SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/4/2016 8:49 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 Preparation for the King
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 9:1-8
Message of the verses: “1 The burden of the word of the LORD is
against the land of Hadrach, with Damascus as its resting place (for the eyes
of men, especially of all the tribes of Israel, are toward the LORD), 2 And
Hamath also, which borders on it; Tyre and Sidon, though they are very wise. 3
For Tyre built herself a fortress And piled up silver like dust, And gold like
the mire of the streets. 4 Behold, the Lord will dispossess her And cast her
wealth into the sea; And she will be consumed with fire. 5 Ashkelon will see it
and be afraid. Gaza too will writhe in great pain; Also Ekron, for her
expectation has been confounded. Moreover, the king will perish from Gaza, And
Ashkelon will not be inhabited. 6 And a mongrel race will dwell in Ashdod, And
I will cut off the pride of the Philistines. 7 And I will remove their blood
from their mouth And their detestable things from between their teeth. Then
they also will be a remnant for our God, And be like a clan in Judah, And Ekron
like a Jebusite. 8 But I will camp around My house because of an army, Because
of him who passes by and returns; And no oppressor will pass over them anymore,
For now I have seen with My eyes.”
We only have
a little bit more to look at and then in our next SD we can move onto looking
at verse nine, which is a very famous verse that comes out of the book of
Zechariah.
Now one may
wonder as I did before reading this commentary and listening to a sermon on this
section as to why all of this concern over the conquests of Alexander the
Great? I don’t know if it is fair to
compare the coming antichrist with Alexander the Great, but just as Alexander
the Great prepared the world for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in His
first visit to planet earth, the antichrist will prepare the world for His
second coming and setting up the Millennial Kingdom. Dr. Wiersbe writes “By building Greek cities,
encouraging his soldiers to marry women from conquered nations, and spreading
Greek culture and the Greek language, he unified the known world, and when the
Romans took over, they found an empire all prepared for them. Greek was the language of literature, and our
New Testament is written in the common Greek language of the people of that
day. The combination of Greek culture
and Roman government, roads, and laws was just what the early church needed for
the spread of the Gospel.”
Now when we
look at the promise of verse eight we see that this not only applies to
Zechariah’s time, but through the actual end of the world as we know it, and on
into the Millennial Kingdom, that God has promised to protect His people
Israel. All we have to do is look at
history to see that although the Jewish people have suffered much for their sin
of not recognizing their Messiah when He came the first time, God has always
protected them. The movie “Fiddler on the
Roof” tells the story of Jewish people who were living in Russia sometime in
the 1800’s and it is like a microcosm of what happened to the children of
Israel since the first century. God said
that they would be scattered around the world, but God also promised to bring
them back to their land, and this happened in May of 1948, and God is still
bringing them back to their land, and even though they are surrounded by their
enemies who frequently attack them, and even though they do not realize that it
was God who brought them back there and is keeping them there, and even though
they think that it is by their own power that they have not been destroyed, God
is still in control of them and will keep all of the promises that He has given
to them.
8/4/2016 9:26 PM
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