Bible Reading Challenge Blog

There is always that fine line between telling the future and telling the present in ways that make it impossible to understand in the future. That is the line that Revelation dances upon. There are areas of this prophecy that we have to say that God is telling us that Jesus is coming back in the future, but until he comes there will be great tribulation. There are some who have spent a lot of time (I would probably say wasted a lot of time), in putting together a theory on the coming of Christ and what the times are going to look like. They are called dispensationalists who have come up with theories of millenialism, postmillenialism, and amillenialism that has nothing to do with what generation you were born. But the bottom line is that Jesus is coming back like a thief in the night and we cannot predict when that will be, nor should we attempt to correlate modern events with those described in Revelation.

Let me give you one example of what John wrote in Revelation that some try to match up with today but was probably an event that took place in the 1st century. Look at 8:8-9 where we see a flaming mountain thrown into the sea. My take is that this is the description of Vesuvius erupting which took place in 79 AD. It is thought that John was still alive then and that Revelation was written soon after that and so he described this horrific event as something that today some would say is a prediction, when in fact John incorporates it as a description of current events. We have to be really, really careful in trying to read Scripture and attributing it to future events in ways that we try to predict. Careful as in we should not do it at all.

There really isn’t much specific to say about Revelation. To start with, it is not plural it is singular. Many make the mistake of calling this book with its plural, similar to when we read a Psalm a person identifies it with the plural often. But the term Revelation in the Greek is Apocalypse of John. This term apocalypse identifies the end times and when Christ will come again, and identifies the main thrust of this book of the Bible.

It would not serve anyone to try to diagnose each of the images that are given to us. It is a writing that describes to a persecuted community that one day Jesus will come back and conquer the Roman empire. All of the metaphors relate to modern events in the 1st century which are signs according to the author John, that Jesus is on his way back to take us with him. If you want to identify Revelation with a single theme you can use this one: NO COMPROMISE!

John is writing to a community that daily has a difficult decision before them. Do we stay with the faith and be killed or do we turn our back on Jesus and the community of believers and deny the faith, apostasy is the term, and so save our lives? This is where Jesus’ words ring especially true when he says those who would save their life will lose it and those who are willing to lose their life for His sake, will keep it. We do not live in such an intense environmnet, but the theme of NO COMPROMISE rings true for all of us.

We find a shocking image in Zechariah, an object lesson, two of them actually, which set up the coming of Jesus as Lord and Savior. Zechariah is told to take two staffs. The first represents the covenant that God made with his people, this one was called Favor. The second staff represented the oneness of the people of God even though they were divided between North and South, Israel and Judah, this staff was called unity. Zechariah is commanded to break the staff of favor and thus breaking the covenant that God had with his people. The favor of God no longer rested upon a single people, but in the coming of Jesus it rests upon the whole world, all of creation, every single person who was created and had the life of God breathed into them. This is super significant. The breaking of unity is less significant because we know that the diaspora of the Jews created all sorts of different nationalities and races and tribes within the Jewish family. There are Jews literally from all over the world. But there does remain unity and that is in their understanding of being Jewish.

But the breaking of that first staff, the covenant, required that there be a new way, a new covenant, in which God interacts with his people and saves them from His wrath so that he would not destroy them. We even see two clear references to Jesus who will be coming up in a few centuries in the same chapter when it describes the same amount of silver that Judas was paid to betray Jesus. In chapter 12 we read about mourning for the one that they have pierced. Again, the breaking of the covenant by God, because it had been broken previously by the people, requires a new covenant, this new covenant that Jeremiah had discussed which is one that is written upon our hearts and not on tablets.

Psalm 84 reminds me of this song that is nice, but not a classic.

We find another very familiar passage in Zechariah and this time it is from chapter 9 verse 9 where we see mention of the liberator of Israel riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Now, he parleys this ride into Jerusalem on a donkey into a battle where blood is shed and where the Lord conquers all, so it is not at all the Prince of Peace riding into Jerusalem, as we are accustomed to thinking on Palm Sunday, but rather a real warrior who battles and will battle for His people. So while the donkey verse is similar, the whole concept is very, very different from what we are used to and what we have been trained to expect.

We also see in chapter 10 a theme that is mentioned in Ezekiel as well which is the way in which the shepherds of the people, that would be the religious leaders so in our time it would be the pastors, have let down their down and only pursued their own desires and wishes to be exalted into positions of power. It is a real warning against the court evangelicals that would lift up their own political agendas against the desires of the kingdom of God which we see so clearly in Matthew 25. Just a warning as we continue to move toward a time where the shepherds of the people of God need to remain focused on those who are on the margins of society and not seek the power that corrupts absolutely.

We have to begin in Zechariah with the verse, maybe the single verse, that should be familiar to you. Look at 4:6 which reminds us that it is not by might nor by power but by Spirit of God that we are able to do anything and that the kingdom of God can be realized. If you don’t know this verse maybe this will jog your memory.

Zechariah is another one of the books where you see visions and strange creatures and occurrences which remind us that the Lord is calling His people to repentance, but even more importantly, the Lord will restore one day. But that restoration will occur not because we do something incredibly, but because the Spirit of the Lord will work through us.

We really do have a continuation of the first letter that Paul wrote to the community in this second letter. Not much more than again a warning to not follow after false teachings because as tempting as they might be they are from the devil and will lead both the individual and the community to wrong thinking and wrong living. That is not terrible advice.

We find a number of really interesting nuggets in I Thessalonians. A little background. It is a church that Paul founded and he really longed to get back to see them and to encourage them but he was tied up so he sent Timothy. He was afraid that the people of the church had been tempted by Satan to abandon the faith because of the persecutions that were present within the body at the hands of both the Jews and the Romans of the day. So when Timothy comes back after a visit with a glowing report about the community, that it continues to pray for Paul and all of the saints, the believers, he is thrilled. This is one of those letters that Paul writes where it is obvious that he loves this community and can only say nice things about them.

In chapter 4 we find the often quoted verse 13 that tells us to grieve, when we do grieve, not like unbelievers, but with hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s a comforting and strong verse for me. Immediately following that we read the primary verse in all of Scripture that many point to in order to prove that the rapture, the concetp of the rapture at least, is a real thing. This whole “left behind” concept comes from 4:16-17. I have a hard time basing my theology on two verses. I prefer focusing on I Thessalonians 5:2 that reminds us that the timing of when Jesus comes back is more like a thief in the night and not something we can predict or describe ahead of time.

Philemon is Paul writing to a friend to accept a former slave, Onesimus, within the community of faith and extolling this person’s faith.

Daniel finishes up with a reminder that there actually is mention of the resurrection of the dead in the Old Testament. We find ourselves told that God will bring up from the dead His people when the end of all things are completed. And like that we finish Daniel, the last book of the Bible Chronologically, but not in the text itself.

We find in Psalm 78 an long account of what the people of God experienced in order to be liberated from Egypt and set free so that they could settle in the promised land. We are reminded that nothing can stand up to the power of the Lord, absolutely nothing and no one. As a result we find this promise that God will constantly be by our side quite convincing. But in our modern era we can easily be dissuaded from this truth by seeing what is happening around us and wondering what God is actually up to. If we but trust in him, then we could stand with him all of our days.

There is a transition in these chapters from a story about Daniel to Daniel telling the story, except for chapter 6 which is the most famous of the Daniel stories. Remember that Daniel is one of the highest ranking officials in the kings court. He was about to be placed over all the others and they didn’t like it. So, they decided to find a way to bring him down. He wasn’t corrupt, so that didn’t work, his work was perfect and he was efficient and hard working. So, the only way to bring him down was to bring him down because of the God that he worshipped. It worked and he was thrown into the lion’s den, really against the king’s wishes. But once he survives his enemies, the children of his enemies, and the wives of his enemies were all thrown into the lion’s den and were consumed, bones and all. Pretty brutal, but you don’t mess with God’s servants.

The story then takes on the first person with Daniel telling us what he experienced and what he saw. It is all end time stuff with meanings that had significance when this was written but takes a lot of interpretation and guess work to understand who the horn is and who the beasts are and who this large man is. But what we can’t forget is that God is in charge and will always rescue His workers. That’s kinda nice to know.

Daniel can be considered pretty much the Old Testament version of Revelation. Except, and I had forgotten this, it is a story of an individual who serves a number of kings. Here is something else that I hadn’t totally picked up on before I read this. Daniel was absolutely in the upper class of the Israelite society. So, remember, Israel and Judah are in exile and the king asks for some of the best and the brightest from that nation who could advise him and give him insight into how the world is working and what is happening around him. He chooses Daniel and some others whom Daniel knows. They feed them the best food and provide the best arrangements for them because they were, after all, serving the king.

But the problem with the meat that Daniel refuses, I hope you caught that in chapter 1, is that it was sacrificed to idols and probably, or absolutely not kosher. So, Daniel refuses to eat the meat and becomes a vegetarian. This book of the Bible is the story of a servant of God, Daniel, who works in a society and a culture that is completely opposed to what God wants in a society and culture. The continual question is how does one work in the world but not be of it. Daniel demonstrates that by not bowing down to the golden image and so being thrown into the fire. But God protects him. Not even one genetration passes and they completely forget what God had done through Daniel. But we end with him serving a second king and one person did remember, one of the wives of the kings, and Daniel is able to interpret correctly, unfortunately for the king, what his disturbing dreams meant. Let’s continue along and follow his life.