Several of today’s prophecies are chronologically out of order…I wonder why they were recorded that way?
There seems to be a lot to wonder about in this section. I wonder about 28:12-19 where it seems to me that Ezekiel is speaking about the devil more than the king of Tyre. Either way, pride is the cause for collapse. It’s interesting that that there is a parallel between the two. I wonder if the temptation that brought down satan was an unhealthy appetite for beauty and praise? It seems to me that those two things when “fed” in our lives would lead to pride, which manifests itself in many ways…all of them bad.
Great wealth (rich commerce) leads to violence…but probably only when coupled with corrupted wisdom; which happens when we love splendor a little too much. So let me see: if I begin to love spendor too much, it causes me to think that I deserve it at any cost, even if I have to resort to violence to get it. Splendor and wealth seem to go hand in hand. It seems like we can never get enough wealth…it’s kind of like praise…we always want more than we get, no matter how much we get. The problem is that it corrupts us if we receive too much.
I wonder how much praise is too much? How much “splendor” is too much? When are we “too wealthy”? I can’t help but see the plight of our nation in these comments. We have so many resources…but here we are fighting all over the middle east supposedly to acquire more oil and other resources. And then, prior to that there is the gold rush, and the treaties that we broke to acquire all that. It doesn’t matter if it’s gold, oil, diamonds or whatever….we always seem to never have enough.
Moving along:
I wonder about God using Nebuchadnezzar to conquer the whole middle east, but for some reason He didn’t allow him to conquer the Island portion of Tyre…. That prophecy has been proven true by history…as I noted yesterday. It seems that God “gave” Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar since he was unable to crush Tyre. If Nebuchadnezzar was God’s “agent” then why didn’t Tyre fall at his hand? Either way, the prophecy about Tyre being completely wiped out was proven true when Alexander came through hundreds of years later. And thinking of the fall of Egypt and Ethiopia, they were just as evil as Jerusalem, so they deserved whatever God chose to subject them to.
I wonder why God chooses to use ungodly people to enforce His wishes upon humanity? It would make sense to me to use godly people instead…unless of course there weren’t any godly people left… I suppose the other reason that God would do it this way is because of His promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David. God had already promised to make them into a great nation and to never leave them without descendants…and since God never goes back on His Word, He chose to use others to bring His people back to repentance.
Well, today seems to be a day of stray thoughts… and it appears that my attention is being drawn in several different directions……sigh.
Faithfully,
PR