Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 39:21
"And I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them." (Ezekiel 39:21)
God is glorified not just in showing mercy to whom He will show mercy (Romans 9:15), but in hardening others and choosing their delusions
for them (Isaiah 66:4), to their ruination (Romans 9:17-18).
Here, therefore, in the destruction of Gog and the barbarian hordes of the East, collectively referred to as "the heathen",
the Lord shall be glorified, because it is a destiny He created them for.
It is a fundamental teaching of the Reformed faith and of the Lord’s faithful children before the Reformation1,
that God is glorified in how
He deals with sin, for it shows His judicial nature, His hatred of sin, and, as in the case where He shows mercy, it also shows His discriminating
nature and His sovereignty to do according to His own infallible will and wisdom.2
"...and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them."
The barbarian peoples of the East shall be left in no doubt that God brought this horrible slaughter and annihilation upon their ostensibly
invincible invasion force in northern Israel, it being plain that He laid His Hand upon them in just judgmental wrath.
And they will know that,
since it happened to a newly Christian Israel, that it was the triune Godhead behind it, of Whom Jesus is one of the three Persons.
Hence in one fell swoop shall the Lord invalidate the Islamic concepts of Allah, Mohammed and their blasphemous views of Christ, and will dispel or
signal the demise of the
atheist delusion from the godless elsewhere in the East.
At the same time, inevitably, the shocked onlookers in the West will observe and conclude the same, but they will
for all of this not repent of their wickedness, nor seek the Lord for mercy, as the just and necessary spread of the Armageddon conflict shortly
thereafter, in the form of the fire sent by the Lord in Ezekiel 39:6, will show.
FOOTNOTES
1. Contrary to popular (i.e. uneducated) opinion, there have always been those who adhered to Reformational doctrines, and they tend to be termed Proto-Protestants.
2. This doctrine, however, is reviled by all apostate Christians and the lively fundamentalists of an Arminian disposition;
but here too shall their
caricatured portrayals of the Lord as a pleading, entreating, trying-so-hard-to-save figure who is ultimately bound
by our "free will" be dashed in pieces in what I expect shall be a primer for, or even trigger of, a final, "Second Reformation"
to come as the Kingdom’s golden age begins, for there will be
no greater display of the Reformers' doctrine of irresistible grace in action that the sudden, mass conversion of an entire nation to Christ,
leaving the enemies of the blessed gospel of sovereign grace dumbfounded.
Isaiah 66, which supplements Ezekiel 39 in numerous aspects, words this event beautifully:
"Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child. Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children" (Isaiah 66:7-8)
Gill on the above-quoted excerpt from Isaiah 66 is illuminating:
"...was ever such a thing heard of?"
yet this will be the case of the Jews in the latter day, when they shall be all converted and saved; and which shall be done suddenly and at once; see (Hosea 1:10-11, Romans 11:25-26), of which the conversion of them, in the first times of the Gospel, was an earnest and pledge, when three thousand were convinced, converted, and regenerated, in one day, under one sermon; and at another time, under the word, two thousand, if not five thousand: thus Christ had, from the womb of the morning, or at the first break of the Gospel day, "the dew of his youth", or numbers of souls born again to him, like the drops of the morning dew; see Acts 2:41, 4:4, Psalms 110:3)
...it [the travail of Zion mentioned in Isaiah 66:8] may also design the earnest prayers of the church and its members, striving and wrestling with God, being importunate with him, that the word preached might be useful for the good of souls; and particularly their earnest and fervent prayers for the conversion of the Jews, which will soon be brought about, when a spirit of grace and supplication is not only poured on them, but upon the saints in general, to pray fervently and earnestly for it." (John Gill on Isaiah 66:8)
