Immerse: Prophets - Flipbook - Page 333
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scroll! Then go and give its message to the people of Israel.” So I opened
my mouth, and he fed me the scroll. “Fill your stomach with this,” he said.
And when I ate it, it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.
Then he said, “Son of man, go to the people of Israel and give them my
messages. I am not sending you to a foreign people whose language you
cannot understand. No, I am not sending you to people with strange and
difficult speech. If I did, they would listen! But the people of Israel won’t
listen to you any more than they listen to me! For the whole lot of them
are hard-hearted and stubborn. But look, I have made you as obstinate and
hard-hearted as they are. I have made your forehead as hard as the hardest
rock! So don’t be afraid of them or fear their angry looks, even though
they are rebels.”
Then he added, “Son of man, let all my words sink deep into your own
heart first. Listen to them carefully for yourself. Then go to your people
in exile and say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says!’ Do this
whether they listen to you or not.”
Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard a loud rumbling sound behind
me. (May the glory of the Lord be praised in his place!) It was the sound
of the wings of the living beings as they brushed against each other and
the rumbling of their wheels beneath them.
The Spirit lifted me up and took me away. I went in bitterness and tur
moil, but the Lord’s hold on me was strong. Then I came to the colony of
Judean exiles in Tel-abib, beside the Kebar River. I was overwhelmed and
sat among them for seven days.
After seven days the Lord gave me a message. He said, “Son of man, I have
appointed you as a watchman for Israel. Whenever you receive a message
from me, warn people immediately. If I warn the wicked, saying, ‘You are
under the penalty of death,’ but you fail to deliver the warning, they will die
in their sins. And I will hold you responsible for their deaths. If you warn
them and they refuse to repent and keep on sinning, they will die in their
sins. But you will have saved yourself because you obeyed me.
“If righteous people turn away from their righteous behavior and ignore
the obstacles I put in their way, they will die. And if you do not warn them,
they will die in their sins. None of their righteous acts will be remembered,
and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. But if you warn righteous
people not to sin and they listen to you and do not sin, they will live, and
you will have saved yourself, too.”
Then the Lord took hold of me and said, “Get up and go out into the
valley, and I will speak to you there.” So I got up and went, and there I saw
