Here’s what The Boss mentioned in the morning meeting today (Ezekiel 13)…
He said, “I’m angry with people who prophesy out of their own hearts; who sew magic bands upon all wrists, and make veils for the heads of persons of every stature, in the hunt for souls! … I will not stand for it! Do they who hunt down souls belonging to My people, think that they’ll keep their own souls alive? They have profaned Me among My people for the superficial adulation of profligate personages, putting to death souls who should not die and keeping alive souls who should not live. They have developed a marketplace of lying, offering lies to My people (who – regrettably – have a voracious appetite for lies).”
“Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against your magic bands with which you hunt the souls like birds, and I will tear them from your arms, and I will let the souls whom you hunt go free, the souls like birds. Your veils also I will tear off and deliver My people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand as prey, and you shall know that I am the Lord. Because you have disheartened the righteous falsely, although I have not grieved them, and you have encouraged the wicked, that they should not turn from their evil way to save their lives, therefore you shall no more see false visions nor practice divination. I will deliver My people out of your hand. And you shall know that I am the Lord.”
I wondered what The Boss had in mind when He made mention of things like, ‘magic bands,’ and the ‘veils,’ and ‘hunting and killing souls,’ and ‘disheartening and grieving the righteous,’ and ‘encouraging the wicked and their evil ways’?
So I asked myself, “What did God most aggressively attack and condemn when He dwelt on earth in the flesh?”
And then I remembered His tirade in Matthew 23, where He said, “The Pharisees tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called ‘rabbi’ by others. BUT – the greatest among you shall be your servant! …But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. …Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! …Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. …Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. …Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. YOU SERPENTS! You BROOD of VIPERS! How are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.”
And then… God talks about FREEBIRDS!
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
Our unwillingness is wicked and tragic; but The Boss’s benediction is our eternal hope, and the absolute basis of our FREEDOM…
“I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My rules and obey them. And they shall be My people, and I will be their God.” (Ezekiel 11)
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