"Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying- Son of man, behold, they of the house of Israel say, The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off.
Therefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; There shall none of my words be prolonged any more, but the word which I have spoken shall be done, saith the Lord GOD." - Ezekiel 12:26-28
So, here we have jehovah telling Zeke that people are interpreting these prophecies as concerning some times in the distant future, and jehovah responding with an emphatic 'Nope'.
Very applicable to what is being done here with Ezekiel 4.
Now, I suppose one could argue that this passage is in a different context than the prophecy in chapter 4, but then that shoots them in the foot regarding the Leviticus extrapolation, since Leviticus is EVEN FURTHER removed from the context of Ezekiel 4, hell, that's from any entirely different book, by a different author, written at a different time. At least chapter 12 is in the same book, by the same author, and only few paltry chapters later.
So which is it? Do we adhere to the boundaries of context? Or is it permissible to extrapolate cherry picked passages scattered throughout the Old Testament books? And if this is permissible, how do we determine which passages to cherry pick and which to discriminate against? What is the methodology for such?
I suppose one might also argue that there would be no discrepancy between chapter 4 & chapter 12 after mixing Leviticus passages into chapter 4, since there's that whole bit about time being different for jehovah, and a day to him being like a thousand years, hence why 2,000 years later, Jesus is still coming soon.
But such an ad hoc would entirely destroy to point of those verses in chapter 12. Interpreting time that way would result in NO time EVER being "many days to come" & "far off", since the whole damn creation is only around 6,000 years old, which to jehovah would only be 6 days by this ad hoc. The point coming across in 12:26-28 is obviously not "no, you guys interpret time differently than I do", but rather "no, I'm serious, shit's gonna hit the fan REAL soon and it's going to effect YOU, so you better start taking this seriously".
Well, this thread has suddenly become interesting to me once again.
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