GOD'S DIVORCE - Ezekiel Chapter 16

1Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

2Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations,

3And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite.

4And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.

5None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the lothing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born.

6And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.

7I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare.

8Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine.

9Then washed I thee with water; yea, I throughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil.

10I clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with badgers' skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk.

11I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and a chain on thy neck.

12And I put a jewel on thy forehead, and earrings in thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head.

13Thus wast thou decked with gold and silver; and thy raiment [was of] fine linen, and silk, and broidered work; thou didst eat fine flour, and honey, and oil: and thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom.

14And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord GOD.

15But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was.

16And of thy garments thou didst take, and deckedst thy high places with divers colours, and playedst the harlot thereupon: the like things shall not come, neither shall it be so.

17Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them,

18And tookest thy broidered garments, and coveredst them: and thou hast set mine oil and mine incense before them.

19My meat also which I gave thee, fine flour, and oil, and honey, wherewith I fed thee, thou hast even set it before them for a sweet savour: and thus it was, saith the Lord GOD.

20Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter,

21That thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?

22And in all thine abominations and thy whoredoms thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare, and wast polluted in thy blood.

23And it came to pass after all thy wickedness, (woe, woe unto thee! saith the Lord GOD;)

24That thou hast also built unto thee an eminent place, and hast made thee an high place in every street.

25Thou hast built thy high place at every head of the way, and hast made thy beauty to be abhorred, and hast opened thy feet to every one that passed by, and multiplied thy whoredoms.

26Thou hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians thy neighbours, great of flesh; and hast increased thy whoredoms, to provoke me to anger.

27Behold, therefore I have stretched out my hand over thee, and have diminished thine ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee, the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy lewd way.

28Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians, because thou wast unsatiable; yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet couldest not be satisfied.

29Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication in the land of Canaan unto Chaldea; and yet thou wast not satisfied herewith.

30How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord GOD, seeing thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman;

31In that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way, and makest thine high place in every street; and hast not been as an harlot, in that thou scornest hire;

32But as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband!

33They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom.

34And the contrary is in thee from other women in thy whoredoms, whereas none followeth thee to commit whoredoms: and in that thou givest a reward, and no reward is given unto thee, therefore thou art contrary.

35Wherefore, O harlot, hear the word of the LORD:

36Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness discovered through thy whoredoms with thy lovers, and with all the idols of thy abominations, and by the blood of thy children, which thou didst give unto them;

37Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated; I will even gather them round about against thee, and will discover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness.

38And I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged; and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy.

39And I will also give thee into their hand, and they shall throw down thine eminent place, and shall break down thy high places: they shall strip thee also of thy clothes, and shall take thy fair jewels, and leave thee naked and bare.

40They shall also bring up a company against thee, and they shall stone thee with stones, and thrust thee through with their swords.

41And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more.

42So will I make my fury toward thee to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet, and will be no more angry.

43Because thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, but hast fretted me in all these things; behold, therefore I also will recompense thy way upon thine head, saith the Lord GOD: and thou shalt not commit this lewdness above all thine abominations.

44Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter.

45Thou art thy mother's daughter, that lotheth her husband and her children; and thou art the sister of thy sisters, which lothed their husbands and their children: your mother was an Hittite, and your father an Amorite.

46And thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.

47Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways.

48As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.

49Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

50And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.

51Neither hath Samaria committed half of thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine abominations more than they, and hast justified thy sisters in all thine abominations which thou hast done.

52Thou also, which hast judged thy sisters, bear thine own shame for thy sins that thou hast committed more abominable than they: they are more righteous than thou: yea, be thou confounded also, and bear thy shame, in that thou hast justified thy sisters.

53When I shall bring again their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, then will I bring again the captivity of thy captives in the midst of them:

54That thou mayest bear thine own shame, and mayest be confounded in all that thou hast done, in that thou art a comfort unto them.

55When thy sisters, Sodom and her daughters, shall return to their former estate, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former estate, then thou and thy daughters shall return to your former estate.

56For thy sister Sodom was not mentioned by thy mouth in the day of thy pride,

57Before thy wickedness was discovered, as at the time of thy reproach of the daughters of Syria, and all that are round about her, the daughters of the Philistines, which despise thee round about.

58Thou hast borne thy lewdness and thine abominations, saith the LORD.

59For thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even deal with thee as thou hast done, which hast despised the oath in breaking the covenant.

60Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.

61Then thou shalt remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when thou shalt receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger: and I will give them unto thee for daughters, but not by thy covenant.

62And I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD:

63That thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord GOD.

 

THE PARABLES OF CHRIST
NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS
THE SONG
OF SOLOMON
       The Bible clearly states that the great mystery of all mysteries of God and Christ is about Christ and the Church. Summed up in Ephesians chapter five it is simply stated as Christ loving the Church and his wife being absolutely one hundred per cent submitted to Him as the head of all things. When this occurs Christ and that portion of the Church which is submissive are one flesh and will be one in eternal utopia living as One This is what Christ was getting at when He prayed at the Last Supper that He and His disciples would be one, even as He and the Father are One. Though this mystery of Christ and His Bride was not frankly stated in this manner until its mystery was fully opened in the New Testament epistles and finally revealed in Revelation 21, it had been alluded to throughout the parables of Holy Scripture, both Old and New. It is now time for us to study, somewhat methodically the parables of the Bride found in the Scriptures and those things that tend to shed light upon the great mystery of Christ and his Bride, though especially regarding the Old Testament parables, we discover their meaning and full impact thanks to hindsight and experience only realized through a knowledge of Christ brought by His First Coming.
         When He created the heaven and earth and all the things in it he always remarked, “it is good”. The first time and only time He cited something as not being ‘good’ was when He looked upon Adam in his solitary state and said, “It is not good that man should be alone.” This turns out to be one of the most important statements ever directed at Man by God, with far reaching prophetic implications that extend to the very last page of the Bible. Even though the Church has wrongly exalted the idea of being alone, as the most holy and pure of lives, such stupidity and perverse thinking runs contrary to the fluidity of the will of God to raise up a Bride perfectly compatible and fit for the Son of Man, Jesus Christ. It has done so much damage in the Church that it can hardly be calculated. (Could the pedophile plague be a judgment of this mistaken idea?) As one of the epithets which Jesus dubbed Himself, the Son of Man not only identifies Him with the ministry of the prophet Ezekiel and Ezekiel in turn as a Christ-like representative, it also shows Jesus identifying Himself with being Christ, the anointed one, which implies not just the one who provides what is needed, but the only man who could give man what he needed. The name Christ is reserved for a man. Christ must be a man and not exclusively God. Christ is a man able to identify in every way with the struggle of man. What the Christ brought and only He could deliver is rectification, a propitiation, a payment in lieu of a debt owed, a straightening out of things forever. A pure and holy God could not do this, being removed from the squalor, fear and hate. Only the Christ, the Son of Man, as Jesus so identified Himself, could face man’s demons and defeat them without giving in to their powers. The debt owed, the wages exacted by sin, of course was death; death for sin, every transgression, any single iniquity. The Christ, the Messiah must not be only God, but Son of Man, born of the seed of the woman, and if man, man who should not be alone. This is the point. If it is not good that man should be alone, then how could it ever be good if the Son of Man remains alone. Ergo, the Bride is sought for the Son of Man’s sake. Does it not make sense that he should be joined eternally with a Bride, a wife. One who will remain a perfect spotless beautiful Bride forever, never aging, never doubting, never recanting, never wandering, never losing pure rapturous love for her champion lover – only growing with passionate infatuation like a flower in a state of endless bloom filling the air of God’s home with new beautiful fragrances every moment throughout eternity to come. He must be one with a wife – and man is to be the wife of the Son of Man, the Christ, the Messiah, the Redeemer, the one who has given His life that we might gain life. Now we discover the purpose, the ultimate purpose of God creating Man. Both are resurrected into one in the Spirit to life immortal and incorruptible for all eternity. This is the Bride. Man is to be Bride of the Son of Man/Son of God. The Bride must be found, must be formed, must be given life, so that the Christ (a man) would not live in state of loneliness for eternity. For it is first stated: “It is not good that man should be alone”. Therefore, God took a part of His life and formed the Bride for Adam (Man). But recall He first put the Man to sleep (in the grave) and then woke Him up (resurrected Him) so he and his wife could have life together, that he not be alone, for his loneliness was not a good result of creation, the only thing which God had to do something about, and for this He had a plan all along which centered around Christ, the Son of Man who could redeem, rectify loneliness, by the giving of His life that another life could be restored.
          All hinged on the power of God the Father to resurrect the sacrificed life that the life of the guilty could resurrected in purity, so they could become one, the Son of Man and Man would never be alone. Pure genius is the mystery of the Bride, Christ and His Church. Even this drama of creation, the Son of Man to pay the debt owed for Man, was a living sort of parable pointing to the ultimate and ‘great’ mystery of Christ and the Church (Bride). As Son of Man working the works of the Christ God was working His mystery of salvation, that it was to provide an eternal Bride for His Son. This plan was not declared outright from the beginning but ‘leaked’ in actions and parables as the story of man and His ultimate marriage with God unfolded through the ages. This is why it is the ‘great’ mystery. The story of the bride and Christ (the Son of Man who gave what was needed) has had its twists and turns and in the parables of the Old and New Testament the great love and romancing of Man by God are revealed, not just events but what has been in the hearts of God and Man.
        The parables of the bride cannot be told without first establishing the heartbreak God has endured as the often rejected suitor of Man. He has endured rejection from those He loved, far more than He has enjoyed submission or love requited. No one could endure just heartache as the Son of Man has endured. We all know that He was despised and rejected, mocked, beaten and killed by those claimed to love God. Even in this age of Grace, the age of the Bride, the time for her to come to Him, He has suffered rejection more often than not. But the espoused husband endures and believes and hopes and bears all things for loves sake that he might present unto Himself a perfected Bride.
        He has even endured divorce. It is clearly stated in a parable given to Ezekiel (the classic Son of Man representative among the prophets) how God divorced His Bride for infidelity. In spite of the modern day Christian who says God would never do or allow such a thing, this is not even debatable. Nor has he ever thought that celibacy and being alone was the ultimate aim or the ultimate in holiness for man. The mystery declares that Christ will have a holy Bride, one without spot or wrinkle. He will divorce the unfaithful woman. It is simply not good for man to be alone; thus, the Bride is the only good thing for the Christ, but she must be pure and holy, without blemish. God declared that he would not stop at divorcing a wife who was committing fornication against Him. 

Jeremiah 3:8

And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of DIVORCE; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.

         When decrying divorce among God’s people, Jesus Himself even recognized that fornication of any sort was one thing worthy of divorce. “But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” Matt. 5:32 In His unrelenting quest for a worthy wife, God will not settle for anything but ‘perfection’. The perfection of the Bride of Christ will be brought by His own hand. Only God has the power to change a person through and through, only He is able to convert the soul and perfect us by giving us a new Spirit and a new heart that can have love’s truth written upon it in indelible ink. Because a perfect Bride could be raised up from sin’s darkness and ignorance, from an idolatrous heritage and from prostitution, God would not, and will not, accept anything less than a virtuous woman who would be a devoted and faithful wife.
         God opens His heart with emotion concerning His feelings for the Bride. In an extremely heart-wrenching parable God pours out His heart to the prophet Ezekiel concerning the betrayal and disappointment of His unfaithful espoused wife. It not only tells the pain which God is willing to endure in order to find a faithful wife, it shows that He will only accept a faithful and devoted wife, the only acceptable standards of a worthy wife,  which He considers the ‘Perfect’ wife.
        In the parable of the divorced wife, He says He had found her alone and abandoned in the gutter, covered in her own blood, unwashed, wallowing in filth. He picked her up, washed her and saved her from enslavement and a lonely death. He turned her into the most beautiful of young ladies. He had lavished every beautiful gift upon her so she could become His beautiful Bride. He loved her with passion and purity. But she had turned on Him, despised Him for no reason other than to fuel her own lust, went looking for other lovers, and shamed Him with her open lewdness. She one continuous stream of adulteries, prostituting herself with every neighbor she could woo. In the parable God reveals His heartbreak to Ezekiel.
        The prophet could understand the pain of losing the love of His life, for Ezekiel too had been required by God to suffer the loss of ‘the desire of his eyes’. The pain which Ezekiel was required to suffer (as a prophet must identify with some part or parts of the sufferings of Christ) was to show God’s willingness to cut off even the apple of His eye, the desire of His eyes, if she was discovered to be a harlot without true love for Him. His divorce of an inferior Bride of infidelities proves in an antithetical way that God’s true intentions have always been to create a Bride for His Son Jesus Christ, but it must be a faithful and perfect Bride.

            Why would God put himself through a divorce if He were not intent on the prime importance of not being alone but having a beautiful, perfect Bride for the Son of Man.

 

GOD'S QUEST FOR A PERFECT BRIDE

GOD'S QUEST INTRODUCTION
PART 1. PROMISE - NOT FOR SON OF MAN TO BE ALONE: NEEDS A WIFE
PART 2. DIVORCE - FROM UNFAITHFUL WIFE TO SEEK FAITHFUL BRIDE
PART 3. VISION – ROMANCE OF BRIDE & CHRIST: SONG OF SOLOMON
PART 4. FAITHFUL FIANCEE - PROMISE OF A MARRIAGE: PSALM 45
PART 5. QUALITIES - GIVING ALL: ILLUSTRIOUS WOMEN OF THE BIBLE
PART 6. PURE BRIDE - PARABLES OF CHRIST: RAPTURE-READY BRIDE
PART 7. PERFECT WIFE - PROVERBS 31, ESTHER, REV. 21, PHILADELPHIA


BRIDE SECTION INTRODUCTION

THE GREAT MYSTERY: CHRIST AND THE CHURCH

ETERNAL UTOPIA: THE BRIDE IN ALL HER GLORY

JESUS' PARABLES PERTAINING TO HIS BRIDE

PICTURE PERFECT
CIRCLE OF PERFECTION
WESLEY ON CHRISTIAN PERFECTION
DIALOGUE ON PERFECTION
ETYMOLOGY OF WORD PERFECTION AS APPLIED TO BRIDE

ILLUSTRIOUS WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

THE BRIDE AS OVERCOMER IN CHURCH

THE BRIDE AS OVERCOMER OF THREE GREAT ENEMIES

END TIMES SNAP SHOTS OF THE BRIDE

PHILADELPHIA/SMYRNA; RAPTURE READY, REWARD BOUND

GOD'S EXPECTATIONS

THE BRIDE REVISITED