e-Watchman articles based upon portions of the prophecy of Ezekiel
This week in the Life and Ministry mid-week meeting all of the congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses around the world will be considering the span of chapters in Ezekiel, 6-10. No doubt the congregations will hear the brothers on the platform repeat the Watchtower’s well-worn expressions about how we must keep pace with Jehovah’s fast-moving celestial [...]
QUESTION: Whats your take on the new June 2016 WT, page 16, Question from Readers: "Whom do the man with the secretary's inkhorn and the six men with smashing weapons described in Ezekiel’s vision symbolize?" ANSWER: The Watchtower’s recent “adjustment” is correct. The man with the inkhorn and the six men with smashing weapons symbolize [...]
Monday, June 20 In a good pasture I will feed them.—Ezek. 34:14. Parents, do you not have a similar goal spiritually? You want to guide your children to serve Jehovah. You want your children to feel as did the psalmist who wrote: “To do your will, O my God, is my delight, and your law is deep [...]
The April 2013, Watchtower Magazine carries an article with the scriptural title: “Make Sure of the More Important Things,” which tangentially invokes the vision of Ezekiel regarding the extraterrestrial chariot – the intent being, to impress upon Jehovah’s Witnesses the reality of the existence of “the invisible part of Jehovah’s organization.” The article reinforces the belief among Jehovah’s Witnesses that [...]
A lone man stands gazing into the sky as the heavens grow ominously dark and the wind begins to blow tempestuously. A great storm is sweeping down from out of the north. But this is no ordinary atmospheric thunderstorm. As if concealing some other worldly visitor, all around the foreboding, billowing, cloud mass there is emitted a strange and entrancing iridescent glow. No, this is no natural weather phenomenon at all, and the observer of this awesome spectacle is no ordinary man. He is the Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel, and the very hand of Jehovah has come down upon his prophet. Yes, Ezekiel is in the grip of a divinely inspired phantasma!
The enraptured prophet goes on to relate the vision as it unfolds: In the midst of the roiling clouds are quivering rivers of energetic fire. Suddenly there appear, hovering, four tremendous living creatures; each with four differing earthly faces and four wings and the hands of a man; their bodies glowing like super-heated coals. Something like flaming torches are conveyed from one living creature to the other and out of the brightness of the torches great charges of lightening flash – as if transmitting messages to one another by electrical means.
It has now been nearly a century since Charles Taze Russell made the bold proclamation: “The Gentile times have ended. Their kings have had their day.” For nearly four decades before that fateful year Russell’s Watch Tower had been pointing forward to 1914 as a year marked in prophecy that would see the beginning of anarchy and the collapse of civilization.
When Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinad, along with his wife Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28th, it resulted in all the Great Powers of Europe choosing up sides and declaring war against each other in a matter of a few weeks – setting the stage for the bloodbath that became known as the First World War. Those tragic developments led C. T. Russell to make his historic announcement on October the 2nd of that year.
Of course, civilization did not collapse then. And the Great War did not lead into the Battle of Armageddon, as the Bible Students had been eagerly anticipating. And the Gentile kings, whose “day” had supposedly come in 1914, have in the decades since then gone on to dominate the world in ways that would have been hard for anyone living back then to even imagine. Oddly enough, though, the year 1914 has ever since become solidified in the minds of Jehovah's Witnesses as the most important date in all human history.
The sanctification of God’s holy name and the vindication of his sovereignty are of the utmost universal importance. Jehovah’s personal interests are supreme. Human salvation is secondary in the outworking of God’s purpose. Jehovah’s Witnesses well know that to be true.
To that end the ancient prophetic book of Ezekiel contains the yet-to-be-revealed judgments of Jehovah that will settle, once and for all time, the issue of Jehovah’s right to rule and the righteousness of his ways and forever sanctify his great name.
It does not matter that the scholars schooled in Christendom have expunged the distinctive name of God from their Bibles. More than any other book of prophecy, Ezekiel emphasizes how the revelation of God’s judgments will serve up to the nations of our modern world a bitter potion; forcing them to know that he is Jehovah, even as it says in Ezekiel: “The nations will have to know that I am Jehovah.”
But as Ezekiel 9:6 establishes, God’s judgment starts first in the holy place, in the very sanctuary of God; beginning with the covenant-breaking priests and older men in Jerusalem and ultimately with the entire house of Israel, exiles and alien residents included.
Because Jehovah’s Witnesses bear God’s personal name before the world, as did the typical house of Judah that fell under God’s judgment two and a half millenniums ago, and because anointed Christians are in a covenanted relationship with Jehovah, as were the Jews in Ezekiel’s day, it is Jehovah’s Witnesses who must first be made to know that he is Jehovah – as opposed to the nations. That is why it says throughout the prophecy of Ezekiel in many places: “And you people will have to know that I am Jehovah” – “you people” meaning God’s people.
"For this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said: ‘Here I am, I myself, and I will search for my sheep and care for them. According to the care of one feeding his drove in the day of his coming to be in the midst of his sheep that have been spread abroad, that is the way that I shall care for my sheep; and I will deliver them out of all the places to which they have been scattered in the day of clouds and thick gloom.'"
The
prophesied desolation of Jerusalem and the Jewish exile in Babylon was
by no means the end of Jehovah’s dealings with his renegade nation.
Another significant aspect, not only of the book of Ezekiel, but of all
Hebrew prophecy, has to do with the liberation, restoration and revival
of God’s covenanted people. Although the nation as a whole, particularly
the leadership, failed to live up to the obligations of the covenant
into which their forefathers had entered with God, Jehovah did not stay
resentful nor did he cast them off forever, but he extended forgiveness
and mercy in a very large way to a chastened remnant.
But the relationship between God and his people was not to be as before. No, in his compassion Jehovah purposed to permanently repair his relationship with the Jews. At least that is what the prophecies relate. But while it is noteworthy that the repatriated Jews did not resume the degrading form of idolatry that they had practiced before their exile, it is also apparent that the prophecy of Ezekiel only had a relative fulfillment with regard to the post-exilic Jewish society. More importantly, the shadows cast by this portion of the prophecy have profound significance for Jehovah’s Witnesses at the coming of Christ, which is the subject of this article.
"Now the end is upon you, and I must send my anger against you, And I will judge you according to your ways and bring upon you all your detestable things." —Ezekiel 7:3
This article was originally an open letter to the Watchtower Society based upon the seventh chapter of the prophetic book of Ezekiel. It was mailed to all members of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses and to numerous departments at Brooklyn Bethel, Wallkill and Patterson facilities in New York State. Copies of this open letter have also been mailed directly to all 100 branch offices of the Watchtower around the world as well as to all assembly halls in the United States and individual congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the New York City area.
Some of the finest men I have ever known are elders and circuit overseers among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Most of Jehovah’s Witnesses would no doubt readily agree that the majority of overseers are honest, hard-working, self-sacrificing Christian men. Be that as it may, the privilege of tending to Christ’s sheep as a Christian shepherd is a privilege, not a right. It is also an enormous responsibility, which necessarily makes overseers more accountable before God. The reason that is so is because Jehovah’s sheep are very precious to him.
Surely, most human parents have the same parental love for their children as does Jehovah for his. For example: When human parents entrust their children to the care of others, such as baby-sitters, day-care staff, doctors, or school teachers, there is always an assumed understanding of the responsibility and accountability involved. But what parent would be reassured and comforted if most of the children in a particular day-care center did not die from abuse or neglect? Obviously, no amount of neglect or abuse is acceptable when it comes to something as precious as a child.
In the 13th chapter of Ezekiel Jehovah commanded his watchman to denounce the “stupid prophets” of Israel – Jehovah spoke to Ezekiel: “Son of man, prophesy concerning the prophets of Israel who are prophesying, and you must say to those prophesying out of their own heart, ‘Hear the word of Jehovah. This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said: “Woe to the stupid prophets, who are walking after their own spirit, when there is nothing that they have seen!’”
Jehovah went on to state concerning the “stupid prophets”: “They have visioned what is untrue and a lying divination, those who are saying, ‘The utterance of Jehovah is,’ when Jehovah himself has not sent them, and they have waited to have a word come true. Is it not an untrue vision that you men have visioned, and a lying divination that you have said, when saying, ‘The utterance of Jehovah is,’ when I myself have spoken nothing?”’
The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses claims to be the voice of a modern-day Ezekiel-like prophet. The Watchtower Society also takes to itself numerous titles besides the “Ezekiel class,” such as the “Jeremiah class,” the “Micah class” and the “John class”; while the modern counterpart to the house of Israel in this instance is supposedly all of Christendom. Though not claiming to be directly inspired, as were the original prophets, the Watchtower Society boasts of having unique insights into the biblical prophecies and inspired visions and an exclusive appointment from on high to serve in the capacity of a prophet by announcing the coming destruction of Christendom and all the realm of Babylon the Great. In so doing, the Watchtower Society unquestionably speaks in the name of Jehovah, saying as it were: “The utterance of Jehovah is…”
