March 4, 2025

We must remember that God's words are to help save us from disaster, not to bring depression, but to encourage us to be righteous. I am overjoyed to find Jesus in Ezekiel 9. He was counted with the angels sent to destroy Jerusalem, but he was there to mark the foreheads of the righteous so they wouldn't be slain. He was clothed in linen and carried an inkhorn as the writers did during Ezekiel's time; he was commissioned to write the names to be saved from destruction in the Book of Life during the cleansing of Jerusalem. Much like the blood over the doorpost in Egypt, we are marked on the forehead for salvation in Jesus. One of those saved during that time was Jeremiah. "Baruch and Ebed-Melech were secured, and, it is likely, others of Jeremiah's friends, for his sake." Matthew Henry. It makes so much more sense why Jeremiah was so sad and crying all the time; his heart broke for the sinners who were being destroyed or left for starvation. These words give us hope that during tribulation in the last days, if we are here, God will have mercy on us and not be slain by His wrath. That doesn't mean we will not die by other means, but it won't be because of God's fury. 

And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Ezekiel 9:4-5