Week 40 - Ezekiel 5-8, Revelation 11 (Oct. 1-7)

Notes

Ezekiel 5:5 - Israel at the Center of Nations

in Ezekiel 5 God says:

5 “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. 6 Yet in her wickedness she has rebelled against my laws and decrees more than the nations and countries around her. She has rejected my laws and has not followed my decrees.

This passage gives us a clear hindsight understanding of why God called Abraham to leave Ur/Haran. God selected this land for his people, not just because it was fertile, not just because the Canaanites were wicked and God knew he would punish them by driving them out, and not just as a test for Abraham who had to pick up and move; He selected the promised land because it was at the center of nations which would be the perfect place for His glory to be revealed through the obedience of His chosen people. In this specific place, the whole (ancient near-eastern) world could see and know of God’s glory through his people’s keeping of the law of the covenant.

But it didn’t work out that way did it! Instead of God’s glory being displayed through his people’s obedience, the Israelites brought shame to the name of God through their disobedience. As a result instead of being made famous for his glory - God will now (this is what he is telling Ezekiel) be known for his wrath as he punishes his disobedient people by destroying Jerusalem in view of the whole world.

EZEKIEL 8:1 a timeline marker

Chapter 8 opens like this:

 In the sixth year, in the sixth month on the fifth day, while I was sitting in my house and the elders of Judah were sitting before me, the hand of the Sovereign Lord came on me there.

we can compare this to what we read in 1:1

In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.

2 On the fifth of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin—

and see that the marker he is using for dating is the years since Jehoiachin was exiled. Then we can also know that the vision of chapter 8 and beyond comes fourteen months to the day after Ezekiel’s call to be a prophet. we can locate this day (8:1) to precisely September 17, 592 BC. This is six years before the temple is destroyed by Babylon.

Revelation 11

Revelation is probably the hardest book of the Bible to understand. Within this book, the first half of chapter 11 may be the most confounding of all. This is our challenge this week.

We’re still in the interlude (of sorts) between the 6th and 7th trumpet, but this interlude seems to be sequentially related to what leads to the 7th trumpet. The 7th (a number of completion and finality in Revelation) is simply the arrival of God’s kingdom - it is the end of the story - which, again, is an indicator that Revelation does not have a single timeline from chapters 1 to 22. Instead, we get many different angles and perspectives on the same timeline of a persecuted by faithful and victorious Chruch enduring through the persecutions of beasts and wicked forces, being partially protected from the judgments of God upon the wicked world (for the purpose of their repentance) and an ultimate victory in which all of rebellious creation is swallowed up into the kingdom of the Christ belonging to God. When we turn the page from Chapter 11 into Chapter 12 next week, we’ll jump into a different perspective than the one we’ve been reading for several weeks.

Chief among the difficult elements of chapter 11 are the two persecuted witnesses who resurrect. Here is NT. Wright’s take on these characters of John’s vision

First, John's 'measuring of the temple (which echoes similar prophetic actions in Ezekiel 40 and Zechariah 2) has nothing to do with the Jerusalem Temple, or with the heavenly temple/throne room of chapters 4 and 5. By the time John was writing - indeed, this was true from very early on in the Christian movement - the followers of Jesus had come to see themselves as the true temple, the place where God now lived through his powerful spirit. John is commanded to mark out this community so that, as in chapter 7, it may be protected against ultimate harm. However, there is another sense in which the community - seen here in terms of the 'outer court' - is to be left vulnerable. The pagan nations will trample it for three and a half years (a symbolic number, half of the 'seven' which stands for completeness, here broken down into 42 months or 1260 days). Just as Ezekiel's measuring of his visionary temple was a way of marking out the place where God was going to come to dwell, so John's marking out of this human temple, this community, is a way of signalling God's solemn intention to honour and bless this people with his presence.

But what is the task and role of this people? Throughout the book of Revelation, the call of God's people is to bear faithful witnes to Jesus, even though it will mean suffering, and quite posibly a shameful death. The seven letters of chapter 2 and 3 continually promised special rewards to those who conquered. This, as we saw, meant the people who, following eus who himself achieved victory through his death, were prepared to face martyrdom rather than compromise. Now this is the part which many find particularly difficult - it appears that the 'two witnesses' of verses 3-13 are a symbol for the whole church in its prophetic witness, its faithful death, and its vindication by God. The church as a whole is symbolized by the 'lampstands, as in 1.20. The church is to prophesy, 'clothed in sackcloth' as a sign of mourning for the wickedness of the world and the evil that it will bring on to itself.

Why two witnesses, then? Partly, I think, because John has two great biblical stories in mind as the backdrop. First, there is the story of Moses, who stood up to Pharaoh, the pagan king of Egypt, and demonstrated God's power by the plagues which, as we have seen, are already echoed in chapters 8 and 9. Second, there is the story of Elijah, who stood up to Ahab, the paganizing king of Israel, and demonstrated God's power by successfully praying for a drought and then by calling down fire from heaven. John doesn't mean, though some have thought this, that Moses and Elijah would literally return to earth and carry out what chapter 11 says. That is to mistake the sort of writing this is. What John is saying is that the prophetic witness of the church, in the great tradition of Moses and Elijah, will perform powerful signs and thereby torment the surrounding unbelievers, but that the climax of their work will be their martyr-death at the hands of the monster that comes up from the Abyss.

We haven't met this 'monster' yet. Nor have we yet discovered the great city, which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where their lord was crucified? John will make all this clear in the several chapters that follow, where we learn that the 'monster' is the might of pagan empire, presently embodied by Rome, and that the city is Rome itself or maybe in this case the Ramie world of the entire Roman empire. Andthe point. the point which John is determined his readers will grasp - is this The God-given and God-protected vocation to bear faithful prophetic witness will not mean that one will be spared from sultering and death, but rather that this suffering and death itself, like that of the Jesus whom the church worships and follows, will be the ultimate prophetic sign through which the world will be brought to glorify God.

How does this work? For three and a half days (there we have the half-of-seven symbol again) the world will celebrate a victory over the church. But suddenly God will act in a new way. The vision of Ezekiel 37, of God's breath coming into the dead corpses, will come into reality. And the vision of Daniel 7, of God's people coming on a cloud to heaven, will also come to pass. The vindication of the church after its martyrdom will complete the prophetic witness.

The result will be that the world, looking on, will at last be converted. That is the meaning of the powerful language at the end of verse 13. Elsewhere, both in Revelation and other biblical books, the idea of people coming in fear and trembling to glorify the God of heaven' is an indication not of a temporary or grudging acknowledgement of God's sovereignty, but of a true and penitent turning to God. The martyr-witness of the church, in other words, will succeed where the plagues have failed. This is how the nations will come to glorify their creator. This is how 'the kingdom of the world' will become the kingdom of our Lord and his Messiah' - which is precisely the point that follows immediately in verse 15.

This most puzzling passage in this most puzzling book, then, turns out to be one of the most important and central statements of what John wants to ay to the churches to whom he is writing. The lamb has opened the seals on the scroll, and all kinds of terrifying things have happened as he has done so. The trumpets have blown; terrors of a different sort have come to pass; but now the scroll has been handed to John, and John prophesies in symbolic action (measuring the temple) and parabolic story (the two witnesses). And this is how the kingdom of God, already spoken of in chapters 4 and 5, is to become a reality on earth as in heaven.