SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/15/2024 8:07 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Sign in the Sky”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
24:30a
Message of the verse: “and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky”
I begin with a quote from John MacArthur’s commentary in today’s SD: “Many of the early church Fathers, such as Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Origen, imagined that this sign would be an enormous blazing cross, visible to the entire world, that would pierce the total darkness then shrouding the world. Other interpreters have suggested it will be the Shekinah glory of the Lord’s presence returning to earth. It is likely that the Shekinah glory will be involved, as the unveiled Christ Jesus makes His appearance. But the sign is not just His glory; it is Christ Himself, the Son of Man, who will appear in the sky.”
MacArthur goes on:
The sign of should be translated as a Greek subjective genitive
indication that the sign will not simply relate to or point to the Son of Man
(as with an objective genitive) but will indeed be the Son of Man. In other
words, Jesus Himself will be the supreme and final sign of His coming. In the midst of the world’s unrelieved
blackness—physical, emotional, and spiritual—Jesus Himself will manifest
Himself in His infinite and undiminished glory and righteousness. Just as the destructive catastrophes of the
Great Tribulation will be utterly unparalleled (v. 21), so will be this
manifestation of the glory and power of Christ.”
In
eleven days from today I will celebrate 50 years of being a born-again believer
in Jesus Christ, and I have to say that the first book of the Bible that I ever
read was the book of Revelation, something that I would not advise a new
believer to do, but that is how it was for me because I was very much afraid of
what was going to happen to planet earth, and had no clue as to what would
happen. My mother told me when I was a
child that winter would turn into summer and then the world would burn up. Only part of that is true, and that is the
part that one day the world will burn up according to 2 Peter 3:10. The point of this is that I have been
studying end-time revelation from the Word of God for almost fifty years, and
many of the stories, like the one MacArthur tells of old time Bible scholars I
have read, and I don’t think that they had the right idea as to what the sign
really was. I totally agree with MacArthur
that the sign is the Lord Jesus Christ returning to planet earth seven years
after the Tribulation period began, and is written about in the middle of the
19th chapter of the book of Revelation. 11 And I saw heaven
opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called
Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are
a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and
He has a name written on Him which no one knows
except Himself. 13 He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His
name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies which are in heaven, clothed
in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. 15 From
His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations,
and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the
fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. 16 And on His robe and on His thigh He has a
name written, "KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.’” The war
called Armageddon, or the last battle of Armageddon is going on at full furry
at this time, and if the Lord did not return at this time then there would be
no more world to save, but as soon as the two sides of this war see the Lord
and the raptured church returning with Him they immediately began to fire their
nuclear missiles at the Lord which will have no effect as the Sword in His
mouth is more powerful than anything that they have in their arsenal.
Lord
willing in the next SD I will add some more comments from MacArthur’s
commentary that go along with what I just wrote.
1/15/2024 8:37 AM
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