Dear Suzanne, Rebecca, Anna and Mikayla,
God sent six angels to carry out His judgment over the city of Jerusalem. There was one among the angels that seemed to stand out. He was clothed in linen and had a writer's inkhorn at his side. This could be the pre-incarnate Christ, the Angel of the Lord.
Verse 3 says the glory of God had gone up from the cherub, where it had been, to the threshold of the temple." The glory of God was departing the temple and the city prior to its destruction. The departure was gradual. First it left the Holy of Holies....from between the wings of the cherubs...then to the threshold of the temple...then to the East Gate (10:18,19) and finally to the Mount of Olives to the east. (11:22-23) God was about the leave the temple in Jerusalem never to return until Jesus returns set up His kingdom. The glory of God was departing...it was on the move. What a solemn moment...the visual sign of the presence of God departing.
God's departure removed all protection and gave the people over to destruction. The angelic scribe dressed in linen who had the writer's inkhorn at his side (the Angel of the Lord) was called by God to mark the righteous who had been faithful and who sighed and cried over the abominations done in the city. Ezekiel goes on to say but "to the others He said in my hearing , "Go after him through the city and kill, do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity. Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary." (begin with the elders of Israel who had committed wicked abominations in the temple and were corrupt both in their practices and their thoughts.)
Then He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his idols? For they say, 'The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.' " --Ezekiel 8:12
The marked ones reminded me of the blood on the lintel to protect Israel from God's judgment on Egypt. The mark identified these people personally with God. Grace for His people and especially for His remnant.!! Praise to our God!! There are so many example of the mercy God shows to His people throughout the Old and the New Testaments.
I can't even voice the comfort this brings me. God marks those who are His. Those who as a friend pointed out fear the Lord and hate evil. We are not appointed for wrath. We are always under His care and protection. We have a Mediator, a Great High Priest who lives to make intercession for us!
For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,--1 Thessalonians 5:9
And I heard another voice from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plague--Revelation 18:4
Come, my people, enter your chambers, And shut your doors behind you; Hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment, Until the indignation is past.--Isaiah 26:20
And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.--Exodus 12:7
Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, And the LORD listened and heard them; So a book of remembrance was written before Him For those who fear the LORD And who meditate on His name. "They shall be Mine," says the LORD of hosts, "On the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them As a man spares his own son who serves him." --Malachi 3:16-17
saying, "Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.--Revelation 7:3
They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. --Revelation 9:4
Chapter 11 verse 16 speaks of a sanctuary for God's people wherever they are.
Therefore say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD: "Although I have cast them far off among the Gentiles, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet I shall be a little sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone." ' --Ezekiel 11:16
God is everywhere present and He is wherever God's people are. God was promising His presence here to those who turn to Him. Today, to those of us who believe Acts 17 says this:
God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.' ---Acts 17:24-28 bold emphasis mine.
In judgment, our God always remembers mercy!
Now the LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation." --Exodus 34:5-7
Love
Mom
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