The main thing you need to know about my past was that I had good parents. My dad was educated, and he taught me a lot. That’s why I can write this book (which I’m writing in our language which combines Jewish thought with egyptian writing).
I’ve been through a lot in my life. I’m an old man now and I have had some hard times. That being said, I’ve also been really lucky and God has blessed me a lot too. I have seen God working in my life and I know pretty intimately how He operates (quick summary, He is confusing, but ultimately good beyond anything you can imagine). So, because I’ve seen so much and know God so well, I figured I better write all this down for posterity. So here goes.
Also, let me just add here that this record is the truth (as in I’m not making it up or inventing anything). I am writing according to what I have seen; and no one is compelling me to write it any certain way. So you can trust this record (as far as you can trust me, I guess).
All right, well, let’s jump into it. I’ll start in the first year that Zedekiah, the King of Judah, had been on the throne. My dad had been born and raised in Jerusalem and had seen leaders come and go. Now at this time, there were a whole bunch of preachers. These people called themselves prophets, and they were doing what my dad was doing, which was warning the people that they were living bad lives and that they needed to change. The message they all preached was that Jerusalem, which is not a small city mind you, was going to be destroyed if they didn’t shape up. (Spoiler alert: these prophets turned out to be right). There were all these looming threats that the Babylonians were going to attack Jerusalem and so times were really tense and really dangerous. But my dad was out there anyway. He really believed in the message.
One day, Dad prayed for the people. I’m sure he did this a lot, but for some reason this time was especially meaningful. He prayed hard, and while he prayed he had a vision of God coming down in a pillar of fire and hitting a rock that was near him. In that vision he saw all kinds of stuff (but I don’t really have a lot of details about what he saw), but it was such an amazing vision that he was physically weak afterward. When he got home all he could do was just flop into bed.
Then, while he was in bed, he had another vision. I have a lot more details about this vision. In it, he saw the heavens open up. Now the next part he isn’t sure exactly what he saw, but he thinks it was God sitting on his throne with innumerable angels all around, and all the angels were singing and praising God. Then out of all that big group, one angel stood out from the crowd as the brightest and most magnificent, and that one came out toward him, followed by twelve others who were as bright as the stars in the sky. The thirteen of them descended until they were on earth in front of my father.
The main angel, the brightest one, handed a book to my dad and told him to read it. So he did, and he felt incredible and knew it was true. But he also felt really sad because the book was all about the bad things that the people of Jerusalem were doing. It was in this book that he learned that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. He read about how the people in Babylon were going to come with swords and kill people and take them as slaves.
Dad was filled with all kinds of conflicting emotions, but the one that stood out the most was just an awe for the power of God. He could see how powerful God was with all the things He had created. But he could also see how much the people were off track and offending God by forgetting him and doing their own thing (they were all missing out on so much!). But then he also felt really grateful that God wasn’t just going to let the Babylonians destroy everyone in Jerusalem, but was going to make a path for some of the people to be safe, especially the people who believed in Him and were trying to do the right thing. God had used this vision to send a merciful warning signal to my dad, and to our family, and to anyone else who would listen.
A quick caveat here: obviously I can’t write down every single thing that happened or that my dad said. My father saw a lot of visions around this time; he wrote a lot of stuff, and told us a lot of stuff that he saw. So just think of this as a sort of highlight reel.
Throughout this book the main thing that I’m going to concentrate on is what I saw in my life. Like I said, my dad wrote a lot, and I have also been doing a bunch of work to summarize his writings into a more manageable form. Once I finish(ed) that, I work on this book, which, again, is all about my life.
All right, back to it. So after my dad had this vision, he went out into the people and started telling them about it. But the people really didn’t like that message. They openly heckled him, and he would just tell them about the bad stuff they were doing.
Then, he started with this new message about a Messiah that was going to come to earth and make a redemption possible for people who’d done bad things in their life. (To me, this message seemed a lot more hopeful and less condemning.) But, even still, the people got angry when they heard this new message.
Now, I’ve read in the scriptures about how, in the olden days, people would get so mad at well-meaning preachers like my dad that they would kick them out of town and stone and kill them like barbarians. Well, the people got so mad at Dad that they started threatening to kill him in the same way.
But you know what? The reason I am writing this book is to show you that when you are on God’s side, when you are in a relationship with Him (even if you screw up), He helps you out, and then you can accomplish things that you couldn’t do on your own.
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