For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption. (Psalm 16:10)
Therefore he says also in another psalm, ‘”You will not let your Holy One see corruption.’
For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption. (Acts 13:35-37).
O! It is grievous to think of our precious Lord being nailed to the cross as He was on ‘Good’ Friday. It IS a Good Friday because His life, death, and resurrection makes it possible for sins to be forgiven once and for all. Jesus’ work on the cross made permanent reconciliation with His called ones possible. It was effectual and final.
But oh! To think of his broken body being carefully lowered from the cross, quickly prepared for burial, and laid in a dark tomb…. it wounds the conscience. It darkens the heart. It grieves the flesh. Death is final, the body no more thriving with movement and color. Only limp, pale, dead tissue- a lump of nothing that came from dust and will turn to dust.
And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. (Mark 15:46).
But no! Not Christ’s body! He will not see decay. However, the grief and suffering of His disciples who did not know that at the time, is woeful to consider.
Giotto painted the lamentation over Christ’s death in the early 1300s. Grief is palpable to the viewer. The dead tree on the hillside symbolizing the tree in the garden where Adam and Eve made their fatal choice…the three women surrounding his limp body, likely Mary Magdalene gently cradling His feet and the mother Mary holding His head, the angels who long to look into these thing also shown affected by the death and burial of Christ, their God whom they had known since their own creation created in eons past.
Titian also depicted the entombment of Christ, painting the more intimate scene below in 1520. The major figures are at Christ’s death, including Mary, John, Nicodemus, Peter, and Joseph of Arimathea, displaying more restraint that Giotto’s depiction, still carefully remove the body and prepare Him for entombement. The twilight timing allowed Titian’s usual use of darkened tones to add depth to the lamentation. Christ’s upper body itself is receding into the darkness, foreshadowing the tomb. What strength they had to carry Him without staggering under unimaginable grief, and place Him behind the rock!
Bela Čikoš Sesija’s Mourning of Christ is an even more intimate portrait. Painted sometime in the late 1800s, this Croatian painter shows the undeniably lifeless Christ in shadow, but His white robe, symbolizing purity and sinlessness is highlighted by a heavenly glow, along with the crown of thorns, symbolizing His suffering. The grief of the two women is also palpable, as is their resignation to the finality of death.
Praise God, Sunday is coming! What joy they will know in one more day’s time! For all eternity, death is conquered, swallowed by His suffering and propitiation for sin, absorbing the wrath for His chosen sinners once for all. Hallelujah!
Yesterday in part 1 I wrote of how this world is temporary. Pagans put their hopes in a human savior, usually in the form of a President or Prime minister, or some sort of high leader. Others pursue “social justice”, or the “prosperity gospel’, or the “Gnostic mystics.” All those are different gospels. Christians know that our supreme leader is Jesus and our hopes should be on Him. He raises up leaders and ordains their time and even ordains the length of time each nation exists.
This year opened with a bang. The long known and feared doomsday prophecy which the Mayans had carved in stone way back in 669 sparked a frenzy of movies, television commercials, articles, and discussions about the precision of their ‘prophecy’ that the world would end on December 21, 2012.
Though last January was 11 months away from the prophecy, the world had finally entered the threshold of the year in which the prophecy was due to occur. So, we endured silliness like this Hollywood movie:
As an aside, I think that no matter how much the US proclaims that “We Love LA“, we nevertheless gleefully insert a clip of LA sliding into the sea at every chance possible. I think we secretly hate LA 🙂
And this commercial from the Superbowl:
In which only the men owning a Chevy Silverado survived the Mayan Apocalypse. “Where’s Dave?” “He drove a Ford…” [moment of respectful silence for the poor car shopper Dave] “Want a Twinkie?”
Who would have thought 11 months ago that Twinkies would be no more?? The Mayans certainly didn’t. I mean, if they couldn’t predict the end of the Twinkie, I think that destroys their credibility for making other predictions, like, say, the end of the world. Just sayin’.
I drive a 20 year old Ford by the way. Super truck! I say BAH! to Chevy.
But the specter of the Mayan Apocalypse still survives to frighten another day. Or not…
Tourists are flocking to Mexico’s Maya Riviera and Guatemalan resorts ahead of next month’s fateful date, as this article reports. The funny thing is, the Mayans did not prophecy the end of the world. Their stone merely marks one cycle ending and another one beginning. “So no need to build giant arks, because the terrible floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions depicted in the Hollywood blockbuster 2012 were not prophesied by the Mayas,” say the experts. The title of the article in the Sydney Morning Herald is certain in its comfort:
Relax, the world won’t end next month: expert “The final date represents the end of a cycle in the Mayan long count calendar that began in the year 3114 before Christ. It is the completion of 13 baak t’uunes, a unit of time equivalent to 144,000 days. “It is not the end of the Mayan long count calendar, which is endless. It’s the beginning of a new cycle, that’s all,” said Mexican historian Erick Velasquez.”
Well, that’s a relief. All that joshing about the end of the world and the vicarious adrenaline pumping thrills they got from watching movies and ads about the ultimate disaster are hitting a little close to home now that it isn’t 11 months away – but mere weeks.
Well, the Mayans may have had a good handle on the new math and zodiacal astronomy but only God gives prophecies. Only HE declares things. (Despite what Joel Osteen says)
“Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me.” (Isaiah 45:21)
Now that the world is approaching the Mayan deadline for doom, people aren’t so pumped up about it. Weird, you’d think they would be even more excited than they were at the beginning of the year now that we are so close to the Mayans’ date. Huh.
The ‘reassuring’ articles are coming out. But don’t be reassured by “experts.” They don’t know what they are talking about.
The world will end. We just don’t know when. (Matthew24:36). If you want end of the world prophecies, just look to the bible. Christ’s Second Coming and His uncreation of the world at that time is mentioned over 200 times. His Second Coming is the most prominent theme in the NT after faith/salvation. There are 1,845 verses in the bible referring to His Second Coming. Every NT author mentions the Second Coming. We are repeatedly told to study all of scripture, and this does not exclude the prophetic passages. (source: “Christ’s Prophetic Plans” pp 14-15, MacArthur& Mayhue)
Genesis records an orderly creation and Revelation 6 records an orderly UNcreation. In the seven-year Tribulation, Jesus strips away all man’s infrastructures, all of man’s institutions, and all of the landforms and changes the face of the earth to prepare for His 1000-year ‘Millennial’ Kingdom. The earth at the end of the Tribulation will be renewed but sin will still be present.
After the 1000 years is over, He will melt the earth in a fervent heat and a great WHOOSH and create a new one, and this time there will be no sin forever. (2 Peter 3:13, Isaiah 65:17, Revelation 21:1-4)
The way to escape the end of the world (as we know it according to Revelation 6) is to appeal to Jesus as Savior to forgive you of your sins and accept Him as Lord of your life. Jesus as Savior and Lord over you will declare you righteous and accept you as a citizen of heaven. The only entry ticket you need is Jesus. He paid your entry fee, by dying on the cross as God’s substitute sacrifice for sins and He poured out His wrath upon Him. The debt is paid and anyone who wants to claim a seat on the rapture flight can do so, without fee. All you need to do is repent.
This is the promise of the Holy God:
“He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.” (Romans 2:6-11).
So seek Him and not self.
The doom is not anticipating a Mayan end of the world. It is not enduring the uncreation of the world via Jesus’s wrath at the end of the age as revelation reveals. The doom is your glorified body and soul enduring God’s wrath forever in the Lake of Fire. I daresay that no Mayan prophecy could imagine the agony of that doom as well as the bible records it. Jonathan Edwards preached it:
“Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it…”
Now that is doom. But in Jesus is life. Here is 12 minutes that may change your life.
The Gospel: The most terrifying truth of scripture
the-end-time.org 