A humbling verse from Ezekiel – but the besieged people of Iran are far from being delivered

I opened my Bible yesterday at Ezekiel 7:14, a verse that God highlighted to me decades ago:
‘They have blown the trumpet and made everything ready but none goes to battle for my wrath is upon all their multitude.’

Then, He was speaking of the siege against the American embassy in Tehran that lasted throughout 1980, during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. American launched a daring – but unfortunately fatally doomed– mission to rescue 52 hostages who were being held captive.

And now, nearly half a century later, we heard Pete Hegseth on Tuesday announcing (unproven) success in ‘Project Freedom’s’ attempt to escort vessels out through the Straits of Hormuz, and on Wednesday, President Trump announcing the project’s suspension. History appears to be repeating itself: everything is ‘made ready,’ but America lacks either the military strength or the courage to bring the ships through.

It is important to remember the people who are most directly affected of all. Lazarus Yehgnazar, founder of Transform Iran [https://transformiran.com/], reminds us that,

‘Iran itself has been taken hostage for 47 years – and that tens of thousands of teenagers, youth, writers, thinkers, academics, students and others have been raped, tortured, and murdered in Iran under the IRGC clerical rule.’ Lazaus adds,

‘Moreover, besides many tragedies, in the last 47 years of barbaric rule, under the Ayatollah’s, we have 3.8 million drug addicts . . . using [huge amounts of] opiates and heroin each single month provided, and controlled by IRGC, producing because this produces much needed cash to give to Hezbollah and Hamas, in order to keep Lebanon and Palestine as hostages, and to produce arms to obliterate Israel from Planet Earth.’

Many multitudes of people are desperate to be free of this pitiless regime.

Lazarus went on to quote Dietrich Bonhoffer, who we referenced in Mashal 490. Bonhoffer wrote:

“If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”’

President Trump certainly seeks to bring the Iranian regime to so vulnerable a position that internal protests are able to overthrow it. The American blockade is certainly doing Iran great economic harm, of course, but as one journalist commented,

‘America is fighting but not winning – whereas China is winning without fighting!’

We pray for the meeting next week between Trump and Xi, for both Iran and America need its support to get the Straits opened up again. There is every chance that it is this could be what the Telegraph calls a ‘dirty deal’ – that Trump will renege on ALL his war aims just to get the oil flowing again – and to have a chance to restock its weapons arsenal. With each Patriot interceptor costing $4,000,000, it is thought that it could take America two years to produce the number of weapons it has used up.

It is true that blockades can be effective weapons of war in the long run – but they do really need that ‘long run,’ and Trump doesn’t do long runs. He suggests he will pass responsibility onto others, but to who? He undermines his own case.

I went on to ponder Ezekiel chapters 6 to 11 yesterday. They are not the easiest chapters in the scriptures to read, and seeking to apply them to the current situation is complicated and partial, for the situations are widely different – and yet there were salient similarities. I will see if I have the time, skill and energy to write some of them up.

‘They have blown the trumpet and made everything ready but none goes to battle for my wrath is upon all their multitude.’ (Ezek. 7:14)

As I wrote previously, I alighted on this daunting verse in which the Lord refused to endorse a specific military deliverance, and saw in it a measure of relevance to America’s conflict with Iran. It was with that in mind that I began studying the context of the verse, as if it were referring to the ‘quagmire’ of the current situation in the Gulf. Of course the parallels are not even remotely exact, but I noted enough similarities to be worthy of comment. See if you think so too.

Chapters 6-11 of Ezekiel do not make for happy reading. The pronouncement of dire judgements in chapters 6 and 7 are succeeded by their outworking for anyone not marked with God’s seal, and then the sad tale of His glory departing the temple in chapters 8 through 11. These six chapters describe a situation that is the very opposite of the blessing the Lord would like to pour out on His people – but their actions demand His attention, and the doom to come is very severe.

The book of Job teaches us that we cannot simply attribute all suffering (personal or national) to wrong behaviour on our part, (phew!) – but on the other hand the prophets and Jesus Himself make it clear that wickedness does carry a penalty, and that penalty can lead to great anguish. (Matt. 12:41-41, 23:35-37; Luke 19:44; 23:28-29). Those who persistently pursue evil will one day bear the cost of their actions, and the fallout will forcibly impact the lives of many who were not primarily involved. The Lord is not squeamish about this and will execute His judgements. BUT, He always leaves room for mercy in the event of repentance, and He invites our intercession for those thus affected.

The fact that He is always seeking grounds to exercise mercy has nothing whatsoever in common with the TACO approach of the current American president!

So when God warns that His ‘eye will not spare you, nor will I have pity but I will punish you for your conduct (your ways) and will surely repay you for the detestable practices in your midst,’ (Ez. 7:4), He leaves room for hope: ‘Then you will know that I am the Lord.’ His judgement is neither impulsive nor impersonal. Disaster will follow upon disaster (v5), so that *’you will know that I am who smites (strikes) you.’

It was the habit of early Puritan settlers to give their children some extraordinary names, ones that certainly wouldn’t make the lists of the most popular names today. How about ‘Smite-him-in-the-midriff Habakkuk Jones?’ (See a Bible study on the theme of Smiting.)

Behold doom has come upon you. The time has come!
The day is near! …
I am about to pour out My wrath on you
and spend My anger against you.
I will judge you according to your conduct
and repay you for all your detestable practices.
Pride has budded;
violence has grown up into a rod of wickedness…
‘See, the day!
See, it comes!
Doom has burst forth,
the rod has budded,
arrogance has blossomed!
Violence has arisen. (Ezek. 7:7-11)

Like a storm-watching meteorologist sounding the alert that a havoc-wreaking tornado is swirling ever closer the writer piles on the warnings. (Jeremiah speaks of such storms likewise in Jeremiah 25). To what extent actual weather events arise as human sin cries out is a debatable matter; but behind many events in our backslidden nation lies the heavy hand of God, even as He rests His gentle hand on His people who are seeking Him, for blood and polluted land calls out against injustice and exploitation, inviting the Lord to move in retribution.

And how do the people respond to these forewarnings? Not by looking to the Lord their Rock, but to their habitual source of strength and comfort. The trouble is that these themselves all too often proved to be the (idolatrous) cause of the judgements God is bringing against them. We often think wealth will protect us in times of insecurity and shaking, but even that is of limited use in times of extreme famine.

They will throw their silver into the streets,
and their gold will be treated as a thing unclean.
Their silver and gold
will not be able to deliver them
in the day of the Lord’s wrath.
It will not satisfy their hunger
or fill their stomachs,
for it has caused them to stumble into sin.
They took pride in their beautiful jewellery
and used it to make their detestable idols.
They made it into vile images;
therefore I will make it a thing unclean for them.
I will give their wealth as plunder to foreigners
and as loot to the wicked of the earth,
who will defile it.
I will turn my face away from the people,
and robbers will desecrate the place I treasure. (Ezek. 7:19-22)

The Lord’s desire for His people was that they would look to Him as their hope, not their silver and gold or their idols – and if that meant demolishing their self-confidence, then so be it. It’s not that wealth of itself that is wrong, but the delusion that arises from depending on it which leads to the serving Mammon in our hearts.

Did He not say from the beginning, ‘Beware lest you say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me?”’ (Deut. 8:17) Rather than being grateful, humble and dependent, pride is so deeply entrenched in so many that they (or we!) continue only to trust in their own strength.

Is this not the attitude we saw from the outset in Trump and Hegseth as they boast of America’s great military might as they launched this war with Iran – now downgraded in Trump’s eyes to a ‘skirmish’ or ‘conflict’, because he is so desperate to pass over it and to move on beyond it before Independence Day and the World Cup come round.

Is it not vanity and presumption that makes them assume that when America blows its trumpet, the rest of the world will immediately bow the knee and rush to fulfil its demands?

Oh America, America, it doesn’t work like that!

As Trump’s short-lived Project Freedom got under way yesterday, 100 American planes, plus the might of the American navy, managed to oversee no more than the release of two US-flagged tankers from the Straits of Hormuz – even as three other tankers (one belonging to the UAE, one to France and the third to South Korea) were hit.

There is no doubt that the Iranian regime is wicked, a ‘madman’ destroying innocent lives, and that there is a need to ‘wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver,’ as Bonhoeffer put it. The question is, is this a role God has appointed America to fulfil? Many believe it rushed impulsively into the fight, inadequately prepared, and unwilling to sustain the struggle for the long haul –something we can be sure that Russia, North Korea and China will all have weighed and noted as carefully as Iran itself, with a view to pursuing their own plans and purposes: China with a view to invading Taiwan, and Russia to the possibility of attacking a Baltic state. (Albeit that Russia is currently being hit so hard by long range drone attacks that it is no position to launch a new front.)

In the face of intense oppression, it would be no surprise to find Iranian believers hoping that Trump will honour his word and to act on his assertion that ‘help is at hand.’ The same is true in parts of Nigeria where, emboldened by Trump’s promises to come to the aid of Christians who are being persecuted, Fulani Christians are praying fervently for Trump to intervene, as this brief You Tube shows. This is where Trump’s over promising has real world effects and consequences.

Nobody is disputing for one moment just how oppressive and anti-Christian the regime in Tehran really is, or the extent of the suffering it is inflicting on its own people. if any regime is a worthy of being judged destroyed and removed, then this is surely it. But is America even strong enough to play the part of the Babylonian attackers against Judah in Habakkuk’s day?

As we continue to consider and to pray for the plight of the Iranian people, who are suffering so grievously under their deeply unpopular but seemingly all-powerful tyrannical masters, I would love to share this post with you: *Prince Caspian riding out against tyranny* before outlining a theme the Lord has been giving me from Ezekiel chapters 6-11.

How much there is to draw on and benefit from in the Narnia stories!

With regard to the Lord’s dealings with Jerusalem

Things had gone so far astray in Jerusalem that the Lord declared that He would permit enemy forces to desecrate the even the temple that He treasured, because it had become a caricature of what it should be. Just as He had summoned Jeremiah to bravely and boldly warn the people that they were making the cardinal mistake of trusting in the Lord’s temple rather than in the Lord of the temple, so now the Lord was warning Israel that He would ‘turn His face from them.’ (Ezek. 7:21-22)

It was very important that Ezekiel should understand His reasons for declaring why the Lord had brought the nation to the point where neither its bank balance nor its military prowess could save them; it was all to everything to do with their faith being compromised.

To that end, a heavenly being picked up the prophet, and transported him to Jerusalem, to the city that had been his home, but where he was now an unseen visitor. In chapter eight we see Ezekiel observing the ‘idol of jealousy’ set up at the Altar Gate; balking at the ‘detestable’ images that had been painted on the temple walls, and witnessing the seventy elders of Israel offering incense to their false gods. He even saw women worshipping the god of fertility, and men worshipping the sun, their backs to the temple, and every one of them profaning the holy and treasured place of God.

We don’t always appreciate just how real – and how powerful – the heavenly host are, and how much the Lord desires that we should be aware of the essential partnership that exists between Heaven and Earth! He showed Elisha the heavenly host who were protecting him from a force sent to capture him, (2 Kgs. 6) just as a fiery chariot carried Elijah to Heaven, (2 Kgs. 11) and Philip was bodily whisked Philip from one important evangelistic assignment to another.

I have myself experienced a few dramatic encounters with elements of the heavenly host for both blessing and empowerment. He has also used them to reveal and confirm His message for our times, such as when He spoke through me in Farsi over the course of many hours, in the presence of a Persian speaker. I have also heard the voice of the Lord communicating truths that have been much harder to hear!

Sometimes the word of God can seem a bit obscure. Not so on any of these occasions. As Heaven showed Ezekiel what was happening in Jerusalem, the hard-hitting message in the eighth chapter was crystal clear, amplifying what He had warned of through earlier prophets. Now he was seeing for himself all the corruption that was at work amongst those who thought that because they were acting in secret nobody would ever know what they were really doing. But God sees it all; whatever it is, whether idolatry or insider trading, all is seen, and will be unmasked alongside every other abhorrent practice. There are no secrets from God – and nobody is ultimately untouchable.

I believe the Lord is going to similar lengths to reveal the corruption in Donald Trump’s entourage. Sadly, it is all too often secular observers who are denouncing this rather than the Church. Too many Christians continue to refute all evidence of it, and to give the president the benefit of the doubt, utterly persuaded by a vociferous community, including false prophets like Paula White, who have publicly declared him that to be an instrument of God, despite his hedonism and immoral practices.

This is a regime that has learned to spin all setbacks and criticisms and turn them to its own advantage. But this is a ‘game’ that can only be played for so long. What is needed is not yet more sycophantic endorsements but rather a blunt confrontation with the truth. The Lord told Ezekiel that He would no longer listen to the prayers of those who were defiling Jerusalem, even when they cried long and loud in His ears. (Ezek. 8:18)

This is where we need the ministry of a modern day James, who did not hold back from naming as ‘adulteresses’ those who used prayer to their own ends. (James 4:4 BSB; See You ask amiss and Rick Renner writing about praying ‘amiss.’ The word translated ‘amiss’ is kakos in Greek – which describes something that is ugly, evil, bad or wrong).

The ‘abominations’ that were being committed in Jerusalem spread their corruption throughout the land of Judah, so that it was filled with violence, and continually provoking the Lord’s anger – even to the point where His patience was finally exhausted. (Ez. 8:17) It is in chapter 9 that we see the Lord despatching a heavenly scribe to mark those who sigh over the sin of the city, followed by six executioners. It is a horrifying scene.

The judgement continues unabated in chapter 10, as the scribe is commanded to fill his hands with burning coals from beneath God’s throne, and to scatter them over the city. Whereas being touched by a heavenly burning coal had served to purify Isaiah’s lips, this is the fire that consumes and destroys. ‘Everyone will be salted with fire,’ Jesus warned, implying that every believer will face trials that are designed to test and purify us, and to strengthen our faith. (Mark 9:49; cf 1 Pet. 1:6-8)

Because Isaiah’s deepest desire was to honour the Lord, it preserved him from destruction, the burning coals serving merely to purify him; but many in Jerusalem at that time, as in Trump’s court today – are filled to the brim with the fruits of deception, and end up being consumed by it.

Another image from Narnia

The elders who burned incense intended for the God of Israel whilst secretly worshipping other gods and pleasures were doing a terrible syncretistic thing. To revert to parallels with CS Lewis’s allegory in The Last Battle, when Shift the Ape sets himself up in power his glory, it was a terrible shock to the people to find him not behaving in the way such a God should do, loving mercy and welcoming the stranger, but in arbitrary and even tyrannical ways.

By the end of Chapter 3, ‘The Ape in its Glory,’ Narnia is transformed from what it was through a combination of psycho-spiritual manipulation and economic exploitation.

If you have not read the stunning series of events that climax the Narnia series do get whole of a copy of The Last Battle – and the rest of the series too!

In the case of Ezekiel, there would be no deep deliverance on this occasion for the nation. Rather, we see the glory of God slowly withdrawing from the city. The fact that it was a three-stage retreat is indication enough that this was an event that caused God Himself great sadness; more profound even than the pain a parent feels when their child refuses to look either to them or to the Lord.

It was a great shock to Ezekiel to see one of only two members of the council who are named – Pelatiah – suddenly keeling over and dying, presumably of a heart attack, even as he was continuing to prophesy against corrupt leaders (though they would not have been able to hear him as he was in a spiritual state. (Ezek. 11:13) It brought home to him yet more starkly the truth and reality of all that God was saying to him. For Ezekiel was far more than just an announcer or an observer; he is an intercessor, who prays for people to reach out to God, and for God to yet be merciful to the nation, even as Moses and many others had done before him. He feels things deeply and pours out his heart to God, his prayers reflecting His compassion. Look how he prays in verse 8 of chapter 9, for instance, as the killing spree continues,

While they were killing and I was left alone, I fell facedown, crying out, “Alas, Sovereign Lord! Are you going to destroy the entire remnant of Israel in this outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem?”

As both Jeremiah and Ezekiel warn elsewhere, times do come when even the prayers of God’s finest intercessors cannot prevail, and on this occasion the Lord shows himself to be unrelenting. He answered me,

“The sin of the people of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great; the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of injustice. They say, ‘The Lord has forsaken the land; the Lord does not see.’ So I will not look on them with pity or spare them, but I will bring down on their own heads what they have done.” (Ezek. 9:9-10)

God had made His final decision and the punishment judgement will continue. Even so, some would be spared to ensure that God’s long-term purposes would by no means be wiped out. What Ezekiel had prayed would be answered, albeit not in the way that he had hoped or expected.

How lovely that the mark that the scribe put on the foreheads of those who would be spared is like the taw, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet that was in circulation in the sixth century BC. This mark took the form of an X – that is a slanting cross. (That sign x in Greek script is also the first letter of the name Christ, of course).

We read likewise in Revelation 14:1 of the names of the Lamb and His Father written on the foreheads of God’s most faithful servants. There is striking continuity here, and in the midst of judgment a remnant is protected to fulfil the purposes of the Lord – just as there is hope for America if they can shake off the sins of ambition, pride and corruption that are leading the nation so far astray. It is an awesome thought that the burning coals that threaten such severe destruction upon Jerusalem are also part of the purity and the glory of God’s throne; for purity and punishment are part and parcel of the whole picture as the fire of God either destroys or purifies. As we saw in the case of Isaiah, His purity holds gret threat for some but great promise for others.

Tragically Jerusalem was about to become like Sodom and Gomorrah, the actions of its citizens having driven the Lord far from his own heritage because of their pursuit of evil.

Next, the Spirit brings the prophet to witness a council of 25 men, (one of who was called Pelatiah), who were giving wicked counsel in the city, complacently taking a proverb to heart and saying, ‘This city is the cauldron and we are the meat.’ What they meant by that is that where they were, they were safe and protected behind the city walls, like meat shielded by a pot. (Ezek. 11:3) God, however, reverses this proverbial declaration.

“Thus says the Lord, you think in your hearts – for I know the thoughts that come into your mind – that only the slain victims are the meat, but the city is a death trap from which He will remove the people to face their doom. Therefore prophesy against them. You have feared the sword; but I will bring the sword upon you, says the Lord . . . and I will give you into the hands of foreigners.’ (11:6-11)

Sycophantic and spiritually blind, the leaders were leading the people towards the doom od Nebuchadnezzar’s punishing return to sack the city he had partially spared on his first appearance. Such blindness is far from uncommon. As Peter Craigie puts it in his commentary on Ezekiel in the Daily Bible Study series (St Andrews Press):

‘When riots breakout, it is one thing to crush the riot, but it is all together more important to seek the roots of the riots and seek to cure that ill . . . and what was true of Jerusalem’s council may be equally true of kirk sessions, synods and vestries the world over.’ (Page 76)

There would be hope to come. The very people the council looked down on (those who were in exile) would in the fullness of time turn out to be the chosen ones whom God would use to rebuild the nation.

An opportunity had been afforded to Judah: a reprieve to Jerusalem which they signally failed to take advantage of the opportunity, just as Trump’s administration had the opportunity to do much good with their supermajority, but have rather done and spread great harm. Peter Craigie again:

There is nothing so blinding to the presence of honest opportunity, as the obsession with ambition and the search for selfish opportunity. What might have happened in the history of Jerusalem, if only its citizens and leaders have seen the last opportunity that was given to them between 597 and 587 BC? We shall never know, though we may guess that much of the course of its history would have been changed. So too should we never know the answer to the what if questions in our own lives, if we allow the opportunities to pass by untouched.’ (Page 79)

Truly the new heart and spirit that the Lord also prophesied about at this time was badly needed.

“I will gather then from amongst the nations to which I have scattered them, and will give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them; I will take the stone out of their heart and give them instead heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances, and be My people and I will be their God.”

How the Lord loves to look forward to such a transformation. But as for those whose hearts go after their detestable things in their abominations, I will require that deeds upon their own heads,’ says the Lord God.’ (Chapter 11:16-21)

Come, Lord, deal in power now with American complacency and idolatry, and with the evil entrenched in the Tehran regime. Punish yet purify we pray as you test the calibre and quality of peoples’ lives and faith.