SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/15/2022 8:49 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Promise Repeated”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
16:28
Message of the verse: 28 "Truly I
say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who shall not taste
death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.’”
When we looked at Peter’s first sermon while
studying the book of Acts, (I am posting the SD’s on my second blog from Acts
at this time, and so it is familiar to me) we saw that Peter quoted from the
book of Joel (Acts 2:28-32). This
passage that specifically relates to events that “shall be in the last days”
(Acts 2:17; cf. Joel 2:28). Now
referring to the dramatic events that had just occurred on the Day of
Pentecost, Peter said, “This is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel”
(Acts 2:16). Yet it is obvious that all
of those events did not transpire at Pentecost.
We know that God’s Spirit was not poured out on all mankind; there were
no “signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke”; and the
sun was not “turned into darkness” or “the moon into blood” (Acts
2:17-21). The events of that day,
wondrous as they were, did not signal the second coming. The day of Pentecost was not “in the last
days” of which Joel spoke.
The
events that took place on Pentecost were actually a glimpse and a foretaste of
the last days, as Peter declares in verse 16.
There was “noise like a violent, rushing wind” that “filled the whole
house where they [the 120 believers who had gathered for prayer] were sitting,”
the appearance of “tongues as fire” that “rested on each one of them,” and
their being filled with the Spirit and enabled “to speak with other tongues, as
the Spirit was giving them utterance” (2:2-4) were foreshadows of the Lord’s
second coming glory. To some extent, all
of Jesus’ divine teaching and miracles and the teaching and miracles of the
apostles were a glimpse of the kind of phenomena that will characterize that
future glory. They were a taste of “the
good word of God and the powers of the age to come (Hebrews 6:5) that countless
thousands unbelievers as well as believers, had been privileged to hear and
see.
MacArthur
writes “Yet it seems that Jesus’ promise to the Twelve about seeing the son of
Man coming in His kingdom was more definite and immediate than those general
glimpses.
“It
was not uncommon for Old Testament prophecies to combine a prediction of a far
distant even with a prediction of one in the near future, with the earlier even
prefiguring the latter. Such prophecies would
thereby have near as well as distant fulfillments. The fulfillment of the near prophecy served to
verify the reliability of the distant one.
It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that Jesus verified the
reliability of His second coming prophecy by giving a glimpse of His second
coming glory to some of the disciples before they would taste death.
“In light of that interpretation—and because in all
three gospel accounts the promise of seeing His glory is given immediately
preceding the account of the transfiguration (see Mark 9:1-8; Luke 9:27-36)
and, as mentioned above, basileia can
be translated ‘royal splendor’—it seems that Jesus must here have been
referring specifically to His unique and awesome transfiguration before Peter,
James, and John only six days later (see 17:1).
Those three disciples were the some among the Twelve who would not die
until, in a most miraculous preview, they would see the Son of Man coming in
His kingdom.”
I think that this clears up some things that I was
not real sure about in the past.
10/15/2022 9:19 AM
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