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The Parable of Degenerate Sisters

A Parable from the Pre-incarnate Son of Man to the Prophet Ezekiel

23:4 Marriage is commonly used in the Bible as a symbol for the covenant relationship between God and his people (e.g. Isa 54:1-8; Eph 5:22-23).

Ezekiel 23

English Standard Version (ESV) (excerpted with literal & brief paraphrase)

2 “Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother. 3 They played the whore… in their youth; there their breasts were pressed and their virgin nipples handled. 4 Oholah was the name of the elder and Oholibah the name of her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters…

5 “Oholah played the whore while she was mine, and she lusted after her lovers… 6 clothed in purple, governors and commanders, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. 7 She bestowed her whoring upon them, the choicest men … and she defiled herself with all the idols of everyone after whom she lusted. 8 She did not give up her whoring that she had begun in Egypt; for in her youth men had lain with her and handled her virgin nipples and poured out their whoring lust upon her. 9 Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands … after whom she lusted. 10 These uncovered her nakedness;they seized her sons and her daughters; and as for her, they killed her with the sword; and she became a byword among women, when judgment had been executed on her.

11 “Her sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister. 12 She lusted after the Assyrians (the same kind of men as her sister), all of them desirable young men. 13 And I saw that she was defiled; they both took the same way. 14 But she carried her whoring further. She saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of (evil enemies of God)… 16 When she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. 17 And they came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoring lust. And after she was defiled by them, she turned from them in disgust. 18 When she carried on her whoring so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned in disgust from her sister. 19 Yet she increased her whoring, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt 20 and lusted after her lovers there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses. 21 Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians handled your nipples and fondled your young breasts.”

22 Therefore, O Oholibah, thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I will stir up against you your lovers from whom you turned in disgust, and I will bring them against you from every side… 24 And they shall come against you… They shall set themselves against you on every side … and I will commit the judgment to them, and they shall judge you according to their judgments. 25 And I will direct my jealousy against you, that they may deal with you in fury. They shall cut off your nose and your ears, and your survivors shall fall by the sword. They shall seize your sons and your daughters, and your survivors shall be devoured by fire. 26 They shall also strip you of your clothes and take away your beautiful jewels. 27 Thus I will put an end to your lewdness and your whoring begun in the land of Egypt, so that you shall not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore.

28 “For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will deliver you into the hands of those whom you hate, into the hands of those from whom you turned in disgust, 29 and they shall deal with you in hatred and take away all the fruit of your labor and leave you naked and bare, and the nakedness of your whoring shall be uncovered. Your lewdness and your whoring 30 have brought this upon you, because you played the whore with the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. 31 You have gone the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand. 32 Thus says the Lord God:

“You shall drink your sister’s cup
that is deep and large;
you shall be laughed at and held in derision,
for it contains much;
33 you will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow.
A cup of horror and desolation,
the cup of your sister Samaria;
34 you shall drink it and drain it out,
and gnaw its shards,
and tear your breasts;

for I have spoken, declares the Lord God. 35 Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you have forgotten me and cast me behind your back, you yourself must bear the consequences of your lewdness and whoring.”

36 The Lord said to me: “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Declare to them their abominations. 37 For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me. 38 Moreover, this they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and profaned my Sabbaths. 39 For when they had slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it. And behold, this is what they did in my house. 40 They even sent for men to come from afar, to whom a messenger was sent; and behold, they came. For them you bathed yourself, painted your eyes, and adorned yourself with ornaments. 41 You sat on a stately couch, with a table spread before it on which you had placed my incense and my oil. 42 The sound of a carefree multitude was with her; and with men of the common sort, drunkards were brought from the wilderness; and they put bracelets on the hands of the women, and beautiful crowns on their heads.

43 “Then I said of her who was worn out by adultery, Now they will continue to use her for a whore, even her! 44 For they have gone in to her, as men go in to a prostitute. Thus they went in to Oholah and to Oholibah, lewd women! 45 But righteous men shall pass judgment on them with the sentence of adulteresses, and with the sentence of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses, and blood is on their hands.”

46 For thus says the Lord God: “Bring up a vast host against them, and make them an object of terror and a plunder. 47 And the host shall stone them and cut them down with their swords. They shall kill their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses. 48 Thus will I put an end to lewdness in the land, that all women may take warning and not commit lewdness as you have done. 49 And they shall return your lewdness upon you, and you shall bear the penalty for your sinful idolatry, and you shall know that I am the Lord God.”

A wife, holy and pure, a virgin undefiled, loyal and faithful: is that not the desire of a man? And is this not the highest and holiest desire of the Living God, in whose image we are made man? Is a faithful bride not the desire of Christ Jesus, the returning Bridegroom of His Church?

Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

Jeremiah 3:8-10 She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. Yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the LORD.”

A history of divorce

The LORD GOD has married you and made you His own! It is a most serious matter that a woman would play the whore and give herself to any other. This is the setting of the parable of the two degenerate sisters in Ezekiel 23. It is the history of God’s chosen ones of Israel and Judah.

Christ Jesus is born a Son of Man, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. The teachers of the Law come to him and ask about a man divorcing a woman. A woman had no such right of divorce or anything else separate of the rights of her husband as a matter of the Law.

Matthew 19:3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”

8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

“… “Because of your hardness of heart…”

Now the hardness of our hearts urges a wife to dismiss her husband!

To the parable of the two degenerate sisters, must we now add another who has called herself, ‘christian?’

Let Christ’s Church with ears to hear hear the distant trumpet announcing the returning Bridegroom of the Church, His Bride:

Revelation 19:6-10

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
7 Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
8 it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” 10 Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus, to your beloved church, the faithful who have not put You away by a bill of divorce.

February 13, 2014
The Time Is Near For Our Church – Thyatira
The Revelation of Jesus Christ

John to the seven churches

Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.

“Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, … to Thyatira…

“Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one.
I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.
19 Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

Christ, our risen Lord and Savior holds in His right hand the angels of the churches. Christ, our returning Lord and Savior stands in the presence of His golden churches – the believers to be taken-up along with those who have gone before us.

Yet each letter to the churches is specific to a group of believers: praise for faithfulness and call to continued faith.

For not all who say, “Lord, lord,” will be taken-up.

Not all who say, “Lord, lord,” will stand as a light of witness as a lampstand on His right.

For some will be separated to the King’s left and He will say of those who did not glimmer with the light of Jesus, “I never knew you.”

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. – Matthew 25:46 KJV

Therefore: The warnings for the seven churches are addressed to the saints of every generation until the last.
You with ears to hear, let the scripture of Revelation speak to your eternal soul.

“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write:

‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

Why would the risen and returning Christ Jesus speak so severely to a small church far from Jerusalem or Rome, far from Athens and Ephesus on a road between other cities of much more importance?

Thyatira lay on the road that connected Pergamum with Sardis and went on to Philadelphia and to Laodicea, linking up with both Smyrna and Byzantium. That was the road by which the imperial post traveled; and it was crowded with the commerce of Asia and the east. Therefore, first and foremost Thyatira was a great commercial town.

Strategically the importance of Thyatira was that it was the gateway to Pergamum, the capital of the province. The first we hear of Thyatira is that it is an armed garrison, manned by a company of Macedonian troops, placed there as an outpost to protect Pergamos. The difficulty was that Thyatira was not capable of any prolonged defense. It lay in an open valley. There was no height that could be fortified; and all that Thyatira could ever hope to do was to fight a delaying action until Pergamos could prepare to meet the invaders.

Jesus appears in a vision to the Apostle John an speaks to Thyatira with awesome imagery of threat. It would not be unlike the Angel of the Lord standing on the hill overlooking the valley of Sodom.

Genesis 19:28: And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.

The same description of awe is described by Ezekiel, who has great difficulty describing the appearing of God:

The Glory of the Lord

4 As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal.[b] 5 And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had a human likeness, 6 but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. 7 Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot. And they sparkled like burnished bronze.

This same description of burnished bronze is John’s description of the feet of the returning Christ on the clouds… and He looks toward Thyatira with eyes of fire.

If you have never been within eyesight of a great furnace for iron or steel or bronze, picture the furnace of Daniel. In fact, it takes a furnace with such great fire of temperature to melt hard metals for the forming of idols.

Daniel 3:19

Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. 20 And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. 21 Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. 22 Because the king’s order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. 23 And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning fiery furnace.

And from within the fiery furnace, a witness of unexpected awe:

“But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.”

26 Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace; he declared, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here!”

Now picture this same Jesus returning with eyes like a flame of fire staring down your church!

Revelation 2:19 “‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.

20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

Your tolerance is for everything EXCEPT the Truth.

Does the church tolerate Jezebel? Do we follow any prophesy and seducing spirit? Do we coexist with those who sacrifice to idols?
- Dare you preach prosperity, when the poor will inherit the Kingdom? [Luke 6:20]
- Why do christians run to the casino, to the lottery, to glitter of false promise?
- Why do christians stand alongside followers of false prophets and idols?
- Dare you preach universal acceptance into Heaven, when Jesus has preached to souls in Hell after going to the cross for our sins? [1 Peter 4:6]
Christ Jesus, King and Lord, has (thus far) given us 2000 years to REPENT and come to God the Father ONLY through Him.

The Lord sends His Holy Spirit to believers to guide us in the Gospel. We need no other spirit or guide. Yet the seducing spirits of some pulpits broadcast in His Name the message of the Anti-Christ.

Why does the church listen to Jezebel, when time is so short and the Lord IS so near?

Jezebel of Thyatira
- a self-proclaimed “prophetess”
- Jezebel is a Phoenician name, and by this time the Phoenicians had disappeared as a separate ethnic identity and had become part of the Greek-speaking world. (Jezebel seems no different from the faithful of the church. She blends in with you and me and the church.)
Presumably Jezebel argued that a Christian might join a guild and participate in its feasts without thereby compromising his faith. He was initiated into a superior wisdom. he knew the idol was nothing and he could not be defiled by that which did not exist. . . . The local situation favored the accommodation of incompatible beliefs and practices: the letter insists on individual devotion to a Lord who searches the hearts of men and demands a consistency of life. The love and faith commended in the church might easily be corrupted by compromise with pagan society: the guilds themselves were devoted to good works.
- Queen of King Ahab in the OT. A woman in the church at Thyatira in the NT who also represents the apostate church of the Tribulation. See Jezebel. (IF gentle teaching from pulpits has hidden true meaning of this:
Matthew 13

The Parable of the Weeds Explained

36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.”

37 He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.

38 The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom.

The weeds are the sons of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil.

The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

40 Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.

41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

Revelation 2:

22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, 23 and I will strike her children dead.

And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.

24 But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden.

25 Only hold fast what you have until I come.

26 The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, 27 and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. 28 And I will give him the morning star.

29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

NEXT: Sardis
October 4, 2013