Ezekiel (Session 23) The Origin of Evil pt1

but we're exploring a topic that is often avoided and it's fraught with all kinds of controversies and but we'll just jump right into it the origin of evil is the topic and this is part one of a two-part study we'll start by exploring a little bit the famous temptations of Christ most of you are familiar with the the text Satan tempted Christ in three areas making stone into bread and that's recorded in Luke 4 and Matthew 4 it's recorded in the two Gospels both Luke 4 and Matthew 4 this another one was the kingdoms of the world again recorded in both Luke 4 and Matthew 4 and taking Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and that is also in Luke 4 in Matthew 4 the the wreck the accounts are virtually identical in all three or all three of these in both Gospels there is they happen to be in a slightly different order in one of them but let's just take a look at the text to begin with here we'll take the lose the Luke account as our base text here Luke 4 verse 1 Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost we turned from Jordan and was led by the spirit into the wilderness in other words this happens right after his baptism so he returns from the Jordan who is led by the spirit into the wilderness being 40 days tempted of the devil and in those days he did eat nothing and when they were ended he afterward hungered I might add the word understandably a fast is tough enough for a few days a few weeks 40 days is a substantial commitment and this is an absolute fast apparently not the some of us fast with an intermediate kind of fast but this is this is a real fast he did eat nothing and when they were ended he afterward hungered and the devil said unto him if thou be the Son of God command this stone that it may be made bread I think we understand who he is we know that he could snap his fingers and have a whole bakery there that was the temptation though wasn't it then jesus answered and said it is written that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word of God so it's interesting that in each of these three temptations Jesus always responds with the Word of God that should be a lesson for all of us then we get to the second one here in Luke and the devil taking him up into a high mountain showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time the devil said in them all this power will I give thee and the glory of them for that is delivered unto me and to whomsoever I will I give it if thou therefore will worship me all shall be thine quite a proposition jesus answered and said to him get thee behind me Satan for it is written thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve and then we get to the third one and and he the devil brought him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said unto him if thou be the Son of God cast thyself down from hence and I might mention the if thou be it's a it's a it could be translated since that it's not there's no ambiguity as to whether is or isn't it's a sense though not a if and sense of being in a conditional anyway if that would be the Son of God cast thyself down from events for it is written he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee and in their hands they shall bear thee up lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone one of the sub-sub lessons here is Satan never hesitates to quote scripture he's quoting scripture here but Jesus answering him said unto Him it is said thou shalt not tempt the LORD thy God so again Jesus rebuts it with his goat from Scripture when the devil ended all the temptation he departed from him for a season only for a season so that's this is a very familiar passage to most of us the temptations of Christ the matthew account being essentially parallel to all of this let's go back and examine a little more closely the second of these three in Luke chapter 4 start at verse 5 and the devil taking up to a high mountain showed him unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time it's hard for us to visualize that happening and yet we can imagine it and they'll send him all this power will I give thee and the glory of them for that is delivered unto me and to whomsoever I will I give it want you to notice this he showed them all the kingdoms of the world not most of them all of them has all this power will I give thee and the glory of them so we've got the kingdoms the power and the glory this is exactly what we pray for in the Lord's Prayer but whose are they in the Lord's Prayer God's so what's going on here are they his yet apparently not the ELMO says all of this power will I give thee and the glory of them for that is delivered unto me that's Satan's boast if that boast is vacuous there's no temptation involved if I said to you I want to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge you're not tempted because you know I don't own it because I'm going to sell you the Coeur d'Alene Resort for a 5/5 star golf resort you're not tempted because you know I don't know man see in order for this to be a temptation the claim has to be legitimate the Satan have a legitimate claim to the kingdom's power and glory they's talking about here apparently does Jesus Christ doesn't challenge his possession this is an offer by the owner the Lord rejected Satan's offer but not because he didn't recognize his ownership Christ knew that Satan did have these kingdoms let's get that let's really grasp it I'm sorry with ultimately of course Christ will rule over the kings of the world but not as some kind of vice regent under Satan of course but today we need to understand the devil is still the Prince of the power of the air he's the one who is in the back of the kingdoms of our world whether we recognize it or not Satan's titles Prince of this world in John 12 the Prince of the power of the air in Ephesians 2:2 head of the world rulers of darkness in Ephesians 6 the god of this age paul calls him in 2nd karena second letter to the Corinthians these are just a few of the titles that the Word of God applies to Satan so he's powerful so that raises the issue that we want to explore a little bit and that's C we know that the angels Satan's an angel right originally he is he's fallen angel whatever you want to call it we know that the angels were created before the earth we probably don't focus on that unless you're just interested at area but clearly in Joel let's take a look at the oldest book of the Bible job 38 there's the science quiz at the end of Jobe called chapter 38 and in that in the Word of God says then the Lord answered job out of the world wind and said and he goes on with a number of questions God is responding to the hold these 40 chapters of dialogue putting up his questions God's asking the questions here clue is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge sounds like one of our college professors anyway grown up now by loins like a man for I will demand a V and answer thou me God speaking here where was though when I laid the foundations of the earth declare fell in understanding God is challenging man's wisdom here he's challenging it he goes on says who hath laid the measures thereof a foul knowest and who hath stretched a line upon it here's God challenge' man in his in his audacity to even have any opinions about the origin of the earth he wasn't around that's what God is saying where were you and I was doing all these things in other words continuing whereupon are the foundations thereof made to sink or who laid the cornerstone thereof when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy let's get behind this phrase the sons of God is the English translation of a Hebrew word burn I Halloween which is a term in the Old Testament used exclusively of angels we could track that all the way through but the the term Belial him refers to a direct creation of God and what we've that's used of Adam was a direct creation of God his offspring are not direct creations of God they're direct descendants of Adam big difference the other direct creation of God called are these angels and that's that's why that term is used in the New Testament it speaks of the Messiah coming he came into his own but his own received or not but as many as received him to them gave he the power to become the sons of God and direct creation he born again this is John chapter 1 verse 11 12 so there's no doubt about that use in fact the Septuagint translation from the Hebrew into the Greek uses the word angels there should be no ambiguity in your mind as to what that term means what that tells you in that verse verse 7 of 38 is that the angels were able to sing and celebrate the creation of the earth that means they were created earlier are we together so far okay but notice what job the passenger up continues after that or who shut up the sea with the doors when it break forth as if it had issued out of a womb when did that happen when I made the cloud the garment thereof in thick darkness a swaddling band for or established mighty Kriya pon it and set bars and doors and said hitherto shalt thou come but no further I'm here shall thy pride of thy waves be stayed wonder what it's talking about here God continues here hast thou commanded the morning since they s and cause the day spring to know his place that it might take hold of the ends of the earth that the wicked might be shaken out of it what's God talking about here it has turned his clay to the seal and they stand as a garment from the wicked their light is withholding and the high arm shall be broken well you can regard some of this language is just being poetic language and broad brush or maybe it's alluding to something very specific an original creation and then a judgment possibly possibly see we know the Angels were created before the earth was well Satan was an angel we first find Satan in Genesis chapter 3 already fallen Adam Adam and Eve got their comeuppance in Genesis 3 Satan had already fallen by Genesis 3 the question that lurks behind the text is when was when did Satan fall we know from things that were looking at here in a few minutes that he was numero uno he was the angel in charge of all the other angels he was top guy with among the angels and he usurped his authority and he got judged when did that happen it had to happen before Genesis 3 it couldn't happen before Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 that's the beginning of everything in beginning that Envy began in beginning God created the heaven and the earth and that's an all-inclusive phrase whoo we'll get to that in a minute so the questions are when did Satan fall and how did he gain his position of power that we experienced in the temptation among other places we're dealing here with a cosmos we're thinking of the universe in its broad strokes puny man finds himself in the middle of universe let's take size going to the right as we we're going to look at things bigger than man we'll call that the cosmos we're gonna we're going to expand in the direction of largeness from man to the earth to the solar system to the universe whatever that's the field of science we call astronomy or astrophysics that's the macrocosm the large side of things the great discovery of 20th century science is they've discovered that the universe is not infinite it's finite it has a limit that's what leads to all these conjectures about the Big Bang because it has a limit and it had a beginning and it's may be expanding there's all kinds of conjectures but we're dealing here in the bigness side of things so ok I want to talk just for a moment before we get into the truth of God's Word let's try to shed the baggage of our presuppositions one of the things that encumbers our understanding in many areas is when we bring to a subject some preconceptions especially if they're incorrect I want to talk for a moment about what's called the nebular hypothesis if you take any course in college or in high school in astronomy and you'll encounter a thing called the nebular hypothesis where did the planets come from and there's a modern myth that is taught in textbooks and in Scott in school which is not true but widely taught I want to call our attention to this the nebular hypothesis it runs something like this and I'm quoting from Immanuel Kant one of the classic expressions of this hypothesis some four billion years ago the Sun had ejected a tail or a filament of material that cooled and collected and thus formed the planets that's a summary that you'll find in many different ways in many different textbook taught today in college but I'm quoting here from Immanuel Kant himself actually he didn't invent this idea 21 years earlier it was published by Emanuel Swedenborg it was published in Latin in 1734 now Swedenborg you need to understand was a very wise guy with a lot of broad interest so in engineer with many interests who claim to have psychic powers and he got this idea in a seance apparently or some such thing he claimed this was confirmed by the nebular hypothesis and seances with men on Jupiter Saturn and places more distant are getting a little suspicious of this idea I hope so some 20 years earlier in 1712 Sweden Berg was then 24 years old and he hadn't have an opportunity to visit with Edmund Halley a very famous astronomer at Cambridge and who italia very famous for his predictions about comets and so forth so Swedenborg trafficked with these kinds of people and those kinds of ideas in in that same era pierre-simon Laplace a very reputable mathematician lent his endorsement cants very but without checking the mathematical validations that he was capable of doing he didn't bother to check the math Laplace didn't there for Kant who picked this up from Swedenborg it became considered valid widely taught and is to this day and it's not true by the way provably not true and what's tragic is Laplace had the depth and mathematics he could have if he done his homework refute this thing back then but anyway the nebula pollicis gained widespread respectability despite its got very serious mathematical problems and subsequent writers have continued to develop variations of this idea even though the more they study it the more it becomes obvious that it can't be true and I'll show you why I'm reminded I couldn't resist putting this in here and reminded of through the looking gas glass by Lewis Carroll one can't believe impossible things at Alice laughed I dare say you haven't had much practice at the Queen when I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast that of course Lewis Carroll is poking fun here but it fits the foolishness that we proliferate through our text in our educational system the difficulty the son turns out to have ninety-nine point eight six percent of the mass of the solar system if you take the total solar system Alma not got 100% but almost hundred percent of the mass is in the Sun that's huge compared to the clamp planets and so forth and yet the Sun contains only less than two percent of the angular momentum it has all the mass but not to spin the nine planets contain 98% of the spin the momentum the more you think about that the more absurd it is you got most of the mass is not spinning all the momentum is the energy moment the momentum energy is in in the orbits there is no plausible explanation that would support a solar origin of the planets the plants did not come out of the Sun they were brought here and got caught by it James genes again a classic mathematician point out that the outer planets are far larger than the inner ones that's hard to explain why are the larger ones you know the ones that outside larger Jupiter's almost 6,000 times as massive as mercury it's almost three thousand times as massive as Mars and so forth there's and this is also a difficult you try to come up with some theory how that happened you you find yourself can convict yourself there are other enigmas the planets are here in three pairs there are three pairs of rapid spin rates among our planets each of which are within 3% of the other of its of its mate they're almost exactly the same spins why we have Earth and Mars spin almost at the same speed Jupiter and Saturn almost exactly the same speed Neptune and Uranus why is this nobody knows it implies that they came in pairs somehow Earth and Mars also have identical spin axis tilts the acts of their spin match why it applies something but not inclusively from the angular momentum and the orbital calculations it is deemed by many of the scientists that these these planets came in pairs and were brought here by some other object something else caught them came close and it capped the orbit you have to get in the orbital mechanics to really try to dramatize that but there's more to it than that why does Mars have 93 percent of its craters in one hemisphere and 7 percent in the other as we explore the planets with NASA probes they have all they're all pokémon by the way quickly one thing you quickly discover is our solar system is a rough neighborhood it's been beat up really badly I'll talk more about that in a minute but Mars has 93 percent of its craters on one side and only 7 percent on the other in fact it would seem that 80% of these craters occurred within a single half-hour term it because it's spinning off while this is going on right why is that nobody knows these raise legitimate scientific questions the planet Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun it's named after the Roman god of war not by accident most of the early civilizations and the planets were terrified of the planet Mars why we regard ourselves as sophisticated space age people right could you go out in the night sky and point to Mars tonight only if you're an astronomer or have an ephemeris I'm an astronomer having had it tough I wouldn't be sure I'd have to do a little homework to be sure what I'm looking at Mars is the bale of the Old Testament why why were they so terrified of Mars you need to understand that science people who indulge in these kinds of studies fall in two groups there are uniformitarian amande that's the majority of people they cling to the presumption that things have remained essentially unchanged over billions of years most scientists presume that whatever's true today was true billions of years ago they're called uniformitarianism there are scientists that feel just the opposite they're called catastrophists they believe the universe has not always been the same it's been said connected to a series of catastrophic events and the evidence of those catastrophes are in what we see and we try to infer what's happened and and people who believe in creationism would fall into that category by the way if you're a Fiat creationist and I assume most of you maybe then you would be in that second category Becky in June 30th 1908 in Tunguska Central Siberia there was an impact of some kind of meteor it's very famous it destroyed 2,000 square miles of forest it was so remote from civilization it wasn't explored until 17 years after the fact 1925 it is a whatever happened there is equivalent to a 15 Megaton nuclear warhead to give you a rough feeling of disaster here if you know the winslow crater in Arizona you're familiar it's one mile across and there are other there are others of these in the Yucatan furnace of one six mile in diameter a hundred Megaton equivalent there have been things that have impacted the earth that's the all I'm finally making here in fact scientists estimate that it happens about one every three hundred years and one in three of these are on land the rest land of the ocean but they still continue that may surprise many people there the immediate right in mecca that created the Kaaba that the Muslims worship the word Cairo in Egyptian is the Arabic word for Mars that may surprise you that's the site of the Great Pyramid not by accident in Athens the word in greeneries is Mars it's pictured as a source of judgement arigatou las' Mars Hill why is Mars always associated with war there's a reason for that we've come to and take a look at any surface in our solar system you get a plenty opportunity see NASA photographs of any of the planets you'll always notice look at our moon get a pair of binoculars take a look at our own moon everything in five zones it has gotten pock marks from being beat up our solar system is a rough neighborhood we are under a constant rain of interplanetary debris the earth about a hundred tons of extraterrestrial material per day over 100 creators on the earth it may surprise you well in the Bible we find an interesting event called Sun Stood Still in in the book of Joshua do we know we now know that the ancient calendars all of them were based on 360 day years all ancient calendars most of them have twelve thirty day months somehow in their basic structure but in 701 BC they all change you know there's earlier than 701 or 360 days subsequent they change they do all different kinds of things that Jews had a month every three years sort of not quite the Romans added for two quarter days per year and so forth it's interesting that Mars was worshipped by the ancient cultures there's a theory that's been surprisingly validated that Mars made near pass buys planet Earth you see they believe now and what they know about orbital mechanics that Earth and Mars originally were on resonant orbits 360 days for the earth 720 for Mars but they were in such a way that they made a near pass by every hundred and eight years and those are recorded on the planet Earth by the way and this would account for catastrophic events that we have records of on a number of occasions in history energy transfers apparently stabilized in 71 BC and that's what stabilized the calendars and by the way to make the Sun stand still you don't have to stop the spin of the earth all you have to do is change this precession would cause the same effect so the idea of the earth being on a 360 day orbit Mars on a 720 day orbit originally but pass high twice a year not every year every hundred eight years it turns out there's a resident orbit Earth 360 Mar 7 2014 the inside after perihelion that is what's the closest it would be ahead and lose energy earth gained a little Mars would lose a little if they if it was a per helium farthest away from the Sun it would be outside passing behind the earth earth losing a little Mars gaining a little always a little adjustment and that finally stabilized in 701 BC that's a fairy I'm not going to give you the whole length of it except to indicate that the stabilization resulted in the earth being 365 and a quarter days where it finally stabilized and Mars 720 dropped down to 687 where it is today now this may saw this theory as a great deal if you're interesting this you want to get into our Joshua background because it has a great deal to say about it but the surprising thing is is that this seems to have been validated by Jonathan Swift you said how what do you talk John Swift grows some children's stories called Gulliver's Travels yes he did early telescopes in 1610 Galileo developed his telescope and he discovered the four moons of Jupiter and Saturn's ring big deal in 1610 Herschel 1781 with a better telescope discovers the planet Uranus big deal six years later Herschel discovers the two moons of Uranus big deal 1789 a couple years later he finds two more moons of urine see our skill with telescopes was improving 1846 leviair discovered neptune in one of its moons 1877 a guy by name of ace of hall using a brand new telescope at the US Naval Observatory makes history by discovering with his new telescope the two moons of Mars and he names them Deimos and Phobos why was it so hard to find because they're only eight miles across and they're almost black they have an albedo or reflectivity of less than 3% so they're hard to find but they were able face of hall discovers it in 1877 and they're very unusual because one of them's going backwards everything in the solar system goes in one direction one of these happens to go backwards it it's Deimos it's almost a synchronous orbit 30 hours and 18 minutes orbit and Phobos is the one that goes backwards eastward if you will and it's only eight miles in diameter it has a reflectivity of only 3% Calvino well why am I getting into this get the date 1877 we discovered the two moons of Mars right a guy by name a jonathan swift an irish political commentator wrote a series of stories that were supposed to be political satire we know them as children's stories called Gulliver's Travels okay now he published that in 1726 most of us know the first voyage of Gulliver with the little people Lilliputians the third voyage of Gulliver is a story you may not have read where they go to laputa and the astronomers in this particular venue brag that they know about the two moons of Mars and the astronomers in London don't know anything about it and in the story the size the revolutions and the orbits of those two moons of Mars are specified within 20 percent accuracy and with the fact that one of them is going backwards now that turns out to be bizarre because Jonathan Swift groped his children's story a hundred and fifty-one years before the astre nominal world discovered it did Jonathan Swift know that no of course not he apparently drew upon some legends that it to embroider his story not knowing that those legends apparently had their origin in eyewitness accounts because there were no telescopes that could see it in those days this turns out to be a shocking corroboration of the near pass by hypothesis 151 before years before so the whole idea I'm getting across here is to understand that our solar system is subject to shocks that the astronomical world has closed their eyes to pretty much and you all know the story of a long day of Joshua Mars comes up on a polar pass at about 70,000 miles away from us appears to rise from the horizon 50 times the size of the moon there's earthquakes land tides a polar shift of 5 degrees so that makes the day longer meteors follow two to three hours later thirty thousand miles per hour and all this kind of thing is embodied and other people's legends the long day in China is offsetting the long day in the Middle East by the way enough of this let's get back to what we know is true that's all just presented so you'll stretch your horizons here a little bit there is a theory called the gap theory and there's two kinds of people that deal with the gap theory those that dismiss it as nonsense or those that miss apply it we're gonna try to do neither to kind of do all I do is understand help you understand why some of us hold the view that there's an interval before we've before it in between the first two verses of book of Genesis okay now some one where the Angels created when did Satan fall is there a gap in that's the issues before us this in this hour let's look at Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth period if you accept that statement you will have absolutely no problem with any other verse in the Bible that says it all in the beginning God created the heaven the earth period done deal no contest the next verse says and the earth was without form and void darkness is upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said let light be and there was light and God saw the light it was good and God divided the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness he called night and the evening in the morning were day one now we could spend a lot we spend a whole hour on this and are just the commentary I'll spare you all that but I want to focus our attention on that second verse because it's translation isn't precise and this is one of those times when precision may be our rescue here says then the earth was without form and void when we get to Isaiah we find a strange phrase here in verse 18 of 40 where God says for thus saith the Lord that created the heavens himself that formed the earth and made it he hath established it he created it not in vain that seems to contradict Genesis chapter 1 verse to be rhythmically was without form and void but God says I didn't create it you know Touhou Touhou bold without form and void he did created not in vain he formed it to be inhabited I am the Lord and there's nothing else there would seem to be a contradiction between as 4518 and Genesis chapter 1 verse 2 now whenever you find an apparent contradiction the Bible rejoice because behind that will lie a discovery it's what a rabbi would call our Emma as a hint of something deeper let's look further when we get to Jeremiah we find some strange descriptions here that don't seem to they're provocative Jeremiah chapter 4 starting about verse 23 he says I beheld the earth and lo it was without form and void really and the heavens and they had no life I beheld the mountains and lo they trembled and all the hills moved lightly I beheld and lo there was no man and all the birds the heavens were fled again the word toho without form is here Thabo who those two words that occur in Genesis chapter 1 verse 2 Thank You Jeremiah continues I beheld and lo the fruitful place was a wilderness there all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord by his fierce anger and thus hath the Lord said the whole land shall be desolate yet will I not make a full end G what's going on here a judgment of some kind why isn't he making a full end he must have some plan in mind well let's go back here and let's take a look at Psalm 18 as we poke around the scripture a little bit it says then the earth shook and trembled and the foundations and hills were moved and were shaken because he was wroth and they went up a smoke out of his nostrils and a fire out of his mouth devoured coals were kindled by it he bowed the heavens also and came down and darkness was under his feet he wrote upon the cherubim did fly yay he did fly upon the wings of the wind he made dark as secret places pavilion was round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of skies and the brightness that was before him his thick clouds past hail stones and coals of fire the Lord also thundered in the heavens and the highest gave his voice hail stones and coals of fire yay he sent out his arrows and scattered them he shot out lightnings and discomfort to them then the channels of the waters were seen and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke O Lord at the blast of thy nostrils sounds like a cosmic judgement of some kind great when did it happen what historical event explains this or is it just flowery language is a poet getting carried away here well let's take a closer look at verse 2 of Genesis and see if it holds the key to this riddle the way it reads in your Bible likely is and the earth was without form and void and darkness is upon the face of the deep the word was turns out to be a transitive verb requiring action it's the same verb that in Genesis chapter 19 verse 26 is used when Lot's wife became a pillar of salt it's a transitive verb requiring action the earth became without form and void hiyya had become in fact because the word order the structure it's the pluperfect form it had become without form and void now without form Tohu without form confused with mo who void empty waste without form and void Tovah bajo furthermore there is this and upfront it's evolved it's a conjunction like and except it turns out to be what we call an adversative conjunction meaning it's not and it's but the valve conjunction it's adversative both the Septuagint the Greek translation 900 years before the Masoretic and also that Latin Vulgate both translate that as but in the English equivalent to the button English and by the way that adversative conjunction often suggests the time delay in exodus two it is an eight-year period in Deuteronomy 10 who represents a 38 year period in first chronicles 10 it's a seven year period in Ezekiel six it's a 58 year period it's an adversative but it implies a delay of some kind so it's the way this gets translated properly is but the earth had become without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep something happened between verse 1 and verse 2 in the beginning God created the heaven the earth period but the earth had become without form and void and the scripture is not silent about events that apparently fit into that interval into that gap and that we find this toe of a bowl having always used as an aftermath of judgment isaiah 34 isaiah 45 that we looked at gerrae Jeremiah 4 that we looked at and darkness was upon the face of the deep that isn't darkness like the absence of light that's an unnatural darkness it's called carsick it's an exodus 10in upon the face of the deep the home in the Greek it's the abyss so the abyss that's the home of the demons and the evil spirits well now wait a minute here in the beginning God created heaven of the earth fabulous something happened that the earth became without form and void and now darkness on the face of the deep and one of the hypothesis we want to explore possibly this explains the judgment on a prior situation that was the judgment on a usurper so the gap theory this I think I'm going to suggest you is first suggested as near as we can tell by Thomas Chalmers in 1814 and you'll find books written about it perhaps the classic on this subject is George pembers book Earth's earliest ages published in London in 1907 and readily available in most bookstores Donald Gray Barnhouse The Invisible War is one of my must reads in my library fabulous fabulous book on this whole subject and Arthur Custance without form and void published in 1713 others let's take a look at a chapter in the Bible that's just a treasure trove of insight in Ezekiel chapter 28 and because it deals with the power that's behind the throne there it's dealing with the throne of Tyrus Ezekiel 28 verse 1 it says the word of the Lord came again unto me Ezekiel's being son of man saying to the Prince of Tyrus thus saith the Lord God because thine heart is lifted up and thou has said I am a god I sit in the seat of God in the midst of the Seas yet Howard a man and not God though that was set by an heart as the heart of God this guy is Tyrus here called the Prince of Tyrus is an egomaniac and in dealing with this egomaniac the text goes beyond him to the power that's behind him here he's called the Prince of Tyrus that's the Prince of Tyrus he's an actual guy but the text is gonna switch to the king of Tyrus the power that's behind him as it goes here we're first dealing with Prince of Tyrus but he's a man thou art a man not God he thinks he's God he said he's deluded I am a god these these are this this was the same thing that Isiah uses of the king of Babylon we're gonna look at that in a minute too there are similar examples the boast of Pharaoh Khafra in as equal 29 the praise given to Herod Agrippa by the turians in in acts 12 Paul's description of the man of sin uses practically the same words in second Thessalonians chapter 2 remember he says who's this this the Antichrist we call him who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God that includes Allah by the way or that is worshipped so he as God sitteth in the temple of God showing himself that He is God false Pretender of course see tyre was known as the Holy Island the city was thought of his rising to the waters like a rock throne of God and in Genesis 3:5 remember that God heals here though that was set by heart the words remind us of the temptation in Genesis 3 but let's go on here in as Ezekiel 28 Zico cannot speak it's for speaking through Ezekiel behold thou art wiser than Daniel there is no secret that they can hide from thee with ice wisdom and not understanding thou has gotten the riches and it's gotten gold and silver and thy treasures by thy great wisdom and by thy traffic has now increased thy riches thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches some people because the rich think they know that's sort of the situation here therefore let's say at the Lord God because that was set thine heart as the heart of God behold therefore I will bring strangers upon thee the terrible of the nations and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of that wisdom and they shall defile thy greatness they shall bring me down to the pit and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the Seas will thou sit yet set before him the that slay a fee out of God but thou shalt be a man and no God in the hand of him that slay a fee you think you're a god the guy that's cutting your head off isn't gonna keep you abreast and FL the third was removed from his throne by Nebuchadnezzar back in 573 and so on but now we're gonna shift gears the text goes on but it talks about the power behind the Prince of Tyre the king of Tyre don't confuse the Prince of Tyre in the first 11 verses and with the the that was an actual ruler with the king of Tyre let's examine what God says through Ezekiel in the next 9 verses the King different word used the melech not the nothing I did my gate is the tyre it was the first 11 verses we're not going to talk about the melech of this power behind them the notices it's actually changing subjects here moreover the word of Lord came unto me saying son of man take up a lamentation upon the king of tires say unto Him thus saith the Lord God now notice what he says here thou see list up the sum full of wisdom perfect in beauty it doesn't say he thinks he is it says he is he is the most beautiful thing available anywhere now see list up the sum full of wisdom really we had perfect in beauty the king of Tyrus now see the stepson he's the cat's meow as some people might say okay the language although is being applied to the king of Tyre it's very similar to language you were going to see that God uses through Isaiah to the king of Babylon we'll come to that later and yet we see here an ulterior or fuller accomplishment in Satan and his embodiment in the Antichrist you go through Daniels seven second Thessalonians 2 in Revelation 13 you'll see this all fits together because Satan's man is described by these things to notice what he's that what God says in verse 13 fabulous thing thou hast been in Eden the garden of God now this should be a red flag right there you know that the king of Tyre wasn't an Eden he's a mortal guy in the sixth century BC no no Eden that's a bit back huh thou has been in Eden the garden suddenly realized the address he here is a spiritual being that's the power behind tyre at the time thou it's been an evening and notice how he's dressed every precious stone was thy covering I suspect that these precious stones were going to be talking about here are the old-fashioned way of dealing with colored light every precious stone was they covering the sardius the Topaz the diamond the barrel of the Onyx the Jasper the Sapphire of the emerald the carbuncle and gold the workmanship of eye tablets and of thy pipes were prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created this is a created being the ultimate created being the number one created being in a sense but he's a created being Eden of course was we're on the earth we're not talking to heaven here we're talking on the earth yet on the air if he's close dim light whoa it may have been a different kind of earth and we think of every precious stones that cover it goes through all these different stones those stones are the same stones that emblazoned the breastplate of high priest and the high priest remember the first stone and the last stone rep art stones are specific stones the first is the sardius it was the stone of Reuben whose name means behold the Sun and the last one is the jasper which represents benjamin the son of my right hand and they become the bookends of the twelve tribes in a sense okay from the first to the last okay both titles of Christ of course behold a son the son of my right hand who could that be who might the the ultimate hold of that thing and by the way that's interesting here nine precious stones here answer to 12 in the high priest breastplate there are there's one world that's missing in each the third is emitted in the Masoretic but it is in the Septuagint so it seems me something that was dropped out in the nine hundred years between the Septuagint even though it's Greek is that nine hundred years older than the Masoretic which is usually the base text so very likely they were all twelve described here it's interesting that the New Jerusalem the place that the ultimen end is described in Revelation 21 and the building of the wall of it was as Jasper the city was a pure gold like unto clear glass not confuses me it's pure gold but you can see through it obviously we're in a hyperspace here frankly and the fountain I'll talk about that a minute later and the foundation of the wall the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones the first foundation was jasper the second sapphire the third chalcedony the fourth an emerald the fifth of sardonyx the sixth sardius the seventh chrysolite the eighth beryl the ninth of topaz the tenth of christopher eleventh a jacinth and twelfth and amethyst and the twelve gates were twelve pearls and every gate was of one pearl in the street of the city was pure gold as it were transparent glass there we go again transparent gold and interesting stuff man if you try to reconcile these precious stones you'll have a real tough time because the names are not consistently used through the ages involved different people use different words it's very difficult you're getting a huge headache to try to reconcile those but he also said thy tablets and thy pipes that's tambourines or it's like holes in a flute is what's being talked about here this is why many people believe that he is that Lucifer's skill at music was unexcelled many people presume that he was the leader of the worship in heaven his musical skills were unexcelled apparently the the workmanship of these things were prepared in Envy in the day that that was created he was originally created as the ultimate in wisdom and everything no numero uno okay in fact his job was according to that does thou art the anointed cherub that covereth clumsy language in our vocabulary but pretty straightforward he's a cherub that's the super angel category right you got angels and you got chair serifs and cherubs and all he is the anointed cherub he's the one that's been given the mandate that he's the anointed one to run things the anointed cherub that covereth he's at the top of the heap he's the guy running feasts that's what that expression is intended to convey thou art the anointed cherub that covereth and God speaking I have set thee so thou wast upon the holy mountain of God the mountain and prophecy idiomatically is a government remember Nebuchadnezzar himself explains that for us in Daniel 4 and elsewhere the mountain of God he'll also in Daniel 2 the mountain that fills the whole earth and so on I have set thee so that was the upon the holy mountain of God thou has to walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire I assume that's a good thing okay super angels so no they're all through the scripture Isaiah 6 and the zekiel 1 and 10 and on it goes thou was perfect in my ways from the day that that was created comma let's absorb that thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that that was created and then we have the saddest word in the scripture till iniquity was found in thee Christ by the way was the one that created him ahem where all things made that were made without him was not anything made that was made he was perfect till iniquity was found in thee sir let's first of all realize Satan even with all his power is still only a creative being the warfare that's going on is not between Christ between the God or Christ and Satan because that's no contest the mystery we want to unravel is why didn't God just snuffle out why did it this play here cuz he had an agenda and Satan's gonna inadvertently fulfill God's agenda here okay till iniquity was found in thee that's the sad part so first of all let's summarize Ezekiel described a king in terms that could not apply to a mere man he appeared in the Garden of Eden verse 13 he had been a guardian cherub overall in verse 14 he possessed free access to God's holy mountain in verse 14 he had been sinless from the time he was created until this event but then it continues by the multitude I merchandised they have filled the midst of thee with violence and that was sin therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God and I will destroy the bow covering cherub from the midst of the stones of fire caste as profane out of the mountain of God he may have access but he's no longer there he's not part of the establishment he's driven out of the place of sanctity according to this verse which he previously occupied in Psalm 89 deals with that too and here's the crux are thy heart thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty thou has corrupted thy wisdom by reason of my brightness I will cast thee to the ground I will lay thee before kings that they may behold his heart was left a pride this is why God hates pride because it was through pride that sin enters the environment Godkin Val has defiled thy sanctuary see apparently he ran the worship he was a top priest there that was defiled by sanctuaries by the multitude iniquities by the iniquity of thy traffic therefore I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee and it shall devour thee and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee again the earth is the stage that this whole drama is going to play out in all they that know the among the people shall be astonished at thee thou shalt be a terror and never shalt thou be anymore that's isaiah 28 the U is equal 28 a parallel passage very similar is in Isaiah 14 not Tyrus now it's Babylon but the writer it's going to be a lamentation on the king of Babylon and again it's not talking to the actual king it's talking to the power that's behind the king starting about verse 12 as heir 14 how art thou fallen from heaven o Lucifer son of the morning how art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nation's who fallen from heaven Lucifer that was his original name Nakash in the hebrew the bright shining one also meaning a serpent the latin being lucifer but he could then we have the famous five i wills 30 verse 13 god speaking for thou has said in thine heart i will ascend into heaven i will exalt my throne above the stars of God I will sit also upon the Mount of the congregation in the sides of the north I will ascend above the heights of the clouds I will be like the Most High his conceit is arrogance as he felt that he had what it took to be like God himself that's called rebellion that's called disaster disaster that's interesting that God didn't just snuff him out no he's going to play this out to show you where all this leads he's letting this play out this show where it's leads there can only be one will in the universe and it's the Messiah's job to bring it all together gut clean yet thou shalt be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit they that see thee shall narrowly look upon me and consider the saying is this the man that made the earth to tremble that did shake kingdoms that made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof whoa wait a minute when did Satan destroy the cities doesn't that sound like Jeremiah for that we just read a judgment of some kind that happened we don't have a record of that made the world as a wilderness that destroyed the cities EV that opened not the house of his prisoners what's that talking about heavy stuff coming down here when did this happen take another look when you get a chance to Jeremiah 4 verses 23 to 26 see what you think let's continue here Albin eight kings of the nations even all of them lie in glory every one in his own house but thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch has the raiment of those that are slain thrust through with a sword that go down to the stones of the pit as a carcass trodden under feet that's graphic thou shalt not be joined with them in burial because that was destroyed thy land whose land his land interesting that was destroyed violent and slained thy people the seed of evildoers shall never be renowned the Lord of Hosts has sworn saying surely as I have thought so shall it come to pass and as I have purposed so shall it stand that I will break the Assyrian in my land and upon my mountains tread him underfoot and shall his yoke depart from off of him and his burden depart from off their shoulders did you catch that the Syrian the Antichrist is not a Western European he's an Assyrian so says Michael 5 Micah 5 so has Isaiah 10 and a number of other passages he's an Assyrian Nimrod was no Syrian the final world dictator will be in the Syrian scripture makes that pretty clear interesting Lee enough we go through that some other time this is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole this is the hand that has stretched out upon all the nations from the Lord of Hosts hath proposed purposed and who shall annul it and his head is stretched out and who shall turn it back always think of you'll Bremer so shall it be written so shall it be done okay that's the origin of evil but the usurp ssin the rebellion of the top angel who becomes hasatan Satan our accuser our tempter our warfare the warfare is not between God and Satan that's no contest that would that like that with that that contest will last about less than a nanosecond no it serves God's purpose to demonstrate that even though Satan was successful at getting man to abort his allegiance to the God of the universe he was unsuccessful at getting man subject to him so the first problem there was one well in the universe let me after God there was a second well universe Lucifer's and his shenanigans ended up creating millions of wills in the universe so there's Oh Satan's in there is is I always think of these things where like a guy who and horseback trying to herd kittens you know you've seen those things so in our next session we're gonna talk a little bit about this unseen world that we're dealing with and we're going to talk about the nature of the cosmic warfare that you and I are engaged in whether we like it or not we're there we are both pawns in this warfare and we're also in the prize in this warfare we want to understand that and we want to understand at least a little bit of our resources and we'll take that up in the next hour

Channel: Bible Study

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Length: 59min 50sec (3590 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020