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Ezekiel 24:1-14. More Ezekiel! I keep getting certain books! A friend, a mathematician, and I were just talking on Saturday about how there is no true randomness in the world - it is impossible to generate a truly random sequence (this came up in discussion of the Einstein/Schrodinger v. Heisenberg/Bohr debate in 1930 wherein Einstein, whose work actually started the quantum revolution, argued so strenuously against the possibility of quantum theory being correct because it seemed so absurd and so random.  "God does not play dice with the universe," Einstein said, to which Neils Bohr replied " Stop telling God what to do!"). So, although I keep calling my daily Bible readings "random," there really is no such thing. Everything I am learning about quantum physics points me back to God being the "quantum observer of the universe". It is he who keeps it from being random - so both Einstein and Bohr were right. My daily readings are random to me, but not at all to God, he is giving them to me for a reason and I must remain alert to "pattern recognition" if I am to garner from these what he is asking of me.

 

So, a few weeks ago, I had Ezekiel 25:12-14- the prophecy against Edom because they would take advantage of the Jews while they were suffering. I referred back to a line from this passage, Ezekiel 24:2, in that post to explain what suffering Ezekiel was talking about - that very day, Jerusalem was falling to the Babylonians and the people would go into exile. Now, just a few weeks later, I opened to that very passage, "randomly."🙂

 

Here God tells Ezekiel to write down, "this very day," an allegory of the destruction that is happening. Ezekiel is not in Jerusalem, he does not know what is happening "this very day" in Jerusalem, but God tells him that the city will fall to Babylon today. The allegory is of a rusted pot. God says it will be set on the fire, filled with water, and all the choicest pieces of flesh put in it to be boiled down to bone and poured out onto the ground. The pot is the city of Jerusalem - filled with the rust of the blood she has shed and her filthy lewdness. And the choice pieces of flesh are the powerful and honored people of the city who have turned so far from God, and created a city in which holiness is no longer possible. The people in the city would not be cleansed of their sin, despite God's trying: "I have wearied myself; its thick rust does not go out by fire. Because I would have cleansed you and you were not cleansed from your filthiness, you shall not be cleansed anymore till I have satisfied my fury on you... I the Lord have spoken; it shall come to pass, I will do it; I will not go back, I will not spare, I will not repent; according to your ways and your doings I will judge you, says the Lord God."

 

Phew, so Jerusalem has reached the point of no return. God has tried and tried, with lesser sufferings, to cleanse her, to make her see the error of her ways ("its thick rust does not go out by fire"), but she persisted in her grave sin. There comes a point, with God, with the Truth, where our turning away is so great that the only way to turn things around is to destroy everything. The whole system, the whole city, is corrupt, and bedeviled by such a web of lies and confusion (Satan's calling cards), that it must be destroyed. The only way to cleanse it of the entrenched wrongdoing is to get the people who can still be saved out, even if it means putting them into exile and at the hands of foreign nations, and boiling to the bone the false prophets, corrupt leaders, and others who built the corruption into the city. Then, once they are destroyed, the pot (the city, the system) is placed back on the coals, empty now, and the heat is increased until its very copper is melted, and the rust along with it.

 

Although it is so destructive, this is love in action (tough love, though!). God wants his people to turn to him. He has tried to warn the leaders and the people with lesser fires - lesser sufferings - and they would not listen. They are so convinced that they know the "arc of history" and which way it leads, they put their blinders on and plod further and further down the path of their own making to the point of no return, paying absolutely no heed to the suffering of the innocent and the weak around them - this is the blood they have shed on "the bare rock" not "poured upon the ground and covered with dust", but right out in the open. They are not ashamed of what they are doing, of the blood they are spilling and their "filthy lewdness," instead they are proud of it, they put it right out on the bare rock for all to see. They actually have convinced themselves that they are doing good, and they are proud of it ("Shout your abortion" indeed!).

 

Have we reached this point of no return? Is that what he is trying to tell me with these "random" readings that all seem to point in the same direction? I don't know. I, like Ezekiel, must listen to his voice and write down what he tells me. Maybe there is still time, maybe we are still in the "lesser sufferings" stage and we can still let go of our pride and allow God to cleanse us. Right now, though, I don't see too much pride being given up, just still a lot of prideful gloating. Pride in our sin - it is really a bad look, and a very ominous sign that we may be reaching the point of no return.

 

But remember after the exile, they are all brought home, eventually, to the cleansed city. The promise always endures.