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If God desires all to be saved and none to perish, what’s the purpose of the Ezekiel battle?

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If God desires all to be saved and none to perish, what’s the purpose of the Ezekiel battle? Empty If God desires all to be saved and none to perish, what’s the purpose of the Ezekiel battle?

Post by Admin Fri Jul 01, 2016 9:28 pm

It is absolutely true that God desires salvation for everyone; the apostle Paul famously said it this way in writing to his protégé Timothy: God our Savior . . . wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth—Paul, I Timothy 2:3b-4. His contemporary, the apostle Peter, conveyed a very similar sentiment in some of the last words he ever wrote: The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance—II Peter 3:9. These are facts concerning the nature of God Himself, particularly regarding His unending love and grace for us. In fact, it is important to point out that God desires that we see all those around us as He sees them—which is exactly as He saw us before we were saved. However, He also made us with free will; in other words, He made us free to choose to defy Him and refuse His desire to enter into our lives. As God, He knows the choices we will make, and He also knows the outcome of our lives, particularly knowing the moments where we have forever turned away from Him. It is very similar to questions regarding all those people who lived in the nations marked by God for destruction by Israel upon their entry into the Promised Land. God knew their hearts and their rebellion and clearly judged their lives condemned as a result, and He made incredibly clear to the nation of Israel what was to become of all those in those lands: When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you—and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy—Moses, Deuteronomy 7:1-2. The Bible makes clear that God desired Israel to kill everybody—men, women, children, old and young; those instruction were even repeated: [I]n the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you—Moses, Deuteronomy 20:16-17. Why? God also makes that clear: After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you—Moses, Deuteronomy 9:4. And to make sure that point was understood, it too was repeated: Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God—Deuteronomy 20:17-18. Now clearly, it was possible to be saved by surrendering to the God of Israel (consider the case of the prostitute Rahab and her family in the city of Jericho). But regarding those people who are alive at this time in those nations, this is not a matter of executing judgment against people who otherwise want to serve the Lord and His purposes, but rather against confirmed rebels. God is simply going to use them, even in their disobedience and stubbornness, to continue to show His will and work His plan—a plan against which man can never change or disrupt regardless of his attitudes. And, of course, if the “Ezekiel battle” (talked about in Ezekiel 38-39) occurs after the Rapture—in other words, with all of God’s believers taken out of the world prior to the events of the Tribulation—there will be no Christians on the planet anyway. Those who do come to Christ will live very dangerously and precariously within the terrible days of God’s judgments against an unbelieving world.

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