophecies speak about these attacks coming from the north. Now, some of those refer to Babylon. When Babylon's over here, by the Euphrates River, they would have come around the Fertile Crescent. This was just arid desert in the middle here. So to travel to Israel from Babylon, they would have come up and in through the north. So a lot of the scriptures that speak about Nebuchadnezzar and the attacks from the north, we'll see that in the beginning of Ezekiel. That's why Nebuchadnezzar comes in from the north. But also, a lot of these prophecies, there's a double edge to double meaning, if you like. And of course, directly north of Israel is where we have Russia. We have the area of Germany. We have the area here, which Meshach, we know today as Turkey. And Jubal, which is the area of Turkey into Syria and so on. Togarmah, this area. Persia, of course, Iran and Iraq. And of course, the northern African areas here. Those are the places.
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 And what we're told in Ezekiel 38 is that these groups of people will all culminate or join together and attack Israel. Now, it's no surprise when you look at those and you recognize the thing they all have in common is largely a Muslim population. What we seem to see is a Russian-led, Russian-backed, funded, if you like, Islamic invasion of Israel. It's no secret that as far as Islam is concerned, Israel has to be destroyed. As I said also, there's a suggestion that in this war that the Bible says is coming, that there's going to be nuclear weapons that are used. The leftover weapons will actually provide the energy needs for the nation of Israel for seven years. This is just as an aside, one of the reasons why a number of scholars and commentators think that this will probably occur, or could well occur, three and a half years at least before the tribulation begins. Let me explain why. If Israel are going to burn the weapons for seven years, the last three and a half years of the tribulation, they are forced to flee from their land. They won't be in their land. They won't be able to burn the weapons. So if you go from the three and a half year point, you count backwards, you have to go to three and a half years before the tribulation. It's just a little bit of deductive logic. It may not be right. But that's why a number of commentators think that this invasion, this attack, will occur before the tribulation begins. By the way, that doesn't change when the rapture will take place. None of these things are dependent upon the rapture, or vice versa. What we are told is that professionals are going to be hired to clear the battlefield. They are to go through. In fact, if people go through and they see a corpse that's lying there, they're not to touch it, but they're to put a marker there. And the professionals will come and deal with it. And you think, well, why else would that be, unless we were talking about radiation and the danger that's associated.
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 Interesting. In fact, they have to wait for seven months before they can even start the operation to clear up all the dead bodies and the remains. And then it takes a further seven months for them to clear it. They are to bury the  BPBPBPBP
 dead bodies east of the Dead Sea, or if you like, downwind. Which again would imply that they're concerned about what's in the air, and potentially radiation poisoning and so on. As I said already, if a traveller finds something that professionals have marked, or have missed rather, they don't touch it, they just mark it. And the professionals will deal with it. Incredible chapters. We will deal with those again. If the Lord is willing, we're still here. We'll go through them and look at the detail. It may well be that we are doing a commentary on that while it's taking place, which will make it easy to understand the details. But we'll see. And then we get to the last eight chapters of the book. This is astonishing. There is so much detail and precision in these chapters, and it seems to be giving us the blueprint, the details, and everything else regarding the Millennial Temple. Now, we've talked about the fact that Israel are wanting to rebuild their temple. The plan is already underway, and even building work, excavation work, is taking place for them to build a temple. But that temple from scripture will be a temple not that Israel will be able to continue to use. They will start their sacrifices again. Daniel chapter 9 is the passage again. Mark is going to give us this study coming up hopefully soon again, if the Lord tarries. We have to keep saying that at the moment because we just don't know. But in Daniel chapter 9, we're given the details that Israel will be allowed to start offering sacrifices again in their temple. Some wonderfully charismatic individual is going to step onto the world stage, and he's going to ratify a peace agreement with Israel, or force them to accept. It could be either way. How interesting that as we're sitting here today, the United Nations are talking about this state of Palestine. It's going to be thrust upon Israel. And some sort of peace hopefully is going to come out of this as far as they're concerned.
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 It just takes one individual to step on the world stage and ratify that agreement, and the clock will start ticking. That's why we think we may well be out of his scene. So close. But this temple is not that temple, because that temple, the one they're working on now, that is the one that ultimately Antichrist will put his image in. Matthew 24, Jesus makes it very clear. Quoting Daniel, he talks about the abomination, the... what's the word I'm looking for? Desolation, yes. So this idea that Antichrist is going to have an image of himself placed within the temple and the Holy of Holies. It's exactly what had happened, 167 BC, where this individual, again Mark was taking us through that, this individual Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the Seleucid rulers. And he had done the same thing, and he'd sacrificed a pig on the altar and so on. Eventually the Jews overthrew him, defeated him. But the one that's coming, the one we refer to typically as Antichrist, and that's one of the least used titles actually in Scripture. He's known by many titles in Scripture. There are about 33 titles in the Old Testament, about 13 different titles in the New Testament. The man of sin, son of perdition, many other titles. But we typically know this individual as Antichrist, the one that's going to step onto the world scene. That temple we're talking about now will be destroyed. But when Jesus comes back at the second coming, when he establishes his throne and his kingdom... and by the way, why is it that Jesus needs to come back? Why not just like, okay, that's all done now? Because Jesus, in a sense, just purely for the record, needs to prove and demonstrate that God's plan right from the beginning of time was good. That man can rule on this earth that God had given in a just and righteous way. Originally it was given to Adam and to his descendants to have dominion over all creation. But of course sin then gets right into the beginning, and we never see that being played out.
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 We never see this earth being run the way God intended. So Jesus will come as the second Adam, and he will establish his throne, and he will prove to all the courts of Satan that God was just and right in doing what he did. In creating Adam, giving him this earth to rule over, the earth that Satan so desperately wanted for himself, and that pride. Ultimately God will set up Jesus. Jesus will rule and reign to prove that man, Jesus, can rule and reign in justice on this earth. We're given the description of this temple. Very, very detailed. There's lots of symbolism, but it all points to something. A symbol means nothing unless it points to something. We're told that all nations are going to worship there. There will be offerings and sacrifices again that will be resumed. It's going to be open only on the Sabbath day and new moons. There's lots of things that we need to explore as to why. And then that gives us the culmination. That's where this book ends. With this hope of what is coming. The restoration. What began in oppression ended in liberty.
ZZZZZ
 As we said last week, Romans 5.5 says, QQQQQQQQ

And hope makes not a shame, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.


And because of the Holy Ghost, because of the Word of God, because He gives us His Word, He gives us His understanding,


we know that there is hope. Despite all that's going on, there is incredible hope.


If we are here next Sunday, we are going to get into the first three chapters. So read the first three chapters and then we will see this incredible vision that Ezekiel has, the call that Ezekiel has, and how that also applies to us. Let's bow our hearts. Heavenly Father, we thank you for Ezekiel. We thank you for his faithfulness and his willingness to trust you, to be obedient, to speak out, even though it was unpopular. The Lord be your man of the hour. Lord, help us to have that boldness to speak out. Lord, to those around us. Lord, just as you said to Ezekiel, Lord, that there would be those that wouldn't want to hear him, but there will be some that would. Well, Lord, by your grace, we pray you would give us opportunity to speak to those who have ears to hear. Lord, to share with them the reality of the times in which we live. But also just as Ezekiel was able to do, to share the hope that you have a wonderful plan and a wonderful purpose, and it will be fulfilled. We've seen this morning, Lord, how the prophecies in Scripture are not just predictions. They're not guesses. It is history foretold in advance. And we can trust your word. Lord, may we grow in faith, but may we also grow in grace. We ask these things this morning in Jesus' name.
 Amen. 
May God bless you. 


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So last week we started our study, our journey through the book of Ezekiel.

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We got a little way through, almost halfway through the introduction.

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Just giving you a summary of the book.

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Let me just remind you some of the things we said because it's important to go over this just to get the flavor of what we're looking at here.

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Commentator John Patterson said this,

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There's probably no book of the Old Testament that is as little read as his, and it may well be the least popular as it is the least known of the Old Testament.

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And there's probably truth in that statement.

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Not sure how many of you read through the book of Ezekiel, but it's an interesting book.

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Plumtree said this, he said,

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His book is difficult, obscure, and tantalizing.

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That's a great summary. It is. It's difficult.

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There's things in here that we just don't really get, we don't understand.

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Ezekiel is explaining to us visions he had that are just so outside of our regular experience.

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And it is obscure.

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He says, but man needs it just as much as the Hebrew exiles needed it.

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And we'll see there are many parallels with the lives that we are living today in the world today with the things that are going on in Ezekiel's time.

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And what Mackwood said this, he said,

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Ezekiel has something almost completely missing from modern thoughts, the element of hope, and how we need that.

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In the world that we live in now, in the world that Ezekiel lived in, they needed that.

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They needed that hope. We need that hope.

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Again, he was a prophet. He was a preacher.

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He was from the tribe of Levi, so a priest.

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As a prophet, preacher, writer, and watchman of souls, Ezekiel stands with the greatest of the Hebrews.

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He is at once one of the most mysterious, yet one of the most entrancing of the Hebrew seers.

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One commentator said. And then another says,

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Ezekiel stands forth as the most powerful figure during the years of Jewish captivity in Babylonia.

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He kept alive in an alien land the faith which had made Israel.

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He deserves credit for leading the exiled nation safely through their ordeal.

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And that's exactly what he did do.

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Again, he was a prophet to the exiles in Babylon, taking captive in the second siege of Jerusalem.

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Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian king, famous from history, lots of historical evidence.

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You need to go to the British Museum and you'll find all sorts of evidence of this time.

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He laid siege to various cities and towns and then got to Jerusalem.

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And in 606 BC, so that's before this, laid siege, the first siege.

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And Daniel and many of the princes were taken away captive to Babylon.

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And then in 597, he comes back again because the king at the time had rebelled.

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And so Nebuchadnezzar comes to sort the problem out.

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And this time, a number of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were taken away captive.

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And Ezekiel is among those that are taken.

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He lived at the same time as Jeremiah.

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Jeremiah was older and then Daniel also.

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Daniel was, as I said, preceded him to Babylon.

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But he was very much influenced from what we understand and the things he writes by Jeremiah's preaching.

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I love Jeremiah.

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You know, when we get to heaven, I've said this a number of times probably,

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that I want to sit down and have a coffee, and I do hope there's coffee there.

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I will sit down and have a coffee with Job and Jeremiah.

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These two characters.

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You know, Job lost everything, but he never gave up on God.

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Jeremiah, the least successful of all the prophets in the Bible.

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I mean, never converted a soul as far as we are aware in his ministry.

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Nobody wanted to listen to him.

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They just wanted to silence him.

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They put him down a dungeon.

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There was actually one character that he influenced for good that we read of in his book.

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But as far as Jeremiah knew, his whole ministry was pretty pointless.

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Nobody listened.

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And he even has this argument with God on one occasion.

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He says, you know, Lord, this is ridiculous.

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People want to kill me.

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What's the point?

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And I love the verse that God comes back to him and says to Jeremiah,

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if you've run with the footmen and they've wearied you, how will you contend with the horses?

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What a great word of encouragement.

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In other words, you think this is hard?

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It's going to get much harder than this.

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If you can't cope now, you have no idea what's coming.

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And the funny thing is, God goes on.

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Rather than putting his arm around Jeremiah and saying, don't worry, it's going to be alright.

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He goes on and says, you think people want to kill you?

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They do.

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Do you know there's people in your own household that want to kill you as well?

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And God really kind of lays it on.

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And Jeremiah's like, oh, okay.

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And in a sense, we need those things sometimes.

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Because sometimes we try and fight in our own strength and we get weary and we think we're going to give up.

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And that's the moment God says, great, I'm waiting for you to give up because when you are weak, then I'm strong.

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And we sometimes need to come to the end of ourselves.

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The end of our own confidence, our own abilities to recognize that we need God.

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Without him, we can do nothing.

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But as we read in Philippians 4, verse 13, through Christ I can do all things.

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Ezekiel taught and prophesied to his people for 22 years.

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During a really turbulent time, in a sense.

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And people have said, and it's probably true, that he's the most dramatic of all the prophets.

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The things we read in his classes, as we said last time, he's one of the major prophets.

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Because the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are the four major prophets.

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And their class is such because their writings typically are longer than the others.

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Again, Jeremiah was declaring the imminent fall of Jerusalem from within the city.

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Ezekiel was predicting the same, but from the land of Babylon.

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And Daniel, by now, was elevated to a place of prominence in Nebuchadnezzar's government.

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The Lord had these three men.

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Daniel was God's prophet to the Babylonian rulers.

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But Ezekiel to the Hebrew captives.

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The key phrase is, over a hundred times we see the expression, Son of Man.

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And it stresses the humanity in contrast to God's sovereignty.

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Interestingly, it's a phrase that Jesus uses of himself.

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To identify his humanity.

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And then 49 times we get this expression, The Word of the Lord came unto me.

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So much of what we read in Ezekiel is not just these prophets' thoughts or musings.

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This is what God has said and it's recorded for us.

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And then we get this statement, And you shall know that I am Jehovah.

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It's used over 60 times.

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And then in the first 11 chapters, 12 times, we find the expression, The Glory of the Lord.

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There's hope in that statement.

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The key thought that we've seen already is that Ezekiel taught Israel,

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that before they could ever return to their homeland, they must return to God.

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And we went through looking at this last time.

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We talked about the call of Ezekiel.

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The judgment that God was bringing upon Jerusalem.

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And that was given before the siege.

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And then we kind of got partway through looking at the judgment of the surrounding nations

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that God was prophesying through Ezekiel.

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And we'll see that from chapter 25 through 32.

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That was given during the siege.

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And then the last section of the book is the prophecies and the promises that God gives

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that were after the siege, which he gets in the land of Babylon when he's there.

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So we're going to jump back in partway through where we got to.

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Just briefly again, the judgment of the nations that we'll see prophesied

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refer to the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, Philistines, the land of Tyre and Sidon,

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Egypt and Ethiopia and Libya and Lydia, that whole region.

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And you will see why God is going to bring judgment as we go through and look at these.

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You know, it's one of the constant challenges of the critics.

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That God is a tyrant and a misogynistic bully and so on.

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He tries to wipe out all these tribes.

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Because people don't understand the background.

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They don't understand what was going on.

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They don't understand quite how evil and wicked these things were.

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We are starting to get a glimpse with some of the things I've already shared this morning.

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With things that are going on right now.

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With things that we're hearing going on, for example, in Nigeria.

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You're starting to get a glimpse.

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And we know that it's young children, barely old enough to walk,

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that are being trained to use guns in some of these places.

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And that helps us, hopefully, to kind of comprehend a little bit about why

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God was bringing judgment on these nations.

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God is a loving God. He's a gracious God. He's a merciful God.

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But at the same time, He's also a just God.

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I'm going to pick up just a little bit here.

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Because this is exciting. It's a wonderful prophecy.

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You may be familiar with this.

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It's one of the wonderful prophecies that we find in the book of Ezekiel.

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Ezekiel prophesied that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the city of Tyre.

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Tyre was a major seaport, a trading place.

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It was a place of industry and business and so on.

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Very, very well known at that time.

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He prophesied that many nations would be against Tyre.

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He prophesied that the dust would be scraped from the surface of Tyre

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and it would become like a bare rock.

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I mean, that's unthinkable.

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You know, that's like us saying about London will be leveled

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and there'll be not a building left there and it'll be just barren.

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And you think, well, you can imagine all sorts of things and catastrophes

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and calamities and so on and terrorist attacks, whatever.

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But it's hard to imagine that kind of city being reduced to nothing.

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And that's what was prophesied.

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And yet, bizarrely, Ezekiel also prophesied that the fishermen

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would spread their nets on the remains of Tyre.

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And that's one of those, it's like, well, I can't even see how that would work

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because you've got the city, which is okay by the coast,

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but why would the fishermen wouldn't spread their nets?

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You know, it's just one of those bizarre things.

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Ezekiel prophesied that the stones and the timber would be thrown into the sea

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and that Tyre would never be rebuilt.

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In fact, it was prophesied that Tyre, the city, would never be found again.

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And again, it's easy for us looking back historically,

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we can understand how these things have played out.

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But on the other side of that,

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three years after this prophecy,

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Nebuchadnezzar did indeed come up against the city of Tyre.

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There was a 13-year siege, and Nebuchadnezzar finally broke the gates down,

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only to find the city almost deserted, much to his surprise.

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The people had all actually fled to an island about a half mile off the coast.

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This new Tyre, as it became known, was almost impenetrable

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because it was off the coast, it was in the sea, it was an island,

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very difficult to attack, and so on.

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We then go a little bit down the line historically,

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and we come to the time of Alexander the Great.

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So from Babylon, you had the Medo-Persian Empire that becomes the dominant empire after them,

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and after the Medo-Persian Empire, it was the Empire of Greece under Alexander the Great.

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And he's the next one to have a go at Tyre, if you like.

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And in order to take this new city of Tyre that had been built on this little island,

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he had to build a causeway out from the mainland,

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literally build a kind of bridge to get there.

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He literally scraped the remains of the old city into the sea

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and left just bare rock, exactly as Ezekiel had prophesied would happen.

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Now, there are people who may say, well, of course, it's easy for Ezekiel to prophesy

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that Nebuchadnezzar was going to attack Tyre, he was in that kind of mode,

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he was this king that was defeating everybody,

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so it was kind of a safe guess to suggest that was happening.

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Well, all right, I'll give you that, that's a possibility.

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But how on earth could Ezekiel prophesy about Alexander the Great?

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A couple of hundred years down the line.

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And interestingly then, it was those rocks that were left there

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that fishermen even to this day would lay their nets on to dry out,

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just as Ezekiel had prophesied.

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Over the next 1600 years, many nations attacked and destroyed Tyre

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until a final destruction in 1291 during the Crusades.

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And you can see on the picture there, on the left, the causeway that Alexander built out to this city,

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this new Tyre, if you like, was built.

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And over the years, the land has been kind of filled in,

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and so now it's actually part of the mainland,

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that whole area has just been filled with rocks and rubble and so on.

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Floyd Hamilton, in The Battle for the Christian Faith, states the following.

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It is also written, thou shalt be built no more.

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Other cities destroyed by enemies had been rebuilt.

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Jerusalem was destroyed many times, but always has risen again from the ruins.

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What reason was there for saying that old Tyre may not be rebuilt?

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But 25 centuries ago, a Jew in exile over in Babylonia

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looked into the future at the command of God and wrote the words, thou shalt be built no more.

00:14:18.500 --> 00:14:25.500
The voice of God has spoken, and old Tyre today stands as it has for 25 centuries,

00:14:25.500 --> 00:14:28.500
a bare rock uninhabited by man.

00:14:28.500 --> 00:14:34.500
Today, anyone who wants to see the site of the old city can have it pointed out to him along the shore,

00:14:34.500 --> 00:14:37.500
but there is not a ruin to mark the spot.

00:14:37.500 --> 00:14:42.500
It has been scraped clean and has never been rebuilt.

00:14:42.500 --> 00:14:51.500
The great freshwater springs of Resolene are at the sites of the mainland city of Tyre

00:14:51.500 --> 00:14:54.500
and no doubt supplied the city with an abundance of freshwater.

00:14:54.500 --> 00:14:58.500
These springs are still there, they still flow, but their water runs into the sea.

00:14:58.500 --> 00:15:04.500
The flow of these springs was measured by an engineer and found to be about 10 million gallons daily.

00:15:04.500 --> 00:15:10.500
It is still an excellent site for a city and would have fresh water enough for a large modern city.

00:15:10.500 --> 00:15:13.500
Yet it has never been rebuilt.

00:15:13.500 --> 00:15:18.500
Thus, this prophecy has stood true for more than 2,500 years.

00:15:18.500 --> 00:15:23.500
What a wonderful thing it is when we find scriptures, prophetic scriptures,

00:15:23.500 --> 00:15:27.500
and we can look back historically and we can see the fulfillment of them.

00:15:27.500 --> 00:15:32.500
What this should do is give you great confidence in the word of God.

00:15:32.500 --> 00:15:39.500
There isn't a single prophecy that has not been fulfilled, that should have been fulfilled by now,

00:15:39.500 --> 00:15:45.500
and all the ones that are yet to be fulfilled, we're seeing things take place now that are in fulfillment of these prophecies.

00:15:45.500 --> 00:15:55.500
We're seeing the foundations being laid for all that the Bible says is going to occur in the last days.

00:15:55.500 --> 00:15:59.500
We don't need to doubt God's word, we can have great confidence in it.

00:15:59.500 --> 00:16:04.500
Well, let's move on then to the final section in a sense.

00:16:04.500 --> 00:16:09.500
This is the prophecies regarding the restoration of Israel.

00:16:09.500 --> 00:16:13.500
And this on its own is a staggering thing to comprehend.

00:16:13.500 --> 00:16:17.500
And I encourage you to read Deuteronomy 28.

00:16:17.500 --> 00:16:24.500
Deuteronomy 28 is one of the most amazing chapters in the Bible because it details the future of the nation of Israel.

00:16:24.500 --> 00:16:30.500
From the time of Moses, all that would take place, all the problems that they experienced during the time of the judges,

00:16:30.500 --> 00:16:36.500
and then during the time of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, all that whole period of history is all prophesied in advance.

00:16:36.500 --> 00:16:40.500
And then including the time when the Romans would then subdue them,

00:16:40.500 --> 00:16:43.500
and that the Jews would be dispersed around the world,

00:16:43.500 --> 00:16:47.500
and then ultimately in the last days that their life literally would be hanging in doubt.

00:16:47.500 --> 00:16:51.500
When we saw that with the Holocaust, we're seeing it again now.

00:16:51.500 --> 00:16:54.500
Deuteronomy 28 is one of the most amazing passages in the Bible.

00:16:54.500 --> 00:16:59.500
And if anybody says to you, oh, I don't believe the Bible, just read Deuteronomy 28.

00:16:59.500 --> 00:17:04.500
You cannot deny that God has done this incredible thing in preserving the nation of Israel,

00:17:04.500 --> 00:17:09.500
which by all accounts should have been destroyed by now.

00:17:09.500 --> 00:17:14.500
Show me one other nation from that period of history that still exists.

00:17:14.500 --> 00:17:18.500
I mean, maybe you could argue that Egypt is still there. Yes, they are.

00:17:18.500 --> 00:17:25.500
But all the surrounding nations, the ones we saw on that list earlier, the Moabites, Jebusites, Hittites,

00:17:25.500 --> 00:17:31.500
all those from that period of history and before, but Israel still exists.

00:17:31.500 --> 00:17:36.500
Chapter 36 is another one of these incredible chapters in the book of Ezekiel.

00:17:36.500 --> 00:17:39.500
And in fact, in the entire Bible, this is a wonderful chapter.

00:17:39.500 --> 00:17:42.500
It speaks of the regathering. Let's just read some of the text.

00:17:42.500 --> 00:17:44.500
Verse 24 of chapter 36 is this.

00:17:44.500 --> 00:17:53.500
For I will take you, this is Israel, from among the heathen and gather you out of all countries.

00:17:53.500 --> 00:18:00.500
All right. At the point that Ezekiel is writing this, the northern kingdom has been taking captives to Assyria.

00:18:00.500 --> 00:18:04.500
Assyria was then conquered by Babylon. So many of them had ended up in Babylon anyway.

00:18:04.500 --> 00:18:08.500
And then Nebuchadnezzar comes and takes the remnant to Babylon.

00:18:08.500 --> 00:18:11.500
Some of them traveled down to Egypt to try and escape and so on.

00:18:11.500 --> 00:18:17.500
And they were judged for their unbelief and rebellion against God there.

00:18:17.500 --> 00:18:23.500
But this is saying, not I'm going to bring you back from Egypt and from Mesopotamia,

00:18:23.500 --> 00:18:29.500
but from all the countries where they've been scattered to.

00:18:29.500 --> 00:18:33.500
Well, now with the hindsight we have, we look back through history,

00:18:33.500 --> 00:18:36.500
we know that the Jews were scattered around the world.

00:18:36.500 --> 00:18:41.500
And much of that really didn't take place until AD 70 and then AD 132 to 135

00:18:41.500 --> 00:18:46.500
when Emperor Hadrian finally came and got rid of the Jews from the land

00:18:46.500 --> 00:18:53.500
and renamed the land Palestine after Israel's ancient enemies, the Philistines.

00:18:53.500 --> 00:18:56.500
He did it on purpose to annoy the Jews.

00:18:56.500 --> 00:19:00.500
And so the land became known as Palestine.

00:19:00.500 --> 00:19:02.500
The land became known as Palestine.

00:19:02.500 --> 00:19:08.500
But notice it was because of Hadrian's rebranding the land.

00:19:08.500 --> 00:19:11.500
There was never a Palestinian people.

00:19:11.500 --> 00:19:16.500
This is a complete media invented fiction.

00:19:16.500 --> 00:19:22.500
I said before, the Palestinian orchestra was a Jewish orchestra.

00:19:22.500 --> 00:19:29.500
The Palestinian Post that published this wonderful event when Israel in 1948 became a nation again,

00:19:29.500 --> 00:19:33.500
the Palestinian Post was a Jewish newspaper.

00:19:33.500 --> 00:19:37.500
So somehow we've gone from understanding that Palestine just referred to the land

00:19:37.500 --> 00:19:41.500
to starting talking about a Palestinian people and a Palestinian state.

00:19:41.500 --> 00:19:44.500
Now this is all a media fiction.

00:19:44.500 --> 00:19:49.500
There's a wonderful book by, in fact a number of great books by Dave Hunt,

00:19:49.500 --> 00:19:51.500
and he deals with a lot of these things.

00:19:51.500 --> 00:19:55.500
One of the best and clearest is a book that Dave Hunt wrote called Judgment Day.

00:19:55.500 --> 00:19:58.500
Now if you want to understand the details of why things are as they are,

00:19:58.500 --> 00:20:01.500
I would really encourage reading that book.

00:20:01.500 --> 00:20:03.500
But let me just carry on. Let's look at this prophecy.

00:20:03.500 --> 00:20:08.500
God has promised to take them from the heathen, bring them back into their own land.

00:20:08.500 --> 00:20:11.500
Notice what God calls it, their own land.

00:20:11.500 --> 00:20:16.500
Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your filthiness,

00:20:16.500 --> 00:20:19.500
and from all your idols will I cleanse you.

00:20:19.500 --> 00:20:24.500
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.

00:20:24.500 --> 00:20:29.500
And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.

00:20:29.500 --> 00:20:33.500
This work that God is promising to do in the people of Israel.

00:20:33.500 --> 00:20:36.500
And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statues,

00:20:36.500 --> 00:20:38.500
and you should keep my judgments and do them.

00:20:38.500 --> 00:20:41.500
And you should dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers,

00:20:41.500 --> 00:20:44.500
that's to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so on.

00:20:44.500 --> 00:20:47.500
And you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

00:20:47.500 --> 00:20:51.500
What hope is there for the Jews?

00:20:51.500 --> 00:20:54.500
That's what God is going to do.

00:20:54.500 --> 00:21:00.500
In chapter 37 we have this incredible vision that Ezekiel gets of this valley,

00:21:00.500 --> 00:21:04.500
or so of the dry bones.

00:21:04.500 --> 00:21:07.500
It's a vision of the restoration of Israel.

00:21:07.500 --> 00:21:16.500
Firstly brought back to life in the flesh, and then later breathed upon with the spirit.

00:21:16.500 --> 00:21:24.500
Isaiah 11.11 tells us the Lord shall set his hand the second time to recover the remnant of his people.

00:21:24.500 --> 00:21:29.500
That was part fulfilled in the first half of the 20th century.

00:21:29.500 --> 00:21:34.500
The remainder of the Jews are already going back to the land,

00:21:34.500 --> 00:21:39.500
and at the second coming the Lord will bring them all from around the earth back into the land,

00:21:39.500 --> 00:21:43.500
and that will be the fulfillment of that prophecy from Isaiah.

00:21:43.500 --> 00:21:50.500
So the Lord through Ezekiel proclaims to Israel the coming resurrection of her national life.

00:21:50.500 --> 00:21:54.500
And that restoration is to do with both the national entity of Israel,

00:21:54.500 --> 00:21:58.500
as well as a spiritual revival or restoration which the Lord announced,

00:21:58.500 --> 00:22:02.500
as we saw back in chapter 36.

00:22:02.500 --> 00:22:06.500
And he foretells by the symbolic act of joining two sticks together,

00:22:06.500 --> 00:22:10.500
the union of the two kingdoms, under one head.

00:22:10.500 --> 00:22:11.500
David, he says.

00:22:11.500 --> 00:22:15.500
Now some commentators of the scholars will see this if the Lord tarries and we get there,

00:22:15.500 --> 00:22:16.500
we've studied through this.

00:22:16.500 --> 00:22:21.500
Some commentators think that David is a reference to the son of David, as in the Messiah.

00:22:21.500 --> 00:22:24.500
Other commentators, and we'll explore and look at the reasons why,

00:22:24.500 --> 00:22:29.500
believe this will literally be David, King David, resurrected,

00:22:29.500 --> 00:22:33.500
and given a position of authority during the millennial reign of Christ.

00:22:33.500 --> 00:22:38.500
And that may well be the case, because the number of times that occurs.

00:22:38.500 --> 00:22:42.500
But Ezekiel sees this vision of these two sticks, one representing Judah,

00:22:42.500 --> 00:22:46.500
one representing the kingdom of Israel, these two, the north and the southern kingdoms,

00:22:46.500 --> 00:22:49.500
bringing them together, making them one again.

00:22:49.500 --> 00:22:52.500
And then we get to chapter 38 and 39.

00:22:52.500 --> 00:22:58.500
And this, again, may well be imminent.

00:22:58.500 --> 00:23:02.500
And when I say imminent, we can see that this week.

00:23:02.500 --> 00:23:06.500
As we've said already, it may be the rapture takes place this week.

00:23:06.500 --> 00:23:10.500
But if the rapture doesn't take place this week, and the Lord, in his mercy and grace,

00:23:10.500 --> 00:23:13.500
again, he's not wanting that any should perish, he's giving people time to come in,

00:23:13.500 --> 00:23:15.500
but there will be a cut off, it could be this week.

00:23:15.500 --> 00:23:19.500
But if that doesn't happen, because of all the other things that are going on,

00:23:19.500 --> 00:23:21.500
it may well be that we will see this.

00:23:21.500 --> 00:23:26.500
There's a number of us that believe that we will see this event before the rapture of the church.

00:23:26.500 --> 00:23:28.500
We might be wrong.

00:23:28.500 --> 00:23:30.500
But it would seem to be, for a number of reasons.

00:23:30.500 --> 00:23:33.500
And we'll look at this again, if the Lord tarries, we'll go through this.

00:23:33.500 --> 00:23:35.500
And we'll look at it in detail.

00:23:35.500 --> 00:23:42.500
But it's an incredible couple of chapters that speak of an invasion.

00:23:42.500 --> 00:23:48.500
Now, probably 30, 40 years ago, there were believers that were teaching these things,

00:23:48.500 --> 00:23:53.500
and sharing them, and Christians throughout the centuries that held to God's word.

00:23:53.500 --> 00:23:56.500
But even then, people would have been a little more sceptical.

00:23:56.500 --> 00:24:00.500
But now, this is just like the newspapers we're picking up,

00:24:00.500 --> 00:24:03.500
or the TV reports we're hearing all the time, or the things on the radio.

00:24:03.500 --> 00:24:11.500
Nobody is going to be surprised at all, if suddenly, Russia invade Israel.

00:24:11.500 --> 00:24:15.500
We know that they've been doing military exercises in Syria.

00:24:15.500 --> 00:24:17.500
Why?

00:24:17.500 --> 00:24:23.500
We know that Putin has been flexing his muscles a little bit recently, don't we?

00:24:23.500 --> 00:24:30.500
We've seen it with these planes that have been flying through Polish airspace and other areas.

00:24:31.500 --> 00:24:35.500
And there is a genuine concern about what is actually going on.

00:24:35.500 --> 00:24:42.500
So, if something were to escalate, and because of all that's been going on with the war in Gaza,

00:24:42.500 --> 00:24:45.500
these things would no longer be a surprise.

00:24:45.500 --> 00:24:52.500
But bear in mind, Ezekiel was prophesying this stuff 2,500 years ago.

00:24:52.500 --> 00:24:56.500
This whole couple of chapters deal with the occasion in which God himself

00:24:56.500 --> 00:25:06.500
is going to intercede and intervene to stop, to quell, an ill-fated invasion of Israel

00:25:06.500 --> 00:25:12.500
by somebody described in the text as Magog and his allies.

00:25:12.500 --> 00:25:16.500
Now, Magog is a term that we maybe don't understand.

00:25:16.500 --> 00:25:18.500
I'll explain where the name comes from in a moment.

00:25:18.500 --> 00:25:21.500
But we're talking about Persia,

00:25:21.500 --> 00:25:27.500
what you and I today would refer to as Iran, Iraq.

00:25:27.500 --> 00:25:36.500
Kush, well that would be, again, northern Africa, down as far as Ethiopia.

00:25:36.500 --> 00:25:39.500
Libya, we do recognize.

00:25:39.500 --> 00:25:44.500
Goma, the area of Germany, to Gama.

00:25:44.500 --> 00:25:48.500
Meshach and Juvel.

00:25:48.500 --> 00:25:53.500
Many commentators believe that the individuals that have come from these names,

00:25:53.500 --> 00:25:56.500
and I'll show you where they come from in a minute, it goes all the way back to Genesis,

00:25:56.500 --> 00:26:01.500
that's referring to Russia, parts of Russia.

00:26:01.500 --> 00:26:07.500
The passage seems to indicate the use of nuclear weapons.

00:26:07.500 --> 00:26:12.500
And this is not a full study of this this morning, we'll deal with it, we'll go through it when we get there,

00:26:12.500 --> 00:26:14.500
and look at all the details.

00:26:14.500 --> 00:26:17.500
But this is imminent.

00:26:17.500 --> 00:26:22.500
Back in Genesis chapter 10, and it's reiterated in 1 Chronicles as well,

00:26:22.500 --> 00:26:27.500
we have a genealogy, we have the sons of Noah that are given to us.

00:26:27.500 --> 00:26:30.500
Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

00:26:30.500 --> 00:26:34.500
Now these were incredible characters, they obviously were with Noah on the ark,

00:26:34.500 --> 00:26:36.500
and they came off the ark and they helped to repopulate the earth.

00:26:36.500 --> 00:26:38.500
But they lived for a long time.

00:26:38.500 --> 00:26:41.500
The earth, the climate was very different.

00:26:41.500 --> 00:26:43.500
And so they lived for a long time.

00:26:43.500 --> 00:26:48.500
And so they became very well known, revered, respected.

00:26:48.500 --> 00:26:54.500
So much so that actually their names get twisted and used in other cultures as the languages change,

00:26:54.500 --> 00:26:59.500
and particularly from the time of the Tower of Babel as all the languages changed.

00:26:59.500 --> 00:27:03.500
Japheth becomes known as Jupiter.

00:27:03.500 --> 00:27:07.500
And various of the Romans and Greek gods and so on.

00:27:07.500 --> 00:27:15.500
We know that the descendants of Japheth are those that populated the area we refer to as Europe.

00:27:15.500 --> 00:27:18.500
Magog being one of those.

00:27:18.500 --> 00:27:22.500
The area of Russia.

00:27:22.500 --> 00:27:28.500
The Scythians were those that lived in that region, from this descent.

00:27:28.500 --> 00:27:30.500
Ham was his descendant.

00:27:30.500 --> 00:27:34.500
In fact, Ham becomes known as Hermes.

00:27:34.500 --> 00:27:37.500
The son of Ham was Cush.

00:27:37.500 --> 00:27:41.500
And then Misrim and Futh and Canaan, all this line.

00:27:41.500 --> 00:27:49.500
Bacchus, the Roman god, son of Cush, Bar Cush, which is Nimrod, by the way.

00:27:49.500 --> 00:27:55.500
All the Greek mythology and the Egyptian mythology, it's all linked back to this.

00:27:55.500 --> 00:27:59.500
If you want to dig into it and you want to get some nice bedtime reading,

00:27:59.500 --> 00:28:03.500
there's a wonderful book called The Two Babylons by Reverend Alexander Hislop.

00:28:03.500 --> 00:28:05.500
It's still in print.

00:28:05.500 --> 00:28:11.500
It's kind of heavy going, but it is fascinating as he shows you where all of these things tie together.

00:28:11.500 --> 00:28:17.500
And how all these gods, probably when you were at school, you probably heard about some of the Greek gods and so on.

00:28:17.500 --> 00:28:21.500
Everything links back to these three, Shem, Ham and Japheth.

00:28:21.500 --> 00:28:23.500
And you kind of understand it.

00:28:23.500 --> 00:28:33.500
These very, very famous great grandparents who were men of stature, respected, and they lived a long time.

00:28:33.500 --> 00:28:36.500
And then, of course, you have Shem.

00:28:36.500 --> 00:28:46.500
Shem, his descendants are the Shemites, which is where we get the term anti-Semitism, Shemitism.

00:28:46.500 --> 00:28:49.500
That's where it comes from, the descendants of Shem.

00:28:49.500 --> 00:28:57.500
They lived in various areas, Elam, Asher, Afak, Sedlad, Aram, and of course, Israel, the area that we know as Israel today.

00:28:57.500 --> 00:28:59.500
But they're the names.

00:28:59.500 --> 00:29:07.500
These are just simply the names that are given to us in Ezekiel 38, are simply the ancient names of these groups of people.

00:29:07.500 --> 00:29:10.500
And you think, well, why doesn't God just use the names we know today?

00:29:10.500 --> 00:29:12.500
Well, the problem is we keep changing names.

00:29:12.500 --> 00:29:16.500
You see, there's a place that we refer to today as Istanbul.

00:29:17.500 --> 00:29:20.500
It used to be known as Constantinople.

00:29:20.500 --> 00:29:27.500
You know, there's many places that you look at around the world that we have changed the name.

00:29:27.500 --> 00:29:32.500
Leningrad is another case of a city that's changed names numerous times in history.

00:29:32.500 --> 00:29:42.500
And simply as generations have gone down, various geographical regions have changed the name, but they're the same geographical area.

00:29:43.500 --> 00:29:46.500
If we were to look at this on a map, you can see Israel in the center there.

00:29:46.500 --> 00:29:48.500
There where these nations are.

00:29:48.500 --> 00:29:52.500
So typically we've got due north of Israel, we've got this area.

00:29:52.500 --> 00:29:59.500
In fact, Moscow is due north of Israel, which is interesting, where a number of these prophecies speak about these attacks coming from the north.

00:29:59.500 --> 00:30:01.500
Now, some of those refer to Babylon.

00:30:01.500 --> 00:30:06.500
When Babylon's over here, by the Euphrates River, they would have come around the Fertile Crescent.

00:30:06.500 --> 00:30:08.500
This was just arid desert in the middle here.

00:30:08.500 --> 00:30:12.500
So to travel to Israel from Babylon, they would have come up and in through the north.

00:30:12.500 --> 00:30:19.500
So a lot of the scriptures that speak about Nebuchadnezzar and the attacks from the north, we'll see that in the beginning of Ezekiel.

00:30:19.500 --> 00:30:22.500
That's why Nebuchadnezzar comes in from the north.

00:30:22.500 --> 00:30:26.500
But also, a lot of these prophecies, there's a double edge to double meaning, if you like.

00:30:26.500 --> 00:30:30.500
And of course, directly north of Israel is where we have Russia.

00:30:30.500 --> 00:30:32.500
We have the area of Germany.

00:30:32.500 --> 00:30:36.500
We have the area here, which Meshach, we know today as Turkey.

00:30:36.500 --> 00:30:40.500
And Jubal, which is the area of Turkey into Syria and so on.

00:30:40.500 --> 00:30:41.500
Togarmah, this area.

00:30:41.500 --> 00:30:43.500
Persia, of course, Iran and Iraq.

00:30:43.500 --> 00:30:46.500
And of course, the northern African areas here.

00:30:46.500 --> 00:30:47.500
Those are the places.

00:30:47.500 --> 00:30:58.500
And what we're told in Ezekiel 38 is that these groups of people will all culminate or join together and attack Israel.

00:30:58.500 --> 00:31:09.500
Now, it's no surprise when you look at those and you recognize the thing they all have in common is largely a Muslim population.

00:31:09.500 --> 00:31:20.500
What we seem to see is a Russian-led, Russian-backed, funded, if you like, Islamic invasion of Israel.

00:31:20.500 --> 00:31:29.500
It's no secret that as far as Islam is concerned, Israel has to be destroyed.

00:31:29.500 --> 00:31:38.500
As I said also, there's a suggestion that in this war that the Bible says is coming, that there's going to be nuclear weapons that are used.

00:31:38.500 --> 00:31:45.500
The leftover weapons will actually provide the energy needs for the nation of Israel for seven years.

00:31:45.500 --> 00:32:02.500
This is just as an aside, one of the reasons why a number of scholars and commentators think that this will probably occur, or could well occur, three and a half years at least before the tribulation begins.

00:32:02.500 --> 00:32:04.500
Let me explain why.

00:32:04.500 --> 00:32:13.500
If Israel are going to burn the weapons for seven years, the last three and a half years of the tribulation, they are forced to flee from their land.

00:32:13.500 --> 00:32:16.500
They won't be in their land. They won't be able to burn the weapons.

00:32:16.500 --> 00:32:22.500
So if you go from the three and a half year point, you count backwards, you have to go to three and a half years before the tribulation.

00:32:22.500 --> 00:32:26.500
It's just a little bit of deductive logic. It may not be right.

00:32:26.500 --> 00:32:33.500
But that's why a number of commentators think that this invasion, this attack, will occur before the tribulation begins.

00:32:33.500 --> 00:32:36.500
By the way, that doesn't change when the rapture will take place.

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None of these things are dependent upon the rapture, or vice versa.

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What we are told is that professionals are going to be hired to clear the battlefield.

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They are to go through. In fact, if people go through and they see a corpse that's lying there, they're not to touch it, but they're to put a marker there.

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And the professionals will come and deal with it.

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And you think, well, why else would that be, unless we were talking about radiation and the danger that's associated.

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Interesting.

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In fact, they have to wait for seven months before they can even start the operation to clear up all the dead bodies and the remains.

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And then it takes a further seven months for them to clear it.

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They are to bury the dead bodies east of the Dead Sea, or if you like, downwind.

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Which again would imply that they're concerned about what's in the air, and potentially radiation poisoning and so on.

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As I said already, if a traveller finds something that professionals have marked, or have missed rather, they don't touch it, they just mark it.

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And the professionals will deal with it.

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Incredible chapters. We will deal with those again. If the Lord is willing, we're still here. We'll go through them and look at the detail.

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It may well be that we are doing a commentary on that while it's taking place, which will make it easy to understand the details. But we'll see.

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And then we get to the last eight chapters of the book. This is astonishing.

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There is so much detail and precision in these chapters, and it seems to be giving us the blueprint, the details, and everything else regarding the Millennial Temple.

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Now, we've talked about the fact that Israel are wanting to rebuild their temple.

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The plan is already underway, and even building work, excavation work, is taking place for them to build a temple.

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But that temple from scripture will be a temple not that Israel will be able to continue to use. They will start their sacrifices again.

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Daniel chapter 9 is the passage again. Mark is going to give us this study coming up hopefully soon again, if the Lord tarries.

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We have to keep saying that at the moment because we just don't know.

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But in Daniel chapter 9, we're given the details that Israel will be allowed to start offering sacrifices again in their temple.

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Some wonderfully charismatic individual is going to step onto the world stage, and he's going to ratify a peace agreement with Israel, or force them to accept.

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It could be either way. How interesting that as we're sitting here today, the United Nations are talking about this state of Palestine.

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It's going to be thrust upon Israel. And some sort of peace hopefully is going to come out of this as far as they're concerned.

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It just takes one individual to step on the world stage and ratify that agreement, and the clock will start ticking.

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That's why we think we may well be out of his scene. So close.

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But this temple is not that temple, because that temple, the one they're working on now, that is the one that ultimately Antichrist will put his image in.

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Matthew 24, Jesus makes it very clear. Quoting Daniel, he talks about the abomination, the... what's the word I'm looking for?

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Desolation, yes. So this idea that Antichrist is going to have an image of himself placed within the temple and the Holy of Holies.

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It's exactly what had happened, 167 BC, where this individual, again Mark was taking us through that, this individual Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the Seleucid rulers.

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And he had done the same thing, and he'd sacrificed a pig on the altar and so on. Eventually the Jews overthrew him, defeated him.

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But the one that's coming, the one we refer to typically as Antichrist, and that's one of the least used titles actually in Scripture.

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He's known by many titles in Scripture. There are about 33 titles in the Old Testament, about 13 different titles in the New Testament.

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The man of sin, son of perdition, many other titles. But we typically know this individual as Antichrist, the one that's going to step onto the world scene.

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That temple we're talking about now will be destroyed. But when Jesus comes back at the second coming, when he establishes his throne and his kingdom...

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and by the way, why is it that Jesus needs to come back? Why not just like, okay, that's all done now?

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Because Jesus, in a sense, just purely for the record, needs to prove and demonstrate that God's plan right from the beginning of time was good.

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That man can rule on this earth that God had given in a just and righteous way.

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Originally it was given to Adam and to his descendants to have dominion over all creation.

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But of course sin then gets right into the beginning, and we never see that being played out.

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We never see this earth being run the way God intended.

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So Jesus will come as the second Adam, and he will establish his throne, and he will prove to all the courts of Satan that God was just and right in doing what he did.

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In creating Adam, giving him this earth to rule over, the earth that Satan so desperately wanted for himself, and that pride.

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Ultimately God will set up Jesus. Jesus will rule and reign to prove that man, Jesus, can rule and reign in justice on this earth.

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We're given the description of this temple. Very, very detailed. There's lots of symbolism, but it all points to something.

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A symbol means nothing unless it points to something.

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We're told that all nations are going to worship there.

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There will be offerings and sacrifices again that will be resumed.

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It's going to be open only on the Sabbath day and new moons.

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There's lots of things that we need to explore as to why.

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And then that gives us the culmination. That's where this book ends.

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With this hope of what is coming. The restoration.

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What began in oppression ended in liberty.

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As we said last week, Romans 5.5 says,


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And hope makes not a shame, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

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And because of the Holy Ghost, because of the Word of God, because He gives us His Word, He gives us His understanding,

00:38:40.900 --> 00:38:45.800
we know that there is hope. Despite all that's going on, there is incredible hope.


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If we are here next Sunday, we are going to get into the first three chapters.

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So read the first three chapters and then we will see this incredible vision that Ezekiel has, the call that Ezekiel has,

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and how that also applies to us. Let's bow our hearts.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for Ezekiel.

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We thank you for his faithfulness and his willingness to trust you, to be obedient, to speak out, even though it was unpopular.

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The Lord be your man of the hour.

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Lord, help us to have that boldness to speak out.

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Lord, to those around us.

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Lord, just as you said to Ezekiel, Lord, that there would be those that wouldn't want to hear him, but there will be some that would.

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Well, Lord, by your grace, we pray you would give us opportunity to speak to those who have ears to hear.

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Lord, to share with them the reality of the times in which we live.

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But also just as Ezekiel was able to do, to share the hope that you have a wonderful plan and a wonderful purpose, and it will be fulfilled.

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We've seen this morning, Lord, how the prophecies in Scripture are not just predictions.

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They're not guesses. It is history foretold in advance.

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And we can trust your word. Lord, may we grow in faith, but may we also grow in grace.

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We ask these things this morning in Jesus' name. Amen.

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May God bless you.