SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/24/2016 11:39 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Presentation of the Vision
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 4:1-3
Message of the verses: “1 Then the angel who was speaking with me
returned and roused me, as a man who is awakened from his sleep. 2 He said to me, "What do you see?"
And I said, "I see, and behold, a lampstand all of gold with its bowl on
the top of it, and its seven lamps on it with seven spouts belonging to each of
the lamps which are on the top of it; 3 also two olive trees by it, one on the
right side of the bowl and the other on its left side."”
Zechariah
has not been seeing these visions for a while now and because of the awesomeness
of them, because they are supernatural to see he ends up being in a type of
semi-coma state as he has become spiritually exhausted which was similar to
what happened to Daniel when he saw some of the visions that God had shown
him. The visions that Daniel saw were
not one right after another, for he saw visions from when he was younger to
when he was older, probably in his eighties.
As human beings not used to seeing things like what Daniel and Zechariah
it had to be very hard on them.
What
Zechariah saw could be described as something similar to what the Jews call a
menorah, and there is a big one outside the Kinnesit in Israel, where the government
is held, or the Parliament meets. This
lampstand has a large bowl on top of it and then it has seven lamps on it with
seven spouts that come from these lamps, making a total of 49 pipes in
all. Macarthur writes “So out of this
bowl to each of those little lamps comes seven conduits.”
Verse three
speaks of two olive trees that are by this lampstand, one of the Olive trees is
on the left side and one on the right side.
What we have pictured is these Olive trees producing a continued supply
of oil for the lampstand. This is
different to the ones in the temple as the priest has to light them each day
and add oil to them to have light.
However this one in Zechariah’s vision is automatic.
MacArthur write some more things about this vision: “The second distinction is the seven tubes, or the seven conduits, or the seven pipes, and incidentally the Hebrew grammar and the Hebrew construction of the term here indicates that there were 49, seven going to each one. So there would be seven little pipes coming down to each lamp. Now in the Holy Place in the temple and the tabernacle no such pipes existed. And then you have the two olive trees on the right and on the left and flowing out of those is the oil going into the bull and then trickling down. And incidentally there are two great big giant golden tubes coming out of the olive tree. You say, "Where did you get that?" Verse 12, and it says, "I answered again and said unto Him what are the two olive branches which through the two golden conduits or channels or pipes or tubes." So let me reconstruct quickly: two great big olive trees living flowing olive trees. In fact an olive tree can last a long time. They tell us, if you're over there in Israel, that some of the olive trees are still producing oil were there as saplings when Jesus lived. They last a long time. Have you ever seen a little olive wood figure somebody brought back from Israel? It takes 40 years to cure that wood before it can be carved because the oil stays in it so long. It is an oily tree, and so there are these two olive trees, the oil flows down golden channels into this bowl and then into multiples of seven into the lamps.
“Now you say, "What in the world is this
trying to show?" Well it's trying to show whatever it is it has no human
agency, right? It's strictly automatic. God is producing the life in the tree
and out of that the thing is being lit without any human involvement. There are
no priests to trim the lamp, there's nobody putting oil in it. It's strictly an
operation by God. Keep that in mind. That's the presentation of the vision.”
5/25/2016 12:01 AM
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