THE prophet Ezekiel was given an task that even the mighty Mark Steyn of GB Information would possibly decline.
Ezekiel, a former priest within the Jerusalem Temple who prophesied to the Jewish exiles in Babylon from 593 BC to 571, was informed by the Lord God Almighty: ‘I ship thee to the youngsters of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled towards me: they and their fathers have transgressed towards me, even unto this very day. For they’re impudent kids and stiffhearted. I do ship thee unto them; and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord. And so they, whether or not they’ll hear, or whether or not they’ll forbear, (for they’re a rebellious home,) but shall know that there hath been a prophet amongst them’ (Ezekiel 2v3-5 – Authorised Model).
Ezekiel’s position as a ‘watchman’ (Ezekiel 3v16-27) charged with warning the depraved to show again to the Lord concerned mendacity prostrate, his legs tied down with ropes, on his left aspect for 390 days in entrance of a mock-up of the town of Jerusalem. The Lord commanded him to take a clay pill and draw an image of Jerusalem on it after which to ‘lay siege towards it, and constructed a fort towards it, and forged a mount towards it, and set battering rams spherical about’ (Ezekiel 4v2). The prophet then needed to lie on his proper aspect for an additional 40 days.
The Lord informed him the aim of this eccentric and bodily taxing task, which in twenty first century Britain would have gotten him into hassle with the well being and security Stasi: ‘Subsequently thou shalt set thy face towards the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy towards it’ (Ezekiel 4v7).
Ezekiel was amongst 10,000 Jews deported to Babylon in 598 by King Nebuchadnezzar, who left the remaining inhabitants of Judah underneath the cost of a puppet king, Zedekiah. When Zedekiah rebelled towards Babylonian rule, Nebuchadnezzar attacked Judah in 589 and laid siege to Jerusalem for 2 years, finally sacking it in 587 and destroying the magnificent temple the place Ezekiel had ministered.
Ezekiel was thus tasked to proclaim divine fact in phrase and deed with no assure that any of his listeners would take the blindest little bit of discover.
Echoing Ezekiel’s calling, the Ebook of Frequent Prayer’s Ordinal (its liturgy for the ordering of deacons, monks and bishops) describes ordained Anglican ministers as ‘messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord; to show and to premonish, to feed and supply for the Lord’s household’.
At the moment round 650 bishops from the worldwide Anglican Communion are assembly in Canterbury for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Convention operating from final Tuesday, July 26, to August 8. Already the organisers have surrendered to a fierce marketing campaign by woke Western Anglicans from Britain and America to forestall the reaffirmation of a decision handed by the Lambeth Convention in 1998 which outlined marriage as between one man and one lady for all times.
Western bishops are grossly overrepresented at Lambeth, given the declining numbers of their church buildings in comparison with the packed Anglican congregations within the biblically orthodox church buildings of Africa and Asia. The Lambeth Convention ‘media and communications workforce’ are quite coy about revealing the exact variety of bishops current from the liberal Anglican dioceses in america, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, however between 200 and 250 can be an affordable estimate. In the meantime there are round 270 bishops who belong to the orthodox International South Fellowship of Anglican Church buildings (GSFA) led by the Archbishop of South Sudan, Justin Badi Arama. In lots of circumstances these bishops are overseeing greater than 100,000 Anglican worshippers of their dioceses in contrast with fewer than 20,000 traditional Sunday attenders in most Church of England dioceses.
The Church buildings of the Anglican Communion are self-governing, so regardless of the Lambeth Convention votes for will not be binding on the 41 Provinces throughout 165 international locations. However via a manipulative allure offensive, coupled with monetary affect, will the bishops of the prosperous, entitled West reach exporting godless wokery to the Anglican church buildings of the two-worlds world?
That may certainly rely on whether or not the senior pastors of the International South are ready to carry out Ezekiel’s watchman position and prophesy faithfully towards Western Anglican wickedness.
