Where's The Image? Part 2

 

“DA 9:1 In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom-- 2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the LORD given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. 3 So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.”

 

          Seventy years before this passage was written the kingdom of Judah along with its capital city, Jerusalem, had been conquered by the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar.  As was the military and political custom of that time, many of the people of the kingdom of Judah were removed from the land and relocated elsewhere. This was in accordance with the prophecies of Jeremiah.  Jeremiah also prophesied that after 70 years the people of Judah would be allowed to return to their land.

 

          In Daniel chapter 9 Daniel tells us that a time came when he understood it was time for Jeremiah’s prophecy to be fulfilled.

 

          Now the question for us is, “How did Daniel respond to this understanding?”  What did he do and what didn’t he do?  And let’s remember, this is a man who has had unusual encounters with God, a man who has been given dreams and visions about the future, the flow of history, right up to the consummation of history.  So how did this man respond?

 

          He didn’t produce a chart with every detail of how the people of Judah were going to return to their land.  He didn’t make a public proclamation of his newfound knowledge.  He didn’t write a series of books. He didn’t hold conventions on prophecy. He didn’t make himself the center of attention. He didn’t seek to financially profit from his understanding.

 

In fact, the only thing we know that he did was what?  He prayed.  He engaged in intercessory prayer for his people, confessing their sins, and while we aren’t going to read this entire chapter, toward the end of the chapter, as a result of his humble praying which was focused on God and others, Daniel received even more understanding about God’s purposes in the flow of history.

 

          Had Daniel been presumptuous, with a “know it all” attitude, I seriously doubt he would have received anything else from God.

 

          If Daniel’s attitude and response was one of humility and prayer, then I think we ought to take our presumptuous charts off the wall and follow his example.

 

 

          What are the prophetic patterns we see in Scripture?  There are many, many patterns, some are hopeful and upbeat and some are on the downside of history.  God has a purpose and His purpose will not be defeated, it will not be stopped, it will not be delayed.  Next week we’ll look at the upside of His purpose, we’ll look at His plan for you, His destiny for you, because He has things for us and a destiny for us that most of us have never even thought about, never even heard about.  Most of His people on this earth are living on spiritual welfare when God has given them the riches of His glory.

 

          Back to Revelation chapter 13.  We’ve got a beast, a dragon, another beast who looks like a lamb but which is a false prophet, we’ve got an image of the beast and we’ve also got the number 666, a number which has generated much speculation for the past 2,000 years.

 

          We’re going to take a quick look at this chapter and if you haven’t read the entire book of Revelation you’ll need to do so in order to put this chapter in its context.  The characters in this chapter are seen elsewhere in Revelation, and the dragon and the first beast are seen throughout Scripture. Look for the patterns, always look for the patterns and images and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you through them.

 

What are the patterns represented in this chapter?  Now to some of you this is old stuff and so you’ll just have to be patient, and you can be like Daniel and pray while we go through this.

 

Verses 1 & 2.  The heads, the horns, and the crowns are images that represent heads of state, governments and power.  If you’ve read the book of Daniel you’ll know that animal images such as the leopard, the bear and the lion represent characteristics of governments and rulers.

The dragon represents Satan, this is interpreted for us in Revelation 12:9 and elsewhere.

 

We see in verse 2 that the dragon gives the beast his authority and power.  In other words, the beast is energized and motivated by Satan.

 

People worship the beast and in verses 6 – 10 we see that the beast is opposed to God and that he makes war on the saints.

 

In verse 11 we see another beast who looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon and it is his job to cause the world to worship the first beast.

 

This second beast, we’ll call him the False Prophet, for this is his designation elsewhere in the Book of Revelation, causes mankind to make an image of the first beast, who we’ll call the Antichrist, and he gives life to this image; if people don’t worship this image they are killed.  If you’ve read Daniel this will remind you of the image Nebuchadnezzar made and of Daniel’s three friends refusing to worship that image and the fiery furnace they were placed in.

 

Then in verse 16 we see the mark of the beast and in verse 17 we see that if you don’t have the mark you can’t engage in commerce and then in verse 18 we have the number 666.

 

Now we know that there were times in the Roman Empire in which people were required to offer sacrifice to the Emperor.  The Emperor was considered a god, and to demonstrate your loyalty to the Emperor you appeared before an official and offered a sacrifice or incense, affirming that you indeed worshiped the Emperor.

 

Without this affirmation you could not engage in commerce, you could not buy or sell.  So while there indeed may be a future and more comprehensive fulfillment of this element concerning buying and selling in Revelation 13, we do have historical examples of it.

 

(We can find many examples of this throughout history – it takes many forms. If you do not conform to the system you are in, the system can be unmerciful and shut you out, making economic survival difficult or impossible.)

 

Christians were not so much persecuted by the Roman Empire because they worshipped Jesus.  Let me repeat that, Christians were not so much persecuted by the Roman Empire because they worshipped Jesus.  They were persecuted because they worshipped Jesus only.

 

Roman society was both and syncretistic and polytheistic.  You could worship 80 or 800 gods and have no problems, as long as you also worshipped the Emperor.  But Christians worshipped Jesus ONLY.  My dear dear friends, we can worship Jesus all we want, as long as we don’t consider Him to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and people will leave us alone. This is, in fact, why they do indeed generally leave us alone – because we worship the gods of the world alongside Jesus.

 

What are the patterns?

to be continued...

Where's The Image? Part 1

 Where’s the image?

 

This was our second Sunday morning after 9/11. The first Sunday I had a handout for the congregation that listed Bible passages and bullet points, I didn’t preach a sermon that first Sunday because it was more a time of reflection for us than anything else. How does a person or a people process and respond to such a tragedy? I wanted to guide our dear people to Jesus and away from the reactions of the world, as well as away from cheap popular Christian thinking. I wanted our people to see themselves as “citizens of heaven” (Phil. 3:20) before anything else – our calling was to display Jesus and bring others to Him.

A companion passage, which I do not refer to in this message, is 2 Thessalonians 2:1 - 12. If we grasp the essence of this passage we will "see" that self-exaltation, both individual and collective, is a hallmark of Satan; and rather than embrace it and justify it, we will flee from it and from all who propagate it. The "man of lawlessness" exalts himself and works to pull us into drinking the poison of that cup...woe to us that we see and flee from this evil.  

 

Can you see what I was doing in this message?

This is lightly edited.

 

 September 23, 2001; Revelation 13

Becket, MA  

Bob Withers

 

            When I was in property management, a lady worked for me who was the manager of a cooperative community of 400 families just outside Washington, D.C.  One year I sent her to a conference in San Antonio, Texas, thinking that it would be a great experience for her and help advance her career.  When she returned, she walked into my office and cursed me up one side and down the other, she was really upset.

 

          She was upset because I’d sent her into unfamiliar territory, unfamiliar people, and unfamiliar subject matter.  She was frustrated, highly frustrated.  Though, all in all, she came out just fine.

 

          A number of people who worked for me over the years had that same experience to varying degrees, that experience of frustration, because I would not dumb down for them, I wanted to bring them up, not allow them to remain where they were.

 

          And so, my dear friends, you have lots of company, your frustration has been shared by many over the years, I love you too much to dumb down.

 

          Last week we looked briefly at a number of questions that have been raised as a result of the attacks in New York and Washington and the tragedy in Pennsylvania.  Among the Biblical references on last week’s handout were the books of Daniel and Revelation, and in reading them I suggested that you ask yourself the question, “What patterns do I see in these passages?”

 

          God communicates to us through patterns and images.  Yes, He also gives us commandments and principles to live by, but much of His communication is through images and patterns.  Sometimes we’re apt to think that the idea that we’re a visual people only came about with the advent of movies and television, but we’ve been visual from the beginning of our existence.  In fact, in the beginning we were God’s visualization of Himself to the universe in that He created us in His image; now He is about the restoration of that image through and in Jesus Christ.

 

          We are told that Jesus Christ is the perfect image of God.  Yes, Jesus taught many things, but He first and foremost lived among us and, as the apostle John writes, “He is full of grace and truth.”  This is why Jesus could say, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me…He who has seen Me has seen the Father” This is why the primary issue with Jesus is not His teachings, but His Person, Himself.  He is God, God manifested in the flesh, God’s perfect representation, His perfect image.

 

          The other day as I was channel surfing, I happened upon one of the religious channels on which the preacher was talking about Biblical prophecy.  Behind him on the platform was a massive chart that took up most of the wall.  The chart showed this preacher’s conception of history from the dawn of time through the last chapter of Revelation.  I’ve seen charts like this since I came to Christ as a teenager.  Those charts used to fascinate me with all their knowledge and detail and Biblical references, I was intrigued by them.  After all, for many of us, knowing the future and having the answers is important, it’s a natural tendency within many of us.

 

          A few weeks ago, I was at a house party when the hostess walked up to me with another woman and said, “Bob, do you know Mary Scammon?”  And I replied, “Of course I know Mary, but Mary, I didn’t recognize you.”  And the fact was that I hadn’t recognized this woman who’ve I’ve seen and talked to on a number of occasions.  In spite of the fact that she had a wide brimmed summer hat on, and that I don’t recall her ever wearing a hat before, I still think I should have recognized her.  But why didn’t I know who she was when I first saw her?  Why did someone have to remind me who she was?  Because I saw her out of context. 

 

Has this ever happened to you?  You’re accustomed to seeing someone in a particular context, perhaps work, or church, or school, and then you see them in an aisle at Walmart, and you draw an embarrassing blank and don’t know what to say?  I was accustomed to seeing Mary Scammon in the context of my relationship with her husband, pastor Warren Scammon.  Since the function we were both at had nothing to do with church ministry, I didn’t recognize Mary.

 

          By the same token, when people draw elaborate charts about Biblical prophecy and insist that the future is going to follow the detailed path they have laid out, they leave themselves and their students open to the almost inevitable experience of not understanding what is actually occurring because they can’t recognize events outside of their pre-determined context.

          If we’ll study and understand the patterns and images of Scripture, then we’ll have the tools that the Holy Spirit can use to help us understand events, otherwise we’ll be like the baseball player at the plate who is looking for a particular pitch, maybe a 95 mph fast ball but he gets a 70 mph change –up and swings long before the ball reaches the plate. 

 

             If you’ve read the book of Daniel, you’ll know that God showed Daniel a number of visions concerning the prophetic flow of history.  Daniel saw some pretty weird images and patterns, in fact, some were quite frightening.  Therefore, we might rightly think that if we could discover how Daniel responded to the contemporary flow of events in his own life, especially if he thought the events were in accordance with Biblical prophecy, that then we might have a pattern to follow in our lives and in our time.

 

          Well, we do have an outstanding example of this and it is found in Daniel chapter 9, so

let’s turn to it briefly, Daniel chapter 9, which will be page 788 in most of the pew Bibles.

to be continued...

The Invitation – testimony

 

The Invitation – testimony

LeAnna

 

I received this email in response to the message, The Invitation; it is from LeAnna. Since testimonies ought to be shared, I thought I’d pass this along. O dear friends, we must always be on mission for Jesus, always for Jesus. How we are distracted about many things, when people around us…and in our pews…truly need Jesus.

 

A worldview doesn’t save people, an economic system doesn’t save people, a political system doesn’t save people – only Jesus saves people, only Jesus brings light and life – and our lives are to belong only to Him…only to Him.

 

Let us be devoted to, and in love with, Jesus.

 

Much love,

 

Bob

 

Thanks for this. Surely I would never forget... I had been attending church that year since February 2001 my ears and heart were being opened...

9/11 was the catalyst for me to dig deeper... and that revival weekend I clearly remember saying to myself "well let me go to church for Friday night instead of partying for the first time."

I met Jesus that weekend

 the veil was taken away

you prayed for me after the service because I told you I wanted to go up to the alter call but was reluctant to be the only one,

 you simply prayed for me and  when I went home I said let me read the Bible for myself; and said well I might as well start where we were reading tonight the book of Revelation and finished it.

 i didn't have any idea what was coming

I was so eager to talk to you the next morning.

9/11 for me was the catalyst to dig in for the gold.

My experience for 9/11 was life-changing and you were an assigned helper on my path at that time in those days.

I’m forever grateful.

Stay blessed and favored.

Love to you both.

I know for sure the message that is/was relentlessly resounding in my being is "come, now is the time to awaken, let The Bride arise, let the bride start moving like the bride" where is the Bride of Christ? It is time.