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Ezekiel 26:2-4    “Son of man, because Tyre has said of Jerusalem, ‘Aha!  The gate to the nations is broken, and its doors have swung open to me; now that she lies in ruins I will prosper,’ therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘I am against you, Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves.  They will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock.’”

What relevance does this prophetic word have for us today?  Historically, it was fulfilled when Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed the island city of Tyre over a 13 year period, from 586 to 573 BC, a historical event that is supported by a cuneiform tablet discovered by a German archeologist in 1926.

Nevertheless, the prophecy foreshadows for us God’s promises concerning his Church, about which the Lord Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18).  The New Testament refers to the Church as the ‘New Jerusalem’ (Revelation 21:2).  Tyre represents any organised attack on God’s People, his Church, the ‘Bride of Christ’.

Tyre’s big mistake was its ‘Aha’ attitude towards God’s people, its complacent, mocking attitude of ‘now that she lies in ruins I will prosper’.  Is not this the attitude of militant, atheistic humanism towards outspoken, mission-orientated, biblical evangelical Christianity today?  So, in the face of what is happening throughout our world today, fanned by cultural Marxism through the media generally, let us take heart from Ezekiel’s words, that the Sovereign Lord is able to care for his people and deal decisively with those who would oppose them.

Our God is all-powerful, and throughout history he has always proven himself to be faithful to all his promises.  We can therefore have full confidence that his Church will survive all attacks upon it, and that its enemies will ultimately be destroyed.  But knowing this should invigorate us to be faithful to God’s Word in all we do, that we might be part of the means God uses in the fulfilment of his promises.

And let us also pray and strive earnestly for the eternal salvation of those who oppose God’s Plan.  We have another historical example of the outworking of God’s promises in the story of Esther, where God powerfully and miraculously rescued his people from threatened annihilation, and in the process “many people of other nationalities became Jews because fear of the Jews [ie of God] had seized them” (Esther 8:17b).  We know today that the Church is growing fastest in places where there is the strongest opposition and persecution!  And we praise our faithful, sovereign God.

– Bruce Christian