Encouragement from Philippians

Have Hope
"Be confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a god work in you will complete it."  Philippians 1:6

On Church Unity
"Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind."  Philippians 2:1-2

Real Social Security
"Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others."  Philippians 2:4

Be a Light
"Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life."  Philippians 2:14-16

Leave Your Behind in the Past
"I do not count myself to have apprehended (understood); but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward all of God in Christ Jesus."  Philippians 3:13-14

Do You Believe This Promise?
"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let our requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."  Philippians 4:6-7

Trust in His Provision
"And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."  Philippians 4:19

True Israel and the land promises

Joshua 21:43-45 ESV - "Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass."

Many Christians apply the "land promise" Scriptures of Genesis to modern day unbelieving Jews.  This presupposition plays out on in reality by meddling in Middle Eastern politics. However, in Joshua we see that the land promised to Israel has already been fulfilled.  To assume that a modern, unbelieving, anti-Christian nation will again inherit this land is to assume that God will bless an apostate nation whose identity is rooted in their rejection of Jesus Christ.

Not only that, the consequences of this viewpoint causes much unneeded conflict and unnecessary war, all based on a misreading of Scripture.

The blessings of God find their fulfillment ultimately in Christ, where we don't look for land to find peace, but we look to the LORD.

So, who are True Jews?  Who is True Israel?  Who is Abraham's offspring?  Galatians 3:29 says, "IF YOU ARE CHRIST'S, THEN YOU ARE ABRAHAM'S OFFSPRING, HEIRS ACCORDING TO THE PROMISE."  It's clear.  CHRISTIANS are Abraham's offspring, CHRISTIANS are heirs, because we are Christ's.  Modern day Israel does not believe in Christ.  Therefore, they are not Abraham's offspring and not heirs.

Who is True Israel?

The truth is that there is no such thing as an “orthodox” Jew, unless he is a Christian; for if Jews believed the Old Testament, they would believe in Christ. If a man does not believe in Christ, he does not believe Moses either:  John 5:46 - "For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me."

Who then is the true Jew? Who belongs to the true Israel? According to the clear teaching of the New Testament, the person (regardless of his ethnic heritage) who has been clothed with Jesus Christ is the inheritor of the promises to Abraham, and possesses the blessings of the Covenant.


-David Chilton, Days of Vengeance 

Coming with the Clouds

"Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen."  (Revelation 1:7 ESV)


Without a familiarity of Old Testament language, the whole of Revelation, unfortunately, becomes a grab bag, a free-for-all of interpretation based on conjecture.  We should always let Scripture interpret Scripture.  And when we look to the Revelation, we see that nearly all of its symbols have a history of meaning rooted in thousands of years worth of inspired literature established by the law and the prophets.  Instead of modern day prognosticators trying to divine foreign meanings from Revelation (often looking to world events for clues), we should instead look for the key to understanding already in Scripture.  These words and phrases have already been established and have a pattern of literary meaning pregnant with symbolism, fantasy, clarity and beauty.  A mere "this means that" symbology, which so many today try to use, is a disservice to sacred Scripture and causes confusion.

So, let's look at just a few instances of how "clouds" were used in reference to God in the Old Testament...

Revelation: Soon means Soon

[Those who would place Revelation as occurring in our modern era believe] that St. John was warning the Christians of his day mostly about things they would never see – meaning that the Book of Revelation has been irrelevant for 1900 years! To claim that the book has relevance only for our generation is egocentric; and it is contrary to the testimony of the book itself. It must be stressed that the Greek expression for our English word shortly plainly means soon, and those who first read the phrase would not have understood it to mean anything else (cf. Luke 18:8; Acts 12:7; 22:18; 25:4; Rom. 16:20; Rev. 22:6). A futurist interpretation is refuted in the very first verse of Revelation.


Days of Vengeance, David Chilton


The following verses all use the same Greek word for "soon."

The Revelation is a REVEALING...not a secretive mystery

St. John makes it clear from the outset that his book is a revelation, an unveiling or disclosure of God’s purposes. It is not intended to be mysterious or enigmatic; it is, emphatically, a revealing of its subject. Specifically, it is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him – in other words, a revelation mediated by our Lord Himself (cf. Heb. 1:2), about the things that must shortly take place. The Revelation, therefore, is not concerned with either the scope of world history or the end of the world, but with events that were in the near future to St. John and his readers.


Days of Vengeance, David Chilton

If Revelation is for us, what would John's readers have thought?

“Was a book sent by an apostle to the churches of Asia Minor, with a benediction on its readers, a mere unintelligible jargon, an inexplicable enigma, to them? That can hardly be. Yet if the book were meant to unveil the secrets of distant times, must it not of necessity have been unintelligible to its first readers – and not only unintelligible, but even irrelevant and useless? If it spake, as some would have us believe, of Huns and Goths and Saracens, of medieval emperors and popes, of the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution, what possible interest or meaning could it have for the Christian churches of Ephesus, and Smyrna, and Philadelphia, and Laodicea? Especially when we consider the actual circumstances of those early Christians – many of them enduring cruel sufferings and grievous persecutions, and all of them eagerly looking for an approaching hour of deliverance which was now close at hand – what purpose could it have answered to send them a document which they were urged to read and ponder, which was yet mainly occupied with historical events so distant as to be beyond the range of their sympathies, and so obscure that even at this day the shrewdest critics are hardly agreed on any one point?


“Is it conceivable that an apostle would mock the suffering and persecuted Christians of his time with dark parables about distant ages? If this book were really intended to minister faith and comfort to the very persons to whom it was sent, it must unquestionably deal with matters in which they were practically and personally interested. And does not this very obvious consideration suggest the true key to the Apocalypse? Must it not of necessity refer to matters of contemporary history? The only tenable, the only reasonable, hypothesis is that it was intended to be understood by its original readers; but this is as much as to say that it must be occupied with the events and transactions of their own day, and these comprised within a comparatively brief space of time."

J. Stuart Russell

Identity of the Beast Clear to First Century Readers

This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.  (Revelation 13:18 ESV)


Why would John write this to his first century audience if he didn't intend for them to actually know it?

Mark of the Beast & Mark of the Lamb

Biblical symbols don't mean just anything.  They have their root in Scripture.  And Scripture always interprets Scripture.

Exodus 28:36-38 - You shall also make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it, like the engraving of a signet:  HOLINESS TO THE LORD.  And you shall put it on a blue cord, that it may be on the turban; it shall be on the front of the turban, So it shall be on Aaron's forehead...

Deuteronomy 6:6-8 - And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.


Here we see clearly see the commands of the Lord to be "in your heart" and "as a sign on your hand" and "frontlets between your eyes."  The hand and the forehead illustrating doing and acknowledging God's commands.

So, when we see the mark of the beast, we should understand that Scripture has already established what a mark on the hand and forehead actually is.  Those who took the mark of the beast were the ones who gave themselves over in thought and deed to the will of the Antichrist.

Symbolism in the Bible

Paradise is where prophecy began. It is worth noting that the very first promise of the coming Redeemer was stated in highly symbolic terms. God said to the Serpent:


I will put enmity
Between you and the woman
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall crush your head,
And you shall strike His heel. (Gen. 3:15)


Obviously, this is not simply “history written in advance.” It is a symbolic statement, very much of a piece with the evocative, poetic language used throughout the Bible, and especially in Revelation. In fact, St. John plainly tells us in his opening sentence that the Revelation is written in signs, in symbols. He did not intend it to be read like a newspaper or a stock market analysis. He expected his audience to respond to his prophecy in terms of the Bible’s own system of symbolism. I repeat: the Bible’s own system of symbolism. The meaning of a symbol is not whatever we choose to make it; nor did St. John create the images of the Book of Revelation out of his own imagination.


Days of Vengeance

The Purpose of Prophecy

No Biblical writer ever revealed the future merely for the sake of satisfying curiosity: The goal was always to direct God’s people toward right action in the present. The overwhelming majority of Biblical prophecy had nothing to do with the common misconception of “prophecy” as foretelling the future. The prophets told of the future only in order to stimulate godly living.


Days of Vengeance by David Chilton

Revelation to be Read Aloud to the Churches of Asia

The lectionary nature of Revelation helps explain the wealth of liturgical material in the prophecy. Revelation is not, of course, a manual about how to “do” a worship service; rather, it is a worship service, a liturgy conducted in heaven as a model for those on earth (and incidentally instructing us that the Throneroom of God is the only proper vantage point for viewing the earthly conflict between the Seed of the Woman and the seed of the Serpent): “The worship of the Church has traditionally, quite consciously, been patterned after the divine and eternal realities revealed in [Revelation]. The prayer of the Church and its mystical celebration are one with the prayer and celebration of the kingdom of heaven.


-Days of Vengeance by David Chilton

Revelation's Great Harlot

From Days of Vengeance, By Robert Chilton:

Throughout Scripture, Israel is regarded as God’s Wife; the covenant is a marriage bond, and she is expected to be faithful to it. Her apostasy from God is called adultery, and she is identified as a harlot. There are numerous examples of this in the prophets:


How the faithful city has become a harlot,
She who was full of justice!
Righteousness once lodged in her,
But now murderers. (Isa. 1:21)


For long ago I broke your yoke
And tore off your bonds;
But you said: I will not serve!
For on every high hill
And under every green tree
You have lain down as a harlot. (Jer. 2:20)


Your fame went forth among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of My splendor which I bestowed on you, declares the Lord GOD. But you trusted in your beauty and played the harlot because of your fame, and you poured out your harlotries on every passerby who might be willing. (Ezek. 16:14-15)


Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations!  For you have played the harlot, forsaking your God.  You have loved harlots’ earnings on every threshing floor.
(Hos. 9:1)


Throughout Scripture, it is Israel whom the prophets characteristically condemn as a harlot. Accordingly, when St. John brings lawsuit against Israel for her rejection of Christ, the greatest apostasy of all time (cf. Matt. 21:33-45), he appropriately calls her “the Great Harlot . . . the Mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the Land” (Rev. 17:1, 5).

When were the Last Days?

The Biblical expression Last Days properly refers to the period from the Advent of Christ until the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the “last days” of Israel during the transition period from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant.

Let's look at Scripture...

The number Four and Seven in Scripture

From Days of Vengeance, by Robert Chilton:


One of the striking features of the Leviticus passage is that the curses are arranged in a special pattern: Four times in this chapter God says, “I will punish you seven times for your sins” (Lev. 26:18,21,24,28). The number seven, as we will see abundantly throughout Revelation, is a Biblical number for completeness or fullness (taken from the seven-day pattern laid down at the creation in
Genesis 1).36 The number four is used in Scripture in connection with the earth, especially the Land of Israel; thus four rivers flowed out of Eden to water the whole earth (Gen. 2:10); the Land, like the Altar, is pictured as having four corners (Isa.11:12; cf. Ex. 27:1-2), from which the four winds blow (Jer. 49:36); the camp of Israel was arranged in four groups around the sides of the Tabernacle (Num. 2); and so on (see your concordance and Bible dictionary). So by speaking of four sevenfold
judgments in Leviticus 26, God is saying that a full, complete judgment will come upon the Land of Israel for its sins. This theme is taken up by the prophets in their warnings to Israel:

And I shall appoint over them four kinds of doom, declares

the LORD: the sword to slay, the dogs to drag off, and the birds of

the sky and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. (Jer. 15:3)

Thus says the Lord GOD: I shall send My four evil judgments

against Jerusalem: sword, famine, wild beasts, and plague to cut

off man and beast from it! (Ezek. 14:21)

The imagery of a sevenfold judgment coming four times is most fully developed in the Book of Revelation, which is explicitly divided into four sets of seven: the Letters to the Seven Churches, the opening of the Seven Seals, the sounding of the Seven Trumpets, and the outpouring of the Seven Chalices. In thus following the formal structure of the covenantal curse in Leviticus, St. John underscores the nature of his prophecy as a declaration of covenant wrath against Jerusalem.

The Pattern of the "Covenant Treaty" in Scripture

In one of the books I am reading right now, Days of Vengeance by David Chilton, the author notes a pattern of how treaties were established in ancient near eastern nations in Bible times, and how when Scripture discusses treaties or covenants, this pattern is found, most notably in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, but also in the books of the prophets and the Revelation.  Here is the pattern:

1. Preamble (identifying the lordship of the Great King,
stressing both his transcendence [greatness and power] and his
immanence [nearness and presence]);
2. Historical Prologue (surveying the lord’s previous relationship
to the vassal, especially emphasizing the blessings bestowed);
3. Ethical Stipulations (expounding the vassal’s obligations,
his “guide to citizenship” in the covenant);
4. Sanctions (outlining the blessings for obedience and
curses for disobedience);
5. Succession Arrangements (dealing with the continuity of
the covenant relationship over future generations).


Like many other Biblical prophecies, the Book of Revelation
is a prophecy of Covenant wrath against apostate Israel, which
irrevocably turned away from the Covenant in her rejection of
Christ. And, like many other Biblical prophecies, the Book of
Revelation is written in the form of the Covenant Lawsuit, with
five parts, conforming to the treaty structure of the Covenant.


In order to grasp the five-part structure of Revelation, we
must first consider how St. John’s prophecy is related to the
message of Leviticus 26. Like Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26 sets
forth the sanctions of the Covenant: If Israel obeys God, she
will be blessed in every area of life (Lev. 26:1-13; Deut. 28:1-14);
if she disobeys, however, she will be visited with the Curse, spelled
out in horrifying detail (Lev. 26:14-39; Deut. 28:15-68). (These
curses were most fully poured out in the progressive desolation
of Israel during the Last Days, culminating in the Great Tribulation
of A.D. 67-70, as punishment for her apostasy and rejection
of her True Husband, the Lord Jesus Christ.).

What does Republican mean anymore?

Mitt Romney has been on just about every side of just about every issue.  Political expedience is his modus operandi.  He was pro-choice before he was pro-life.  He bragged about getting hundreds of millions of federal dollars for the Olympics.  He instituted an individual mandate for health care in his state, Massachusetts.  Yet, he is a "Republican."

Santorum voted to give Planned Parenthood $25 million.  He voted to raise the debt limit and voted for unbalanced budgets.  His views on abortion have even changed over time as a politician.

What IS the Republican Party?

Pathetic.

Except for one, at least.

Salvation and Works

"For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.  (1 Corinthians 3:11-15 ESV)

The FOUNDATION of SALVATION is CHRIST ALONE.

We can (and SHOULD!) build on to the FOUNDATION of SALVATION (which is Christ alone) with works.

BUT, what kind of works will we build with - "gold, silver, and precious stones" or "wood, hay and straw"?

"If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.  If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, THOUGH HE HIMSELF WILL BE SAVED..."

What we DO, does NOT save us.  What we DO, does NOT send us to hell..

We don't work FOR our faith.  We work FROM our faith.

Amerika

"America is an empire.

And the Bible has a lot to say about empires.

Most of the Bible is a history told by people living in lands occupied by conquering superpowers. It's a book written from the underside of power.  It's an oppression narrative.  The majority of the Bible was written by a minority of people living under the rule and reign of massive, mighty empires, from the Egyptian empire to the Babylonian Empire to the Persian Empire to the Assyrian Empire.

This can make the Bible a very difficult book to understand if you are reading as a citizen of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen.  Without careful study and reflection, and humility, it may even be possible to miss central themes of the Scriptures.

Because what's true of empires then is true of empires now."

Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell