SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/22/2015
11:02 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Impact of the Two Witnesses
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
11:13
Message of the
verses: “13 And in that hour there was a great
earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in
the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of
heaven.”
In this SD we want to focus in on what happened after the
Two Witnesses went to heaven in their resurrection and it is very amazing. First of all we see a great earthquake and
the verses goes on to say ‘a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were
killed in the earthquake,” and then it goes on to say that the remainder who
were terrified and so they gave glory to the God of heaven.” This is different than what we have been
seeing in earlier parts of the book of Revelation and what we will continue to
see in later parts of the book as in many cases we have witnessed that people
were cursing God because of the judgments, but not this time.
Now remember that from the beginning
of this chapter it has been about the nation of Israel as we learned from the
measuring of the temple we saw that God was focusing in on the people of
Israel. Let me go back even further to
the book of Daniel and in the ninth chapter of that wonderful book we see the
greatest prophecy found in the Word of God and we have gone over this before,
but need to briefly go over it again.
The prophecy that God gave to Daniel was one for 490 years
(seventy-sevens in the Hebrew), and it begins in Nehemiah chapter two and then
after 483 years ends temporarily when Christ offers Himself as King and is
rejected. Luke nineteen is where is see
the stop to this prophecy where Christ comes into Jerusalem on a donkey at what
is called Palm Sunday. In the period
following that we have the Church age which begins in the second chapter of the
book of Acts. The church age will end at
the Rapture of the church as seen in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and shortly after
that the Tribulation period will begin and this is the period that we are in
the midst of looking at in Revelation 6-19 which ends with the return of Jesus
Christ to planet earth as seen in the 19th chapter of
Revelation. God is dealing with the
nation of Israel in this seven years of the Tribulation Period just as He did
in the first 483 years of Daniel’s prophecy.
Now the apostle Paul knew what was going on here as he wrote the book of
Romans and in chapters 9-11 he speaks of Israel and writes the following in
Romans 11:26 where he writes “26 and so
all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, "THE DELIVERER WILL COME
FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB."” Now what we see in the verse that we are
looking at, and this is my opinion from what I have learned in my study of
Revelation in the past, is that Romans 11:26 is fulfilled in this passage from
Revelation 11:13 where we read “and the rest were terrified and gave glory to
the God of heaven.” When we see this in
other parts of the Scriptures “gave glory to the God of heaven” we see that it
is speaking of salvation. It is my
belief that after the earthquake that Israel wakes up and understands that
Jesus Christ is their Messiah and the remaining people who are not killed by the
earthquake are saved thus giving glory to God.
The interlude ends on this note and the third woe is
coming quickly after that. John
MacArthur writes on this word quickly “Tachu
(Quickly) means ‘soon’ (cf. Rev. 2:16; 3:11; 22:7, 12, 20) and expresses the
imminency of this last woe, which is the seven bowl judgment ushered in by the
sounding of the seventh trumpet.”
It becomes exciting when you compare Scripture with
Scripture and see how this all fits together.
We have a few more SD’s to do in
this 11th chapter of Revelation and then we will move into the
second half of the book of Revelation. At
this point I want to quote the last paragraph from John MacArthur’s sermon on
this section of Revelation 11 as I believe it is important to understand what
he spoke here: “Now as we come then to
the seventh trumpet, we come to the very end. You say, "Why does the book go on and on
from there?" Because
it recapitulates and goes back and describes the career of Antichrist,
describes the one-world church, describes the one-world economy, goes back
historically in ways that fill in that seven-year period, and we'll be looking
at that in the future. Next time, in a few weeks, we will look at the
seventh trumpet that is blown starting in verse 15.”
Spiritual
meaning for my life today:
Understanding the future is very important to all believers in Jesus
Christ as it gives “hope” to us. When I
put on the Spiritual Armor, one of the things that I put on is the “helmet of
salvation” and Paul calls it the “helmet of the hope of salvation” in his
letter to the Thessalonians meaning that our hope for complete salvation is
something we need to put on our heads (spiritually speaking) each day as this
is our hope, the return of Jesus Christ.
Paul writes to Titus “Tit 2:13
looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great
God and Savior, Christ Jesus.”
My Steps of Faith for Today: To love the Lord with all my
heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength, and to fear the Lord and
live in the love or Christ.
Answer to yesterday’s
Bible question: “Athaliah” (2 Chron. 23:13).
Today’s Bible
question: “Where was Paul let down from
the wall in a basket?
Answer in our next
SD.
5/22/2015 12:38 PM
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