God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible (31 page)
Read God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible Online
Authors: CJ Werleman
Four faced creatures? What the fuck was this guy smoking? And as his heavenly tour report proceeds it becomes even more fantastic.
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The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.” (Ezekiel 1:13-14 NIV)
Ezekiel then tells of a voice out of nowhere, a voice that sounds like God, although he has never heard God speak before. With the sounding of this strange voice, the winged creatures fluttering off lightning bolts with four heads, ceased to move. And then God spoke to Ezekiel:
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Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you. I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their fathers have been in revolt against me to this very day.” (Ezekiel 2:3 NIV)
God then hands Ezekiel a scroll containing words of lament and mourning on either side of the document. Unfortunately, Ezekiel doesn’t describe God’s penmanship, but God in true secret agent fashion does command his prophet to eat the scroll immediately after reading it. God promises him that the scroll is quite nourishing and Ezekiel says
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So I ate it and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.” (Ezekiel 3:3)
I hope you are having a giggle, because I am on the floor right now, but I refuse to write ROTFLMAO. Shit, I just did!
God is angered, and makes it clear to Ezekiel in no uncertain terms that death awaits those who do not repent their sins, cease their wickedness and return to worshipping him. God underlines this instruction that their blood will be on Ezekiel’s head if he is unable to lead the Israelites back to his heavenly master.
God lists a number of actions that will result in their deaths:
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If you warn a wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin.”
“When a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, he will die.”
God also informs Ezekiel that he has put some kind of voodoo spell on his prophet which makes Ezekiel’s tongue stick to the roof of his mouth when God is not ready for any telegrams to be passed to his people, but will release his tongue at the appropriate time.
God then spills out passages of doom for Ezekiel to relay to the Israelites. A promise that the following will be their fate if they have not learnt their lessons for worshipping other gods:
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I will bring a sword against you and I will destroy your high places. Your altars will be smashed; and I will slay your people in front of your idols. I will lay the dead bodies of the Israelites in front of their idols and I will scatter your bones around your altars. Wherever you live, the towns will be laid waste and devastated… Your people will fall slain among you and you will know that I am the Lord.” (Ezekiel 6:3-7 NIV)
Chapter after chapter, Ezekiel writes that he has been instructed by God to illustrate what the end of days for the Israelites looks like if they refuse to bend to God’s will. God’s motivational modus operandi is not all by the way of the stick though, as he does dangle the carrot of freedom just out in front of the Israelite’s gaze:
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I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered and I will give you back the land of Israel again.” (Ezekiel 11:17 NIV)
We find that God’s love of violent retribution is not just confined for the sinner but also for those that he believes are guilty by association. Which means, if your cousin murders a man then, you too, are guilty of the crime. Even if you weren’t in the country at the time of the crime or had never spoken with this relative, you are still guilty of their sins. Thank Christ we, except for the Taliban, don’t base our judicial systems on this irrational, insane logic.
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If a country sins against me by being unfaithful and I stretch out my hand against it to cut off its food supply and send famine upon it and kill its men and their animals, even if these three men – Noah, Daniel and Job – were in it, they could save their own sons or daughters by their own righteousness.” (Ezekiel 14:12-14 NIV)
Oh, and in case you had forgotten who we are dealing with, he is always there to remind you:
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I will bring upon you the blood vengeance of my wrath and jealous anger.” (Ezekiel 16:38 NIV)
Like the prophet Jeremiah, Ezekiel prophesizes that God will destroy Babylon, Moab, Assyria, Ammonm, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon and Edom before returning the Israelites back to their promised land. Ezekiel writes of a vision in which God shows him the building plans for the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and also provides Ezekiel with instructions as to how the new land is to be divided amongst the Israelites post-independence.
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I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
Galileo Galilei
Daniel was born to a family of high rank and nobility within the city of Jerusalem and was only sixteen years of age when the Babylonians took siege of the city in 587 BC The Babylonians killed many of the Israelites that held offices of high position but king Nebuchadnezzar decreed that handsome young men with physical attributes and an aptitude for learning and from families of nobility would be reserved a special place in the king’s palace to study Babylonian culture, literature and language. This indoctrination would last a period of three years and the best of the brightest would take up high positions within government.
Immediately, Daniel stood out from the other lads, as he refused to dine on the king’s luxurious food and wine which his fellow Babylonian Studies undergrads scoffed on. Daniel grabbed the immediate attention of God hovering somewhere above. Daniel claimed the food to be impure and not suitable for an Israelite devoted to his God and he cunningly defended his rejection of the king’s food offerings with claims that a poor diet would not be conducive to learning. Instead, Daniel suggested that a diet of vegetables and water would facilitate better study habits. Personally, I found burritos and beer to be an outstanding academic aid. The king agreed to put Daniel’s recommended diet to the test and half of the select Israelite boys remained on the king’s diet and the other half on Daniel’s. After ten days it became apparent that Daniel’s diet team were in far better physical and mental condition, and from that point on, Brussels’ sprouts and water became their dinner. Yes, I hate this guy, too. And you can imagine how popular Daniel was amongst the others, can’t you? As popular as a cold sore on a first date, by my reckoning!
God began to speak to Daniel in visions and dreams from this point forward and the king was astonished at the young Israelite’s wisdom and foresight.
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In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned him, he found him ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.” (Daniel 1:20 NIV)
In the second year of king Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, the king had trouble sleeping and he experienced many dreams. These dreams made the king restless and he summoned for his best magicians, astrologers and sorcerers to interpret his visions. The magic men and the voodoo scientists failed to offer the king a satisfactory explanation and he ordered their executions. The king then called for Daniel and three of his learned buddies to ease the king’s restlessness, but Daniel had heard that the stargazers had been placed on death row for failing to satisfy their king. This made Daniel terribly nervous, and there is no better moment for prayer time than when the sphincter is under great strain, and thus Daniel called out to the invisible Dictator:
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Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and disposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things.” (Daniel 2:20-22 NIV)
Daniel was summoned by the guards and brought before the king. Daniel asked that the magicians and sorcerers be spared should he be able to provide a satisfactory interpretation of the king’s dream, to which the king agreed. God then spoke through Daniel and said that his dream represented the future. The king’s dream included a statue and a rock carved out of a mountain, carved out by hands that were not human, to which Daniel ,with God as his Svengali said:
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The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands – a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the sliver and the gold to pieces.” (Daniel 2:44-45 NIV)
The king was impressed and lavished praise and gifts upon Daniel for this insight, although the dream interpretation was a not so covert message that God was coming to destroy Babylon and in its place make Israel a mightier nation than it had ever been before.
Not too long after the king had a second dream, and he called for Daniel to interpret it for him. Daniel, this time, adopted a little more straight talk and thus pulled no punches in explaining to the king that his reign and his kingdom was coming to an end. The king scoffed at this interpretation and didn’t give it any further thought until one year later whilst walking on the roof of his palace, he said aloud:
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Is not this the great Babylon? I have built this royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty.” (Daniel 4:30 NIV)
As the above words were leaving his mouth, God spoke to the king from somewhere high above:
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This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. You will be driven away from people and will live like wild animals; you will eat grass like cattle. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.” (Daniel 4:31-32 NIV)
God’s words came true for Nebuchadnezzar immediately, and he was driven away from his people and ate grass like cattle. Nebuchadnezzar not only walked away from his throne, but devoted the rest of his life to worshipping the God of the Israelites.
In his place, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, Belshazzar, became new king of Babylon. To celebrate his ascension to the throne, Belshazzar threw a huge banquet party in his own honor. Present were more than a thousand guests including his numerous wives and concubines. The honored guests drank wine from gold goblets that had been looted from the Temple of God in Jerusalem and as they drank they gave thanks to the many pagan gods they worshiped such as the God of gold and the God of silver.
The festive atmosphere was abruptly interrupted by the appearance of a human hand, a hand suspended in mid air, unattached to a human . Who said it was hard for a hand to find work, or a handjob? This floating hand began to write a cryptic message on the wall nearest to the lamp stand in the royal palace, and this is where the expression ‘the writing on the wall’ originates.
The new king, visibly shaken, offered the prize of a gold chain if anyone could interpret what had been written. One of the king’s servants informed him that whilst his father Nebuchadnezzar was king he often used the Israelite Daniel to interpret mysteries for him and hence Belshazzar wasted no time in summoning Daniel.
Daniel, not mincing words, reminded the new king that it was God that gave his father the power to rule over his people and it was God that stripped him of his throne because he became arrogant and proud and failed to thank God for his power. This is why he was sent out into the long grass, so to speak. Daniel’s words to the king:
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You have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them… Therefore he sent you this inscription.” (Daniel 5:23-24 NIV)
The inscription on the wall contained four words:
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN
The Bible says the above words mean the following:
Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.
Tekel: You have been weighed on scales and found wanting.