EZEKIEL… God’s Chosen!?

THURS., JUNE 14, 2001, 9:10 AM
5TH FLOOR, MORRIS LIB’R

You and your small (to smaller) “breakfast” Group continue to read, study, and compare impressions of My servant Ezekiel. So I’ll quickly answer your implied question: Yes, I did choose Ezekiel as a prophet for his time. His attitude and his words don’t seem completely relevant for this time in the 21st century, but they remain Holy Scripture, nevertheless. One lesson you’ve discerned from these chapters is that I, the Lord God, am not necessarily consistent… and therefore I seem to be quite “Other” than I Am in Christ Jesus. You are not wrong in this observation… AND… don’t try to make Me into a “better God,” for this time.

Ezekiel was telling his fellow Jews of their sins… and, therefore, of the sin of God’s chosen people. I, as that Almighty Yahweh, had chosen this group of humans to hear Me, through “servants” who had been chosen to warn them, in some forceful ways. Ezekiel was “tapped” to be such a “prophet” and to have his “story” become part of the Old Testament Scripture. Nothing more can be added, officially, to either Testament, so humankind is “stuck” with observations on life and admonishments about conduct from 2,000 to 4,000 years ago.

The gives stability and consistency to the Christian faith, and, obviously, this is what I prefer. And yet here I Am with you, in a large, quiet library, looking out over a portion of this beautiful campus (quite unlike much of the Holy Land of My “official” Scriptures), giving you important ideas, in words you and I choose.

What I tell you and what you write may not seem to agree completely with Holy Scripture, but these passages you now are “studying” (yet again) also suggest that I am not always consistent. I Am DIVERSITY, Personified! (Yes, too much coffee, with little else for breakfast, does cause your handwriting to be “less beautiful” than usual.)

The “world” in which Ezekiel lived, as a “critic,” was quite different from that in which you live, and move, and have your being. I admit this. Some of these “changes” (from Ezekiel’s time) were caused by Me… most I just let happen. You have legitimate questions about WHY I caused or allowed as I did… and as I do now. You sometimes almost feel that I Am not as good a God as I claim… or as you proclaim, as a Christian.

As the Christian story goes (and this finishes off the New Testament) I, as Almighty Yahweh, the Creator and Sustainer God, “decided” that My chosen people, the Jews, could not consistently be righteous, by My Standards, and so I did an “odd thing” by your present cultural values: I came into the earth as a “miracle” baby Jew, grew up as a son in Nazareth. Then, as a mature man I preached, baptized, and, in a three year life span I left a New Testament, AND I offered Myself as a sacrifice for the sins of all of you, who accept Me as the Christ.

Now that is a “condition.” Before… and still, with the Jews, it was behavior consistent with My 10 Commandments and other “rules” from the O.T. With you Christians it is just full acceptance of My “doing it for you” – a sacrifice, by Me, nearly 2,000 years ago, that takes away your sin. Why? On the premise that being forgiven, unconditionally, you will be motivated to live more sinlessly, even though not perfectly.

Is this “the best way”? Well, it’s My Way now. BUT the Ezekiel story is not only one that tells you what I once did, but is also one that tells what I could do again. You know these Scriptures of Mine well enough to accept that I could (even may?) act in ways more like I did in these Scriptures.