If everyone could turn to Ezekiel 33, we will begin in verse 1. Ezekiel 33:1-11 says:
Again the word of JEHOVAH came unto me, saying, Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand. So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul. Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live? Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord JEHOVAH, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
I will stop reading there.
I thought that this would be a good time for us to look at Ezekiel 33. We have looked at this before and it is always appropriate to read Ezekiel 33 and information about the watchman and the obligation of a watchman regarding seeing the sword coming. If he sees the sword, he is responsible. He has a duty that is really just like soldiers who have duties that they must perform. Soldiers are obligated to obey their superiors.
In times past in history, there would be soldiers or men who would have been given the assignment of being watchmen. For example, maybe they were assigned to a watchtower in the wilderness where there would be a high platform that they would go up into to keep watch for any approaching enemy. When they saw an enemy, they would have a trumpet near them that they would pick up and blow in a manner that was already agreed upon, “If you blow this sound, we are going to understand that an enemy army is approaching.” So they would blow the trumpet, which was probably relayed back to the people of the city where perhaps they would do whatever was necessary to protect themselves.
This is the idea and this is understandable as we look at history. It is also understandable today as we have warning systems in place in our own country. For example, the thing that many people were complaining about with the latest terrorist threat on a plane in Detroit was that information was gathered in advance and they knew that this individual was a threat, but this information was not passed on. This means that there was not a warning given that this person was actually getting on a plane so that they could stop him.
We also have many safeguards in place in our country that are watching our coasts, watching the air, watching even for the possibility of submarines coming from beneath the surface of the waters. From space there are all kinds of watchmen, in a sense, in that the government has built certain things in place, and many governments have these same types of safeguards. These governments are all watching for any type of threat or danger that could harm the people. So what is ordinarily supposed to happen and most times does happen is that there are warnings given, the threat is taken care of, and the people are kept safe as a result.
In Ezekiel 33, God is speaking about a watchman who sees a sword coming upon the land. The Bible was written in a day when there were no handguns or rifles or machineguns or cannons or missiles. At that time, they had bows and arrows and spears and swords, and God is using this historical illustration that the watchman would look for an enemy that was coming in a hostile way to do battle, to do war.
But notice that it says in Ezekiel 33:2:
…When I bring the sword upon a land…
This is the Lord Jehovah who is speaking, and He is saying:
…When I bring the sword…
So He is the enemy.
Is it true that God is the enemy of man?
This is not the idea that many people have today because they have been give the impression, unfortunately by the churches, that God is a weak God, that He is a God who loves everybody and is always happy with everyone, no matter what they do. But this is not the impression that the Bible gives us. God is a God who is angry with the wicked every day.
If we look at Psalm 7:11, it says:
God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.
Now look at verse 12, Psalm 7:12:
If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready.
To whet means to sharpen, and so He will sharpen His sword. Why? Because He is angry with the wicked. Who are the wicked? Terrorists are wicked. Murderers are wicked. People who do violent crimes are wicked.
Yes, but the Bible says, “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” that there is “none righteous, no, not one,” and that there is “none that doeth good, no, not one.” All, therefore, are wicked. We are all evil because of our sin, and the Bible says that God judges the righteous and is angry with the wicked. He is not pleased. He is definitely not pleased especially, we could say, with our generation, with the people of the world at this time as sin has multiplied to a level that has never even been close to being seen in the world with nearly seven billion people on this earth who sin constantly on a daily basis, and all sin is against God—it is all against Him.
God is a God of love. This is true, but He is also a God of justice. He will avenge Himself and He will make sure that what His Word states regarding sin, which is that “the wages of sin is death,” will be carried out. “He hath appointed a day,” the Bible tells us, “in the which he will judge the world,” and that day is May 21 in the year 2011. That will be Judgment Day when God will bring the sword of judgment, the sword of His wrath, which has been sharpened.
You know, to be slain with a sword is a very ugly way to die, like Agag who was hacked to pieces. The prophet Samuel righteously “hewed Agag in pieces.” Samuel was not wrong in doing this. He did it at God’s beckoning when he destroyed that evil man. And God is the One who says that He is bringing the sword.
Let us go back to Ezekiel 33:2-3:
…When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;
So here God tells us that when He brings the sword, if the man, the watchman, sees the sword come, he is to warn the people. This is kind of difficult for us to understand because God is Spirit. If you are a watchman in a watchtower, you can see an enemy army coming; but to see God, an angry God with a sword drawn, is not possible because He is Spirit, even though there are a couple of occasions in the Bible when we find the Angel of the Lord standing in the way against Balaam with a sword drawn, or we find Joshua meeting the Captain of the LORD’S Host who had His sword drawn. This is the picture that God gives us.
Turn 1 Chronicles 21:12. This is after Gad is coming to David and he is giving him three options for numbering the people, and it says in 1 Chronicles 21:12:
Either three years’ famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of JEHOVAH, even the pestilence, in the land…
Here the sword of the Lord is not a literal sword, but it is referring to the pestilence. Pestilence came because David chose that option. David understood that the other options were worse. He knew that God was merciful, and so he decided that he would have rather had the Lord determine what was to exactly happen. God did make this determination, and so He sent a plague upon Israel from Dan to Beersheba wherein 70,000 people were slain by the sword of the Lord.
So the sword of the Lord is not a literal reference to a sword. It has to do with God’s judgment. In this case, it was a plague.
Now look at 1 Chronicles 21:14-16:
So JEHOVAH sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men. And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, JEHOVAH beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of JEHOVAH stood by the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of JEHOVAH stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem…
This is the picture that God is giving and it is one of destruction. It is a picture of people perishing when they are slain.
Whenever people do perish and die, it is always because God has taken their spirit. This is why they die. It is because He has beforehand determined that it is a certain person’s time to die. There has never been a person yet who died “before their time.” This is not possible. God preserves someone to a certain point in time. When that time is reached, He takes them.
Every day in this world, God is taking people, as we know. He takes 150,000-200,000 people daily, if you factor in deaths by abortion. Each and every day, this is the number of people who die; and this is besides things like earthquakes and tsunamis—this is just a daily average. The Lord takes people constantly. At every point that they are taken, it is because “the wages of sin is death.” At the death of a person, God is bringing this to pass.
If we also go to Isaiah 34 to continue looking more at the sword of the Lord, it says in Isaiah 34:2:
For the indignation of JEHOVAH is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.
Verse 4 then sets the context of judgment, and then we read in Isaiah 34:5-6:
For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment. The sword of JEHOVAH is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for JEHOVAH hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea.
These verses can be connected to Judgment Day when God will whet His sword. He will bring it down on all of those who are left behind, on all of the unsaved of the world. It is not that they will literally be slain by a sword. It is that however they die, it will be due to the wrath of God and His judgment.
Let us now go to Ephesians 6 and look at one verse. This is a passage dealing with the “armour of God.” It says in Ephesians 6:17:
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
We know also that Hebrews 4:12 says:
For the word of God is quick [alive], and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword…
So the Word of God, the Word of the Lord, is likened to a sword. This makes better sense. We understand that a watchman cannot see an invisible God who is Spirit. A watchman cannot see this literally, but a watchman can watch to see what the Word of God is saying.
Is this not what a watchman can do? Is this not what God, of course, had in mind as He wrote this in the Bible? Does He not expect His people to be reading the Bible? When they are reading the Bible, that is the Word the God, which is the sword.
According to the Bible’s own definition from Ephesians 6:17, the Bible itself is the sword:
…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
This is the sword of God.
Let us go back to Ezekiel 33. Again, it says in Ezekiel 33:2-3:
Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;
God is saying that when the sword is seen, that is when you blow the trumpet. As a watchman, it is then that you are to warn the people.
So when will God’s people see the sword coming, which represents the judgment of God? When will this happen? God told Daniel, “Seal the book, even to the time of the end.” The implication is that at the time of the end, He will open the Word. He will unseal it and knowledge will increase: knowledge of the Word of God, knowledge of what God intends to do, His plan.
This is what He has laid out in the Bible for centuries, but nobody could see this. At times, people in the past have thought, “Well, I have this figured out. I know that the end of the world will be at this point in time.” Luther thought this in his lifetime, which was over 400 years ago. Others have thought that around 1,000 A.D. might have been the end of the world.
Here and there, people have thought this, and it is kind of interesting how people today say, “You are saying that the world is going to end soon, but all kinds of people have said this all throughout history, so just get out of here!”
But what kind of a response is this? If we look at everything that people do in the world or have developed or what has come to pass, most of the time things develop through a series of failures. For example, how long did it take for people to develop the airplane? How many times did they try before someone finally developed a plane that could fly? If this attitude had prevailed that people have had regarding not knowing because no one in the past had known, we would not be flying.
How many times have people developed serums or medicines for diseases after failing and failing and failing at first? They thought that they had something right, and yet it did not work out. But then comes along someone like Louis Pasteur and he develops something that is wonderful. We can only imagine if people would have had this same idea toward Pasteur, “Look, a hundred people have tried to develop a cure for this disease, so I am not even going to pay any attention to your cure.”
Why would they have possibly thought that way? That would have been a stupid way to react because it would not have taken into account that none of the people in the past had any relation to Louis Pasteur. They did not have his mind, nor did they have his abilities, and so forth. And yet the time did come when many things were discovered and developed.
It is true that all throughout history nobody has understood these things or gotten this right because the Book was sealed. But does this mean that nobody could have ever understood? No, it does not mean that. We are at the time when God is opening up the Scriptures and His people are understanding this, and we can see that the sword is a reference to the Bible.
Concerning the watchman, let us go to Ezekiel 3:17:
Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.
This is the sword. The watchman here is not looking out into the distance for an approaching army. He is listening to God. He is listening to hear the Word of God. Once he does, then he will give warning from God. He will give warning from God, which is an important principle. This is very important.
God warned Lot of Sodom’s destruction and God forewarned Noah of the destruction of his world, and so people say, “Yes, and if God came to me directly, I would listen. I would listen. If God told me directly, I would obey, I would listen, and I would take action and maybe turn from the way that my life is going. However, I am not going to listen to you. I am not going to listen to Family Radio either. I am just not going to listen to people.”
The problem is that they do not understand that God works through ambassadors. He is the King of kings. He is the Supreme Being. Since the Bible was completed, He has determined to send messengers, like messenger boys. We are servants. We are ambassadors.
What does an ambassador do? He represents the government or the president of his country. If it is an ambassador from America, he represents the United States. He represents whatever nation he comes on behalf of and he has authority based on that particular government or power that he is representing.
This is what God has done in this world. Since the cross, He has sent forth His people into the world to carry a message that comes from Him that He says is as good as though He Himself has spoken it. In 2 Corinthians 5:19-20, it says:
To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.
The believer who has the truth from the Bible and carries this information to others—we must have the truth from the Bible—is a representative of God. When the tract is ripped up and thrown in the trash, when someone smirks and says, “Yeah, right,” and continues on their way, no matter what kind of response they have that they think is directed toward the one sharing the Gospel with them, the fact is they are coming against God. God told Samuel, “They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me.”
So this is a very serious thing because Christ is the One who sent His people into the world with the Gospel. Christ is the One who is now opening up information from the Bible concerning the sword of judgment. He is the One who has set up watchmen, His people. These watchmen are His people and they are not looking off into the distance. They are looking in the Bible. They are searching the Bible.
If you remember, Jesus said in Matthew 24:42:
Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.
And in Matthew 25:13, we read:
Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.
In Mark 13:33-37, we also read:
Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is. For the Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch. Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning: Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.
Watch! Are you a watchman? Be a watchman! Is this not what these verses are saying? Be a watchman. Keep watch in the Bible—not anywhere else. We cannot learn about Christ anywhere else. We cannot learn about His coming anywhere else. We are to only keep watch in the Bible.
The watchman who was placed in a watchtower in the wilderness was to watch for an enemy. What would he do when he saw an enemy? He would blow a trumpet and give warning.
Somehow, people have gotten the idea that to watch means that you cannot know and that you never will know. What is the sense of watching then? If it is pointless to watch, do not put anyone in the watchtower in the wilderness. Do not even bother putting someone up there to look for the enemy. But people will say, “No, Jesus told us to watch.”
This means that we have a watchtower. We put the man in the watchtower in the wilderness who is looking for the enemy. He can, therefore, see him approach before he gets to the people. Right?
Does this not mean that he had advance information in order to even be a watchman? What good is it to be a watchman if it is always too late to warn anyone? It is the task of a watchman to warn, as it says in Revelation 3:2-3:
Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
If you do not watch, you are not going to know.
So, what is this verse saying? Honestly, what is this verse saying? If you do watch, what is it saying? It is saying that we will know. We will know the time. We will know the hour. So, watch! Keep watch! Keeping looking in the Bible.
Okay, so a thousand years pass during the church age, fifteen hundred years pass and it is the time of the Reformation, and then we get to nearly two thousand years since the cross. We are now actually past two thousand years from Christ’s birth in 7 B.C. This is the time. This is the time of the end.
Everything testifies to this. The church is a wasteland across the board. Mankind is involved in wickedness to where we cannot even stand to read the newspaper or to hear the news about what is happening in just about every place on this earth. Israel is a nation again. After nearly 2,000 years, they became a nation once again amongst the nations of the world.
Everything is in place. Yes, the time is here. The time is right. Judgment is just a few days way, and so Jesus is saying:
If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
It is interesting because people say that “as a thief” means that we will not be able to know the time. So let us turn to 1 Thessalonians 5:1-2:
But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
Does a thief call ahead to let you know? Does he inform you, “I will be there at 3:00 A.M. You can count on it. I will be at your back door. I am going to break the glass to get to the lock. This way you can be waiting for me”?
No, a thief does not do this, and so they say, “Well, you see, Jesus does not want us to know because He says that He is coming like a thief.”
The problem is that if Jesus comes as a thief for you or for anyone, He is not coming to take you to Heaven. If you read about a thief in the Bible, nowhere does it tell us that a thief comes to give blessing. It tells us nowhere that a thief comes to give good gifts to men or to lift people up to Heaven or to reward them. A thief does not come to give. A thief comes to take away.
Is this not what it says in John 10? We read in John 10:10:
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy…
We do not read here that a thief comes to give the gift of eternal life. A thief does not come to give you a new resurrected body and everlasting life. He comes, number one, to steal. What is he going to steal? If Christ is coming as a thief for you, what is He going to steal?
If He comes as a thief for you, He is coming to steal your treasure. This is because God warned us to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.”
So if we lay up treasure on earth—our own riches like a big bank account or our own things—if we love this world and the things of this world, then our treasure is here. If so, God is coming to steal this and to take it away from us forever. He is coming to do this and then to kill and to destroy us. He is coming to destroy us because it is Judgment Day and it is time for the sword to come down on all of the wicked, all of the unsaved, all of those whom God did not elect and who had no Saviour. This is what a thief is coming to do.
If we go to 1 Thessalonians 5, this is confirmed. In 1 Thessalonians 5:2-3, we read:
…the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them…
A thief comes to destroy. They say that they have “peace and safety” and yet they say that Christ is coming as a thief for them. But it goes on to tell us:
…then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
Where is the provision for God’s people? Where is the provision? He is coming as a thief! Should there not be a provision here in that He is coming as a thief but that He is not coming as a thief for His people?
There is, but we find it in the next verse. Look at what this says. 1 Thessalonians 5:4 is referring to the true people of God, and it says:
But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
Why are we not in darkness? Because God has given us understanding and wisdom. It says in Daniel 12, “the wise shall understand,” but it also says, “none of the wicked shall understand.” The wise will understand, as we read in Ecclesiastes, “a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.”
God sent Jonah to Nineveh and he preached, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” and they repented at the preaching of Jonah. They understood, but none of the wicked will understand.
Sadly and tragically, we see a little foretaste of May 21, 2011 with this awful tragedy in Haiti, which was a relatively minor earthquake. It was a 7.0. The earthquake that the Lord is going to send on May 21 in 2011 is going to be worldwide.
Can you imagine if no one could get to Haiti to help those people like they are helping them now? Can you imagine if no other nations could arrive to assist them because no other nations would be able to? Each nation will have its own situation to deal with. They will have their own problems. We can see coming from this disease, contaminated water, loss of power, etc.
I said something like this to a teenager one time who is really into computer games and things like that. I told him, “You know, the time for games will be up then. You will not be involved in all of these computer games at that time.” I guess that he did not really take this information seriously because he responded, “Yes, but I will still have batteries and so I will still be able to play some games.”
Who is going to want to play games then? Who is going to want to do that then? You are going to realize and know that you have five months. This will be part of that big torment because you will know that five months is all that you have left.
Let us just quickly go back to Ezekiel 33. Again, it says in Ezekiel 33:3-4:
If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.
I had several verses to look at regarding the trumpet, which we will not be able to do because we are close to being out of time. But the trumpet is also the Word of God. We can look at Revelation 1 when the Apostle John was given that revelation and God was moving him to record what we read in the book of Revelation. Let us go to this verse. We read in Revelation 1:10:
I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega…
We do not need to read further. We know that this is Jesus. He has the voice of a trumpet and He is the Word, and so the Word of God is the trumpet that we sound. We do not literally go and blow a trumpet, even though if someone were to do something like that they would definitely get attention. But the Word of God is the trumpet, and so a tract is an excellent source of sounding the trumpet. Broadcasting over radio and over the Internet—whatever medium is used—are also excellent ways of sounding the trumpet.
God opens up the eyes of the watchman. He sees the sword, which is the Word of God. He understands that judgment is coming, and then he proclaims it by also sharing the Word of God, the trumpet. Then God indicates that there will be those who hear and take warning. Those who hear and do not take warning, their blood is on their own head. This means that there is no responsibility for anyone, but that they die themselves.
Then God asks the question, “Why will ye die?” Why will you die? If you are hearing the sound of the trumpet, if you are hearing this warning from the Bible, why do you insist on dying? If you are still going your own way, why do you insist on a poor bowl of porridge compared to the great inheritance that God has for His people? Why do you insist on a few measly pleasures that sin affords, which—believe me—even in this day and age smacks you over the head like a hammer after you do indulge? Why do you insist on that rather than the “recompense of the reward” that Moses knew and saw as he refused to go after “the treasures in Egypt.” Why do people insist on their own way, on these things?
God is warning everyone, and warning is a part of life. We know that there are many warnings everywhere that we look. Beware of dog! You have been warned if you go on that person’s grounds. Beware of this fence…high voltage! We are to beware of so many things.
I actually jotted down a few of the many warnings that we have today. If you have a drug prescription, they always come with a warning. Do not take too much within a certain period of time. Parents warn there children, “Do not run in the street!” Why are there so many warnings? You could probably think of many more. Why are there so many? We have so many warnings because there are so many dangers and sometimes people do not listen.
I had a friend when I was younger who was always getting hurt because he wanted to try dangerous things. He would not listen to anyone and he ended up being electrocuted from high voltage wires that run across train tracks. A little before that, he almost drowned. He just did not listen to warnings.
Warnings are designed to keep us safe. This is why warnings are given. It is so that people can listen to the warning and then they can be protected from something. It is not a bad thing. It is not a horrible thing to be warned. In this case, this is about the best thing that anyone could ever think of because God is warning us, each one, every one of us, and He will warn the whole world, “This Day is coming and the sword is going to fall!”
Will you continue to go your own way when God says, “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” I just do not think that anyone can give a good enough reason for why they will die. No sin is worth it! Absolutely no sin is worth perishing forever.