When word finally came to Ezekiel that Jerusalem had been destroyed, he turned his attention to the surrounding regions. One of those was Tyre, which was a powerful big city near northern Israel. Well, when Tyre was destroyed, it seemed like Ezekiel’s prophecy was fulfilled, but it was only the beginning.
It would take another 300 years before his warning was complete. Stay tuned to hear the rest of this fascinating story on Thru the Bible with our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
I’m Steve Shwetz, welcoming you as always aboard the Bible bus. So come on in, buckle your seatbelt, because we’re on for a wild ride through the book of Ezekiel as we come to chapters 25 and 26. And as you get to Ezekiel 25, say hi to my friend and Thru the Bible’s president, Greg Harris.
Hey, everybody.
And we are excited to share with you some of the updates of how God is working around the world with Thru the Bible. And we’re focusing today, Greg, I thought it’d be good if we go to Africa, specifically the western part.
Oh, man, so many things going on in our ministry in Africa. Such a dynamic ministry. We’re doing players, we’re moving into FM networks, we’re starting home groups.
And Steve, it is a joy. And some people say, boy, you guys sound like you’re having a great time in there. Honest truth is, this is one of the highlights of my month.
Obviously, seeing you is always a highlight. But I mean, just to share the ministry is so exciting.
And sharing with others how God is just miraculously moving throughout the world. And we see him moving in different ways in different continents. And our sense is that Africa, there’s a lot of stuff happening.
The Spirit seems to be moving in significant ways, in particular, at least in this season, in using Thru the Bible in that continent.
And Steve, so much of it is thanks to our World Prayer Team. So please, if you haven’t joined, go to ttb.org/pray. You’ll get a daily email and you will have a ministry to support God’s work going out all over the world.
So let’s get to the letters. I know you always want to share letters.
Yeah, here’s from a Fung Bee Bible bus listener in Benin. I am a committed Christian in my church where I worship the Lord with beloved ones. I sing in the choir and lead worship.
However, recently, I aspire to serve the Lord with the other spiritual gifts that are within me. I heard you teach on spiritual gifts and I asked you, can you help me know mine? I don’t really know what they are and how to use them.
I want to play my part in the body of Christ. I thank God that this confusion did not last. Indeed, since I was added to the forum of media TTB Fung Bee program, the Holy Spirit has helped me to see clearly through the teaching of God’s word.
I will further attach myself to this program in order to draw out the maximum for my spiritual growth. Thank you very much to the entire team and may the Lord lift you up in the name of Jesus Christ.
Wonderful. Now let’s go to Cape Verde. And if you don’t know where that is, it’s a group of islands off the west coast of Africa.
And when the scripture talks about reaching the islands, I heard Dr. McGee teaching that recently. It’s happening. So this listener says, a few days ago, I was in the interior of the island where I live, in a place without many means of communication.
I only had a small radio set. I heard the message from you and a light shone in my mind and heart. It brought me back memories from my childhood and my relationship with God.
I will continue to listen as I return back to my faith.
Wow. Praise the Lord for that testimony. And here, now there’s 23 languages.
We’re moving to Sierra Leone. 23 languages spoken there. English is the primary language.
Here’s Ismail from Sierra Leone. I am a fervent Muslim from Sierra Leone. I love listening to your teaching about the Book of Malachi.
That’s interesting, which has inspired me to have more trust in Christianity. And the preaching of Dr. McGee, I would be grateful if you pray for me as I have family stress. Thank you very much for your hospitality.
Oh, I wish we had time to talk about that.
Yeah, and if you’re a Muslim listening to Christian radio, my friend, I’m sure you’ve got family stress.
Yeah, reaching Muslims through Malachi, who would ever envision that?
Yeah, it’s great. Greg, let me pray for us as we continue our program in Ezekiel. Heavenly Father, we are so thankful for the way you’re moving in West Africa.
Continue to do that, Lord. And if you see suitable use through the Bible for accomplishing your purposes. Thank you, Lord, for the ministry.
Pray that you would bless it as it goes out today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Let’s begin our study of Ezekiel 25 on Thru the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
We have come to a section here, beginning with chapters 25, going through chapters 32. And we are actually dealing here with prophecies concerning the nations that we’re round about. We’ll have in chapter 25 here, prophecies against Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia.
All of those, as far as we’re concerned today, have long since disappeared from the face of the earth. And the prophecies have been literally fulfilled. Then in chapters 26 and 28, we have the prophecies against Tyre.
And then in chapters 29 through 32, prophecies against Egypt. Now, Ezekiel, up to this point, he has been giving out prophecies concerning Jerusalem and the land of Israel. Because the final deportation of the children of Israel has not yet arrived in that land.
And these people halk on to this faint hope. And they were urged on and encouraged by the false prophets that God would not destroy Jerusalem. And that the land of Israel would remain.
After all, wasn’t that his method of communication to the world? And may I say they were startled. They were dumbfounded when word came, as it did.
And this man, Ezekiel, will record it when we get to 3321. It came to pass in the 12th year of our captivity, in the 10th month, in the 5th day of the month, that one that had escaped out of Jerusalem came under me, saying, the city is smitten. When that word came and the headline in the Babylonian bugle read, Jerusalem destroyed.
And then the byline underneath was Jerusalem, and it said, on this day, Nebuchadnezzar with his armies entered the city of Jerusalem, having breached the wall. Now, may I say to you, this man Ezekiel is proven right, and from here on, he will not be giving you prophecies concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, because he’s not writing history, he’s writing prophecies. So he turns to these surrounding nations.
Now, let’s look at this for just a moment. There’s a tremendous message here for us. There is God’s city in ruins, and I see standing over that city, a man by the name of Jeremiah, tears coursing down his cheeks, and he has a broken heart, and he’s the one that mirrors the one that will be coming in, oh, just about 500 and some odd years, and he too will sit over Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives, and he will weep over Jerusalem, because destruction is coming again to the city, because they have turned their back on the living and the true God.
Now the thing that was happening, or at least had happened, here’s another prophet, and I don’t think he’s weeping, and I tell you why. I know he’s not weeping, because at the same time his lovely wife died, and the one that the Scripture makes it very clear, he loved her, and he’s told not to mourn. He’s on the surface, hard-boiled.
Well, God said he’d be that way. Now this reveals the two sides of God in this matter, and we need that today. God is tender-hearted, like Jeremiah, the Lord Jesus, and how tender-hearted he was, merciful and kind, not willing that any should perish, and he died for us on the cross.
But listen to him speaking to these cities that rejected him. Woe unto you, Capernaum! You’ll be cast down to hell!
Say that strong language coming from the gentle Jesus. And then again, he said, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! And he denounced them in a way, my friend, that makes your hair curl.
Let me tell you the two sides of God, and those two sides are true today. We get just a warped view of him when we run around and say, God is love, God is love. That’s true.
Don’t lose sight of it. But God is holy, God is righteous, and God will judge. And if you reject his salvation, well, the Lord Jesus said, no man cometh to the Father, but by me.
You’re not rushing into heaven, my friend, on the little love boat today. You are only going to come there because Christ shed his blood, gave his life, that you might have eternal life and be covered with the righteousness of Christ, standing complete and acceptable in him. Now, this gives us today a wrong, warped view of God.
I always think in this connection of that judge years ago out in West Texas. He had a reputation for making quick decisions, and others just didn’t move that fast. Somebody asked him one day, says, what is the secret of you making quick decisions?
Well, he says, I tell you what I do. I just listen to the defense, and then I hand in a decision. And this friend was startled.
He said to him, don’t you ever listen to the prosecution? Well, he said, I used to. But he said, that always confused me.
May I say to you, a lot of confused folk today, running around talking about the love of God, don’t you forget, he’ll judge also. And that’s maybe the reason Ezekiel is a closed book, a sealed book to so many folk, and liberal ministers encourage that. They say, well, nobody can understand it.
Well, you sure can’t understand it until you study the book. We’ve had a remarkable principle laid down here so far, and I hope we don’t miss its message. It’s for us today.
Now, here we come to the judging of these nations that we’re round about. And I’m not going to be very long with them, I can assure you, because they’ve long since passed off of the stage, but they are to return. They’re a very interesting thing, and only God can bring them back.
And you find here the judgment, first of all, of the Ammonites. Well, the Ammonites have a pretty bad beginning. To begin with, their country was along the Dead Sea, and we’ve already had prophecies concerning them, that they were to go into captivity, which they did.
They were made subject to Nebuchadnezzar. They are the result. They go back to Ammon, son of Blot, by his own daughter, the incestuous relationship.
And you have that same thing in Moab. And you have here a prophecy against Moab. And God says in each case, I’m going to judge them.
In verse 7 of chapter 25, Behold, therefore, I will stretch out mine hand upon thee. Now, this is Ammon. I’ll deliver thee for a spoil to the nations.
I’ll cut thee off from a people. Why does God do that? And thou shalt know that I’m the Lord.
And God’s judgment is for that. Now, we’re going to see that, especially in a prophecy for the future that concerns, I think, Russia and the 38th and 39th of Ezekiel will be there one of these days. Now, the prophecy concerning Moab here, Moab was also on the east of Israel, but it was along the northern part of the Dead Sea.
And this is the land that Ruth the Moabitess came from. And David was an ancestor of hers. She was an ancestor of David, I should say.
Let’s not get it mixed up. And then we find also that the Lord Jesus Christ came in that line, read the first chapter of Matthew, and Ruth’s name is mentioned there in the genealogy. Now we have a prophecy here concerning Edom.
Now, who is Edom? Edom came from Esau. And we are going to see that when we get to the Rockhune city of Petra, which we’ve by the way already had, and I went into detail concerning that.
Now, we’ll probably be coming back to it, however, and we’ll have actually one book that will be devoted to that. And that will be the little book of Obadiah. Now you also, beginning with verse 15, you have the prophecy here against Philistia.
The Philistines have disappeared. I haven’t seen the Philistines in a long time myself. And they’re not in that land today.
And this judgment also was literally fulfilled. Now, I’m not dealing with this because read it. And this was literally fulfilled.
And that, of course, causes the critic, the liberal critic, oh, he wrote this after it happened. Well, that’s what he says. And he just didn’t happen to be around at that time.
And these prophecies were fulfilled after Ezekiel, of course. Now, we have here, coming to chapter 26, a very remarkable prophecy concerning Tyre and also concerning Sidon. And this makes this an exceedingly interesting section.
Tyre and Sidon belong together. They belong together like pork and beans or ham and eggs. You never think of one and the other.
Now, Tyre was the capital of the great Phoenician nation. They were a seagoing people. They plied the Mediterranean and went even beyond.
We know today that they went around, the pillars of Hercules, the Rock of Gibraltar, and came up to Great Britain. And they got 10 there. In fact, the meaning of the word Britain was 10.
And they also established a colony in North Africa. And that was the nation and city that gave Rome so much trouble. And then Tarshish, north on the southern coast of Spain, was founded by these people.
They were great colonizers. And they also apparently went around Africa. And they went a great deal farther than we have believed in the past.
Now, Tyre was a great city, a proud city, a great place. And Hiram king of Tyre had been a good friend of David, supplied him with materials. Solomon didn’t get along with him as well as David did.
But this man, Hiram, apparently a great king, but also the center of the worship of Baal was there, entire in Sidon. And you have also this woman, Jezebel, she was a daughter of the priests and king also of that area of the Phoenicians. And she introduced this worship in the Northern kingdom.
Now, God has a prophecy here concerning this place, and it is tremendous. It’s first against the prince and the ruler of the place. Let me begin reading at chapter 26.
And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first day of the month, that the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, son of man, because Tyre hath said unto Jerusalem, aha, she’s broken. That was the gates of the people. She’s turned unto me.
I shall be replenished. Now she’s laid waste. In other words, Tyre was destroyed at the same time that Jerusalem was.
Nebuchadnezzar took Tyre. Now, verse 3, I’m reading, therefore, thus saith the Lord, God, behold, I’m against thee, O Tyre. And when God says that, you can be sure he’s against the plates.
And I will cause many nations to come up against thee as the sea causes its waves to come up, just as the waves break on a shore. God says, Phoenicia and Tyre, the great commercial center, the great capital that’s been invincible. Now nations are going to come just like the waves that have been breaking on the shore.
Now what would happen? They shall destroy the walls of Tyre, break down her towers. I will also scrape her dust from her and make her like the top of a rock.
Now who would do that? Now actually, Nebuchadnezzar came against the city. He destroyed the city.
But friends, he never did anything like this. He didn’t scrape it at all. And God’s not through with it.
Will you notice what he says? It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea. That’s an interesting statement.
It’s going to become a fishing village, not the great proud capital. For I have spoken it, saith the Lord God, and it shall become a spoil to the nations. And her daughters, which are in the field, shall be slain by the sword.
Now, you find that these colonies that they had established, they’d established one on Cyprus. Cyprus means copper, and they got copper from there. These metals were brought by the Phoenicians into the ancient civilized world of that day.
Now, her daughters, they’re going to be destroyed also. And let me read verse 7. For thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will bring upon Tyre Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a king of kings from the north, with horses and with chariots and with horsemen and companies, and many people.
He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field. He shall make a fort against thee, cast a siege mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee. He shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers.
By reason of the abundance of his horses, their dust shall cover thee. Now Nebuchadnezzar breached the walls of ancient Tyre, just as he had Jerusalem. And this statement was literally fulfilled.
But he has said that he’s gonna scrape or dust from her, just like the top of a rug. Well, Nebuchadnezzar didn’t do that at all. Now, verse 11, with the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets.
He shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrisons shall go down to the ground. Now, what about it? How about scraping it?
Well, let’s read on, verse 12. And they, not Nebuchadnezzar now, God has said, the nations are coming. Here comes another nation.
And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise. And they shall break down thy walls, destroy thy pleasant houses, and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber, and thy dust in the midst of the water. And I will cause the noise of thy songs to cease, and the sound of thy harps shall be no more.
And I will make thee like the top of a rock. Thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon. Thou shalt be built no more.
For I, the Lord, have spoken it, saith the Lord God. Now, friends, may I say to you that this prophecy just seemed like it could never be fulfilled. For 300 years, there were the ruins of Tyre.
And they were, I tell you, very impressive. But this hadn’t been fulfilled. Who’s going to take up the stones and even scrape it, and even the dust put it in the ocean?
Well, out of the west, there comes this goat that Daniel talked about with a strong horn. That was Alexander the Great. And what had happened was that Tyre decided after the destruction of Nebuchadnezzar that they would go out to an island since there were seagoing people, and on that island, they’d build a fortress, and they would be there, and nobody could get to them.
Well, when Alexander got there, he saw the ruins of the city, but out yonder on the islands where the people are and where the new city is. And what did he do? He had plenty of time, and he had a lot of soldiers.
So he decided he’d build a causeway. And where did he get the material to put out in the ocean? Well, he scraped old tire and he took the pillars, he took even the dust, and he just poured it out there and built a causeway.
And his army went right into the city of Tyre and destroyed it. And from that day to this, it’s never been rebuilt. Now, may I say to you, you can say that Ezekiel wrote history about the coming of Nebuchadnezzar, but you sure can’t say that he wrote history when he wrote about this man Alexander the Great.
Now, I’ve been to ancient Tyre. I’ve studied those ruins. And I must confess, I was a little confused at first.
I drove down the coast from Beirut and the Mediterranean Sea is on the right, and I get down here to the ruins of ancient Tyre, and it’s over on the left. You know what had happened? I couldn’t figure it out at first.
It was really puzzling. I had walked out on this isthmus now that this man Alexander had made, and there are the ruins. They’ve been excavating there, and I walked down through some of those trenches, and I ought not to make the confession, but there was all kinds of pieces of pottery there and other artifacts.
I just picked up a couple pieces of pottery and put them in my pocket. I think I still have that around somewhere. That was ancient Tyre, if you please.
This was literally fulfilled. Now, in one sense, this is one of the most remarkable prophecies that you have in the Word of God, and it’s been literally fulfilled. And there’s the place over there.
It’s one of the best places to build a city I’ve ever been, but nobody’s built it bad. Lebanon hasn’t. Sidon stands today as it always has.
But Tyre went down, the main city. You want to say today that the Word of God is guesswork? Or that this is filled with all kinds of falsehoods?
May I say to you, it’s not my business to explain this to you. It’s your business to decide how it came to pass. I’ll tell you what I believe.
It’s the Word of God. Only God could prophesy like this. Why, our weatherman has had a lot of trouble this winter, he can’t even tell you what it’s going to do the next day.
God said what was going to happen in 300 years and what was going to happen even today. If you can rebuild a car, you can contradict God’s Word. But I advise you to invest your money somewhere else.
Until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
That’s a good word from Dr. McGee, isn’t it? Next time Dr. McGee answers the question, What does Satan look like? I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s certainly not the popular cartoon picture of a creature with horns and a forked tail and cloven feet and probably painted red.
Don’t miss learning the truth. If you have any questions about this ministry or if there is any way that we can serve you, call us at 1-800-65-BIBLE or email BibleBus at ttb.org. I look forward to studying the Bible again with you next time.
I’m Steve Shwetz. And, as always, I’m saving a seat on the Bible Bus just for you.
Your study today was made possible through your prayer and financial support. We’ll meet you back here next time. In fact, we’re going to do this together, Lord willing, till Jesus comes again.
In which case, we’ll meet you in the air.
