Nov 14th

“Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them

and say, ‘Mountains of Israel, hear the word of Lord Yahweh! Thus says Lord Yahweh to the mountains, the hills, the ravines, and the valleys: “Behold, I Myself am going to bring a sword on you, and I will destroy your high places.

So your altars will become desolate, and your incense altars will be broken; and I will make your slain fall in front of your idols.

I will also put the dead bodies of the sons of Israel in front of their idols; and I will scatter your bones all around your altars.

In all your places of habitation, cities will become waste, and the high places will be desolate, that your altars may become waste and desolate, your idols may be broken and cease, your incense altars may be cut in pieces, and your works may be blotted out.

The slain will fall among you, and you will know that I am Yahweh.

“However, I will leave a remnant, for you will have those who escaped the sword among the nations when you are scattered among the lands.

Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations to which they will be carried captive, how I have been broken over their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and by their eyes which played the harlot after their idols; and they will loathe themselves to their own faces for the evils which they have done, for all their abominations.

Then they will know that I am Yahweh; I have not said in vain that I would do this calamitous evil against them.” ’

“Thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Strike your hands together, stamp your foot and say, “Alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel, which will fall by the sword, by the famine, and by the plague!

He who is far off will die by the plague, and he who is near will fall by the sword, and he who remains and is besieged will die by the famine. Thus will I spend My wrath on them.

Then you will know that I am Yahweh when their slain are among their idols all around their altars, on every high hill, on all the tops of the mountains, under every green tree, and under every leafy oak—the places where they offered a soothing aroma to all their idols.

So throughout all their habitations I will stretch out My hand against them and make the land more desolate and desecrated than the wilderness toward Diblah; thus they will know that I am Yahweh.” ’ ”

Moreover, the word of Yahweh came to me saying,

“Now as for you, son of man, thus says Lord Yahweh to the land of Israel, ‘An end! The end is coming on the four corners of the earth.

Now the end is upon you, and I will send My anger against you; I will judge you according to your ways and put all your abominations upon you.

For My eye will have no pity on you, nor will I spare you, but I will put your ways upon you, and your abominations will be among you; then you will know that I am Yahweh!’

“Thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘A calamitous evil, a unique calamitous evil, behold, it is coming!

An end has come; the end has come! It has awakened against you; behold, it is coming!

Your doom has come to you, O inhabitant of the land. The time has come; the day is near—confusion rather than joyful shouting on the mountains.

Now it is near when I will pour out My wrath on you and spend My anger against you and judge you according to your ways and put on you all your abominations.

My eye will show no pity, nor will I spare. I will give to you according to your ways, while your abominations are among you; then you will know that I, Yahweh, do the striking.

‘Behold, the day! Behold, it is coming! Your doom has gone forth; the rod has blossomed; arrogance has budded.

Violence has grown into a rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain, none of their multitude, none of their moaning, nor anything eminent among them.

The time has come; the day has arrived. Let not the buyer be glad nor the seller mourn; for wrath is against all their multitude.

Indeed, the seller will not return to himself what he sold as long as they both live; for the vision regarding all their multitude will not return empty, nor will any of them strengthen his life by his iniquity.

‘They have blown the trumpet and made everything ready, but no one is going to the battle, for My wrath is against all their multitude.

The sword is outside, and the plague and the famine are inside. He who is in the field will die by the sword; famine and the plague will also devour those in the city.

Even when their survivors escape, they will be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them moaning, each over his own iniquity.

All hands will hang limp, and all knees will become like water.

They will gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror will cover them; and shame will be on all faces and baldness on all their heads.

They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will become an impure thing; their silver and their gold will not be able to deliver them in the day of the fury of Yahweh. They cannot satisfy their soul, nor can they fill their stomachs, for their iniquity has become an occasion of stumbling.

They transformed the beauty of His ornaments into pride, and they made the images of their abominations and their detestable things with it; therefore I will make it an impure thing to them.

I will give it into the hands of the foreigners as plunder and to the wicked of the earth as spoil, and they will profane it.

I will also turn My face from them, and they will profane My secret place; then robbers will enter and profane it.

‘Make the chain, for the land is full of judgments that promote bloodshed, and the city is full of violence.

Therefore, I will bring the most evil of the nations, and they will possess their houses. I will also make the pride of the strong ones cease, and their holy places will be profaned.

Anguish has come, and they will seek peace, but there will be none.

Disaster will come upon disaster, and report will be added to report; then they will seek a vision from a prophet, but the law will be lost from the priest and counsel from the elders.

The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with desolation, and the hands of the people of the land will be dismayed. According to their way I will deal with them, and by their judgments I will judge them. And they will know that I am Yahweh.’ ”

Now it happened in the sixth year, on the fifth day of the sixth month, as I was sitting in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me, that the hand of Lord Yahweh fell on me there.

Then I looked, and behold, a likeness as the appearance of one on fire; from His loins and downward there was the appearance of fire, and from His loins and upward the appearance of brightness, like the gleam of glowing metal.

He sent forth the form of a hand and took me by a lock of my head; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the north gate of the inner court, where the seat of the figure of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy, was located.

And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the appearance which I saw in the plain.

Then He said to me, “Son of man, raise your eyes now toward the north.” So I raised my eyes toward the north, and behold, to the north of the altar gate was this figure of jealousy at the entrance.

And He said to me, “Son of man, are you seeing what they are doing, the great abominations which the house of Israel is doing here, so that I would be far from My sanctuary? But yet you will see still greater abominations.”

Then He brought me to the entrance of the court, and when I looked, behold, a hole in the wall.

He said to me, “Son of man, now dig through the wall.” So I dug through the wall, and behold, an entrance.

And He said to me, “Go in and see the evil abominations that they are doing here.”

So I entered and looked, and behold, every form of creeping things and beasts and detestable things, with all the idols of the house of Israel, were carved on the wall all around.

Standing in front of them were seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them, each man with his censer in his hand and the fragrance of the cloud of incense rising.

Then He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each man in the room of his carved images? For they say, ‘Yahweh does not see us; Yahweh has forsaken the land.’ ”

And He said to me, “Yet you will see still greater abominations which they are doing.”

Then He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the house of Yahweh which was toward the north; and behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.

He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Yet you will see still greater abominations than these.”

Then He brought me into the inner court of the house of Yahweh. And behold, at the entrance to the temple of Yahweh, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of Yahweh and their faces toward the east; and they were prostrating themselves eastward toward the sun.

He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to do the abominations which they have done here, that they have filled the land with violence and provoked Me to anger still more? For behold, they are sending forth the twig to their nose.

Therefore, I also will do this in wrath: My eye will have no pity, nor will I spare; and they will cry in My ears with a loud voice, yet I will not listen to them.”

But we are convinced about you, beloved, of things that are better and that belong to salvation, though we are speaking in this way.

For God is not unrighteous so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and continuing to minister to the saints.

And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end,

so that you may not become dull, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself,

saying, “I will greatly bless you and I will greatly multiply you.”

And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise.

For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute.

In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, guaranteed it with an oath,

so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.

This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and confirmed and one which enters within the veil,

where a forerunner has entered for us—Jesus, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham as he was returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him,

to whom also Abraham apportioned a tenth part of all, was first of all, by the translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem, which is king of peace.

Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest continually.

Now observe how great this man was to whom Abraham, the patriarch, gave a tenth of the spoils.

And those indeed of the sons of Levi, who receive the priest’s office, have a commandment in the Law to collect a tenth from the people, that is, from their brothers, although these are descended from Abraham.

But the one whose genealogy is not traced from them had collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed the one who had the promises.

But without any dispute the lesser is blessed by the greater.

And in this case mortal men receive tithes, but in that case one receives them, of whom it is witnessed that he lives on.

And, so to speak, through Abraham even Levi, who received tithes, paid tithes,

for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.