Interlude

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/30/2015 9:27 PM

As I said in our last SD on Ezekiel we are now at an interlude portion of the book, between chapter 32 and the rest of the book from 33-48 and as I promised I will quote from Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary on what he wrote about this interlude.

Interlude

            “Chapters 33-48 of Ezekiel focus on the hope of Israel as found in the promises God has made to His chosen people.  In chapter 33, God reminds His prophet that he has been commissioned to be a watchman whose task ii is to protect and inform the people by keeping his eyes open to what is happening and his earls open to what God is saying.

            “In the previous chapters, the Lord revealed His judgments on His own people and on the neighboring nations.  Ezekiel told the exiles in Babylon that the city of Jerusalem would be taken by the Babylonians, the land would be ravaged, and the temple would be destroyed.  But in this closing section of the book, he had the happy privilege of announcing a bright future for the people of God.  The holy city and the Promised Land would be restored (chapts. 33-36), the divided kingdom would be united and protected (chapts. 37-39), and there would be a new temple in which the glory of the Lord would reside (chapts. 40-48).  The glory that he had seen depart from the defiled temple (11:23) he saw return to the new temple (43:4-5; 44:4).  The kingdom promised by the prophets would be established, and the Messiah, the Son of David, would reign from Jerusalem.

            “Some students prefer to interpret Ezekiel 33-48 idealistically or symbolically, applying those descriptions ‘spiritually’ to the church today rather than literally to Israel in the future.  But if we’ve been interpreting Ezekiel’s prophetic word literally up to this point, what right do we have to change our approach and start interpreting his words symbolically?  As Dr. David Cooper said, ‘When the plain sense of Scripture makes good sense, then we need no other sense.’  We must face the fact that both approaches—the symbolical and the literal—present problems to the interpreter, but taking Ezekiel’s prophecies at face value seems to present fewer problems.  Furthermore, seeing literal fulfillment of these prophecies accomplishes the purpose for which God gave them, the encouragement of the people of Israel.  Few nations if any have suffered as Israel has suffered, and to rob God’s chosen people of their hope is to make their suffering meaningless. 

            “Our approach will be to assume that these prophecies will have a literal fulfillment and that Israel will one day see her Messiah and share in the glorious kingdom promised by Ezekiel and the other prophets.  At the same time, we will seek to apply the basic spiritual lessons taught in these chapters, truths that apply to God’s people in the church today.”

            I have stated before that the people who want to take the promises that God gave to Israel and apply them to the church are doing a great disloyalty to the Word of God.  I totally believe that our enemy is the one behind this so that he can even use people who have been truly born-again to go against Israel.

3/30/2015 9:48 PM