NORTHERN STYLE NEWSWATCH No.19
CREDO `Beneath the Debris'
As we entered the New Year of 2002 our thoughts naturally turned to the many momentous events of the past year, and, inevitably, memories of the horror of September 11th in New York came flooding back. It was said at the time that the world would never be the same again, and yet we know that a few months later life continues in much the same pattern. But those who know `the times and seasons' are aware that a significant change did occur at that time, and so we wait again! We then carried our thoughts beyond the natural events of September 11th and placed them into the timespan of that which we have written about earlier - of a spiritual fourty-year Probation Period for the Church which, we understand, began with the taking of Jerusalem by the nation of Israel in 1967. And without wishing to repeat what has been reported of the joy experienced at that time, all watched with dismay as Israel began the long, slow decline to the point they have reached today. But joined to the understanding of a spiritual Probation Period is the knowledge that `the Church' and Israel are joined together in a parallel walk, and therefore that which we see outworking in the natural life of Israel will be correspondingly seen outworking in the spiritual life of the Church.

With that background in mind we can perhaps more easily carry the picture of the debris of the collapsed Twin Towers forward to the debris of `collapsed' western Christianity, now well into the fourty-year Probation Period. We hear from the media that the surface fires on the Twin Tower site have at last gone out, but at what has been called Ground Zero the fires are still smouldering. And so we caught a sight of the certainty of God looking at our spiritual debris - and even though the `surface fires' may have gone out we should be aware of the smouldering fire that lies beneath the debris of our efforts. And so we turned to the Scriptures, and to certain chapters of the Book of Ezekiel (never a comfortable book to be led into) which, as we shall find, was also set in a Probation Period and so has a parallel message for the time in which we find ourselves.

We would open up our thoughts in chapter 31 where it records that Ezekiel was speaking:

"In the eleventh year, in the third month on the first day the
Word of the LORD came to me."
What follows is a remarkable prophecy concerning the coming destruction of Egypt: (v2)

"Son of man, say to Pharaoh and to his hordes. "
The following seven verses set out the glory and the majesty of that ancient kingdom, comparing it to a mighty cedar tree: (v 5-6 in part)

". . . higher than all the trees of the field . . .
all the birds of the air nested in its boughs,
all the beasts of the field gave birth benath its branches,
all the great nations lived in its shade . . . '
And as the verses continue we find that this tree was even more wonderful than the cedars in the Garden of God: (v 8b-9)

"No tree in the Garden of God could match its beauty.
I made it beautiful with abundant branches,
the envy of all the trees of Eden,
in the Garden of God. "
But as we continue into the narrative, from verse 10 we begin to see how God views its majestic beauty and are given a deeper understanding of the dark spiritual power that lies behind Pharaoh, seen first in the Garden of Eden: (v10-11)

"Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Because it towered on high, lifting
its top above the thick foliage, and because it was proud of its height, I handed it over
to the ruler of the nations, for him to deal with according to its wickedness. "
As we read through the following verses of chapter 31 we read in a far greater intensity than anything we could write of the devastation that awaits `Pharaoh and all his hordes'. However leaving this prophecy at this point, with its possible message for today, would leave us in despair, standing in the debris of our best efforts, with the fires put out and nothing left but wreckage and death - and that has never been the fulness of the message that God's prophets were told to speak to the nation of Israel, or to the surrounding nations! And so for the full message we need to spend time drawing together the fragments of detail in these chapters of the Book of Ezekiel to find that, although `the surface fires may have gone out', below the debris there are still smouldering fires burning which God will use in His own time!

The first chapter of Ezekiel opens with the words: (v 1-2)

"In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day . . . (and) on the fifth day
of the month - it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin - the word of
the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest . . . . . "
This gives us a clear historical date - `the thirtieth year' - and despite the `received wisdom' this could not refer (as is often said) to the coming of age of Ezekiel when he entered his priestly ministry) for no devout Israelite (let alone one from the priestly tribe) would ever have considered any reference to his person entering the Scriptures. Ezekiel was an exile along with his king - his physical body was beside the Kebar River, but his heart and emotions were centered on Jerusalem. He was certain of the LORD's covenanted Word to His people and was waiting for the deliverance, the salvation of Israel, according to that Covenant. In reading the detail of the destruction of Pharaoh in chapter 31 we may well read of God's judgement on Egypt, but Ezekiel's mind was on the destruction of an earlier Pharaoh and his armies, which made certain the Hebrew's deliverance from Egypt (as recorded in the Book of Exodus), and beyond that Ezekiel spoke of an even greater deliverance that would finally break the power of `the covering cherub' - as recorded in Ezekiel 28 - who holds the whole world in bondage and slavery. In reading again the whole of chapter 31 with this understanding you will find in these words not a message of `woes and lamentations' so beloved by today's `prophets' in the Church, but words of certainty of a greater deliverance than ever known before in Israel's history - and for the Church also, linked as it is with Israel.

We now need to take our thoughts back to the `eleventh year' that Ezekiel speaks of in chapter 31 in order to understand the depth of his certainty. We have two dates here in chapter 1 - the thirtieth year and the fifth year - and in using the work of Bible historians we find this takes us back thirty years (before the fifth year of the captivity) to the time of 513 BC and to the time of King Josiah's great Passover celebrations after the Book of the Law was found in the eighteenth year of his reign. We can read of the glorious revival that broke out in Israel with the finding of the Book of the Law, leading to the renewing of the Covenant: (2 Kings 23:21)

"The king gave this order to all the people: `Celebrate the Passover to the LORD your
God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant'. "
and 2 Chronicles 35:19 gives us the date of this special Passover as `in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign'.

As we have written previously, this was the beginning of a Probation Period of fourty years in which the character of the nation of Israel, at that time, was to be tested, which would eventually lead to Judah's captivity in Babylon. Ezekiel spoke the Word of the LORD in chapter 31, eleven years into that captivity, and at the end of the Probation Period, but he knew the heart of God - that there was coming a deliverance for the nation of Israel greater than that experienced when an earlier Pharaoh of Egypt held God's people in bondage - and he also spoke forward to a final deliverance from that `covering cherub' who is the ultimate source of all slavery!

The apostle Paul, writing centuries later, also with the knowledge of the heart of God, echos the same certain cry in his Letter to the Romans: (Romans 8:19-22 in part)

"The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed . . . . . .
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right
up to the present time. "
However it is a sobering thought for us today, in looking at the revival that came through King Josiah, that not long after this he went out in his own strength to fight with Neco king of Egypt, which consequence led to Josiah's death, the Probation Periods then passing on through the following kings until Judah went into captivity. So, also, with many of the leaders in the Church today, who experienced the revival that came at the beginning of the Church's Probation Period in 1967. Have they not led the Church - through such things as the Toronto and Pensecola experiences and the so-called `inter-faith meetings' et al - into a place of captivity as real as that experienced in Ezekiel's time? Whatever caused these leaders, after knowing the renewing power of God, to go out in their own strength to fight with `Neco king of Egypt' is known only to God!

If, however, we have the same heart knowledge that was seen in Ezekiel, we can take confidence in our sure and certain hope that, although we stand in the debris of the Church's `twin towers' of self-achievement some thirty-four years into our Probation Period, God is searching through the debris and He knows that at `ground zero' the fires are still smouldering and a mighty deliverance is our sure and certain hope. We all, like Ezekiel, watch and wait, speak and pray, for that day to come.

Jan 2002

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