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The Book of Zephaniah – Zep 2:1-15

[Aired April 12, 2025]

Zephaniah’s name means ‘Jehovah has treasured and stored’, and when the ‘natural man’ reads the first verse of Chapter Two, he is already disillusioned since he is not given the understanding that God’s spirit discerns spirit that same spirit in his Elect — Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired.

1Co 2:14  But the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 
1Co 2:15  But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 
1Co 2:16  For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Of course, all of Orthodox Christianity, represented as greater Israel, perceives Christ in a limited way—ranging from slight understanding to total blindness. Consequently, the “we” above in 1 Corinthians 2:15 is naturally seen as meaning themselves, not knowing they represent the elder woman, a church, serving the younger woman, the New Covenant Elect of God. So, in the opening verse of Zephaniah, they see a “nation not desired”, meaning some other Christian orthodoxy not preaching what they preach, particularly a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or other religious ideology.

Rom 11:25  For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in [That event is the Resurrection to Judgment, the Lake of Fire for Zionist Christianity and all other religious ideologies – the world!].
Rom 11:26  And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: 
Rom 11:27  For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. 

Thus, like the other Minor Prophets, Zephaniah persists with grim preaching that challenges the Babylonian cheerful message of peace and prosperity, emphasising their straightforward act of simply believing in Jesus, who has taken away their sins, where judgment is a dirty word belonging to some marauding Christian cult.

Significations:

Judgment on Judah’s Enemies

Zep 2:1  Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired; 

While speaking of a horrendous earthquake of the likes never experienced by mankind demolishing “that Great City” we perceive as Babylon, its most profound shaking is spiritually seen as the “we“ in 1 Corinthians 2:16 — we are initially that Great City “not desired”, a spiritually veritable whore — (Orthodox Christianity likely offended by the insult). That is a shocking statement to the spiritually discerning Elect, who formerly stood proud of his accomplishments, which he “gathered together” in Orthodox Christianity, doing endless, genuinely good physical works. With dead eyes, aware of the outward meaning of Matthew 7:21-23 — “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven”, his spiritual understanding crippled, semi-consciously pricked that there is more to its meaning, yet never coming to the understanding of the truth (2 Tim 3:1-7).

Not being desired by your loved one is agonising, especially if love once flourished. That was the emotion Old Israel should have felt, but since she was a whore, her impudence ruled self-righteously. Even exile in Babylon, with its unexpected riches, amplified her brazen disrespect for her Husband’s chastising love. As we are well acquainted, she represents us for a spiritual earthquake of glorious magnitude — and the reason for this belaboured introduction dissecting the joints and marrow of being “not desired”.

The most dynamic Biblical account of someone “not desired” is Christ, a husband rejected by his Gomer-like first wife, Old Israel, and worse in their time and order, even the Elect of God. Since one event happens to all men, humanity since Adam, she, too, has likewise scorned and thus hated him.

Isa 53:2  For he [Jesus Christ] shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. 
Isa 53:3  He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

The Bible is based on mankind becoming God through the evil experience of battling the flesh, in contrast to the peace of living in and by Christ’s spirit. Two women represent mankind, who signify churches beginning with Old Israel in the wilderness and the New Covenant church after the cross. By Christ’s design, the first, His wife, became a Gomer-like whore (Hos 1:2-4). Their marriage dissolved in His death on the cross. The second was initiated by Christ dragging His hand-picked disciples (and others) to represent His New Covenant Bride, a literal remnant He calls His “Elect.”

The most graphic example of those two women representing the two Covenants is modelled by the young and beautiful women, Aholah and Aholibah, in Ezekiel 23. To present their whoredoms, we shall read part of that chapter, and I highly recommend that you read the entire account.

Eze 23:1  The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, 
Eze 23:2  Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother: [Meaning mother Israel]
Eze 23:3  And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity. 
Eze 23:4  And the names of them were Aholah the elder, and Aholibah her sister [the obvious younger]: and they were mine, and they bare sons and daughters. Thus were their names; Samaria is Aholah [Representing greater Israel, the world], and Jerusalem Aholibah [Judah, the Priests of God out of whom come a remnant spiritual Elect]. 
Eze 23:5  And Aholah played the harlot when she was mine; and she doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbours, 
Eze 23:6  Which were clothed with blue, captains and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses. 
Eze 23:7  Thus she committed her whoredoms with them, with all them that were the chosen men of Assyria, and with all on whom she doted: with all their idols she defiled herself. 
Eze 23:8  Neither left she her whoredoms brought from Egypt: for in her youth they lay with her, and they bruised the breasts of her virginity, and poured their whoredom upon her. 
Eze 23:9  Wherefore I have delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, upon whom she doted. 
Eze 23:10  These discovered her nakedness: they took her sons and her daughters, and slew her with the sword: and she became famous among women; for they had executed judgment upon her.
Eze 23:11  And when her sister Aholibah [… the incipient Priests, the spiritual Elect of God today] saw this, she [the younger] was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she, [the Elder, Israel, the world since she should have known better!] and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms. 

Zephaniah’s point covertly points to where the Bride of Christ is extracted: from Israel, and specifically Old Jerusalem as Judah, the treacherous priests of God! That is a mighty earthquake that shakes a very few Elect to their core for the realisation, generating heart-thumping excitement for its spiritual understanding when we understand that we are the nation not desired! The extension of the grim reality is that one event happens to all humanity, first starting with our undesirable filthy clothing, while greater Israel, being in their ignorance, remains blind and undesirable until the Resurrection to Judgement — for a harrowing moment, a symbolic seventeen years (Gen 47:28) is their turn to mistakenly perceive themselves as the ones who are “not desired”. Out of their own mouths, being judged, deluded into believing that they, with Satan stoking the coals of fire, will burn in hell forever.  

We initially are a captive, beautiful woman desired by her Lord, enslaved in Egypt, first to become the Lord’s enemy who is designed to become undesirable for the much later Elect of God to see that they, spiritually, are her!

Deu 21:10  When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, 
Deu 21:11  And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; 
Deu 21:12  Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; 
Deu 21:13  And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her Husband, and she shall be thy wife. 

The greatly favoured Lord’s first wife, Old Israel, was beautiful, but her feet didn’t remain in her Husband’s house; ‘a girl just wanting to have fun’ she became bored and thus undesirable to her husband as Hosea’s wife, Gomer, was to him and signifies us before being dragged out of Babylon. She typifies all women becoming wives whose inherent nature is having a heart of snares and nets and hands like bands (Ecc 7:26) when the promise of the good life with children is evident. Once satiated, his stability becomes unexciting and is exaggerated by her inevitable hormonal changes, causing her to look back melancholically for her first love—yet not necessarily desiring her Husband’s ‘light bread’ (Num 21:5).

Pro 31:30  Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.

Num 21:5  And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth [does not desire] this light bread. 

Only Christ, our Husband, can reverse our loathing of His word and transform it into a desire for Him in the dead of night; our blindness cries out that we cannot see.

Isa 26:9  With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee earnestly: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. 

Joh 9:41  Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye would have no sin: but now ye say, We see: your sin remaineth. 

What makes the Elect so ravishing to Christ is their response of genuine “desire” to receive judgment, the overriding theme of all the Minor Prophets. It all is part of the “decree of the watchers”—the Elect of God, given to see, “watch” for her enemy coming within and being instant in prayer, calls upon her husband to rescue her by his spirit and strength and burn off her spiritual chaff.

Dan 4:16  Let his [Nebuchadnezzar’s, representing our…] heart be changed from man’s, and let a beast’s heart be given unto him; and let seven [Fulness of…] times pass over him. 
Dan 4:17  This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it [We] the basest of men. 
Dan 4:18  This dream I king Nebuchadnezzar have seen. Now thou, O Belteshazzar [The Elect of God], declare the interpretation thereof, forasmuch as all the wise men of my kingdom [Babylon—Orthodox Christianity; the World] are not able to make known unto me the interpretation: but thou art able; for the spirit of the holy gods is in thee.

Zep 2:2  Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the LORD come upon you, before the day of the LORD’S anger come upon you.
Zep 2:3  Seek ye the LORD, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the LORD’S anger. 

Additionally, what more is this “decree”, meaning statute, ordinance or something prescribed, in Zephaniah 2:2 speaking of? Any earthly authority’s decree grabs our attention; however, like the wayward whore we were, the decrees of our Husband, Christ, were often received similarly to how all earthbound wives regard with contempt the notion that any man, particularly a husband, should command authority over them. An outstanding ‘decree’ is found in Psalm 2:7:

Psa 2:1  Why do the heathen [We, in our time and order] rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? 
Psa 2:2  The kings of the earth [Us!] set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,
Psa 2:3  Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 
Psa 2:4  He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision [… is something “not desired”]. 
Psa 2:5  Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. 
Psa 2:6  Yet have I set my king [Christ, our Husband] upon my holy hill of Zion. 
Psa 2:7  I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. 
Psa 2:8  [The very Elect…] Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen [The world of humanity] for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth [humanity] for thy possession. 
Psa 2:9  Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

Jer 25:27  Therefore thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you [Beginning at the Altar, the Temple, the Elect of God]. 
Jer 25:28  And it shall be, if they [The Elect and humanity] refuse to take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ye shall certainly drink.) 

Psa 2:10  Be wise now therefore, O ye kings [The Elect]: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. 
Psa 2:11  Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

Consequently, we, the basest of men, have a decree [To be a watchman] to judge ourselves so that our blood and the blood of the Earth’s inhabitants are not laid upon us. 

Eze 33:6  But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand. 

Dan 4:17  This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men [Hopefully, you and I]

Nebuchadnezzar’s (Daniel 4) supreme rulership and God-given demise represent our beastly nature, the earthquake realisation that we are the man of purdition sitting on God’s throne, effectively stating that we are god — being dashed to pieces like a potter’s vessel, like chaff before the summer breeze for the stunning realisation, now instructed to judge ourselves by Christ’s decrees and serve him in fear, and rejoycing with trembling.

Zep 2:4  For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up. 
Zep 2:5  Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, the nation of the Cherethites! the word of the LORD is against you; O Canaan, the land of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant. 

All those aforementioned ethnicities are heathen nations dwelling spiritually within whom Israel deemed unnecessary to utterly remove from their physical land and paid severe hardships in consequence. Today, 2025, the crypto Judeans, emblematic of Orthodox Christianity, enslaved to the Old Covenant, are attempting to fix what the God of the Old Covenant ‘decreed’ to rid their land of all unrighteousness, mercilessly slashing and burning every ‘Gazian’ son of Haggar the bondwoman, utterly unaware that they are in bed with her — an earthquake of unimaginable proportions soon to be realised in the Resurrection to Judgment. 

1Sa 15:1  Samuel also said unto Saul, The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD. 
1Sa 15:2  Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. 
1Sa 15:3  Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. 

Without spiritual discernment, the duality of meaning is too convoluted to understand that in the next verse of Zephaniah, they all become food for the Elect of God, “the remnant”, as an inheritance.

Zep 2:6  And the sea coast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks. 
Zep 2:7  And the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah;[spiritual Judah] they shall feed thereupon: in the houses of Ashkelon shall they lie down in the evening: for the LORD their God shall visit them, and turn away their captivity [In the Resurrection to Judgment]. 
Zep 2:8  I have heard the reproach of Moab, and the revilings of the children of Ammon, whereby they have reproached my people [The Elect], and magnified themselves against their border. 

The “reproach of Moab” is what the Lord’s Elect experience today through taunts, insults, and mockery from emblematic Christian Moabites, most painfully felt by their wives, husbands, and children’s defamation who have not yet been dragged to Christ.

Mat 10:16  Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. 
Mat 10:17  But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; 
Mat 10:18  And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. 
Mat 10:19  But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. 
Mat 10:20  For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. 
Mat 10:21  And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. 
Mat 10:22  And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. 

Zep 2:9  Therefore as I live, saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even the breeding of nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual desolation: the residue of my people [The Elect] shall spoil them, and the remnant [The Elect] of my people shall possess them. 
Zep 2:10  This shall they have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the LORD of hosts. 

The tables have turned for us. The former “not desired” of the Lord has been scourged, and the beasts have been driven out before us from our Temple. It is all humanity since Adam’s turn because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the Elect of God. We see these things through the holy spirit, who gives all understanding.

Joh 16:4  But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you [… a glorious paradox now known!]. 

Zep 2:11  The LORD will be terrible unto them: for he will famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall worship him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen. 
Zep 2:12  Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by my sword. 

The mention, almost as a side note, that the Ethiopians, too, will not escape, denotes a people who by all accounts, never attacked Israel, so, in theirs and our thinking, why should Christ’s sword slay relatively innocent people? A violently contentious parallel can be juxtaposed with Anthony Fauci and all the pundits of safe and effective vaccines most likely never in this life, including the One-Thousand Year reign with the rod of iron, and to the world’s bitter chagrin, never being judged. A phenomenal earthquake result coming upon billions of people is that Fauci is no different to them and us, having killed Christ. So, in the short term, it seems grossly unfair that a perceived innocent and gentle people (the rich man – Luk 18:9-14)) should be lumped in with the likes of Fauci. The reason for the Lord’s actions is that all flesh incurs the wrath of God simply by being “evil flesh”, regardless of how innocent a Christian he thinks he is.

Psa 51:5  Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. 

2Co 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

Gal 5:19  Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 
Gal 5:20  Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 
Gal 5:21  Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

1Co 15:45  And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. 
1Co 15:46  Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. 
1Co 15:47  The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. 
1Co 15:48  As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. 
1Co 15:49  And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. 

Zep 2:13  And he will stretch out his hand against the North, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. 

A striking parallel can be drawn between Zephaniah 2:13 and the King of the South pushing at the King of the North in Daniel 11. In these apparent ‘end times’, and as we once did, the Babylonian Christians are feverishly straining their eyes to see who the Great Whore and Beast are, not knowing that judgment comes upon us who are pushing at Christ, the spiritual King of the North who swiftly responds out of the North with the sword of His word. Paradoxically, the act of our Lord striking us with His word, ‘passes over’ His Elect by the nature of sanctification—being set apart; dedicated to Christ.

Joh 17:16  They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 
Joh 17:17  Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. 

Dan 11:40  And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the North shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over. 
Dan 11:41  He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon. 
Dan 11:42  He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.

When our Lord has struck those we perceive as innocent—being women, children, and the flocks that support our livelihoods, representing our self-righteous little sins that seem un-noteworthy—our Old Jerusalem within becomes a desolation in which the genuinely innocent word of God can dwell within the ‘lintels and windows’ of a receptive mind to his spirit. Being sanctified, the formerly unclean food represented by cormorants and bitterns, and taking up poisonous serpents has no effect on us since those symbols in the New Covenant point to unclean doctrines, which the entire Old Covenant primarily exhibits. Hence, in the next verse of Zephaniah, we live in that peace that the Old Covenant could never deliver, with its suffering progressively being pushed out to the thresholds of our hearts — and eventually entirely. The shittim wood from which the Ark, containing the Old Covenant was constructed is overlaid with corruptible gold, just like the altar made of cedar from that once glorious Covenant, is now made naked, its “cedar work uncovered” in Christ.

Jas 5:2  Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. 
Jas 5:3  Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

Zep 2:14  And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he shall uncover the cedar work. 

Consequently, the Elect of God ecstatically rejoices upon seeing from where they have come, having lived carelessly in Babylonian doctrines with the startling realisation that she was The Great Whore, that Great City, the “I am”, proudly in direct opposition to God, the original “I am” (Exo 3:14), she, with bare thighs sitting on God’s throne in his stead — a most humiliating sight indeed! (Isa 47:1-3)

Rev 17:18  And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. 

Zep 2:15  This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand. 

Rev 17:15  And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. 
Rev 17:16  And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. 

In the not-too-distant future, Lord willing, even now, hopefully, we, the two men dressed in sackcloth, will witness the world in opposition to Judeao Christianity, The Great Whore (representing us!), send each other gifts and endlessly lampoon her—hiss and wagging their fingers in gleeful derision, precisely and unwittingly as our non-believing families and Babylonian friends do to us this very day, all the way to our hopeful, First Resurrection (Rev 11:1-14).