SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/12/2024 12:22 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Scene in the Heavens”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
24:29b
Message of the verse: “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken,”
I have to say that the jet lag that I have been
experiencing over the last few days is a lot better at this time, and so
hopefully I can get further in the study of this wonderful chapter from Matthew
where the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking about what will happen in the end
times. Another thing that I have been
working on is getting my new cell phone hooked up with my hearing aids so that I
can listen to John MacArthur’s sermons while I do my walking each day, and that
is a big help for me in preparing my Spiritual Diaries each day.
Most Christians realize that the earth is held together
by the power of God, and when that power is diminished, the resulting chaos
will be inconceivable. MacArthur adds “Speculations such as the one just cited,
no matter how scientifically derived, can only remotely approximate what the
actual situations will be like.” (The things we looked at in the last SD.)
What is going on in this verse we are looking at happens
because of sin, as sin is the root cause of God having to judge this world at
this time. I go on with what MacArthur
wrote here “But just as the withdrawal of a small part of God’s sustaining
power will cause such pervasive chaos and destruction, so will His supernatural
control of that disintegration prevent the total destruction of the earth. His sovereign power will preserve and restore
it and its people for the establishing of His millennial kingdom.” Now I have written about this in earlier SD’s
and stated that as we look at the time table of what happens when the Lord
Jesus Christ along with His Church returns to planet earth that the first thing
that He will do is take time to judge those who are unbelievers including the
Antichrist, the false prophet, and Satan.
After that is done the Lord Jesus Christ will in effect re-create the
earth to a similar way that it was after it was created by Him in the book of
Genesis, that is I believe that the vapor barrier will be between the sun and
the earth in order to cause people to live longer, as the Bible says that if a
man dies at 100 years old it will be like a child dying.
Now
I want to look at what the prophet wrote some seven hundred years before the
birth of Christ, as he predicted the end-time devastation; 6 Wail, for the day of the LORD is near! It will come as
destruction from the Almighty. 7 Therefore all hands will fall limp, And every
man’s heart will melt. 8 They will be terrified, Pains and anguish will take
hold of them; They will writhe like a woman in labor, They will look at
one another in astonishment, Their faces aflame. 9 Behold, the day of the LORD
is coming, Cruel, with
fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation; And He will
exterminate its sinners from it. 10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not flash forth
their light; The sun will be dark when it rises And the moon will not shed its
light. 11 Thus I will punish the world for its evil And the wicked for
their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud And abase
the haughtiness of the ruthless. 12 I will make mortal man scarcer than pure
gold And mankind than the gold of Ophir” (Isa. 13:6-12).
Now I will quote from MacArthur’s commentary to help
us to understand this passage from Isaiah and then, Lord willing, I will
conclude this section in the next SD which will begin with more from the book
of Isaiah.
“Although
that prophecy applied immediately to the destruction of Babylon (v. 1; cf. Dan.
5:30-31), which occurred in 539 B. C., those events described by Isaiah are
obviously far too universal and catastrophic to have related entirely to
Babylon. The devastation of ancient
Babylon was but a microcosm of what will happen to the whold universe in the
end time.”
1/12/2024 1:07 PM
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