Devotional Commentary on Jeremiah 25

 

One cannot miss the precision with which Jeremiah is writing: the 4th year of Jehoiakim equals the 1st year of Nebuchadnezzar, thus 605 BCE (verse 1). Jeremiah indicates for us when he started his ministry, namely adding 23 years to 605 BCE “until this day, these twenty three years” coming to 628 BCE “the Word of the Lord has come to me, and I spoke to you, arising early and speaking but you did not listen” (verse 2-3).

 

Not only Jeremiah but other prophets were also sent but they did not listen (verse 4).

 

Even though they were rejecting God, God’s message was repentance: “each man of his evil way and the evil of your deeds”. The successor of Calvin, Theodore Bezae invented and designed a frame that he superimposed over the Bible claiming it was from Calvin and this doctrine was called Predestination with the anagram TULIP for Total Depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. That is at the end of the 16th century leading to the Synod of Dordt to accept this scholastic view built with a skew rationalism. Then came Ellen White in 1893 with her short statement basically dismantling this view saying “In the council of heaven, provision was made that men, though transgressors, should not perish in their disobedience, but, through faith in Christ as their substitute and surety, might become the elect of God predestinated unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. God wills that all men should be saved; for ample provision has been made, in giving his only-begotten Son to pay man’s ransom. Those who perish will perish because they refuse to be adopted as children of God through Christ Jesus. The pride of man hinders him from accepting the provisions of sal­vation. But human merit will not admit a soul into the presence of God. That which will make a man acceptable to God is the imparted grace of Christ through faith in his name. No dependence can be placed in works or in happy flights of feelings as evidence that men are chosen of God; for the elect are chosen through Christ.”—Ellen G. White, “Chosen in Christ,” Signs of the Times, January 2, 1893. It took G. C. Berkhouwer since 1943 many books to dismantle himself from TULIP and say almost the same as Ellen White. Nearly 43 doctorates went through him of which Hans LaRondelle was one. As right as Berkhouwer was on his view of faith and justification so wrong is he with his view of scripture as containing errors for it is a human document as Higher Criticism indicate. Adventists do not work with Higher Criticism, not with an interpretation of suspicion, not with polarizing methodologies in the Bible, not locking the Bible up in its own time as Berkhouwer did. Herman Ridderbos and G. Berkhouwer agreed on this point that if God elect people according to the TULIP model, what benefit will universal gospel preaching have in Matthew 24? I read this point online by a disciple and student of Berkhouwer discussing his own teacher so this is not an Adventist view of a Calvinist but a Calvinist view incriminatingly considering his own teacher.

So they had to set aside the workings of the Synod of Dordt in Calvinistic Scholastics and come in line with salvation like Ellen White had it already in 1893 as indicted above. In Jeremiah here God wants repentance because repentance is always an open option with God. There is no fatalism in His operation with humans like TULIP and the Synod of Dordt declared.  

He did not say repent those whom I have elected. He said “each man of his evil way”. There is no whining that we are sold out to Total Depravity [first point of TULIP] and therefore we cannot get rid of our LGBTQH lifestyles. “Each man of his evil way” is not selective, not excusing some and others not, not looking at race categories as was done so many time in history in the past. Total Depravity is an Augustine invention that is haunting many scholars even in Adventism excusing themselves from the possibility of perfection or acceptable sanctification, or law keeping.

 

What was their problem? Going after other gods to worship, prostrate themselves to them, provoking the Lord (verse 6). Additionally they do not listen to the repentance message call of God in the 11th hour of their lives (verse 7).

 

Punishment announced: Their families will be taken to the North to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (verse 9). He will come to Israel but also to all nations around.

 

Then follows a list of dire consequences with real examples:

1.  No voice of happiness

2.  No voice of joy

3.  No sound of bridegroom

4.  No sound of a bride

5.  No sound of the mill

6.  No light of candles

The list is so long that one can hear pastor Charles Bradford’s famous saying: “The list is so long that one asks the question, when is he going to get through with it?”

And he is. The result is waste and desolation (verse 11). They will serve for a period of 70 years.

But since the Bible assures us that all kings hearts are in the hand of God (Proverbs 21:1) their day also comes: “I [God] will visit upon the king of Babylon… and I will make it for everlasting desolations” (verse 12). There is no eternal USA, eternal China, eternal Iran, eternal Russia, eternal North Korea or eternal South Korea or any eternal country. They stand until they fall by His hand. He pulls the plug, not political tricks, god ascribed assassinations, or surgical eliminations. It is from above not below. The timing element, that is.

 

God will bring upon the land of Babylon everything that He prophesied to the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah this book (verse 13). God acknowledge a “written book”.

 

When the wheel turns by God, they will be enslaved as well by many nations “I will recompense them according to their deed and according to the work of their hands” (verse 14). “Many nations” says Rabbis Redak and Rashi in the Middle Ages, refers to Media and Persia. Personally I think that from this point, God is accelerating the vision for Jeremiah through the corridors of empires of many generations to the End Time at the end of this chapter.

 

God said then to Jeremiah to take a cup of wine [of the wrath of God] from the Hand of God and give it to “all the nations to whom I send you” (verse 15).

 

When any generation’s political leaders drink the wine of God’s fury, they “reel to and fro and be like madmen” (verse 16). It makes us understand our own time better. Ever talked about crazy presidents, mad prime-ministers, confused leaders, useless politicians? They drank from the cup of fury of the Lord.

 

In vision [so Rabbis Abarbanel and Redak] Jeremiah took the cup from the Hand of the Lord and went to all nations (verse 17).

 

He started out with his own generation “as of this day” (verse 18) and went to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah to make them waste and desolation.

 

The Egyptian empire got his day too (verse 19).

 

All the allies of Egypt and kings of the land of Uz, of the Philistines, Ashkelon and Gaza, Ekron and Ashdod (verse 20). The Phoenician empire went down in history as well and Phoenician inscriptions are thin in the third and second centuries BCE and shortly afterwards disappeared. Hard to find.

 

And Edom and Moab and Ammon which had their heyday as well in succession but as the Madaba Plains archaeology of Andrews University at the Siegfried Horn Institute of Archaeology is showing, they were almost nobodies by the third and second centuries BCE with almost an unrecognizable character change. Investigate their seals as Adventist scholar Larry Herr did, and one knows what is at stake here.

 

The empire of Tyre and Sidon and the isles which had their high day in their generations but at a certain point one talks about the Fall of Tyre as Isaiah 14 is predicting using Lucifer’s Rebellion in Heaven motif as thrust to describe it (verse 22).

 

Dedan, Tema and Buz are also mentioned and all the kings of Arabia and those who dwell in the desert (verse 24). Nabonidus went and lived for nearly 14 years at Tema just before the Fall of Babylon for many reasons, religious, control of that area, strange personality and more.

 

The prophet moved to Iran and said that all the kings of Zimri, Elam and Media had problems (verse 25). Iran will not get away from the cup of the fury of God that Jeremiah had to give them to drink as well.

 

From this point Jeremiah covered the known “world” of his time but he is not stopping here: “and all the kings of the North, both near and far, one after the other, and all the kingdoms of the earth that are upon the face of the earth” (verse 26). It must be very clear for the reader that Jeremiah is going “overboard” here, beyond his own history boundaries into corridors of future history. God’s cup of fury does not stop making leaders madmen when they function and their time of Fall is near. Ever heard leaders say they do not drink but they speak like drunk men, repeating themselves, focusing on the non-essentials and taking everything personally? The cup of God’s fury before the Fall. Take note of it.

 

Sheshach should drink after all these nations of the earth, said God to Jeremiah in verse 26. When the Babylon finished, go to Iran for the Mede’s and Persians and when they finish the Greeks and when they finish the Romans and when they finish in 538 A.D. give it to the Holy Roman Empire in 1798 and when the Anglo-American Empire take over the world stand ready to give the cup of God’s fury to them too but, the last one to drink this cup of fury of God, the Wrath-cup, is Sheshach.

 

Who is Sheshach? Who is this last enemy of this world’s history?

Ask the rabbis: Rashi, Kara, Redak, Metzudath David all agreed that it is a code. This is how it works: write the alphabet of Hebrew from right to left. Write underneath it the alphabet of Hebrew from left to right under each of these letters. Substitute then each letter in SH + SH + CH with the Hebrew letter corresponding. Result: Babel = Babylon (so also in the Targum Jonathan of the Prophets).

Every empire was Babylon and the Roman empire is also called Babylon in 1 Peter 5:13 in the New Testament. Archaeology has revealed that Niniveh was called Babylon once as S. Dalley in her article shows. Thus Egypt is Babylon (come out of her motif’s in Old and New Testaments), Niniveh is Babylon (S. Dalley’s cuneiform article), Babylon is Babylon, Shushan is Babylon (?), Athens is Babylon (?), Damascus is Babylon (see Acts 7:43; Amos 5:27; CD 7:14-20); Rome is Babylon (1 Peter 5:13; Revelation 12; Targum Jonathan to the Prophets on Isaiah 21:9); Vatican is Babylon (Revelation 12 which is the time of the little horn, composite animal of Revelation 13:1 and 13:11, the 666 as Vicarius filii dei); USA is Babylon (? Revelation 18? But a comeback of the the little horn, composite animal of Revelation 13:1 and 13:11, the 666 as Vicarius filii dei to overshadow all others). So this final Babylon is the one who is Sheshach to drink the cup of the wrath of God after the Door of Mercy closes according to Revelation 15:7.

In Sumerian Babylon is KA.DINGIR.RA.KI and the Akkadian form of this is bab-ilu(ki). In Sumerian it means “gate of the god (city) or “the city of the gate of the god”. In Akkadian it means “gate of the gods (city)” or “city of the gate of the gods”. The Egyptians knew Babylon by the word brbr. They do not have an /l/ in their grammar so they used an /r/.

 

Jeremiah was to say to all of them that they should drink the cup of the fury of God (verse 27) “Drink, become drunk, and vomit, fall and you shall not rise, because of the sword that I am sending among you”. Now we know in proper historiography why empires rise and fall. It is Historiography with a capital H!

 

Some nations will refuse to drink the cup of the fury of God (verse 28) but Jeremiah was to say to them “You shall surely drink”. How certain is the rise and fall of all nations? Surely.

 

Now about New Jerusalem/heavenly Zion God said to Jeremiah in verse 29: “with the city upon which My name is called” “I commence to bring evil? And shall you be cleared?” The answer is emphatically clear: “You shall not be cleared, for I call a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth” (verse 29). When? The Warrior Messiah in the Hell event after the Millennium when the New Jerusalem descends to the earth for the Armageddon, Day of the Lord Battle that Joel, Zechariah 14 and Revelation is talking about.

 

How is it going to be that Day of the Lord event of battle? “The Lord shall roar from above and from His Holy Habitation He shall give forth His voice, He shall roar over His habitation: Hedad” (verse 30).

 

The great harvest motif of God is brought in here. After the harvest of the good at the Second Coming, after the Millennium at the Hell event is the harvest or treading of the bad grapes or weeds “He shall call out like those who tread grapes, to all the inhabitants of the earth”. Eschatological not historical Babylon here.

 

When this event comes (verse 31) “A stirring has come until the end of the earth, for God has a controversy with the nations, He contends with all flesh [not only Babylon, or Jeremiah’s day enemies or nations]”. “The wicked He has delivered to the sword”. The war is selective to exclude the good and faithful. It is a global event

 

Satan and his proxies will get ready for a showdown against Christ the Warrior Messiah that day in the Hell event with the New Jerusalem now in the plain on this desolate earth after descending with faithful inside (Zechariah 14) and “Behold evil goes forth from nation to nation and a great storm shall be awakened from the ends of the earth” (verse 32).

 

The Warrior Messiah is very successful: “And those slain by the Lord [Christ the Warrior Messiah or Lion of Judah] shall be on that day from the end of the earth to the end of the earth, they shall not be lamented, not gathered, not buried. They shall be as dung on the face of the earth” (verse 33). The Day of the Lord Battle in verity.

 

Bad Pastors in that day should cry (verse 34) and roll on the ground with their special teams and elders in church “you mighty of the sheep” for their days was filled with the slaughtering of people with church political tricks and gossip and fingerpointing. They scatter the flock (migrations of the church members due to their actions) and what shall happen to them? “You shall fall as a precious vessel” (verse 34).

 

To flee will not help the pastors and there will not be deliverance for the elders and deacons of the church (verse 35).

 

What is the Lord doing in that final day of the Battle of the Lord? Pastors cry and elders cry for the Lord plunders there churches and wicked members who supported them (verse 36).

 

The houses of the secular shall be destroyed because of the furious wrath of the Lord (verse 37). They may have time after the millennium to build their houses and prepare for the battle against the Lord?

 

The Lion of Judah, Christ the Warrior “has left His hut like a young lion, for their land has become waste, because of the wrath drunk from wine and because of His furious wrath. “ (verse 38). The poor Rabbis of the Middle Ages could not see application any further than Babylon and at least to so far as Rome (Redak). This is all eschatological here in vision given to Jeremiah.

 

Dear God

Thanks for your rehearsal to Jeremiah of events that are part of your Last Generation Theology so well known to your faithful since it is biblical. Save us in the New Jerusalem in Your “hut” we pray. In Jesus Name. Amen.