This is a staggeringly incomprehensible verse, but it is true, my brethren:
“Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them.” (Luke 12:37)
Mercy. A beautiful quality of God. Here is CARM.org’s definition of mercy and how it differs from grace:
Mercy
“Mercy is the act of not administering justice when that justice is punitive. Because of our sinfulness we deserve death and eternal separation from God (Rom. 6:23; Isaiah 59:2), but God provided an atonement for sin and through it shows us mercy. That is, He does not deliver to the Christian the natural consequence of his sin which is damnation. That is why Jesus became sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21) and bore the punishment due to us (Isaiah 53:4-5). It was to deliver us from damnation. (Compare with justice and grace.)”
“God saved us according to His mercy (Titus 3:5) and we can practice mercy as a gift (Rom. 12:8). “Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).“
Mercy is not grace.
Grace
“Biblically, grace is unmerited favor. It is God’s free action for the benefit of his people. It is different than justice and mercy. Justice is getting what we deserve. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. Grace is getting what we do not deserve. In grace we get eternal life, something that, quite obviously, we do not deserve. But because of God’s love and kindness manifested in Jesus on the Cross, we receive the great blessing of redemption.”
Sometimes we think to ask for mercy from God. The tax collector was commended for his humble appeal for mercy to Holy God.
“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” (Luke 18:13)
Here is something to think of even further. There are many people who say they are watchmen. As a matter of fact, we are all called to “watch.” In Mark 13 between verses 33 and 37 Jesus said to “watch” four times! He said to watch for His coming, and to pray. Watch for the householder. Stay awake and watch. And He finished by saying “what I say unto you I say unto all.” So we all are supposed to be watchmen.
So we watch.
But there is more to do than simply watch. What else are Christian watchmen supposed to do? Well, pray, as stated above.
We also share the good news of salvation.
“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” The voice of your watchmen—they lift up their voice; together they sing for joy; for eye to eye they seethe return of the Lord to Zion.” (Isaiah 52:7-8).
But there is something else we can do besides watch, pray, warn, and share the Good News. It’s mercy. The prophets of old often warns, often shared the good news, but one of their jobs was to plea for mercy before God on behalf of the people.Do we pray to God for mercy for our people?
The tax collector was praised for acknowledging his own hopeless state, and pled for mercy to God who dispenses mercy.
After we remove the log from our eye and repent of our daily sins, (so we are not prayerful hypocrites) when we pray, plea for mercy for your church family too. We should pray and plead for mercy for our brethren.
Paul asked the Lord to grant mercy on the house of Onesiphorus–
“May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains,” (2 Timothy 1:16)
In his salutation,Paul often wrote that he asked the Lord to show mercy to his loved ones as in this example:
“May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.” (Jude 1:2)
I believe that when we pray for mercy for others by name or in groups, it is harder for us to be critical of them, and it makes it possible to love them even more. Because, He loves us and showed mercy…not dispensing our earned justice of His wrath but instead He mercifully reconciled us to Him through Jesus.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; (2 Corinthians 5:17-18).
“for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,” (Isaiah 61:10b)
Pray for mercy for the people you love.
I mentioned before that any time there is a large earthquake, this blog sees an increase in views. People are somehow more unsettled after an earthquake than most other natural disasters, though any disaster sees people flocking to sites in search of the meaning of it all.
Personally I think quakes unsettle people because this is the very ground we walk on that is moving, splitting, and otherwise kicking up. If solidity isn’t solid, than maybe invisible God is real…The subconscious thought or fear is likely, “If the earth isn’t solid, then what is?”
God of course.
But any natural disaster sends people searching for what, where, why. God is creator. He made the earth and the stars and the heavens and the stars and everything in between. He made it…and He can UNmake it.
.png) |
| Wikipedia photo, Linnaean taxonomy |
Man assigns lists and categories to everything in the natural world, trying to organize it, in order to understand it. I remember being very interested in the biological taxonomy of mollusks in my 30s. Wikipedia explains taxonomy–
The establishment of universally accepted conventions for the naming of organisms was Linnaeus’ main contribution to taxonomy—his work marks the starting point of consistent use of binomial nomenclature.[129] During the 18th century expansion of natural history knowledge, Linnaeus also developed what became known as the Linnaean taxonomy; the system of scientific classification now widely used in the biological sciences.
The Linnaean system classified nature within a nested hierarchy, starting with three kingdoms. Kingdoms were divided into classes and they, in turn, into orders, and thence into genera (singular: genus), which were divided into Species (singular: species).[130] Below the rank of species he sometimes recognized taxa of a lower (unnamed) rank; these have since acquired standardised names such as variety in botany and subspecies in zoology. Modern taxonomy includes a rank of family between order and genus and a rank of phylum between kingdom and class that were not present in Linnaeus’ original system
I bought plastic divided tackle boxes at Wal-Mart and collected shells from all the oceans I sailed on and
 |
| Initiamenta conchologica, or, Elements of conchology Printed and published by Reeve, Brothers,1846-1849. biodiversitylibrary.org/item/54210 |
all the beaches I walked on, and labeled them and placed them within a taxonomy … and it felt so good to organize the world. I felt that if I could organize it, and then I could understand it, and then I could control it.
Of course that is a mistake, no matter how fun it is to study natural history. But I wasn’t saved then and I didn’t know God.
And in the end, man doesn’t really understand the world or the universe much at all. See the following articles:
The Sun That Did Not Roar
“This is the height of the 11-year solar cycle, the so-called solar maximum. The face of the Sun should be pockmarked with sunspots, and cataclysmic explosions of X-rays and particles should be whizzing off every which way. Instead, the Sun has been tranquil, almost spotless. As W. Dean Pesnell, the project scientist for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, dryly noted, “We’re not having much of a solar maximum.” A week ago, a solitary sunspot blemished an otherwise blank yellow disk. In the ensuing days, a few more specks appeared, but even a small explosion, or coronal mass ejection, last Thursday seemed like the halfhearted effort of a slacker star. “The truth of it is there isn’t a lot going on,” said Joseph M. Kunches, a space scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center. “It’s been a bit of a dud. You look at the Sun today and you say, ‘What?’ … For scientists trying to understand the dynamics in the interior of the Sun, it has been a humbling experience enlightening them about how much they do not know.“
They do not know as much about the order of the universe as they thought they knew.
 |
| Wikimedia commons, TS Franklin, 2005 |
Despire dire forecasts, it’s a dud year for hurricanes
“The preseason predictions were all dire, using words like “extremely active” and “above-normal” to describe the forecast for the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted that seven to 11 hurricanes would form, while AccuWeather predicted eight. However, the season so far has been a welcome if unexpected dud, with not a single hurricane yet through the first week of September. (A typical full June-November hurricane season, based on weather records that go back to 1950, has seven hurricanes.)’
Really? Scientists know so much about how the wind blows that they can predict how many hurricanes there will be? I don’t think so. They do not know as much about hurricanes as they think they know.
Climate change AKA global warming? Nah.
Climate change is on ice: UN scientists reveal the world’s barely got any hotter in the last 15 years
“In a report Report compiled by over 800 scientists and used 9,000 scientific studies UN scientists said today they are ’95 per cent’ certain that climate change is man made, but still could not explain why the world has barely got any hotter in the last 15 years.”
The earth is not as solid as we think and the wind is not as constant as we think and the sun is not as active (or inactive) as we think. The Tribulation will be a time when all the cycles and taxonomies and orderliness of what has been a seeming normal will morph into a new normal: the horror of uncreation. Man wasn’t around when God created the stars and the earth but he will be around when He uncreates it.
For example, the wind won’t blow.
“After these things I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of
 |
| Hans Holbein the Younger 1497/98-1543, The angels holding back the four winds Series/Book Title: Apocalypse |
the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree” (Revelation 7:1).
The sun is cooling now but later it will turn hot, so hot it will burn men in an instant–
“The fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory” (Revelation 16:8-9)
Hail will be supersized, 100 lbs, and crush mens’ heads.
“And great hailstones, about one hundred pounds each, fell from heaven on people; and they cursed God for the plague of the hail, because the plague was so severe.” (Revelation 16:21)
The Tribulation will be a time when God will uncreate the earth, unspooling it from the seeming normalcy humanity has enjoyed, to now when things are starting to go haywire, to future then when nothing will be normal.
Spurgeon wrote that in the creation, “The light which broke in upon the primeval darkness was of a very mysterious kind, and came not according to ordinary laws, for as yet neither sun nor moon had been set as lights in the firmament.“
MacArthur wrote of the uncreation of Revelation: “The present laws of thermodynamics, which state that matter can not be created nor destroyed, will no longer be in effect. As a result, “he universe “will be burned up,” it will be totally consumed. (2 Peter 3:10-13). The absolute reverse of creation will occur. It didn’t take eons of evolution to create the universe, nor will it take eons to uncreate it. The uncreation of the universe, like its creation, will take place by the word of God.” (source “Revelation 12-22 MacArthur New Testament Commentary By John F MacArthur”)
All praise our holy God who creates, makes things orderly in their time, makes things disorderly in their time, and will dissolve the universe when it is time!
“I exhort you!” “I beseech you!’ We read those biblical phrases a lot. So. What do they mean?
That is what this blog essay is about.
“Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” (1 Timothy 4:13)
Paul is urging Timothy to be bold and stay strong. Timothy was a pastor. However, exhortation is not only for pastors. Gills Exposition says of the verse,
“Exhortation” intends the stirring up of believers to the exercise of grace, and the discharge of duty; and is a considerable part of the work of the ministry, and on which a minister of Christ should much insist; –
Mike Ratliffe on the same verse
What is exhortation? In 1 Timothy 4:13, the word I translated as “exhortation” is the noun παρακλήσει, which is the Dative, Singular form of παράκλησις or paraklēsis, which refers to an “admonition or encouragement for the purpose of strengthening and establishing the believer in the faith (Romans 15:4; Philippians 2:1; Hebrews 12:5; 13:22). Technically, an exhortation is the application of the exposition of scripture. It challenges God’s people to obey the truth of God’s Word and warns them of the consequences of not doing so.
The pastor exhorts the believer, and the believer exhorts the believer. As a matter of fact, some believers have been given the gift of exhortation!
“Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.” (Romans 12:6-8).
GotQuestions explains the gift of exhortation,
“The gift of exhortation is a person’s unique ability to encourage and edify others. This person delights in finding Scriptures that apply to a situation and teaching others how to apply them. People with this gift are often involved in teaching, counseling, and discipleship training ministries within the church. Exhorters are among the first to find believers who are floundering in their faith. They come alongside the weaker ones to encourage, confront, if necessary, and model victorious living.
Jesus exhorted and John the Baptist exhorted. Their first words and the main thrust of their ministries were to tell people to repent. Believers should exhort people to repent, whether you have the gift of exhortation or not. It is what Jesus came to do, seek the repentant and save the lost. As His ambassadors it is what we are here to do.
GotQuestions again, “Regardless of our primary gifts, all Christians should desire to become better at exhortation to build up those who are weaker, encourage those who lead, and strengthen the Body of Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:14; 2 Corinthians 1:4).“
So what else should we exhort about? –Peter also exhorted to people that they should repent. (Acts 2:38).
–John exhorted to people about truth. (3 John 4).
–James exhorted people to good works in Christ (James 2:17-18)
So if pastors are urged to exhort, and believers with the gift are urged to exhort, and believers without the gift are urged to exhort, why isn’t the church exhorting?
Christians are being persecuted everywhere! Chased, hunted, killed, and churches burned! Here is a snippet from an article called The Silence of the Pulpits
If you are even slightly awake about the world news today, it is no surprise that Christians are being killed, raped, and brutalized throughout the Islamic world. However, there is a place where you can go to escape the dreadful and relentless details of Christian annihilation by Islam. You can just go to church. …
The principal reason public opinion hasn’t been galvanized around the persecution of Christians is that the various church leaderships either ignore or dance around the issue. If churches don’t speak up forcefully, then it is unrealistic to expect the world’s democratic governments to do the same.And so the response found in nearly every church to the murder of Christians is…wait for it…complete silence. Not a mention or reference to it, or to the brutality against Christians that happens almost every day in the Islamic world. This is not a passive silence, because if you try to change it, you will fail. The silence is an active, working conspiracy that goes throughout nearly all of Christendom.“
The article’s author goes on to propose that the reason for the silence means one must examine the who the people are doing the persecuting, and since facts are the enemy today, they don’t like speaking about the fact that Muslims are doing the killing. (ans why are Muslims doing this Christian-killing? They hate Jesus).
If we are supposed to exhort unto the truth in opposition to false doctrine, as John modeled for us, then why is there a deafening silence from evangelicals?
John MacArthur on the Deafening Silence of Evangelicals
“There is a widespread reluctance in the evangelical community to offer strong, biblical critique in response to theological error. And the glut of unrestrained charismatic teaching serves as a glaring example of that. Theological pacifism has inadvertently given license to many false teachers. They have free reign to misrepresent the Holy Spirit and mislead the people of God by proclaiming their imaginings as direct revelation from the Lord. Believers cannot sit and watch as such blasphemy poisons the minds of people looking for the truth.“
No, a person is not being humble and gentle when they remain silent and do not exhort when they should.
Bill Muehlenberg said in his essay “The Sin of Remaining Silent – and Doing Nothing“
“Remaining silent and inactive about evil when we have a chance to make a difference is not just cowardly, but sinful. We are called to be proactive in promoting that which is good and resisting that which is evil. Apathy, fence-sitting and refusal to engage are not options for the biblical Christian.”
If a sister is reading a book you know for a fact to be thoroughly permeated with false doctrine, will you sit still and say nothing? If a precious brother says he is a Christian but refuses to go to church to hear the word and worship Him, will you let it go? If you are a pastor and you know for sure that a member is watching porn, or engaged in adultery, should you exhort that brother or sister to repent? Yes you should.
Paul told Titus that as an elder he should encourage those who are in sound doctrine to continue and refute those who contradict. (Titus 1:9)
Exhort with all due love to the brethren and others! Stay strong and speak up. Exhort!!
—————————
Further reading
This is an excellent and practical essay on street preaching. found it helpful even though I am not a street preacher. It’s a practical treatise on engaging with people in exhortation.
Thank you readers! I am so grateful for the readership and the comments here. Last night this blog passed 3 million views. That means in some way or another 3 million people came in contact with the themes of Jesus, His name, of the concepts of redemption, holiness, the Spirit, lawlessness, or salvation. It is also a lot to be accountable to Jesus for in me handling the Word…
I began a secular blog in 2006, because that was the thing to do back then. It is called The Quiet Life, based on the verse from 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12. As I went along though, my new position of justified before Christ and increasingly sanctified in Him prompted me to discuss more of Him. I also felt a burden for being a witness to the last days and the fervor and discernment that comes along with that.
So in 2009 I started this blog, devoted exclusively to encouraging the saints, teaching how to discern, and warning of the last moments of the last days. For Christians, I hope that the writing here would accomplish those goals, and that we would all strive to live a higher standard of living for Christ, including myself! For non-Christians I pray that the words here and the links here and the comments in discussions here would shed light on your sins and your need for Jesus. I won’t know the level of my obedience or disobedience until I get there, or what the Spirit has done through me, but in any case, I try to work for Christ all day, all the time.
Speaking of work for Christ, I am working at the County Fair tonight in our church’s Snack Shack booth. The Fair is huge around here so it will be crowded even if it rains (which it is supposed to). If you think of it, would you kindly pray for hearts to be prepared ahead of them coming the booth? I’ll be saying James 5:8 a lot as well as Mark 1:15. I guess I am not a believer in ‘relational evangelism’. If ‘Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand’ was the very first ministry words Jesus our King said, (Mt 4:17) and good enough for John the Baptist, the greatest man who ever lived, (Matthew 11:11) then those verses are good enough for me to open with. But I am not bold so I’ll need prayers to help me. 🙂
Thank you for reading and your comments and encouraging me through your talents and time and prayers. I’ll be writing here until the Spirit says stop, I die, or we are raptured!
I am reading through 1 Kings and in chapter 9 and then chapter 11 and a mysterious thing called “the Millo” is mentioned. Here are two verses which mention the Millo, though certainly not the only verses in the only books of the Old Testament which mention this structure.
“And this is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon drafted to build the house of the Lord and his own house and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer” (1 Kings 9:15)
“And this was the reason why he lifted up his hand against the king. Solomon built the Millo, and closed up the breach of the city of David his father.” (1 Kings 11:27)
Other times the Millo is mentioned (and it is always the Millo) are 2 Samuel 5:9, 1 Chronicles 11:8 and 2 Chronicles 32:5.
The context of the mentions is always in a militaristic context, so the Millo seems to be something like a wall or a fortress, or a defense structure of some kind. It is not THE wall, because the Millo is mentioned separately from the wall in the 1 Kings 9 verse. This article abstract from Biblical Archaeology Society explains:
Scholars’ Corner: Has Jerusalem’s Millo Been Found?
“One of the puzzles British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon solved during her Jerusalem excavations of 1961–1967 was the meaning of the untranslatable Biblical word Millo. Or did she? On the steep eastern slope of the city of David (or Ophel), the site of the original city of Jerusalem south of the Temple Mount, Kenyon uncovered tier upon tier of architectural terracing buried beneath an avalanche of stone and debris. Kenyon identified this terracing, which had supported buildings of the city located on the slope, as the Millo of the Bible: “And David dwelt in the stronghold, and called it the city of David. And David built the city round about from the Millo inward” (2 Samuel 5:9). The Millo is also mentioned in 1 Kings 9:15, 24; 11:27; 1 Chronicles 11:8 and in 2 Chronicles 32:5. Etymologically, Millo is related to a root meaning “filling,” and here there was filling aplenty. Moreover, we know from the Bible that the Millo was located in Jerusalem and had to be repaired from time to time.”
Here is a photo from Jerusalem 101 website which shows the wall Kenyon uncovered which they believe was part of the Millo mentioned in the Old Testament.
 |
| source |
Interesting, isn’t it?!
I really enjoy the military aspects of the bible. The battle strategies, the terms for weapons and defense. I did a blog essay on bucklers once. You know, the verse where it says “Take up the shield and buckler”? (Psalm 35:2)
The Millo is pretty interesting to me. The siege ramp is also interesting. There is one mentioned in 2 Samuel 20:15, where it is a literal method of attack.
“And all the men who were with Joab came and besieged him in Abel of Beth-maacah. They cast up a mound against the city, and it stood against the rampart, and they were battering the wall to throw it down.”
And in Job 19:12, where Job meant it as a metaphorical attack: “His troops come on together; they have cast up their siege ramp against me and encamp around my tent.”
A siege ramp is where the opposing army of the besieged city constructs a huge earthen ramp against which they batter the walls, hoist armaments to lob at the interior of the city and scramble upward and over the walls to penetrate the besieged fortification. My description makes it sound a lot easier to construct and use a siege ramp than it was. Here is a description and illustration from Wikipedia—
“In his Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War), Caesar describes how at the Battle of Alesia the Roman legions created two huge fortified walls around the city. The inner circumvallation, 10 miles (16 km), held in Vercingetorix’s forces, while the outer contravallation kept relief from reaching them. The Romans held the ground in between the two walls. The besieged Gauls, facing starvation, eventually surrendered after their relief force met defeat against Caesar’s auxiliary cavalry. The Sicarii Zealots who defended Masada in AD 73 were defeated by the Roman legions who built a ramp 100 m high up to the fortress’s west wall.”
And here is the ramp the Romans built at Masada, again Wikimedia Commons photo
I think about the battles to come in the last days and into the Tribulation. Albert Einstein was often quoted as saying “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Einstein was born in 1879 and died in 1955. He certainly saw a great change in military capabilities within his lifetime. For example, he would have been a young man reading newspaper reports about the Spanish-American war of 1898. Both the regular cavalry and the volunteer cavalry, and Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders used smokeless ammunition. In later battles, national guard and other mobilized militia used black powder Civil War era rifles. That was the big military-technological advance back then.
By the time Einstein died, he had seen men split the atom and use an atomic bomb to end WWII. The first hydrogen bomb test occurred three years before Einstein died. No wonder he was musing about what military & technological advances would be unleashed in the future.
One side-effect of a thermo-nuclear blast is the electro-magnetic pulse emitted along with the regular pulses and shock waves of the blast. Except people are now catching wise to the fact that you don’t need the nuclear part to render your enemy dead in their tracks. You can send any civilization back to the stone age with one pulse over the central part of their land mass and all life as they knew it would come to a dead stop in seconds.
And now people are catching wise to the fact that instead of mass blasts, you can target this EMP specifically to smaller ranges, as in use of an EMP grenade to stop a tank.
Here is an excerpt from a story from 2009 at The Register, a tech publication:
Contradicting previous reports, a US Army electronic-warfare colonel has apparently confirmed the existence of working non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) ordnance – apparently so portable that it is even available in hand-grenade size. The revelation came at a blogger roundtable (press conference) held in order to introduce the US Army’s new electronic-warfare specialist career field.
An electro-pulse will short out any and all electronic circuits within range. This means phones, computers, vehicles, buses, and anything else that relies on an electronic chip. So that means pretty much everything.
I was watching a Discovery program called Future Weapons, about what happens when an EMP blast hits a car. (the link goes to a 3 minute clip showing a small remote-controlled helicopter being hit with an EMP and then a car). I use the term ‘blast’ but you don’t see anything nor hear anything. There is no light, no sound and no blast. Your car just stops. Simple. It doesn’t affect people at all…until you starve to death. Then you’re affected.
So Einstein was pretty much right, in my opinion. The next war could indeed be nuclear and the one after that, back to Stone Age fighting. The descriptions in Zechariah 14:12 seem to indicate the biological effects upon a person who is at ground zero of a nuclear blast. And the bio-hazard clean up described in Ezekiel 39 also seem to indicate that a nuclear war had occurred. The number of dead, also seem to indicate such a technologically advanced battle. The level of mutually assured destruction in the next war may well guarantee that the war after that may very likely be conducted as a Stone Age tribe used to.
So that begs the question of when the bible records the last days battles such as the Gog Magog battle of Ezekiel 38: “army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed in full armor, a great host, all of them with buckler and shield, wielding swords” it may be that the Prophet recording God’s words was using language he understood and we understand to this day to describe a sophisticated war using artillery that was out of range of his comprehension. Or it could be a literal recording of such a war being conducted- with actual horses and shields and bucklers and not tanks and rocket launchers and planes.
I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud here. But it does make me wonder if the old time siege ramps and shields and bucklers and horses and swords will be used in the last wars of the Tribulation. Revelation 14:20 records the following-
“And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for 1,600 stadia.”
 |
| Blood Flowing from the Great Winepress of God’s Wrath, Nicolas de Bataille, 14th century Apocalypse Tapestries |
The winepress is the winepress of God’s wrath but the blood is very real. The verse is telling the result of the battle at Armageddon when the Lord returns and smites His enemies. 1600 stadia is 20 miles. I wonder why the horse’s bridles is used as a vertical measure here. Goliath was said to be 6 cubits high. Cubits was usually used to measure height, with span or handbreadth for smaller vertical measures. Maybe it’s because actual horses are used at the battle of Armageddon?
With all the talk of Israel and Iran, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and the window closing to when Iran will finally have made a bomb (and you know they will use it if they got it), I just wonder if the last technologically advanced war will be happening soon and then those who remain on the earth will be back to using sticks and stones (and the Millo and siege ramps and horses and bows and arrows) as Einstein predicted.
We know that the LORD our God is in charge of it all, and He never loses. He ordains everything and nothing is a surprise to Him.
I am an enlisted soldier in God’s army (2 Timothy 2:3-4). The Preacher said in Ecclesiastes 3:8 that there is “A time to love, and a time to hate; A time for war, and a time for peace.”
As long as sin in in the world, there will be war. But for all those in Jesus, He is the giver of peace. No longer am I at war with God who is Holy, my sin-nature rebelling against His statutes. I am at peace, being reconciled to Jesus my precious savior.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)
Man must obey God.
Man does not want to obey God.
God put His commands on a stone tablet so there would be no equivocation as to what is required for obedience. (Now those commands are subsumed under the two greatest commandments. (Mark 12:29).
Yet man hates God and disobeys. God’s commands are a curse to man.
10 Commandments monument toppled in Washington
“A stone monument of the Ten Commandments that sits on a street behind the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington and was the subject of controversy in the past has been toppled by vandals. The 3-foot-by-3-foot granite monument weighs 850 pounds and sits out front of the headquarters of Faith and Action, a Christian outreach ministry. The group installed the tablets in a garden outside its offices in 2006, and the group’s president said the tablets were angled so that justices arriving at the high court would see them. The Rev. Robert Schenck, who heads the organization, said the damage to the monument happened sometime between Friday night and Saturday night. A minister who works in the area alerted the group to the damage around 9 p.m. Saturday. The monument had been pushed over so that the words of the Ten Commandments are now face down.”
Man can do those things all he wants, but God is God. There is no other. Not self, not personal wants, not Dagon. No other God. See what He did here, with Dagon-
“The Philistines and the Ark“
 |
| Wikimedia commons, Fall of Dagon, Landseer |
“When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.” (1 Samuel 5:1-5)
Charles Spurgeon wrote of this incident. He called it “Dagon’s Ups and Downs“
“Another lesson may be learned from the incident before us. When the Philistines had beaten the Israelites in battle, and captured the sacred chest called the ark, they boasted and gloried as though they had defeated God Himself. They evidently regarded the golden casket as the very choicest part of the spoil, and they placed it as a trophy in the chief temple of their god Dagon, to show that he was mightier than the God Jehovah, who was unable, as they thought, to protect His people. This touched at once the honor of Jehovah, and because He is a jealous God this boded good for Israel. The fact that God is a jealous God has often a terrible side to us, for it leads to our chastisement when we grieve Him: this, indeed, led to the defeat of Israel. But it has also a bright side towards us, for His jealousy flames against His foes even more terribly than against His friends; and when His name is blasphemed, and honors that are due to Him are ascribed to a mere idol, or He is declared to have been defeated by a false god, then His jealousy burns like coals of juniper, and He makes bare His right arm to smite His adversaries, as He did on this occasion.”
“He thinks it meet to punish His offending people, but when Philistia saith, “Dagon has defeated Jehovah,” then the Lord will no longer suffer Philistia to triumph. Jehovah’s answer to His foes was Dagon broken to shivers before His ark, and the Philistines plagued with tumors till, in their desperate pain and dire disgrace, they set free the ark, being no longer able to endure its presence in any of their towns; so that the Jews ever afterwards used to exasperate the Philistines by reminding them of the disease which so sorely tried them; and there is a dash of this in the psalm which saith of the Lord, “He smote his enemies in the inner part; he put them to a perpetual reproach.” Never did a boastful nation undergo a deeper dishonor in the eyes of their neighbors, to whom they became a laughing-stock, and never did an image suffer a worse disgrace than that which befell their god Dagon.“
America will suffer such a disgrace.
Oh, not because some vandals toppled the Commandments, though the image of the Commandments face down did remind me of Dagon lying face down. But because of this and many other incidents which directly show God that we are irredeemable as a nation.Whereupon we have said over and over, through elections, and judicial renderings, and mass demonstrations, and state-by-state verdicts, that we do not want God.
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7)
God will do something about it. His Holy ire is roused, to be sure, and one day, soon I think, He will part the veil and let us know it directly and personally. Spurgeon said in his piece–
“Now, then, whenever at any time infidelity or superstition shall so prevail as to discourage your minds, take you comfort out of this—that in all these God’s honor is compromised. Have they blasphemed His name? Then He will protect that name. Have they gone further than they used to do in foul utterances against Him? Then they will provoke Him, and He will make bare His holy arm. I pray that, they may so provoke Him! All His church will say “Amen!” to that, so that He may arise and perform the glorious works of His strength and of His love among the sons of men, and put the adversary to confusion by proving that He is still with His people, and still the same mighty God as He was in the days of yore.”
“Say you to yourselves, then, “Our Lord will not always endure this idolatrous popery, which is multiplying its priests within our national church. His people cannot bear it; much less will He. He will not always tolerate these blasphemous theories, by which self-conceited, learned men and vainglorious skeptics seek to get rid of God out of the world. They will provoke Him. He will bestir Himself, He will show Himself strong on the behalf of His truth, He will roll back the waves of sin, and let the ages know that He is still the great I AM, the victorious God over all, blessed forever.””
It’s the end of the end times.
“You’re stupid. You people have been saying it’s the end times, like, forever.”
True. That is because it HAS been the end times like forever. At least two thousand years. They began when Jesus ascended, and will end when Jesus returns. (Acts 2:17, Hebrews 1:2)
The last days is like a woman who is pregnant. Her baby grows inside her, and as the weeks progress, she shows more and more evidence of her imminent state. (in today’s terms, ‘baby bump’.) As she nears the end of her pregnancy, she develops other signs that her term is nearing the end. Her body aches. Her stomach grows. Her doctor visits become more frequent.
Then there is a final sign, the final sign that the baby’s birth is nearing. The pregnant mom’s water breaks. This is the moment when it becomes evident in the long gestation that the final phase has been entered. There is pain, blood, mess, and screaming.
Then the baby is born. New life has arrived. (Revelation 21:1)
The gestation is the end time, or last days. This is the time that Jesus is building His church. (Matthew 16:18, Romans 11:25, Luke 21:24). The water breaking is the rapture. The blood, mess and screaming (labor pangs) is the Tribulation. (Matthew 24:8). The new baby is the new earth and the Kingdom, fresh and new.
Jesus likened the last days as to the woman’s pregnancy, and specifically to labor pangs. In Matthew 24, Jesus answered the disciples specifically as to three three things they were wondering:
“As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.” (Matthew 24:3-5).
They asked —
1. When will it happen?
2. What will be the sign of your coming?
3. What will be the sign of the end of the age?
Jesus said no on knows when, so we can get that question out of the way fast. The disciples were waiting for Messiah and of the Kingdom that had been promised them. They had learned as Jews that when Messiah came, He would institute the covenant promises, so naturally the disciples were eager for it all to start. What they did not know (but should have) is that His coming would be in two phases, Lamb and Lion. Suffering Servant and Sovereign King. So they asked excitedly in Matthew 24 and several other times too, “Is it now? When? When? When?”
What we know from our vantage point is that Jesus has been building the church, growing His bride for these last two thousand years. The disciples thought it was all going to take place right then, and they didn’t have the church on their radar.
As for question #2, Jesus went on in Matthew 24 with all the signs. These are signs of His immediate coming, His return after the 7 year Tribulation. Matthew 24 is a Tribulation chapter relating to the Jews. These are signs the Tribulation saints will be looking at and waiting for His return on the Day of the LORD.
I think we are moments away from the water breaking. I really do. I think we are in the last moments of the last days.
I could be wrong. But the rapture is always imminent. Always has been, always will be, until it happens.
“And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.” (Romans 16:20)
“Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus” (Titus 2:13).
“Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the Day approaching” (Heb 10:24-25).
“For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry” (Heb 10:37).
Here is the plea:
Do you know where you would go if you were to die in the next few moment of time?
Do you know what would be happening if all the true Christians suddenly disappeared and the world went to hell (literally. That’s not a swear. The Tribulation is a time hell comes to earth). Well, do you?
No?
You can. You can know where you will go when you die. If you repent of your sins (be sorry for them, truly sorry that you’ve done things that disobey Holy God), you can ask Jesus to forgive them. He is the resurrected Lamb, whom God exhausted all His wrath for sins. Pleased with Jesus’s sacrificial death, He raised Jesus from the dead and set Him at His right hand in heaven. Now people who are sorry for their sins can come into heaven under Jesus, since He already took your wrath for your sins for you.
Once you do that you become born again, born from above, you will go to heaven when you die.
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)
If you do not repent, and do not ask Jesus to forgive your sins, and are not born again, when you die you will go to hell. That’s because you still have a debt to pay- that wrath. You didn’t want to come in under Jesus, who already blocked God’s wrath from you. So now you have to take it, and that will happen forever in hell.
It’s much better to get your sin-debt to Jesus taken care of now, before you die. Christians have been saying this for two thousand years, and how much closer is the kingdom today than yesterday? Closer.
“and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)
“You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. (James 5:8)
Don’t wait until tomorrow. You may not have a tomorrow.
“Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” (James 4:14)
Eternity is long.
“It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long for ever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite. Oh, who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it, gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable: For “who knows the power of God’s anger?” Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, excerpt)
Repent. The end is near.
 |
| Elizabeth Prata photo |
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. According to this summary from Christian Book Summaries,
Writing in the mid-1500s, John Foxe was living in the midst of intense religious persecution at the hands of the dominant Roman Catholic Church. In graphic detail, he offers accounts of Christians being martyred for their belief in Jesus Christ, describing how God gave them extraordinary courage and stamina to endure unthinkable torture.
From the same link, the book’s purpose was fourfold:
Text from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
The Sixth Persecution, Under Emperor Clodius Puipienus Maximus, A.D. 164-238
Maximus was a despot who ordered all Christians hunted down and killed. So many were killed that at times they buried them fifty and sixty together in large pits.
Among those killed were Pontianus, bishop of Rome, who was exiled to Sardinia for preaching against idolatry and was killed there. His successor, Anteros, was also martyred after only 40 days in office, for offending the government by compiling a history of the martyrs.
A Romans senator Pammachius, and family, and 42 other Christians were beheaded on the same day and their heads displayed on city gates.
A Christian minister, Calepodius, was dragged through the streets of Rome and then thrown into the Tiber River with a millstone around his neck. A refined and beautiful young virgin named Martina was beheaded. Hippolitus, a Christian minister, was tied to wild horses and dragged along the ground until he died.
Maximus died in 238 AD and was this was the year they call “The Year of Six Emperors”. Maximus was succeeded by Gordian, who was then succeeded by Philip. During the latter two reigns, the Church was free form persecution for a period of 6-10 years. In AD 249 however, a violent persecution in Alexandria was instigated by a pagan priest without the emperor’s knowledge. This was partly by his jealousy concerning the amazing increase of Christianity; for the heathen temples began to be forsaken, and the Christian churches thronged.
During that persecution, an elderly Christian named Metrus was beaten with clubs, pricked with needles and stoned to death for refusing to worship idols. A Christian women, Quinta, was scourged, dragged over flint stones by her feet, and stoned to death. A 70-year-old woman, Appolonia who confessed that she was a Christian, was fastened to a stake to be burned. After the fire was set she begged to be set free, which the mob did, thinking she was going to recant Christ. To their amazement however, she hurled herself back into the flames and died.
“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19)
They hate Jesus so much that even a Christian compiling a history of the martyrs incited them to kill the man compiling a history of the martyrs. Keep this in mind.
