Key Verses: Ezekiel 47:22, 48:35
…you will divide it [the land]…for yourselves and for the strangers who sojourn among you and who bear children among you. They shall be to you as native born…All the way around shall be eighteen thousand cubits; and the name of the city from that day shall be: THE LORD IS THERE!

Ezekiel 46 tells us five times of “The Prince!” Isaiah calls Him “Prince of Peace,” (Isaiah 9:6) and during His reign as Messiah King, there will be total peace. Here and now He brings “peace on earth” (the message to the shepherds at the birth of Jesus), and read about how He brings peace to the troubled soul in the present (Ephesians 2:13-18).

Ezekiel 47 describes the final Temple to be built in Jerusalem, serving the whole world during the final 1,000 years before the new heaven and the new earth, of which Peter writes (we move over to Second Peter in tomorrow’s reading).

Ezekiel 48 describes the distribution of land and includes the “stranger” (non-Jew). The departments of immigration in our various countries could learn God’s plan for caring for everyone whom He cares for equally. Seven times in today’s reading we read of lands that “belong to the Prince.” We have something in Canada called “Crown Land.” In theory it belongs to Queen Elizabeth 2 (translate that as government). We may have temporary title to land, but the real owner of all is “The Prince!”

PRAYER FOR TODAY:
Lord God, You were so concerned with every detail of the Temple construction and use. Surely You are even more concerned with the temple in whom You dwell in this age. Paul taught that I am Your temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). Be in charge of this human temple, I pray! I ask You this in the Name of the One “In Whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:8-10), Jesus Christ (Messiah). Amen!!!

100 PERSONAL WORDS:
My wife, Norma-Jean, has told me several times that she expects Israel to build a wall between the Dome of the Rock (a Muslim shrine on the Temple mount for the last 1,300 years) and the actual location of the Temple Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, so that a new Temple can be built. She has actually paced out the space. She claims there’s room there for a Temple to be built beside the mosque. Maybe? That land is a fuse waiting for someone to ignite it, launching what could be World War III. The Eastern Gate in Jerusalem’s wall, blocked up by the Muslims, leads directly into the core of what once was the Temple.

My sons (who help me with this blog) and I walked from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. Jerusalem is 2,500 feet above Sea Level and the Dead Sea is 1,300 feet below. I imagined the rush of the waters spoken of in Ezekiel 47, coursing down the valleys beside the road (someone captured on video a rush of water down to the Dead Sea after a rain in the Judean hills…click here). My imagination and ability to use words which paint a picture is not nearly as descriptive as those of Ezekiel. Today is the last reading for now in Ezekiel.

Yours for communicating, in as many ways as possible, the Gospel message,

David

P.S. This blocked-up Eastern Gate (below) in the wall of Jerusalem would have opened in a direct line with the entrance to the central area of the Temple at the time of Jesus. The ancient Eastern Gate, through which Jesus passed on Palm Sunday, was discovered by Jim Fleming, a professor at the college in Jerusalem where my daughter, Ellen Shaheen, was a student. It’s just below this section of the wall. Ezekiel said that the Prince would enter through the “gateway of the inner court that faces toward the east” (Ezekiel 46:1-2).