Ezekiel and the Desecration of the Temple, Part 1

It's a pleasure to be back. And I will mention that my plan, assuming I don't forget, was to take about a 10-minute break in the middle of these two hours. So that's the way we do it most of the time at ABC. It seems a little unusual. Standing up here, I start thinking to get in sermon mode. And of course, when you're teaching Bible classes, it's not that much different. But you do have some differences, especially in it's a little less formal. And there will be some times where I might walk around and ask for comments and get discussion going. So I want you to feel free. That's something you don't normally do during a sermon, is raise your hand if you have a question or anything like that. But think of this as a class, not a sermon. So we're free to do that kind of thing. So I wanted to... well, part of our plan for these is to present parts or material from our actual classes. And last fall, the first full class I taught at Ambassador Bible Center at the time, and it changed to college, was the major prophets class. Then I switched into the minor prophets the next semester. So I thought I'd draw from that class and move into the book of Ezekiel. And I like to start off with an introduction. And then I really want to culminate with the prophecy from Ezekiel 8-11, which is one continuous prophecy of a pretty interesting and, I think, significant vision that God gave to Ezekiel. So to start with, though, what I always like to do when I begin with a book is to give some introduction and background. And I found, for me, the way that works the best to do that is to cover what I call the five W's. If you remember, if you had an English comp class or a journalism class, they always tell you to address the five W's. The who, what, why, where, when, and sometimes how, although I don't usually deal with the how that gets mixed in. I think it's sort of like the five vowels, A-E-I-O-U, and sometimes why. Usually people chuckle at that. But that's okay. Usually people laugh when I say, oh, I thought that would be funny. I didn't necessarily think it would be funny. But let's move into the five W's of Ezekiel. So, and this is talking about the book, and then we often address the author because we're pretty sure the who is Ezekiel the prophet. So the book is named after him. He was a priest as well as a prophet. And there are a few of the prophets who were, like Jeremiah and Ezra, although he's not considered necessarily a prophet.

It says he's the son of Boozy or Buzzy. And he was among the early captives who were taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. It was about 597. And this was, he went one of the early ways. Remember, and actually you might remember it more clearly from the story of Daniel, because it says he and his three friends were taken and they were being trained.

This was while a lot of people were still back in Judea and the temple was in existence and working and things like that. So Ezekiel was in this early wave of about 3,000 to 10,000. And they were the leaders, the more educated, often the more wealthy of the people who were taken. And part of the idea with the Babylonians was you take away the leaders and the wealthy, and those who are left behind are used to being told what to do. And they'll listen when we tell them what to do. So we believe Ezekiel was 25 years old, or approximately, when he was taken captive, and he began prophesying at the age of 30. Interestingly, that's the same age when priests were allowed to begin doing their duties of priesthood. And that's described in Numbers 4 and verse 3. I'm not going to turn there, but... So perhaps, you know, God doesn't often do things just by accident or coincidence. It's likely that he planned to start using him at that time. We know a few things about Ezekiel from what's mentioned later. So I can give you some scriptural references without turning to those. But we know he was married. And actually, apparently, he was happily married. Because in Ezekiel 24, it describes when she dies, and God describes, you know, that the delight of my eye was taken... or Ezekiel says that the delight of my eye was taken away. So apparently, you know, he loved his wife, and she was allowed to die. We know that he had a house. It's mentioned two or a couple of times in the book that people came to his house. We'll see one of them in chapter 8 and verse 1.

The name Ezekiel in Hebrew means, God is strength. Or it could be interpreted, God may God strengthen. Or God will prevail. There are different ways to interpret the Hebrew word. So that's interesting to me. And tradition tells us that Ezekiel was killed by a Babylonian prince after Ezekiel reproved him for his idolatry. Now that's not in the Bible, as I said. That's sort of within Jewish tradition, and it's not surprising if it is true. We can move on to the when. The book seems to have begun when Ezekiel was 30 years old, as I mentioned. About 593 BC, and continued to be written for about 22 years to about 571.

Now it's interesting, many of the prophecies are dated from the time of Jehoiakim's captivity. And that's an interesting background. If you remember, Josiah was the last good king of Judah. And then his first son, I can't read that, first son Jehoah has reigned for just three months. And he was taken captive by the Egyptians. And so Josiah's other son, Jehoiakim, was put on the throne. Jehoiakim reigned for 11 years, and his life came to an end. His son was called Jehoiakim.

So the first one that reigned 11 years, his name ended with an M as in Mary. The second one, Jehoiakim, with an N as in Nancy. He also reigned for just three months, and then he was taken captive by Babylon. And not his son went on the throne, but his uncle, whose name was, I think originally, Eliakim, but changed to Zedekiah, was put on the throne by the Babylonians, and he would stay there for 11 years.

And what I'm saying, so Ezekiel dated his prophecies from the time when Jehoiakim was taken captive. We could say also from the year of Zedekiah's reign. He doesn't say it that way, but all of these, you know, of course, when Jehoiakim was taken captive, Zedekiah went on the throne. So actually, if you look at the beginning in verse 2 of Ezekiel 1, it says, "...the fifth day of the month of the fifth year of King Jehoiakim's captivity." That was also the fifth year of Zedekiah's reign.

And remember, Zedekiah reigned 11 years, so this is almost halfway through his reign, and at the end of that 11 years, Judah was no more. That's when Nebuchadnezzar came and wiped out the city, took the rest of the people captive, except for a small handful. So we're looking at that, which tells us, Ezekiel is contemporary with the end of the kingdom. He overlapped Jeremiah and Daniel. Jeremiah started prophesying, we believe, about 30 years before Ezekiel did, and would continue about 6 or 7 years after.

Jeremiah covered a long expanse of time, which is why his book is so long, partly. And I like talking about Jeremiah, although he's not our focus today, but Jeremiah's prophecy, his book started when he was just a kid, he said, he was probably an older teenager, and went until he was a fairly old man. Ezekiel doesn't cover quite as long a span. Daniel was much younger. Daniel was likely taken captive at the same time as Ezekiel.

He started prophesying a little bit later and continued well after Ezekiel. Okay, so what we'll see is the first part of the book of Ezekiel occurs before the fall of Jerusalem. Well, while people are still there, and unfortunately not living the way they should, and the book will continue after the fall. And of course, that's the latter part of the book that we're not going to discuss today, because we only have these couple of hours.

So with that in mind, let's move on to the where. Okay, Ezekiel prophesied from the area of Babylon. He started his work when he was in captive. The first vision when he described it, he says he was along the Kebar River. Okay, that was the scholars debate over what that was exactly. Many say it was a small river or stream that flowed into the Euphrates River just south of Babylon. Some scholars believe it might have actually been more of a canal that was dug for trade and irrigation purposes that actually went off from the Euphrates north of Babylon, arced around and then came back in.

And we don't have the records to know for certain if that was the case. Ezekiel lived in a town that was called Tel-Abib, or it might have been pronounced Tel Aviv, which is... There is a city in Israel now called Tel Aviv, not the same one, obviously. But it seems that from what we see described in his book and also in Daniel, that the captives, the Jews that were taken away to Babylon, at least in some cases, perhaps many, were not treated as absolute slaves as much as colonists.

They were brought in and told to set up communities. They were under the rule of the Babylonians and had limited freedoms. But we see that they built homes and communities and went on from there. And matter of fact, we believe it's then and there that they developed what's called the synagogue system. In Israel, worship was centered around the temple. But when the temple would be no more or when they were far away and couldn't go to the temple, they developed local community groups to worship, which they called the synagogue, similar to now we have local church congregations meet together.

And Ezekiel's home may have been a prototype of this. There are descriptions of the elders coming to his house and listening to him speak, perhaps teaching in the form of, as I said, it would be a synagogue or a congregation meeting together. Okay, those are the pretty straightforward, you know, who, what, when, or who, who, when, and where.

It gets a little more complex when we start talking about the why and the what. So let's talk about why. Ezekiel is called in chapter 3, verse 33, a watchman. He was appointed a watchman, and he, a watchman is a sentry who's appointed to warn about impending danger.

Most of his prophecies are directed to the house of Israel. Matter of fact, I've got some numbers. Well, it's just a couple numbers here. I'll come to more later. But the house of Israel, that term appears in the book of Ezekiel 82 times. But the term house of Judah appears 15 times. So it's directed at the house of Israel. What's interesting, well, actually, a lot of you have been in the church a long time.

What is interesting about that? Why do we say it's so significant that he addresses his prophecy to Israel rather than Judah? Do you have a question here? Is Israel the king of Israel? Is it the king of Israel? I think you've got in your mind, you might have the words backwards. Because the nation of Israel divided into two kingdoms after Solomon died. The northern kingdom went by the name of Israel, the southern kingdom by the name of Judah.

Was the northern kingdom still there when Ezekiel was prophesying? They had been taken into captivity about 130 years earlier by the Assyrians. And they were taken out. Sumerians were moved in to take their place. It later became known as the Samaritans. And they disappeared. They became the ten lost tribes. Now, in our mind, they're not lost. And we know God knew exactly where they were. And led their migration. And we think a lot of them are living here now. Or most of them are. So that tells us if he's prophesying to a people that he could not go to.

All words, and we'll discuss this later, but it says, I'm sending you to the house of Israel, but he never got up and went to the house of Israel. Well, does that mean God goofed? He messed up? Or does it mean something else? This is the group participation part. One of the parts. I'm only saying this because I know this was a central part of Mr. Armstrong's teaching. And a part of our understanding of prophecy ever since.

Now I can't remember how I said it. What do we think the significance is of Ezekiel being sent to the house of Israel, but not going? Bill? Prophecies are for modern Israel. Okay, his prophecies are for modern Israel, we believe. Now the way I like to say it is many of these prophecies are only for the end time, possibly dual prophecies. Meaning a more immediate fulfillment, perhaps in his time, plus an end time. Now there are some we'll see that are for his time. You know, when he prophesies that the temple is going to be destroyed, the temple was destroyed. You know, and that... well, I was going to say we don't see a dual prophecy in that unless, of course, a new temple is built. And that gets into other things that we can speculate. Anyways... Let me make the contrast, okay? So Ezekiel's prophecy is primarily for the people of Israel, and we think largely to modern day Israel, which is represented in the United States in British Commonwealth. Daniel's message was more for non-Jews. A message about what God is going to do in the whole world, and for members of the church, more than the physical nation of Israel. And remember, Daniel and Ezekiel overlap. So, you know, and let's also bring in what Ezekiel was doing in his own time period. He was preaching to comforting, and to some degree forewarning, the exiles who were already in captivity. So a lot of Jews had been taken from their homeland, moved to the area of Babylon, and Ezekiel worked with them. While at the same time, Jeremiah was working with preaching to those who were still in Judah. So there's two ministries going on at the same time running parallel. Ezekiel working with the people in captivity, Jeremiah preaching to the people that had not yet gone into captivity. Okay, another thing we want to address, Ezekiel includes several prophecies of the millennium, and Ezekiel has several parallels with the book of Revelation. I find that interesting. I've got a list here in my notes of four things that are in Ezekiel that are also in the book of Revelation. I'm curious if anybody has some guesses of some of those. You'd add this to the quizzes that you've been getting on your Friday evening announcements. Is there something? Yes, Linda. I have three showers and five lights. Aha! So you've got this in advance. Well, I've got Ezekiel taking the same thing as John on Revelation. I brought that in 1-26-26 days. Okay, we want to address that. And actually, you know what? I've got to add that to my list. I've got four things on my list, and the fact that he sees a vision of God's throne, and John sees a vision of God's throne, we'll see that in the first chapter of Ezekiel, and I believe it's in Revelation 4.

Actually, I focused in on something more narrow that goes with the throne. Anybody? You're going to make me give it to you, huh? Okay, the first one, and we'll spend some time on these, is carobim. The angels, sometimes we call carobs in plural, carobim is the Hebrew way. In Ezekiel 1-10, he describes these angelic beings that look pretty bizarre. John also sees the same type of angelic beings that are described in Revelation 4. Okay. Now, a couple other ones you might not have guessed, but Ezekiel spends some time describing a war, a battle with some nations, that he describes as Gog and Magog. And Ezekiel 30... I know it's funny, I've only got 38 written down, and I think it's 37 and 38. If it's not that, it's 38 and 39, but 37 and 38, that's... Okay. John also describes Gog and Magog coming and fighting this battle at the end of the millennium. It's near the end of the book of Revelation. Oh, and in... Oh, I've got Revelation chapter 10 written down. That doesn't sound right. I'm going to have to check my notes. Actually, if you were in last year's ABC class, this became a famous thing where I'd have a reference, and I'd have the number wrong, and I'd have somebody who has a concordance in their computer help me find the right one so we could correct them. So I'm still working in the process of that. Another thing that Ezekiel spends a lot of time on, the last part of the book, chapters 40 through 48, are focused on describing a city, New Jerusalem. That same city, New Jerusalem, is briefly described in Revelation chapter 21. And within that description, also, in Ezekiel chapter 47, he describes a unique body of water that we often call the River of Life, and that appears in Revelation chapter 22. So I like seeing those parallels. I think it's worth noting because they each complement each other. We can look at some things in Revelation like that River of Life. We don't know much about it, but when we look to the Old Testament, we see that it appears not just in Ezekiel, but about three or four other places, and it fills out our understanding and knowledge of what that's about.

Okay, so I'm going to move on, though, but another thing we could say is, Ezekiel was the first of five of what are called post-exilic prophets. So most of the prophets came while Israel was a functioning nation. Five prophesied after that time ended, and that's significant to this culminating prophecy that I want to look at today. So the first is Ezekiel, the second is Daniel, and Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are all post-exilic prophets. And that's just a fancy name for after Judah was taken into captivity.

Okay, nearing the end of the Ws. The last one is what? And this one is pretty simple, and my Ws tend to overlap, but Ezekiel is largely end time or dual prophecy. I always like to consult this because, as those of you that have known me for a while, know I'm not a Hebrew language scholar or Greek for that matter, but there are scholars who understand the language very well who will tell us about how it's written. And they say the language is direct and more clear than some of the other prophecies, like Isaiah, but much less poetic. It doesn't have the beautiful language of Isaiah, who's called the Shakespeare of the Prophets. One thing Ezekiel does have is he uses more imagery and more symbolism than the other major prophets. And the fact is, sometimes the imagery and symbolism is kind of tough to understand. You're reading it going, what the world is that supposed to be? And some of it we still struggle. I'll mention some themes in Ezekiel. And by the way, a theme is not necessarily his specific purpose statement, but it's sort of a recurring idea that comes back again and again. And one of them we see is that God is sovereign. God is sovereign, and people eventually will learn this. And that appears in the term that Ezekiel uses a lot, where he says, well, actually God says it, then they will know that I am the Eternal. That phrase appears 65 times in this book. Basically, God says, I'm going to do something, and then they'll know that I am the Eternal. So that phrase, God is in charge, and people are going to eventually know it. Another theme, and this isn't one... I wasn't sure how to put it, so I just call it strange visions. Over and over again, Ezekiel has some pretty strange visions. And there's a term that he uses, the term, the hand of the Eternal was upon me. He says that seven different times. Okay, I've got six of these, by the way, and don't worry, there's not going to be a test at the end of this. Actually, we do have tests in class, but... Another one is, often there are various allegories, parables, and metaphors. Through the book, that's a recurring thing. Allegories, parables, metaphors. Another theme, and these often appear less often as you go down the list, is that God emphasizes to the Jews that they need to return to God, meaning to return to Him in their true worship, before they can return to Jerusalem. So you need to return to God, turn back to Him, before you think about physically being able to move back to the country of your origin. And then the last thing I want to say as a theme is individual responsibility. Ezekiel mentioned this, and we know it from a famous memory scripture. Ezekiel 18, verse 4, The soul that sins shall die. And that's said in the context of, you don't put the Father to death for the sins of the Son, you don't put the Son to death for the sins of the Father, there's individual responsibility. And that appears also in chapter 14, also in chapter 33, that God emphasizes, hey, the individuals have to take responsibility for what they do.

And the last thing, before we get into the actual scripture, I want to give you just a brief outline, an overview. And I've got it divided into three major sections. Section 1 is what I call the doom and gloom section. Chapters 1 through 24 are announcing the upcoming fall of Jerusalem. Okay. Then in the second section, chapters 25 through 32, is announcement of punishment to come on other nations.

So the first section, Jerusalem and Judah are going to fall. Then God turns his attention and says, now let me tell you about these other nations. Like, this is what's going to happen to Moab, and this is going to happen to Edom, and it goes through several of those. And then the last section is one of the most fun, although it has a lot of detail. The third section is the section that I call hope. That's prophecies of future restoration. Chapters 33 through 48 describe that. And that includes a lot of description of the new temple that will be built during the millennium.

Boy, it's amazing. Playing this out, I thought, boy, I wonder if this will take as much as five or ten minutes. And here, we're halfway through this first hour. Okay, any questions or concerns? Like I said, in the sermon, you don't usually get to stop partway through and say, hey, go back and clarify that.

Okay, let's get into the first chapter. And actually, we can breeze through some of this, because the first three verses summarize these five W's I just went through. Came to pass in the thirtieth year, the fourth month, the fifth day of the month. I was among the captives by the River Kibar, and the heavens were opened. I saw visions of God. It was the fifth day of the month with the fifth year of King Jehoiakim's captivity, which is also the fifth year of King Zedekiah's reign.

The word of the Eternal came expressly to Ezekiel the priest, son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the River Kibar. And the hand of the Eternal was upon him there. So I've mentioned these things before. And this shows God dealing directly with Ezekiel, at times giving him strength, giving him encouragement. But we'll also see, apparently, at times, restraining him, limiting what he could do. And he does that with Ezekiel more than other people that we're used to.

He starts off with this really powerful vision many of us have studied before. He says, I looked, and behold, a whirlwind was coming out of the north. And it seems like some type of a windstorm. There's cloud, fire, and such is this. A windstorm was coming out of the north, a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself. And brightness was all around it, radiating out of its midst, like the color of amber, out of the midst of fire.

One of the things I like to point out is there's a parallel with this. I'm not sure if it's meant to be the same. But remember, when God led the children of Israel out of Egypt, He led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

So the cloud and fire is a motif. That's the way God presents Himself, sometimes, when He's not showing you Himself. Which is good, because, as He told Moses, no one could look at my face and live. But apparently, you can look at the face of some of the angels, because we see that coming up here. Also, from within it came the likeness of four living creatures. They had...and this was their appearance. So here's what they look like.

They had the likeness of a man. That word likeness in Hebrew is dmuth, which I can't pronounce it any... Well, I can spell it better than I could pronounce it. It's transliterated. And yeah, it's dmuth. It says, likeness means the resemblance, like the general shape. So I was saying these creatures, it seems, had a torso and a body and legs. But they got some other things that we're not used to. Each one had four faces, and each one had four wings.

And I want to point out here something I didn't realize until I studied into the Hebrew. There is some dispute over whether there were four wings. Because the Hebrew seems to be like they're four faces and wings, which could be interpreted four faces and four wings. But it could mean four faces and a plural number of wings. Which you might ask, why does he care about that? Anybody know why would I bring that up?

Reason I mentioned is that the four living creatures in Revelation are described as having six wings. So some scholars, they want to look at it and say, well, were they different creatures or are they the same creatures? And these, you know, they misinterpreted the Hebrew and it's just four faces and they also had wings that might have been six. And I don't want to come down, I don't think it matters, but it's worth noting because to me it's more convenient if they are the same four creatures.

He does describe the faces. This is their appearance. Each one had four faces, four wings or wings. Their legs were straight, soles of their feet were like calves' feet. They sparkled like the color of burnished bronze. So they're bright and weird looking. The hands of a man were under their wings on their foreside. So they do have hands and we actually see a little bit later.

Yeah, I think it's in chapter 10 we see them using the hands. Sorry, I thought I had it written down. 10-13. 10-13? Thank you. I knew I would think in chapter 10 I've got it noted to look back here. But, okay, and, you know, it's getting to their faces. But their wings touched one another. The creatures didn't turn when they went but went straightforward. That's a handy thing. I guess if you're facing all four directions you don't have to turn to be able to see where you're going.

The likeness of their faces, they each had the face of a man, they had the face of a lion, face of an ox, and the face of an eagle. And it describes different sides.

Now what's interesting is over in chapter 10...

Now I don't have it written.

In chapter 10, verse 14, it describes the four faces only. Instead of the face of an ox, it says the face of a carob.

Well, these are carobs, so the face... It makes you wonder if we put those together, all the other three faces are the same. So some scholars have said, well, maybe the face of the ox or a cow is its primary face. And carob seem to be related to cows a number of times, which, again, seems kind of odd to me. They're not described as having the body of a cow, but that seems to be their face.

Some people have also pointed out that... And this might be coincidence, but these animal faces seem to match the standards that each of the tribes had when they were the camp of Israel. When they were, during those 40 years, wandering, God told them, here's how I want you to arrange your camp. And towards the north...

Now, towards the north, you had the tribe of Dan with a couple of tribes with them, and Dan's standard had an ox on it. To the south, Reuben was the leading tribe, and they had a human face.

Ephraim was to the west with the standard of an eagle, and Judah to the east had the lion, which makes sense. The lion was equated with David, who was a Jew.

So... I gotta watch out. I'm gonna run out of time here. Here's...it's Revelation 4, verses 6 and 7, where we see the creatures with the same... creatures that God's thrown with four different faces, and there was six wings each. I'll make one comment, because we're gonna come to the point where it describes these wheels. Another thing scholars have thought is, maybe two...one pair of wings was in motion, and it looked kind of like a spherical wheel. If you've ever seen a hummingbird, I say, we've got a hummingbird feeder out in a tree, and you see this creature coming in, and you just see this blur at the sides of the bird.

It's a speculation we don't know, and we're probably not gonna know until Christ returns, and He'll say, oh, here's what a carob looks like. You've been imagining it all this time. But now I'll show you. Matter of fact, I've seen the projector here. As I was getting ready for this, I thought, maybe I should use PowerPoint and try to come up with some images, and I said, I'm not gonna come up with anything that I want to hang my hat on and say, this is what this looks like.

Probably each one of us here has a different idea of what this looked like, and probably they're all equally valid. Well, maybe not all equally valid, but we can't know for sure. Forest? Oh, sorry, I thought you had your hand up. Okay. So we'll move on from...boy. Like I said, this always works this way. I think I'm gonna be done in no time, and we move ahead.

So let's move ahead. Yeah, in verse 11, you know, that's where their faces, their wings stretched upward. Two wings of each touched one another, and two covered their bodies. And we do see the other places it says in Revelation, it says they used two wings to cover their bodies, two they flew with, and two were outstretched. As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches going back and forth among the living creatures, and the fire was bright.

So this is this bright image. Probably, you know, Ezekiel was pulling out of sunglasses so he could look at it. And he ran back and forth like lightning. Now, as I looked at the living creatures, behold, a wheel was on the earth beside each living creature, the four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their working was like the color of barrel. And it's funny, I've read over that a lot of times. I said, well, what color is barrel?

It turns out barrel is a type of gemstone that comes in many different colors. And one of the predominant ones, most people think of green as in emeralds, but a lot of the scholars say this one probably is not that, but it also comes in an amber-reddish-yellow color, which fits the general theme more. But we can't say with certainty, but that seems more convincing to me that that would be the color there.

But we have these wheels. When they moved, they went towards one, any one of the four directions. They didn't turn aside. As for the rims, they were so high, they were awesome. Which is funny, Ezekiel was ahead of his time. He was like, awesome, dude! The rims were full of eyes all around the four of them, and when the four living creatures went, the wheels went beside them. When the living creatures lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. So it's obvious they're connected somehow.

And when the spirit wanted to go, they went because the spirit went, and the wheels were lifted together with them. The spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. And I wonder, because remember, in Hebrew, the word for spirit is ruach, which also means breath or wind. So we don't know what that means if these wheels were like a living part of these creatures, or just they're connected. Because then we go beyond just these four creatures, the what's above them. And one of the reasons I wanted to spend some time on this is we see they're going to reappear in that prophecy.

In chapter 10, Ezekiel sees them again, and he'll say, oh, these were the same ones I saw that first time by the River Kebar. So we won't have to spend the time so much discussing them there. We'll see what we've seen them before. Anyways, in verse 22, the likeness of the firmament above the heads of the living creatures was like the color of an awesome crystal stretched out over their heads.

This firmament, basically the Hebrew means expanse, probably a platform. So they're there, and there's something above them that perhaps they're supporting. And when we're talking about spirit, it's hard to know. It's not like an engineer has to develop the cantilever and do structural analysis to see how much weight it can hold. But it seems to be an actual structure. And, well, let me keep moving ahead.

I think most of us have read this before. When they went, I heard the noise of their wings like the noise of many waters, like the voice of the Almighty. So there's this roaring sound, a tumult, like the noise of an army. Or we might say like the sound of a jet engine taking off. Although I don't think these are jet powered.

A voice came above from above the firmament that was over their heads. Whenever they stood, they let down their wings. Above the firmament and over their heads was the likeness of a throne, an appearance like sapphire stone, which is a bluish, beautiful color. And the likeness of the throne was the likeness of an appearance of a man above it. This wasn't just a man. Of course, he's going to see the one that was the Word, the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ.

So what we're describing or seeing is a throne. And I had a question, because I've heard ministers before describe this as God's portable throne. And that's not necessarily an inaccurate term. Of course, we don't know, because we see a description of the throne with very similar things in Revelation. Matter of fact, I'm trying to see what it is that I've missed that I meant to describe. Oh, it's coming up here.

Like in verse 28, the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day. In Revelation 4.3, John describes seeing a rainbow about God's throne. He says it's dominated apparently by the color of green. So we have these parallels. One of the things I wondered is, does God need a portable throne? Because I say, for God, what's not portable? Is there anything? Could he have a throne that, oh, I can't move this? It's too big and heavy. Well, I imagine, say, we want to go down there, the whole thing can move together.

Of course, you could say, why does he need that? It's not like he's too tired to walk or... I like to get into speculation with spirit. There's things we don't understand. And who knows but what God does things a certain way just for us to see. He let Ezekiel see this, and let Ezekiel describe it. Later he showed something to John that overlapped considerably. They saw a lot of the same thing. Matter of fact, we'll see this in verse 27, because he saw this appearance of a man above it.

From the appearance of his waist and upward I saw, as it were, the color of amber, with the appearance of fire all around within it, and from the appearance of his waist downward, is the appearance of fire. Brightness all around. So there's this person that looks like a man, but there's this bright color exuding out. And that does... well, I'm not going to turn there.

In Revelation, when John saw a man, he said he had hairs white as his head, but his legs were like burnished brass. And sort of similar, this bright color that we believe that the glorified Jesus Christ, what he showed of himself was just glowing brightness. So there's another reason we think it's the same person. You know, the one who was the Word, who was with God, and who was God, comes down, born by these powerful, bizarre angels, brings him down, and he's going to have a talk with Ezekiel.

As a matter of fact, at the end of verse 28, I fell on my face and heard the voice of one speaking. So he fell on his face, and then he says, Son of man, stand on your feet. I should have mentioned this, actually, could have been in my theme, but I'm not sure if it's a subject matter, but Ezekiel will be called Son of man about a hundred times in this book. So it's just so common you'd almost think it was his name. In the book of Daniel, Daniel is called Son of man once, and no other prophets are.

In Hebrew, the word is ben adam, or Adam is the name for man. Ben means son of. Scholars think it's not some particular bizarre thing, but that it was a Caledean idiom that emphasized his human frailty. So the reason we don't see in other books is because these were the people that were living in Babylon, and so they picked up that phrase.

Now, the other thing you're probably thinking of is, wait a minute, doesn't Jesus call himself son of man? And yes, he does, about 85 times, but he calls himself the son of man. Ezekiel says just son of man. He's the son of man. Daniel was the son of man. Jesus Christ was the son of man. But there could be an overlap, because when Jesus Christ came in human form, you know, he was the all-powerful Creator, but as the Psalms describe, man was made a little lower than the angels.

Jesus Christ lowered himself, took on the frailty of humankind, of course, so he could be a sacrifice for sin. So anyways, I wanted to mention that because it comes up, you know, son of man, I want to stand on your feet and I'll speak to you. Then the Spirit entered me when he spoke to me, and he set me on my feet. I think that was probably a transforming experience. The Spirit entered him. Most people before the time of Jesus Christ did not have God's Holy Spirit.

There is records of a few. And of course, we know that David did because he begged God not to take it away from him when he was caught up in a terrible sin. But there's indication that the prophets did. We see that here. Nehemiah 9, verse 30, mentions the Spirit and the prophets. And also Ephesians 3 and verse 5. I wrote that down. That was one I was going to turn to. I think it says it... Yeah, in Ephesians 3, 5, he's in the middle of the sentence.

He says, Which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, because it has now been revealed by the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets. In the New Testament, we see apostles and prophets together quite a bit. But that's one of the things that have an indication of the specialness of the prophets. They were men to whom God gave his Holy Spirit at a time when it was not freely available. And he used them to communicate his word in his message.

So here we're at the beginning of Ezekiel's commission. He puts the Spirit in him and he basically gives him a job to do. Son of man, I'm sending you to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that's rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day. They're impudent and stubborn children. I'm sending you to them, and you'll say to them, Thus says the Lord God... And it's funny because it basically says they're not going to listen.

As for them, whether they hear or they refuse, for they are a rebellious house, yet they all know that a prophet has been among them. And he goes on to say, Don't be afraid. I'm sending you to people that you can understand, not a strange language or anything like that. I'm skipping ahead here. I'm not as bad as I thought. And here again, I've got a matter of fact... I'll give you some more detailed words on who God sent them to. The word Israel is used in the book of Ezekiel 986 times. As I mentioned before, house of Israel 82 times. The word Judah only six times by itself, and house of Judah 15.

So again, there's this emphasis in sending you to the house of Israel, not just to the tribe of Judah, or maybe not even at all to the tribe of Judah. There's this warning, Ezekiel is going to be persecuted, but these were God's words, not Ezekiel's own. Matter of fact, in verse 7 it says, You shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or whether they refuse, for they're rebellious.

And he tells them, Don't you be rebellious like them. And then there's one of his interesting, kind of bizarre visions. In verse 9, I looked and behold, a hand stretched out to me, and there was a scroll of a book was upon it.

And he spread it before me. There was writing on the inside and the outside. On it were written, Lamentations, Mourning, and Woe. Most scrolls at that time were written on just one side. So the fact that it's written on both sides is an emphasis of how much of this mourning and woe and lamentation there is.

The punishment is going to be great. There are a lot of sins. And then, of course, remember, this is a vision. He's not actually experiencing this. Because he says, Son of Man, eat this scroll, and then go speak to the house of Israel.

So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat the scroll. And he says, Son of Man, feed your belly. Fill your stomach with the scroll that I give you. And it was in my mouth as honey and sweetness. So this is representing what? Like the breakfast we just had, or is there something else behind this, we think? God's Word. Take this in. Fill your belly. And of course, the belly is symbolic of your innermost being. Make this a part of you. Internalize my word, and then go share it.

And it's sweet. It's like honey. Now, is there a parallel to this somewhere in the Bible? Who? John. Now I'm looking to see. I've got it written down somewhere. Oh, there we go. Yeah, John, Revelation 10, verses 9 and 10. Revelation 10, verse 9. I went to the angel. I said, Give me the little book. Of course, what he meant was a scroll. And he said, Take it and eat it. It'll make your stomach bitter, but it'll be sweet as honey in your mouth.

And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and I ate it. And it was sweet as honey in my mouth. When I eat it, it became in my stomach bitter. Now, is Ezekiel missing the bitter part? Actually, I used to think so until I just looked across the page back in Ezekiel chapter 3. Because at the end of this vision, in verse 14, it says, The Spirit lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit.

So, yeah, it was sweet in his mouth when he ate it, but then there is the bitterness. Why is that? Probably the sweetness of understanding God's Word. How many of us remember that when we first started understanding? And we're going, wow, now I see it, I get it! And then you read, oh, but what's going to happen to my people?

What's going to happen at the end of this age before the kingdom of God? And it's kind of bitter. Not that the bitterness won't pass, but I think that's what Ezekiel and John both experienced, and all of us have experienced. So the prophets foreshadow a lot of what we experience as Christians, because God is working with us in a way similar. Unlike most people at that time, we have God's Holy Spirit. We have something in common with those prophets where God works with us and opens our mind to understand His Word, and we have the joy that comes from that.

But, you know, there's a bitterness, too, because of understanding, you know, the bad things that are going to happen that people bring on themselves. Okay, I want to... Look ahead. It's funny, I was discussing this last week. Last week, I was up in Cleveland doing one of these, and it was just me and Aaron Dean, so we covered all the time. But even then, you know, with a lot of time, I said, boy, you know, back in Ambassador, you run out of time, you just say, well, we'll pick this up next time.

And I'm looking to say, you guys aren't going to be back here tomorrow for me to pick up if I'm behind, so I've got to choose the right ending place. Well, I do want to mention in chapter 3, you can scroll, and he says basically, I'm sending you to the house of Israel, go speak my words, I'm not sending you to someone of unfamiliar speech or anything like that.

You'll understand them. And then I want to drop down... Actually, let's mention verse 15, because this is part of this original vision. He says, Then I came to the captives at Tel-Abib, who dwelt by the river Kebar, and I sat there and remained there, astonished, among them, seven days. So he's just blown away. I've seen this vision of angels and God's throne. In this vision, I ate the scroll, and I was told I'm going to carry this message. And he was just blown away, to put it in modern terms. I sat there, I didn't know what to think.

Seven days, where he even knew what to tell them. And it came to pass at the end of seven days, so God comes and tells them, Son of man, I've made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Therefore, hear a word from my mouth, and give them a warning from me. When I say to the wicked, you'll surely die.

When I say to the wicked, you'll surely die, and you give them no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked, to save his life. The wicked man will die in his iniquity, but his blood will require it your hand. Yet, if you warn the wicked, and he doesn't turn from his wickedness, then he'll die in his iniquity, but you've delivered your soul. So this is the Watchman's commission that was put on Ezekiel. That's expanded in chapter 33.

God comes back and tells him almost the same thing, but expands it considerably. And that's something important, because we've seen that as applying to our church in this end time. Now, it doesn't here specifically say, this is a message to the church, but we know the church is sent to all nations, to all the world, to preach the gospel, which is the good news of the coming kingdom of God. But that often includes that warning. Okay, the good news, why is what's going to happen going to happen, and why doesn't it happen a different way, partly includes, hey, the wickedness that's going on, and a Watchman needs to sound a warning.

If we don't, we have some culpability that, you know, we need to warn the people. And God will choose to open the minds of some who will change their ways and be delivered. Many won't, but we have to fulfill our responsibility the way Ezekiel did his. So, as I said, we've emphasized that strongly in our church in the past, sometimes more strongly than others, but I don't think we've ever let it go away, nor do I think we should.

We should see a responsibility to be this witness. And sometimes, a lot of the witnesses, by the way, we live. You know, we're living a godly lifestyle. It's interesting, I've been focusing in the book of 1 John, because I'll be teaching the General Epistles class, but he talks about how the wicked hate the righteous.

And he mentions, why did Cain kill Abel? Because Abel's works were good, and Cain's were evil, and wicked people just don't like that witness. It shows them what they are. So, the important thing is, remember, if you're living God's way of life, you're fulfilling part of this watchman prophecy without even realizing it. Now, sometimes there are the opportunity to say it in words, but actually, I'm going to leave it there, because if I get preachy, I won't finish the class part. And like I said several times, not a sermon. I will mention, actually, just to give you a feel for the book, Ezekiel goes through several things where he's acting something out, and some of the commentaries call them pantomimes. And I kind of like that term, so I put it in my notes, even though I thought it unusual, but there are some things where God says, I'm going to have you do this, and it's acting out something symbolic. And he sees one of the first, it's interesting, in verse 25 of chapter 3, "'O Son of Man, surely they'll put ropes on you and bind you, so that you can't go out among them.'" Now, where it says, ropes and bind in Hebrew, that's a literal translation, but in chapter 4 and verse 8, the same exact words are translated as restrain. So we're not sure if it's just the Hebrew didn't have a good word for restrain, and so they used that. But in one way or another, Ezekiel's going to have some restraint. He's going to be limited in what he can do. Now, basically, he's got to stay at home until God gives him a message. And then, moreover, in verse 26, "'I'll make your tongue cleave to the roof of your mouth, so you'll be mute, and not one to rebuke them for their rebellious house. When I speak to you, I will open your mouth, and you'll say to them, Thus says the Lord God.'" And he who hears, you know, goes on from there. So God would literally make Ezekiel mute until he had a word for him. Now, scholars have, you know, studying this, say, well, we're not sure. Did that mean that he just couldn't speak at all? He was going around doing sign language until that time? Or he couldn't make public proclamations until God gave him permission? And to be honest, we don't know for sure which it was. Similar to staying in his house. You know, was it just that he couldn't go out for various things, but he could go out, you know, to get groceries or something like that? Hmm, hard to say. I wanted to mention that because, well, I wasn't sure how much we'd get into the second pantomime, because in chapter 4 and 5 it's described how God's going to have him play war. And it's kind of a neat little prophecy, but I really want to get to chapters 8 through 11. And before we get to any of that, I'm looking at the clock, saying it's time for us to take our first break. I'd like to take no more than 10 minutes so that I don't run long and cut into Mr. Dean's time. So let's take 10 minutes, try to be back by 10 after or even a minute or two early, and we'll pick up.

Thanks for watching!