2016-10-14
Good Morning Dear Ones,
For the last two weeks, we have been examining the interactions of God with mankind over mankind’s history. The Spirit directs me to continue with this today. I took up the evidence of God’s love for Israel by her endurance, despite the disappearance of her enemies, the in-grafting of the wild olive branches (believing Gentiles) which replaced Jews “broken off” for disobedience to God from the cultured olive tree (believing Jews) in the metaphor of RO 11: 17-25. HE 5: 12-14 and HE 6: 7-8 were discussed; they contain warnings to take every opportunity to mature in the faith and not to fall away from it. All sorts of warnings from God to live by His teaching and the consequences of falling away come in JN 15: 5-6, 2 PET 2: 20-22, and 1 JN 5: 16.
Today, we’ll pick up with REV 6: 9-14, the fifth seal judgment of Revelation. This passage opens with the righteous martyrs under the throne of God being told their deaths will be avenged with their being given the white garments (symbols of righteousness). The time God will avenge their deaths will be when all those to be martyred have been. Then the focus is turned to verses 12-14, “I watched as He opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.” This was the beginning of the end of the earth and heavens, as we know them, and a sign that Christ’s second Advent would soon follow.
There is nothing accidental about these events. Christ, in MK 13: 24-26 prophesied them. He knew He would appear with great power and glory in the clouds afterward. REV 14: 19-20 further describes what will happen. “The angel swung his sickle on earth gather its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and the blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles, for a distance of 1600 stadia (approximately the length of Palestine from north to south-5 feet deep and 200 miles long).” This same series of events are prophesied in the book of Joel, in JL 3: 12-14. Further information is found in ZECH 14: 1-4, “A day of the Lord is coming when your plunder will be divided among you. I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as He fights in the day of battle. On that day, His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south.” The key event of this series of cataclysmic events is seen in HE 13: 12, “And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through His own blood.”
Illness, like the one God brought down upon the prophetess, Miriam when she disobeyed Moses and was temporarily given Leprocy [NU 12: 1-16], and physical death, like Christ’s death on the cross, was taken outside the city in ancient Jewish custom. These things were considered ritually impure. This is also the reason that even today, traditionally Jewish people bury their dead within three days. More on God and man interacting next week.
PRAYER: O Lord, we gather before Your throne with heads bowed to acknowledge our reverence and awe, Your superiority and sovereignty, and Your unconditional love shown by the sacrifice of Your Son on the cross. We are useless and unable to live righteously without Your loving and wise intervention. Our lives are incomplete without You. JN 15: 5 expresses our need to be connected with You in a covenant relationship. “I am the Vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.” Anyone who has raised fruit knows that once the fruit is separated from the tree, it can no longer grow. Instead ripening and senescence begins immediately, and if not eaten at peak ripeness, the fruit will wither and rot. We are here to acknowledge the caring for every detail of our lives that You do, the attention to every need we have to which You attend. PS 37: 23-24, “The steps of the godly are directed by the Lord. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will not fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand.” We are blessed beyond imagination to have You in our lives, to be able to access You at any time of any day for help, advice, wisdom, encouragement, and caring attention to our pleas. So, Dearest Lord, we thank and praise You with every fiber of our being, in the holy/mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: Our Lord has promised us His legacy: heaven, sweet fellowship with Him, and the eventual end of evil. We’ll look at that legacy next week, and we’ll continue to view mankind’s interaction with the Lord from a historical viewpoint. Recently my husband and I got into a discussion of why mankind keeps making the same mistakes time and time again. I believe, as he does, that it’s because we don’t look carefully into our history and learn the lessons it has for us. While that is easy to say, it’s not easy to do. As a Messianic Jewish person, I feel that God has not only charged me with the responsibility to understand and appreciate the many ramifications to my life of Christ’s Atonement and Resurrection, but also to spread the truth of Christ’s Gospel. But that is not all. Jewish people are also charged with the task of never allowing the lessons of the Holocaust to be forgotten. It’s an important and huge responsibility I carry, and I take it seriously. These things are what motivate me to serve a full-time ministry. They are what help others to understand me as a person wanting to leave a valuable and godly legacy behind me. I have been taught to “think eternally” rather than just of earthly things. As Paul writes in COL 3: 1-4, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, Who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” Praise be to Him!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2016. All Rights Reserved.
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