⁶  And I will send fire on Magog and on those who live in security in the coastlands. Then they shall know that I am the LORD.

The Plan of God and Devotion to Nationhood

The above verse is from Ezekiel 39, one of the most apocalyptic chapters of a very apocalyptic book. In it the prophet describes “Gog” the leader of a land called “Magog” leading a multi-national force against Israel. God intervenes, and the campaign ends disastrously for the invaders. The rest of the book of Ezekiel is a detailed description of a restored temple, different from either Solomon's temple or the temple as it existed in the days of Jesus, and may be symbolic.

Returning to “Gog and Magog”; “Gog” means “leader”, and “Magog” was one of the sons Japheth, thus, a grandson of Noah (Genesis 10:2). His descendants formed a tribe that became the nation of Magog. The only other time Magog is mentioned in the Bible, other than Genesis and Ezekiel, is Revelation 20:8. There God and Magog arise to lead a multi-national invasion against Israel. Whether it is a second invasion or another depiction of the invasion prophesied in Ezekiel I do not know, but the end is also disastrous for Magog. Magog is mentioned elsewhere. Marco Polo, in his travels, wrote of Magog. In ancient maps it can be depicted as an empire north of the Caucasus Mountains. The “coastlands” can mean islands, but has not size limitations and can thus refer to very large land masses. Those are most of hints toward the identity of the nation or nations involved in Magog.

Of course Magog can be symbolic of nations assembled to stand against God, though it can be tempting to search for specific nations in the symbols. Perhaps for now we should consider that our God is above and over all the nations, and none of them will outlast God. There is plenty of room for a Christian to be patriotic yet put that patriotism in the context of devotion to the Lord of all nations, and that even a nation we love can be on the wrong side of God's plan. “America, right or wrong” is a dangerous position to hold. Devotion to our Lord Jesus must supersede even devotion to our country.

Question that was once posed to me: “If the Lord called you to work as a missionary in another country, and the only way to get there was to renounce your U.S. Citizenship, would you do it? Even it if meant that you could not return to your home country?”

Ezekiel 37:11 (NKJV)

¹¹Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’

Note: Here is the crux of the matter. The vision depicts the despair of the surviving Israelis in exile. While the promise of the vision includes the promise of the Resurrection, that God speaks life into dead situations prophetically and that the people of God will never die out; the context also tells us that the people in exile remained in exile for 70 years. Most of these people never saw their homeland again. While God is life-giving, prayer answering and death-destroying in my life, I must remember that He has promised to bring His dreams to pass, not necessarily mine, and that I should not be surprised to find my heart broken in this fallen world. Maybe some of my dreams are lost because I never should have embraced them in the first place. Perhaps hopes and dreams that I deem lesser dreams to what I've embrace are actually the greater dreams. My mistake is that I view them from my perspective than the Lord's.   

Blessings, the Land, and My Purpose for Today  

Ezekiel 36

20-When they came to the nations, wherever they went, they profaned My holy name--when they said of them, 'These are the people of the LORD, and yet they have gone out of His land.'

Years ago, Christian folk singer Barry McGuire mentioned that the promised land symbolized the promises of God. For Christians having the promises fulfilled in our lives is a fulfillment of the promised land, with the promised land ultimately being heaven. This notion is fortified by the assertion in Hebrews (11:8-10) that Abraham's journey to the promised land was really a search for heaven all along. It could be inferred that a Christian living in some sort of defeat, with none of the promises of God in force in their lives (I've yet to consider what that must look life) is like unto an Israeli who claims that name of the Lord but has been forced out of the land. It makes the Lord look bad. But compare with verse 22

²¹  But I had concern for My holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations wherever they went. 

²²  "Therefore say to the house of Israel, 'Thus says the Lord GOD: "I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.

Note: The blessings God gives to Israel (but not to the generation that saw judgment cf. 33:23-29) He does not give for their sakes, but for the sake of His Holy Name. That does not mean that the Lord is indifferent or does not love us, but that the Christian life has never been about us as much as it is about the Lord. Giving honor to the Lord is more important than our wants, or even needs. Joe Stowall, former president of Moody Bible Institute, once said that acts of righteousness is more important than self fulfillment. I, very naturally, turn my mind to my needs and wants, my goals, dreams, hurts and hopes when I wake up every day. The Lord is not indifferent to all of that, but I am to consider His honor first, perhaps that is a part of what Jesus meant when He said, “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33) 

When I stop thinking about me or my disappointments and consciously consider just the notion that my life is meant to give honor to the Lord, my disposition changes even if I do not come up with a concrete response to that thought. It's like I start looking at the day through a different set of lenses. The sense of disappointment wanes. I have something to consider that is more important than whether I am disappointed about something or not (I'm often disappointed. It seems I have high expectations of everything). My life, this day, is about the honor of the Lord's holy name and that is more important than my happiness and sense of self-fulfillment, and that takes a lot of pressure off of me as I go through the day.  

Saturday, October 31, 2015

¹⁰  "Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: 'Thus you say, "If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how can we then live?" ' “

As I read this, I wondered how our sins can cause us to “pine away”?

“pine away”-H4743 mâqaq maw-kak' A primitive root; to melt; figuratively to flow, dwindle, vanish: - consume away, be corrupt, dissolve, pine away.מקק

cf. Leviticus 26:36-39 “And as for those of you who are left, I will send faintness (fear) into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a shaken leaf shall cause them to flee; they shall flee as though fleeing from a sword, and they shall fall when no one pursues; and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And those of you who are left shall waste away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; also in their fathers' iniquities, which are with them, they shall waste away.”

Note: the word is used ten times in seven verses, twice in Leviticus 26:39 (pine away=waste away) and three times in Zechariah 14:12. It is also in Psalm 38:5, Isaiah 34:4, Ezekiel 4:17; 24:23 and Zechariah 14:12. The verses in Psalms and elsewhere in Ezekiel also paint the picture of unrepented sin causing a person to waste away spiritually. Isaiah & Zechariah use the word more literally.

Zechariah 14:12 And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem; their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet, their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, and their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths. (italics mine)

Isaiah 34:4 “All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll; all their host shall fall down as the leaf falls from the vine, and as fruit falling from a fig tree.

Mentioned several times in Scripture that the created order will be done away with and there will be a new heavens and a new earth, seemingly consistent with the idea that our Universe is finite and that there is a greater reality beyond. Almost as if our reality is like a “virtual reality” within a greater reality. The aforementioned is not original to me. Others have suggested this before. The verse from Zechariah is interpreted by some as eschatological, referring to the end of the age. For now I'll focus on the interior, spiritual application of the word. Unconfessed sin is toxic, caustic that is life diminishing and makes me less human, less what I was meant to be. The prayer of confession is valuable for my daily spiritual life.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Hi, everyone.  Sorry I've been slow to leave an entry.  Ezekiel is one of the more unusual passages in this very unusual book.  Here's my thoughts on it.  

Ezekiel 28 is a challenge to keep track of the subject. The prophet has finished speaking to Judah (what was left of Israel, at that time under siege by Babylon) and is addressing neighboring city-states also in danger of judgment. Here he's speaking to the prince of the Tyre, a coastal city-state that was large and prosperous. This prince, like many ancient rulers (and a few today, such as the leader of North Korea) considered himself better than human. He was a god, and Ezekiel sarcastically asks if the prince is going to tell the Babylonians that he is divine before he is killed. But then the tone, and possibly the subject of the prophecy changes and the king of Tyre is addressed. Some suggest that the king and the prince is the same, but this is another interpretation, dating from the second century AD, that suggests that the true king of this capital is Satan. If so, this, along with Isaiah 14, gives us a view to his life before he became the enemy of all humanity. This “king” was in Eden, with a covering of every precious stone, and anointed cherub (a very high rank of angel) who was on the mountain of God and walked among the fiery stones. Stones that burn are symbolic if the immediate presence of God.

What's the point? Tyre was the New York of its day. It was a very prosperous, driven, powerful hub of trade for the entire region. It was an economic powerhouse, but the city was driven by pride and greed. 1 Timothy 6:10 says “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. For which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Perhaps one think that we can take away is that a life dedicated to greed and material wealth can lead one to some very bad company and pride can lead one to vastly overestimate one's abilities. We think we are gods, and we're not.   

Friday, October 16, 2015

Ezekiel 25:15

Thus says the Lord God:  "Because the Philistines dealt vengefully and took vengeance with the spiteful heart, to destroy because of the old hatred,"...

The Philistines and other were at enmity with Israel for generations.  Why?  It seems to me that bitterness can grow into a hatred that no longer needs a reason to hate, and can perhaps be spread to the next generation who learns to hate without ever knowing what caused the hatred in the first place, or even knowing that they should know this.  One of the dangers of bitterness is that it can grow beyond the boundaries of our lives and can take on a life of its own.  It eventually no longer needs to reason to exist; it just does.  I find this especially sobering considering that the worst cases of bitterness are found in people who have good reason to be bitter-a man whose sister is murdered by her abusive husband, who is released from the bar of justice because of a legal technicality.  I know it sounds a little melodramatic but things like that do happen.  People commit great crimes and are not always brought to justice.  

Albert Speer was Chief Architect and Minister of Armaments for Germany during World War 2.  After the war, he convinced the justices at Nuremburg that he was, if not innocent, at least not as guilty as the other leaders of the Nazi Party and was spared the death sentence.  He spent years in prison, but afterward lived an affluent life for years before his death in 1981.  I watched a History Channel program that included a section on him.  Apparently, evidence has been discovered that revealed that Speer was not nearly as innocent as he led many people to believe.  If true, then he participated in some of the most monstrous crimes in modern history and fared fairly well because of it.  I could see where his victims could become bitter over this.  

Though this is an unpopular topic, I think the remedy from such a malaise as bitterness, especially in troubling cases, is the judgment and wrath of God.  If God is a God of wrath and justice as well as a God of love and peace then there is no getting away from injustice, even if someone escapes justice in this life.  Paul wrote in Romans 12:19-21  "Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written,'Vengeance is Mine, Il will repay,' says the Lord."

How would I react if tempted to become so bitter that the bitterness took on a life of its own?  What would I say if I craved justice and it was denied me?  What do I say to those in different parts of the world who are denied justice most cruelly every day?  This verse gives me a lot of food for thought.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Hello,  I'm currently studying the Book of Ezekiel.  It's one of the darker books of the Bible; the observations and prophecies of a priest seeing the collapse of what was left of his culture.  A grim view of sin, self-delusion and religious hypocrisy, Ezekiel joins the major prophets in showing what life is like at the end of an age.  When I read this, I ask myself where I would fit in if I lived during this time.

Note:  I should have put this in the other day, but if anyone is looking for a website that defends the notion that one can be rational and still trust the Bible, try www.thepoachedegg.com.


Here's today's note.  I'll try to have one our every few days or so.

Ezekiel 24:7

 For her blood is in her midst; She set it on top of a rock; She did not pour it on the ground, To cover it with dust.

“on top of a rock”-When I read this I made the awkward comparison to the statement of Jesus, that the church is to be a "city on a hill"(Matthew 5:14). The commentators mention that the blood of animals was to be poured out on earth, and covered with sawdust for sanitary reasons. (Leviticus 17:13)  Here human blood is spilled out on rock. In other words, people have become so brazen in their violence that they make no attempt even to hide the fact that they have committed bloodshed. If I lived in this setting, would I have been part of the problem or an exception to it, for all this was going on with the veneer of religiosity still there.  It could be argued that the fall of Jerusalem was religious hypocrisy played out to the final result. For my life I need to ponder once a Christian, then an example. That is part of the commitment. I will be an example of what a Christian ought to be, or one of what a Christian ought not to be, but an example nonetheless.   

Monday, October 12, 2015

Hello, everyone.  My name is Dan Vellinga and I'm a pastor of a church in Marshalltown, Iowa.  This blog is about Bible study; that is, what I'm studying in Scripture for my own learning and spiritual growth.  The title comes from an anecdote alleged to involve Charles Spurgeon, the great British preacher of another century.  When asked by some students how they were to defend the Bible against a variety of attacks, Spurgeon replied with a question.  "How do you defend a caged lion?"  The students didn't know, so he answered it himself.  "You don't," he said.  "You let it out of its cage and it will defend itself."  

My views on Scripture are very conservative, I believe it to be the infallible Word of God.  I know that such a view leads me to some tricky questions and I can find that I have "painted myself into a corner" because some of those questions are very hard to answer.  Then again,I think all views of Scripture lead to tricky questions so I try to find the "corner" that is closest to the truth.  Over the years, Scripture has proved to be an unending source of encouragement and wisdom for me.

I should add one caveat.  While I believe that the Scriptures are infallible, I, as someone to tries to apply and learn, am very fallible and make mistakes all the time.  Anything on this blog is my opinion and may not always be held by every member of the church I serve.  For any errors or foolishness that you find here, I apologize, and if people find any encouragement or food for thought from this blog, then I will consider the endeavor a success. 

Currently I'm studying the book of Ezekiel and my next entry will be thoughts about that book.