Ezekiel Famous Quotes

that famous story of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and often stand for each other. "Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of the sea," said Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale;

THE MASADA MYSTERY WE WERE STANDING in the middle of a large valley, harsh and forbidding. “The prophet Ezekiel was taken in a vision to a valley filled with dry bones, which, by the hand of God, would rise and come to life and become a massive army. It was a prophecy that the nation of Israel, though utterly destroyed, would one day by God’s hand be resurrected from the grave.” The teacher began to walk through the valley, unfolding the mystery as he went. “In the first century the Romans destroyed the nation of Israel. The nation’s last stand took place on a desert mountain fortress called Masada. It was there that her last soldiers would meet their end. So Masada became the grave of ancient Israel. But then, after two thousand years, the nation of Israel was resurrected by the hand of God as foretold in the vision of dry bones. The people were resurrected, the cities were resurrected, and the Israeli soldier was resurrected. And then the resurrected nation decided to return to its ancient grave.” “To Masada? Why?” “To excavate it, to dig it up. The man in charge of the excavation was one of the nation’s most famous soldiers and archaeologists. And Israeli soldiers helped in the excavation. So now on the grave of Israel’s ancient soldiers walked her resurrected soldiers to see what lay hidden in its ruins.” “And what was hidden in the ruins?” “A prophetic mystery . . . a Scripture. It had been buried and hidden there for almost two thousand years.” “And what did it say?” “It was from the Book of Ezekiel, the section that contained the prophecy of the Valley of Dry Bones: ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.”’ So the prophecy was hidden right there in Israel’s ancient grave, waiting for ages for the day that it would be uncovered, the day when its words would be fulfilled and the nation resurrected from its grave. You see, God is real. And His will is to restore the broken, bring hope from hopelessness, and life from death. Don’t ever give up. For with God, nothing is impossible . . . even restoration of a nation from a valley of dry bones.” The Mission: Bring your most hopeless situations and issues to God. Believe God for the impossible. Live and move in the power of the impossible. Ezekiel 37:12–14; Luke 1:37 The Masada Mystery

Double-entry accounting was popularized in Europe toward the end of the fifteenth century, and most scholars believe it set the table for the flowering of the Renaissance and the emergence of modern capitalism. What is far less well understood is the why. Why was something as dull as bookkeeping so integral to a complete cultural revolution in Europe? Over nearly seven centuries, “the books” have become something that, in our collective minds, we equate with truth itself—even if only subconsciously. When we doubt a candidate’s claims of wealth, we want to go to his bank records—his personal balance sheet. When a company wants to tap the public markets for capital, they have to open their books to prospective investors. To remain in the market, they need accountants to verify those books regularly. Well-maintained and clear accounting is sacrosanct. The ascendance of bookkeeping to a level equal to truth itself happened over many centuries, and began with the outright hostility European Christendom had to lending before double-entry booking came along. The ancients were pretty comfortable with debt. The Babylonians set the tone in the famous Code of Hammurabi, which offered rules for handling loans, debts, and repayments. The Judeo-Christian tradition, though, had a real ax to grind against the business of lending. “Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother,” Deuteronomy 23:19–20 declares. “In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God,” Ezekiel 22:12 states. As Christianity flourished, this deep anti-usury culture continued for more than a thousand years, a stance that coincided with the Dark Ages, when Europe, having lost the glories of ancient Greece and Rome, also lost nearly all comprehension of math. The only people who really needed the science of numbers were monks trying to figure out the correct dates for Easter.

He leaned forward slowly and embraced me again. “Jesus entered our iniquity by submitting to our insanity. Our blessed Lord made his way inside Adam’s broken eyes; that is why he cried out, and as he did his Father held him in his arms, even as I do you now—yet from the inside. Union with his Father and with us in darkness. ‘It is finished,’” he whispered in triumph, holding me as if he wanted me to feel the truth. My mind swirled like one of Ezekiel’s wheels. I understood what the apostle was saying, but this was so foreign to all that I knew. Then the universe inside me slowed, and I could see a single neon sign flashing before my eyes. It was the title of Jonathan Edwards’s famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” My guts wrenched. But I heard the song of light and knew to watch carefully. As I looked the words Sinners and God changed places in the sign. I gasped as “God in the Hands of Angry Sinners” appeared, pulsating with the rhythm of the song. “Oh, God! What have we done?” At