Posted on 03/28/2014 6:11:12 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
Ezekiel 9 (NIV) Then I heard him call out in a loud voice, “Bring near those who are appointed to execute judgment on the city, each with a weapon in his hand.”
And I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with a deadly weapon in his hand. With them was a man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side. They came in and stood beside the bronze altar.
Now the glory of the God of Israel went up from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple. Then the LORD called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side and said to him, “Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.”
As I listened, he said to the others, “Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter the old men, the young men and women, the mothers and children, but do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary.” So they began with the old men who were in front of the temple.
Then he said to them, “Defile the temple and fill the courts with the slain. Go!” So they went out and began killing throughout the city.
While they were killing and I was left alone, I fell facedown, crying out, “Alas, Sovereign LORD! Are you going to destroy the entire remnant of Israel in this outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem?”
He answered me, “The sin of the people of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great; the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of injustice. They say, ‘The LORD has forsaken the land; the LORD does not see.’ So I will not look on them with pity or spare them, but I will bring down on their own heads what they have done.”
Then the man in linen with the writing kit at his side brought back word, saying, “I have done as you commanded.”
It will! Have a great weekend yourself!
Likely angelic beings in the vision.
Thank you for sharing your insights, dear aMorePerfectUnion!
Thanks!
The scripture quotes: And I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with a deadly weapon in his hand.
As I said, there is a seventh chakra, the crown chakra that unites a human soul with God. Perhaps this chakra is the "upper gate which faces north" (i.e. at the top of the head) from which these deadly angels came down into the bodies of those who were to die, to cut their lifelines to their lower chakras.
The death angel, and his cohorts, who wrought God’s judgment on the firstborn of Egypt, save those households that were signified with the Blood of the Crucified Lamb.
Thank you for the additional insight, dear Talisker!
Thank you, dear imardmd1, for sharing your insights!
Thanks for the link, dear Karl Spooner!
My “Jewish Study Bible” points out that, “The Babylonian army would have entered Judah from the north (see Jer. 1. 13-19).”
Ezekiel 9 is a continuation of Ezekiel’s vision. Here he sees executioners as issuing from God to do their work of judgment. Possibly there may be an allusive reference to the Chaldeans as the actual human instruments of judgment.
The Biblical explanation of the end of societies uses the concept of judgment. Either a society is collectively submitted to the Will and Authority of God or it is in rebellion against Him. The book of Ezekiel portrays Israel as having become an evil nation fully deserving the judgment about to be meted out by God.
Israels rebellion against God was accompanied by a turning to ‘self’ and idols. Idolatry in its larger meaning is properly understood as any substitution of what is ‘created’ for the Creator. In this sense, idols can be anything from ‘self’ to wealth, power, status, ambition, intellect (pride of mind), the state, and political systems to unseen forces, things of the imagination and elitist occult sciences such as Hermeticism and esoteric Kabbalah.
In John 5, Jesus Christ addresses those who have elevated ‘self’ and idols (other teachings?)above the writings of Moses, thus are unable to believe him:
“Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” John 5:45-47
Whatever a man places at the top of his pyramid of values is ultimately what he serves. The ultimacy of that service profoundly affects how he thinks, speaks and acts. When the society around him also turns away from God to ‘self’ and idols, it is an idolatrous society heading for judgment and destruction, hence the six men of Ezekiel’s vision.
I would much appreciate your views, comments or insights on who those six men are (were or will be) in the above passage (emphasis mine.)
It's a vision. Ezekiel is caught up and carried hundreds of miles away from where he is in Babylon, to be shows in a visionary way the departure of the glory of God from Jerusalem and the coming judgment on the city.
I don't think we should push the details of the vision too hard. Here's why: It's obvious that John's Apocalypse makes much use of the visions and prophecies of the OT prophets. But, often he does it with obvious differences in the details. Ex. Daniel's 4 beasts become one composite beast in Revelation. Ezekiel's vision of the new temple is echoed by John's vision of the New Jerusalem ("carried away to a great high mountain....").
I don't think it matters much who those 6 were. God's judgment was coming.
Thank you so much for your insights, dear spirited irish!
Thank you, dear Lee N. Field, for sharing your insights!
Overtly quoting the Borg now I see.
Titus 3:10 Reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition, 11 knowing that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned.
I John 4:1-3 NKJV
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.
Misappropriated, which is nothing unusual for a follower of the heretic Swedenborg
But such use one can, like a liberal, indict all who engage in principled dissent, as FR Christians here do regarding your cult. The Lord Jesus Himself was a divisive man, and the church began in dissent, while "the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed." (Ps. 2:2)
"Reject a divisive [manaihretikos] man" from the NKJV is a poor rendering, as the context is not about being a peacemaker vs. one who causes agitation, but to avoid a certain kind of agitator, which the previous verse describes.
But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. (Tit 3:9)
Thus the KJV" A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject.
This is akin to the admonition against old wives' fables, 1Tim 4:7 and Jewish fables and commandments of men, that turn from the truth, Tim 1:14 truth being defined by the Scriptures, and not as Swedenborg sees them, and also after the basically literal historical hermeneutic seen therein.
And which includes Paul's epistles, one of which your quote from, despite Swedenborg not listing them among "those which have an internal sense are not the Word." (http://www.sacred-texts.com/swd/ac/ac207.htm)
No wonder, as it includes him among "false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. "(2 Corinthians 11:13)
Along with Pico della Mirandola, Ferdinand Baur and other disgruntled Renaissance theologians, mystics and intellectuals, Swedenborg was a practitioner of the Magic Way (occult sciences) of Hermetic magic and esoteric Kabbalah.
Occult sciences include, but are not limited to, spiritualism (contact with spirits), alchemy, astrology, divination, Hermeticism and Kabbalah.
Implied in Hermeticism is an inverted exegesis teaching biological and spiritual evolution of the adept from lower to higher states of existence:
“Human beings are themselves the product of a long spiritual evolutionary process that moves from ‘creeping things’ to fish, mammels, birds and then people. Humans can-—through occult knowledge and extraordinary ability-—continue this evolutionary process and become daemons, then gods, and finally planets or stars.” (The Making of the New spirituality, James A. Herrick, p. 40)
Kabbalah inverts the Genesis account of creation as well as the Revealed Word relationship of created man to His Creator rendering human beings virtually divine. As activation of the divine powers of God is the goal, elite men create a God-force for this purpose. The limited God-force can only direct evolution and is entirely dependent on its handlers who control and manage divine powers and teach that human beings are not created but rather emanated (evolved) from God. Kabbalah suggests that elites may destroy the God of the Old Testament, the God “who created us, made us breathe, eat, reproduce...write books; who is responsible for our historical existence” as he is a “blind, arrogant, and merciless” God, a vile God who created space and time. (Herrick, pp. 41-42)
Though introduced by Swedenborg, et al, The Magic Way of intellectual and moral evolution (deification) was made possible by later inventers of theories of spiritual/cosmic evolution. The Catholic philosopher and historian, Thomas Molnar (1921–2010) writes that travelers on this highway were characteristically recruited from theology. Some of these inventers are,
“Bergson, Laberthonniere, Le Roy, Blondel, Bloch, Teilhard de Chardin, Heidegger, Bultmann, Karl Rahner, and numerous others…” (God and the Knowledge of Reality, p. 133)
The evolutionary thinking that has swept the West and America, virtually displacing the Revealed Word (in particular the Genesis account), was introduced by Swedenborg, et al, is not new, nor scientific except in the sense of occult/magic science.
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