SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/16/2015
9:34 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Duty of the
Two Messengers
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
11:3a
Message of the
verse: “"3 And I will grant
authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for twelve hundred and
sixty days,”
We are not getting into one of the themes, and I am not
sure that is the right term to use, but we will go with it as we begin to look
at the two witnesses of Revelation chapter eleven. The first question that people want to ask is
who are these two witnesses and we will get to that later as to who we think
they are, but only the Lord knows for sure who that are. We will first of all look at the duty of
these two men, and yes I truly believe that they are men.
We first of all need to identify who it is who is speaking
here for whoever it was said “And I will grant authority,” and so we know
someone is speaking with a great authority for He grants authority to these two
men. It is believed by me and others for
sure who have read this passage that it is either the Father of the Lord Jesus
Christ who is speaking here for they are the only one who can give this authority.
John MacArthur writes the following on why there are two
witnesses: “There are two witnesses
because the Bible requires the testimony of two people to confirm a fact or
verify truth (Deut. 17:6; 19:15; Matt. 18:16; John 8:17; 2 Cor. 13:1; 1 Tim. 5:19;
Heb. 10:28).”
The verse goes on to say that they are to prophecy and we
want to take a closer look at this word:
“1) to prophesy, to be a prophet, speak forth by divine inspirations, to
predict
1a) to prophesy
1b) with the idea of
foretelling future events pertaining esp. to the kingdom of God
1c) to utter forth,
declare, a thing which can only be known by divine revelation
1d) to break forth under
sudden impulse in lofty discourse or praise of the divine counsels
1d1) under like prompting,
to teach, refute, reprove, admonish, comfort others
1e) to act as a prophet,
discharge the prophetic office”
John MacArthur adds “Prophecy in the New Testament does
not necessarily refer to predicting the future.
Its primary meaning is to ‘speak forth’ ‘to proclaim’ or ‘to preach.’”
Now what are they going to preach about when they begin
to preach which will happen near the mid-point of the Tribulation? I believe that they will be preaching about
what is going on in the world at that time, they will expose the Antichrist,
and also tell of the judgments that are coming into the world, that they are
from the Lord so that He will judge sinful man, demons and Satan, and is also
doing this to take back the earth under His control as it was before sin
entered the universe. The verse tells us
that they will preach fro twelve hundred and sixty days. Now I don’t know if we have covered the point
that the number of days in a year during Biblical times was 360 days as each
month had only 30 days in it. Now they
had some kind of way of taking care of the extra five days, but their calendar
was a lunar calendar.
They will be preaching from the city of Jerusalem and
like people who tell the truth in our world today, and I mean the truth of the
Scriptures they will get under the skin of many people who have believed the
lie of Satan.
MacArthur writes on the fact that they are men: “The fact that they are actual preachers and not
symbols of institutions or movements is indicated by the description of their
clothing and behavior.” We will look at
more of this in our next SD.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: It is comforting know
that God will always have a witness of His grace and mercy in the world as we
see these two witnesses are during the time of the Tribulation, but I need to
be a witness to those whom God brings onto my path each day.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To continue to love the Lord with all of my
heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to better live in and understand the love
of the Lord.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Philippi” (Acts 16:12, 30).
Today’s Bible
question: “Who killed himself after the
battle of Gilboa?”
Answer in our next SD.
5/16/2015 10:04 AM
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