SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/13/2015
6:15 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Introduction to Revelation Eleven
This SD will be a bit different
because I will not quote any verses but just give a little review as to some of
the things we have been looking at and then a preview to what we will begin to
see in chapter eleven. We will meet the
two witnesses in chapter eleven and I have to say that this is one of my
favorite chapters from the 6th to the 19th chapters of
Revelation which makes up the Tribulation Period of the book of
Revelation. The seventh trumpet judgment
is also a part of this chapter and we will look at it later on as the first
fourteen verses have to do with God’s two witnesses.
When we go all the way back to the
third chapter of Genesis, which is probably the saddest chapter in all the
Scriptures, but as we spoke yesterday there surely was some sweetness in that
chapter as after the sin of Adam and Eve we read the following in Genesis 3:15 “And
I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her
seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the
heel."” God is speaking to Satan in
this verse telling him that there will come a redeemer who will kill him for
that is what “bruise you on the head” means.
Satan will bruise the Redeemer on His heal, but the Redeemer will
eventually have Satan killed or put into the fire that was prepared for him and
all of his demons who followed him. The point is that God will provide a
Redeemer and that Redeemer was the Lord Jesus Christ. The problem was that all of mankind was born
into sin and because of that they sinned.
They were as bad off as they could be and as we look throughout the Old
Testament we see that even though God’s promise of a Redeemer was there that
man did what he wanted to do, and that was sin, not paying much attention to
the promise of a Redeemer who was to come.
God would later on call Abram who became
Abraham to begin the nation of Israel which is who God would bring the Redeemer
through, but even Israel, God’s chosen people did not follow the covenant that
God had given them. Let us look at some
verses to show that they rebelled against God and His covenant, but first look
at one of the warnings that God had given them in 2 Kings 17:13 “Yet the LORD
warned Israel and Judah through all His prophets and every seer, saying,
"Turn from your evil ways and keep My commandments, My statutes according
to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you through
My servants the prophets."” This
was given to the people of Israel because God loves them. Now we will look at what happened to Israel
as we look at the next two verses “14 However, they did not listen, but
stiffened their neck like their fathers, who did not believe in the LORD their
God. 15 They rejected His statutes and His covenant which He made with their
fathers and His warnings with which He warned them. And they followed vanity
and became vain, and went after the nations which surrounded them, concerning
which the LORD had commanded them not to do like them.” Now
look at 2 Chron. 36:15-16 “15 The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to
them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people
and on His dwelling place; 16 but they continually mocked the messengers of
God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the
LORD arose against His people, until there was no remedy.” Jeremiah adds “4 ’Yet I sent you all My
servants the prophets, again and again, saying, "Oh, do not do this
abominable thing which I hate." 5 ’But they did not listen or incline
their ears to turn from their wickedness, so as not to burn sacrifices to other
gods. 6 ’Therefore My wrath and My anger were poured out
and burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, so they have
become a ruin and a desolation as it is this day.”
John MacArthur writes “Prophets such
as Elijah Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jonah, and the others confronted both
wayward Israel and sinful Gentile nations.
Jeremiah’s experience was typical of the reception that the prophets
often received: “1 The word that came to
Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim
the son of Josiah, king of Judah (that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar
king of Babylon), 2 which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah
and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, 3 "From the thirteenth
year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this day, these
twenty-three years the word of the LORD has come to me, and I have spoken to
you again and again, but you
have not listened. 4 "And the LORD has sent to you all His servants
the prophets again and again, but you have not listened nor inclined your ear to hear, 5 saying,
’Turn now everyone from his evil way and from the evil of your deeds, and dwell
on the land which the LORD has given to you and your forefathers forever and
ever; 6 and do not go after other gods to serve them and to worship them, and
do not provoke Me to anger with the work of your hands, and I will do you no
harm.’”
We see pretty much the same thing in
the NT as Israel continues to turn their backs on the Lord, and not only Israel
but the whole earth have pretty much turned their backs on the Lord. As we come to the book of Revelation we have
seen first of all the description of Christ and the call of John to write down
the vision that he saw and was actually a part of. The scroll that was spoken of in chapter five
was given to Jesus Christ the Lamb of God and He began to open it one seal at a
time and judgment began to fall on the peoples of the earth and onto the earth
itself, however God has never left Himself without a witness to the people of
the earth including the people of Israel as we saw in chapter seven that God
sealed 144,000 Jewish evangelists which seems to happen soon after the Rapture
of the Church taking the Church home to be with the Lord and setting the stage
for the Tribulation to begin with the signing of a peace treaty with the nation
of Israel by the Antichrist. In chapter
14:6-7 we read “6 And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to
preach to those who live on the earth, and to every nation and tribe and
tongue and people; 7 and he said with a loud voice, "Fear God, and give
Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the
heaven and the earth and sea and springs of waters."” We have stated that the chronology of the
book of Revelation is not in the order of the chapters that we read and we are
not sure when this action by the angel will happen. Now as far as the two witnesses we believe
that their ministry begins around the mid-point of the tribulation period
sometime after the Antichrist goes into the Holy of Holies and claims to be
god.
MacArthur writes “In addition to
preaching the gospel, these two preachers will proclaim God’s judgment on the
wicked world. Their ministry will likely
stretch from the midpoint of the Tribulation until just before the sounding of
the seventh trumpet. That trumpet will
herald the pouring out of the rapid-fire bowl judgments, the battle of Armageddon,
and the return of Christ. During that
period, they will declare that the disasters befalling the world are the judgments
of God. They will participate in fulfilling
the words of the Lord Jesus Christ that the ‘gospel of the kingdom shall be
preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations, and then the end
will come’ (Matt. 24:14). They will also
be used by God to bring salvation to Israel.”
“But before introducing these two
faithful witnesses, John records a fascinating incident in which he himself
took part, an incident that sets the stage for the arrival of the two
preachers.”
The incident that John takes part in
is very similar to what we have been looking at in the book of Ezekiel.
Answer
to yesterday’s Bible question: “Through
the blood of Jesus” (Eph. 1:7).
Today’s
Bible question: “What did Jesus do to
the money changers at the temple?”
Answer
in our next SD.
5/13/2015
6:57 AM
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