Friday, April 24, 2015

The Cleansing of the Land (Ezek. 39:9-16)


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/24/2015 8:42 PM

My Worship Time                                                                      Focus:  The Cleansing of the Land

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Ezekiel 39:9-16

            Spiritual meaning of the verses:  Now here in this section we see something that makes it hard to understand exactly when this battle will take place.  As we begin to look at this main section which Dr. Wiersbe entitles “After the Invasion,” we will see that after this great battle which caused sudden destruction such a multitude of corpses as we will see in this section of scriptures along with some military material which is also a topic of this section.

            “9 "Then those who inhabit the cities of Israel will go out and make fires with the weapons and burn them, both shields and bucklers, bows and arrows, war clubs and spears, and for seven years they will make fires of them. 10 “They will not take wood from the field or gather firewood from the forests, for they will make fires with the weapons; and they will take the spoil of those who despoiled them and seize the plunder of those who plundered them," declares the Lord GOD. 11 “On that day I will give Gog a burial ground there in Israel, the valley of those who pass by east of the sea, and it will block off those who would pass by. So they will bury Gog there with all his horde, and they will call it the valley of Hamon-gog. 12 “For seven months the house of Israel will be burying them in order to cleanse the land. 13 “Even all the people of the land will bury them; and it will be to their renown on the day that I glorify Myself," declares the Lord GOD. 14 "They will set apart men who will constantly pass through the land, burying those who were passing through, even those left on the surface of the ground, in order to cleanse it. At the end of seven months they will make a search. 15  "As those who pass through the land pass through and anyone sees a man’s bone, then he will set up a marker by it until the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon-gog. 16 “And even the name of the city will be Hamonah. So they will cleanse the land."’”

            Like I said that this section causes some difficulty as to when this war will take place.  Let me explain by saying that we know that the tribulation will last for seven years and that is why some commentators believe that this war will happen sometime close to the tribulation period, but not in it.  In the series that Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins wrote called the “Left Behind” series they actually used Lahaye’s commentary on Revelation to get the theme of the books and Jenkins wrote the plot of the people in it, but they said in the story line that this battle came before the Rapture of the church.  Now Warren Wiersbe believes it will happen right after the tribulation period begins while John MacArthur believes it is part of the last battle, the battle of Armageddon.  Warren Wiersbe believes that the weapons of war fare that Ezekiel speaks of here will not be the weapons of war fare that will be used during this battle.  It will probably be jet fighter planes, rockets and modern things like that that will be used in this war so how will they be able to burn those things for seven years.  Dr. Wiersbe writes “The burning of the equipment simply says that the Jews didn’t keep it to use themselves and they destroyed it so nobody else could use it.  God and his army came to spoil Israel, but Israel spoiled them!” 

            The other problem as far as timing of the battle comes when we read that it takes seven months to clean the land of dead bodies.  MacArthur believes that this could actually go into the Millennial Kingdom. 

            Now the whole object of this war is for God to destroy those nations that have been cruel to Israel in the past and are still to this day doing the same thing.  It is also to bring glory to God and also cause nations around to understand that it was God who is behind this and therefore they should glorify Him.  When Israel came out of Egypt everyone knew that it was the God of Israel who destroyed Egypt, but none of them gave glory to God they only though that He was powerful.  The other reason is that we have is found in “John 3:19  "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.”

            I will now give my take on how I think this could happen for what it is worth.  I believe that this battle of Gog and Magog happens near the beginning of the Tribulation Period and as far as the weapons used for fuel I think that it could be possible that nuclear warheads from rockets will fall harmless to the ground and Israel will use them to make electric power.  I have to admit that I have never read any commentary who said anything like this but perhaps this is possible.

4/24/2015 9:18 PM    

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