The Book of Ezekiel is prophetic; it is about the future as well as the present. As I wrote in an earlier commentary, “Israel” is more than the nation; it is also the descendants of Jacob, the Garden of Eden on Earth, The House (family) of God, the early Church, and even a symbol of the Messiah (Jesus).
One of the two meanings of the
name “Israel” is “He Retains God” in addition to “God Is Upright.” Put the two
together and retaining God is remaining upright. That implies two things:
(1) That God can be abandoned and (2) that mankind can become slanted… inclined
toward evil from once being upright.
Everybody perceives themselves as
good, albeit they are born inherently evil. “The wicked are estranged from the
womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies” (Psalm 58:3). The
only innocent ones are the unborn. If you have been born you are estranged, or
a “stranger” to God; or as Paul said it, you “come short of the glory of God” (Rom
3:23).
Some Christians refer to strangers
to God as “the lost.” They are indeed as “lost sheep” (Mat 15:24) but sheep who
stray from the fold were once safe, were they not? Hence, “the lost” are those
who once were secure in the House of God (i.e., Israel) but now are like
strangers and foreigners amidst the household of God (Ephes 2:19).
The lost are those who once
had affection for God but have defected (apostasia) from Him (Heb 6:6).
Those who never knew God were never citizens of the household of God, so they were
never lost.
(Words mean things in scripture,
so it is important to not gloss over the Old Testament wisdom and prophetic
sayings.)
Since God is truth, if He said it
in the Old Testament, it remains the truth in the New Testament. The
Ten Commandments remain the will of God; they are ways to demonstrate love. One
who loves God would not adore a false image of Him, and likewise, someone who
loves his neighbor would never steal from him. The Ten Commandments are what
the household of God should do to remain within the family of God.
They are familiar traits required
to remain a son of God. Those who do not do those things are strangers to God
and others. They are not lost but know what they do. They are written on
stone, so that those who are of the household of God know that they are. Those
who gloss over the Ten Commandments are the lost and are strangers to God because
they take the standards of God in vain.
Once a sheep; not always a sheep. Sheep can be food for the beasts. Referring to Christians, it is written:
Casting all your care upon Him; for he cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Pet 5:7-8)
Paul meant that you may be a
Christian now, but you are vulnerable; Satan can transform even you into
nothing more than a meal at the supper table of demons.
You may have been made safe, but
walk too far from the household of God, and you become a snack for unseen beings.
Now consider the Israelites. They
are God’s people. They were of the household of God who kept them safe from
the Canaanites, the other “ites” and even Anakim giants — demonic men.
Israel himself (Jacob) carried the genes of God. All his descendants carried that gene. They were engendered from God above (“born again”), but they still could separate themselves from both God and His family, to wit:
7 For every one of the house of Israel, or of the stranger that sojourns in Israel, which separates himself from Me, and set up his idols in his heart, and puts the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and comes to a prophet to enquire of him concerning Me; I the Lord will answer him by Myself: (Exod 14:7)
The key phrase within that passage
is “separates himself from Me.”
The prodigal son did just that;
he was of the family of God and his own family. He took his inheritance and
left both his earthly father and Father God. Upon returning to the fold, his
father said about him, “My son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and
is found. And they began to be merry” (Luke 15:24).
The prodigal son died when he
left home. Death, in scripture means many things. He could have died a mortal
death, or it could have been a spiritual death. The father in the parable was
speaking of a genetic death. The son had died to him because he became lost to
the family. If he had died away from his father and away from God, he would
have denied both as his family.
He received his inheritance, so
he was part of the family, but when he left the fold, he died.
The death of Adam and Eve was not
that they physically died, but their genetics changed, and Cain became of the Wicked
One (1 John 3:12). He was not lost, but was the first being that came
short of the glory of God at birth just as is written. He was born dead in a
sense because there was little “Adam” in him. He was genetically, never part of
the household of God, and he was never lost but only “wandered” as his
name means.
The prodigal son had the opportunity to again become part of the family and the household of God because Jesus has yet to be crucified. That has great significance:
It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. (Heb 6:4-6)
It is not impossible to fall away
but impossible to renew them again after falling away. It would
be as if crucifying Jesus again.
Note that Paul was referring to
those who once had the Holy Ghost; those that have been engendered by Jesus and
were in Christ. They once had affection for Christ, and they had become part of the Household of God.
“Falling away” is apostasia in
the Greek. It is to defect from Jesus after once having affection for
Him.
Defection induces the Holy Ghost
to remove itself from a “temple” where it is not welcome. The Holy Ghost is the
Christ in the Christian. The Ghost of Jesus is just as much God as the
Person of God — Jesus.
Tasting the good Word of God
is not just sampling but partaking of the Word of God; ingesting both His Will
and His Holy Ghost — in a sense eating of the invisible body of Christ.
God will never leave nor forsake
you, but you are not in jail but a safe house to prevent the wicked ones
from eating you. You leave the House of God like a prodigal son and with Jesus
already crucified and His Estate probated, there is no inheritance to come back
to obtain.
That you have been saved is
indeed comforting, but that you can be devoured (unsaved) is irrational. Once
devoured, always devoured, if you are the meal of demons at their “wedding
feast.”
Look at Adam and the woman. They
were safe in the arbor of the Garden of Eden but there they encountered
the Devil who was cleverly disguised as some other image. They failed to be
vigilant because they were in the household of God. When they least expected
it, the woman was beguiled; she had ingested guile and no longer was she Adam’s
woman, but a new kind that Adam called “Eve.”
Was the woman dead? Yes! She was
no longer of man but of the wicked one and her child was demonic in countenance.
The so called “Serpent” was really Lucifer, and his child was from the mother
of all living (Gen 3:20). Eve’s kind was not “sons of God” but of the gens
of Cain.
She had died because she was
changed inwardly. She looked like Adam but was inwardly a beast.
(I believe that Lilith was the demon
spirit within Eve, not before then, but after she had sinned.)
As such, the woman ate the fruit of Lucifer, thinking that it was the real fruit of God. She tasted wickedness and liked its taste more so than the ordinary fruit of God from the Tree of Life. She imbued wickedness whether she ate figs or any other fruit. Whereas before, the woman was glorious with the Ghost of God within her, and she died in the sense that God left her because she was by then filthy within:
The works of the flesh
are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness,
lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath,
strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and
such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time
past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal 5:19-21)
Such things are guile that beguiled the
woman to change her glorious kind into inglorious, coming short afterward of
the glory of God. She died in the sense that she lost the twelve fruits of the Spirit
of God and imbued the many fruits of the Wicked One.
Because, after sin, Adam and Eve were
different creatures who would make a great meal for the demons, God put a
garment on the two (Gen 3:17) for their safety from the fiery darts of the wicked
ones.
Adam and Eve were kept safe by
that impenetrable garment until Jesus died on the Cross to save them.
Since the time of Adam, mankind itself
has lived in a state of safety for those who have remained children of
God. The two Adams had to die to be born again. Except for the rapture,
Christians must die to be born again. Rebirth begins with engenderment by God
above and is finished at glorification, when those in Christ arise to be with
Christ, “receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls” (1
Pet 1:9).
The salvation of your souls is either
at death or the general resurrection. No wonder, Paul said that death would be
gain for himself because he was in Christ (Phil 1:21), having Christ in him
to the end.
You are kept safe, as the Greek
word “sozo” also means, until death wherein the soul of those in Christ
are finally “saved” (a secondary meaning.)
“Salvation” is the Greek word “soteria”
which occurs at death whereafter the soul of the Christian is beyond the wiles
of the Devil.
Words do mean things, especially the
Word of God. There are not two conditions for salvation, there is one
salvation, for Jew and Gentile alike. Any Jew that is engendered by Christ is
as much a Christian as a Gentile about whom Paul wrote, “He is a Jew, which is
one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart” (Rom 2:29).
Yes, you too require circumcision, not
of the foreskin of the pudenda, but the hardness that surrounds the will of sinful
men and women.
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