Ozarks Hebrew Heritage Celebrating the Hebrew Roots of our Faith

AUGUST 21, 2021 ~ BROTHER LYNN GREUTER

The month of Elul is among other things, a month of exposure and correction. Some things we are called to expose and correct by ourselves, others are exposed by the hand of God and He brings correction Himself.

Evidence of this can be found in many passages of scripture, the basis of this writing is drawn from Ezekiel 8.

Occuring on the 5th day of Elul, God exposes things which Israel refuses to correct themselves. Four things are pointed out to Ezekiel as major offenses. An image of jealousy, seventy one people worshipping in a room filled with idolatrous images, women weeping for, or giving them themselves to, the weeping idol of Tammuz, and twenty five men facing the sun worshipping it.

A continuation of reading reveals there would be no mercy to those who were guilty of those things, (however, mercy was extended to those who were distraught by them) and the Presence of God left the Temple crippling the strength of the nation.

In each of the four charges leveled by God there is a relevant picture given to our current events.

The “image of jealousy” is widely believed to be an obelisk, a phallic symbol of pagan worship.

The seventy on people burning incense in hidden chambers brings connotations of the Great Sanhedrin, the highest level of legal rule in The Land. Our national equivalent would be the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tammuz, seems to have been a pagan deity of fertility cult worship in which women in particular were drawn to.

Many of the rites associated with this worship are central to Christianity’s Easter Sunday rituals, a mixture of holy and profane worship ceremonies.

Twenty five men whose faces were toward the sun, brings a picture of the highest spiritual leaders of The Land. Each tribe had two representatives who would stand in attendance as the High Priest presented the nation each day before God. A total of 25 men including the High Priest, who had totally forsaken their God.

The Hebrew text gives further insight to the actions of these men not found in translations. Each man had bent over exposing themselves, and were defecating toward the Presence of God in the Temple. An act which God takes not of by saying the stench created would return back into their own noses.

Friday, August 13, 2021 was this year’s date for Ezekiel’s vision.

With all these things we find on the very day of Ezekiel’s vision, in Afghanistan, Kandahar and three other lesser cities fell to Taliban forces. Due to poor planning an unknown number (in the thousands) of American and foreign citizens are in extreme danger. Washington’s crimes against humanity exposed before all the world.

In the very week of Ezekiel’s vision, the entire nation viewed on TV as lightning strikes the Washington Monument, on obelisk sitting in our national capital. A replica of the image of jealousy as recorded in Ezekiel. God who controls all things sent a sign from the heavens.

We watch this week as the highest levels of government produce policies in secret chambers which have become exposed as they worship the gods of power and money.

Because of the unwillingness of spiritual leaders to lead in righteousness, women are seduced themselves and instruct their children to participate in pagan springtime rituals.

Because the spiritual representatives of the nation have turned their backs on God and have defecated upon the holy things, our nation has been weakened.

We are beginning to see the results of a nation whose high courts and spiritual leaders have created policies which diverge from the will of God.

In eleven days, in Afghanistan, American leadership has been exposed for what it has become for all the world to see.

For successive administrations the unchecked powers of an elite group hidden behind walls of power and prestige, have quietly wrecked our nation.

Eleven is a spiritual number representing incompletion and disorganization.

In eleven days, in the month of Elul, the month of searching and exposure, even to the day and week of scriptural example, the Word of God brings forth the sins of the national leaders.

To them, the blood and treasure left behind to strengthen an enemies hands means nothing.

The families who have sent sons and daughters to be maimed or killed hold no value. The promise of further bloodshed and oppression of an indigenous population is of no concern.

Their goals of power in the monetary war machine and nation building have deepened their coffers of blood money and they fear no reprisals.

But I assure you today, since the words of Ezekiel are so spot on in rebuke, his other words will also unavoidably come to pass.

Ezekiel 8:18 reads as follows: “Therefore, I will also deal in my fury; my eye will not spare, neither will I have pity; and even if they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.”