Oct 13, 2022
EZEKIEL 4-5:
In
Ezekiel 2-3 God commissioned Ezekiel to speak for God to the
rebellious people of Israel. God fed Ezekiel a scroll. This tasted
sweet, but afterwards I think he would tell us that it produced
“bitterness”— as we will see with John who eats a similar scroll in
Revelation. God gave these important words to Ezekiel in
yesterday’s reading:
Ez. 3:10 NLT …“Son of man, let all my words sink deep into your own heart first. Listen to them carefully for yourself.
SONG OF SOLOMON 3:
As
we have seen, this Song of Songs is high poetry. The woman’s
stories— such as what we hear today, are better taken as poetic
expressions of her deep love than as true narratives.
MATTHEW 24b:
Jesus said, “Immediately after those days, the
sun will be darkened and the moon will give no light.” Here is a
story from 2014, the first year I was recording these podcasts. I
wrote: Just three days ago, in the evening, I was with the Orya
people at an open-air youth retreat. The pastor pointed out that
the Bible says the moon will turn into blood (or be the color of
blood). He had come from town and is not an Orya speaker. He told
the people that he had seen that morning on the Internet that on
that very night there would be a “blood moon”— or a lunar eclipse
where the moon would turn red like blood. And while he was speaking
about that and other end-times signs, sure enough, it happened!
Nothing like God managing a visual presentation for you! I have
never seen a more moving sight.
GNT Translation
notes:
Mat. 24:15 “You
will see ‘The Awful Horror’ of which the prophet Daniel spoke. It
will be standing in the holy place.” ([May the one who reads out loud note this and
explain it to those who listen!//Note to the reader: understand what this
means!])
27
For [when I,] the Son of Man, [come, it will be//will come] like
the lightning which flashes across the whole sky from the east to
the west.
30 Then the sign of the Son of Man
[(my sign)] will appear in the sky; and all the peoples of earth
will weep as they see [me//the Son of Man] coming on the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory.
31
The great trumpet will sound, and [I//he] will send out [my//his]
angels to the four corners of the earth, and they will gather
[my//his] chosen people from one end of the world to the
other.
37
[My//The] coming [as//of] the Son of Man will be like what happened
in the time of Noah.
yet
they did not realize what was happening until the flood came and
swept them all away.
39 That is how it will be
when [I,] the Son of Man[, come// comes].
44
So then, you also must always be ready, because [my coming as] the
Son of Man will come at an hour when you are not expecting
[me//him].