Christ Church

Bible Challenge #35

Becky Pliego on

¡HOLA, HOLA! Can someone please explain to me how did we get to week 35 in a breeze? YAY! Maybe, after all, this daily wearing of our habit truly became our daily habit. I hope you feel comfortable in it, and I trust that all those around you can see how well it looks on you. We know that habits cannot be hidden for too long, all become visible at one point or another, and so it is the same with the habit of Bible reading and prayer. Be encouraged, Sister. Every time you read your Bible, the Word of God is at work in you!

I want to share with you something that puzzled me this week. I listened to a Podcast in which a renown author was being interviewed on how he read the Bible. To my surprise, he said that he didn’t necessarily have a plan. In fact his approach was that, if he didn’t feel like he was getting much from, let’s say I Kings, he would happily skip to his favorite passages somewhere else. Now, the question we must ask ourselves is this: do we really need to have a plan to read the Bible? (And I know that this question is an odd question to add when we are almost done with our Bible reading plan! But we always need to be thinking about what we are doing and why we are doing it.) Well, no, not necessarily, but if you choose not to have a plan, you must build some sort of structure (a plan? Ha!) so that you will not only read your favorite passages, but read all the Bible. We need all of God’s Word to feed our soul, edify us, and transform us. We need to read all the Word of God to
begin to understand all the Word of God. This leads us to say that yes, having a plan laid out is a wonderful thing to help us get to our destination on time and without missing anything as we go. And we have already seen this, right? We have been encouraging one another to keep walking, to keep turning pages, because we all want to get to our destination, we all want to stand together at the top of the mountain and be amazed at the wonderful view, to see the whole Story of Redemption laid our before us in all its glory!

So, Friends, get ready: our plan will continue! We are already working on the Summer Bible Reading Challenge, the reading plan is done, and now we are working on the graphics and design. And we can’t wait to start a new journey with you!

This week we will finish reading Zechariah, and then we’ll read 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Philemon, and we will start Revelation and 2 Corinthians along with Psalms 81-84 and Proverbs 31. We have a catch-up day on Thursday in which I recommend you read 2 Peter.

Remember what we said in our last webinar: Read as you pray and pray as you read. Don’t skim over the harder passages. And those things you do understand, take heed and apply in your daily life. God will bless your coming to His Word this week too!

May our prayer this week be, “Lord, direct our way to you and make us increase and abound in love for one another, so that our hearts may be established blameless in holiness before you, our God and Father.” (I Thess. 3:11-12)

Under His sun and by His grace,

Becky Pliego and the Team of Christ Church Ladies Fellowship

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 97

Douglas Wilson on

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

“And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great“ (Rev. 16:17-21)

The last of the bowls of wrath is poured into the atmosphere. It is perhaps suggestive that this is described as the realm of the devil (Eph. 2:2). When this happens, a great voice comes out from the heavenly temple, crying out that the judgment is finally complete. As a result there is a stir and a commotion—voice, thundering, lightning, culminating in a massive earthquake. There was a great earthquake, such as had never happened on earth before.

Continuing with our view that these cascading judgments were washing over the city of Jerusalem, we can see that the cup of wrath she was given to drink corresponds to the cup of her persecuting sins that is described in the next chapter. And so given this, it would seem that this earthquake is the one that was predicted by the prophet Haggai.

“For thus saith the Lord of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, And I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land” (Hagg. 2:6).

The apostle Paul (as I take the author of Hebrews to be) describes Haggai’s prophecy as fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem.

“Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Heb. 12:26–27).

As he says in the next verse, we as Christians are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken in this way (Heb. 12:28), and the kingdom in its previous form was being taken from the Jews in order to be given to a people who would bear the fruit of it (Matt. 21:43). As John Owen observed, the heavens of their Mosaic worship were being thrown down, and the earth of their political arrangements were being toppled. All was complete, and the stage was set for the transition.

The city was divided into three pieces, which likely was foreshadowed by Ezekiel, and fulfilled in the internecine conflicts between the three factions of the Jewish rebels. The prophet Ezekiel had been told to cut off his hair and to divide it into three portions (Eze. 5:1-12). This was to represent Jerusalem—“this is Jerusalem” (Eze. 5:5). A third of the hair was to be burned up, another third was to be slashed with a sword, and the final third was to be thrown to the winds. Ezekiel’s dramatic enacted action referred to the disposal of the inhabitants of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., but it was also a harbinger of the great and final destruction of the city in 70 A.D. And during the siege of Jerusalem (a virtually unconquerable city), the rebels fought against their own interests by fighting with one another—three fierce factions making it possible for the Romans to take the city.

When it comes to the great hailstones, an interesting and suggestive detail is found in Josephus’ Wars (5.6.3). These hailstones are described as weighing about a talent, which translates into our units of measurement at about a hundred pounds. The Tenth Legion had catapults that could throw these massive stones, which were white. They could throw these things two furlongs or more, which is about a quarter of a mile. Josephus says, “Now, the stones that were cast were the weight of a talent . . . of a white color.” Hailstones indeed.

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 96

Douglas Wilson on

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon (Rev. 16:12-16).

We come now to the great battle of Armageddon, the symbolic name for the ultimate defeat of the enemies of God. Many commentators have pointed out that this word served the same way that the battle of *Waterloo* serves us. It refers indirectly to a location, but in general application it means catastrophic defeat.

So the sixth angel pours out his bowl of wrath on the river Euphrates, which was the eastern boundary of the Roman Empire. On the other side of that river was the Parthian Empire. Josephus tells us that the general Titus brought additional reinforcements to the siege of Jerusalem from the region of the Euphrates.

In this vision the waters of the Euphrates were dried up, which provides us with an important scriptural trope. When Daniel interpreted the famous handwriting on the wall for Belshazzar, it was the night before he was killed. Cyrus conquered Babylon that night through the device of diverting the Euphrates, drying it up, and marching into Babylon on the river bed (536 B.C). In addition, when waters are dried up in Scripture, this indicates a great deliverance for God’s people. We saw this in the Red Sea deliverance (Ex. 14:21-22), and in the initial stages of the attack on Jericho (Josh. 3:9-17; 4:22-24). So here the waters of the Euphrates are dried up, opening the way for the kings of the sunrise to destroy Jerusalem, which has become the new Babylon.

These armies are gathered through the working of an unholy trinity of three demon-like frogs. This brings to mind the plague of frogs that afflicted Egypt (Ex. 8:1-15)and remember that Jerusalem has also become the new Egypt (Rev. 11:8). The fact that the frogs come out of the mouths of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet indicates that the enemies of God who are going to be destroyed are going to be destroyed by the instrumentality of other enemies of God. In other words, the unbelieving Jews were going to be judged through the pagan Roman armies.

The word Armageddon means Mountain of Meggido, and the location referred to is probably Mount Carmel, where Elijah defeated the priests of Baal. This is the nearest mountain to the plain of Meggido. That battlefield was used more than once. Deborah and Barak achieved their great victory there (Judg. 5:19). The godly king Josiah met his Waterloo there, so to speak (2 Chron. 35:20-25). And so the grim reality represented by this convulsive battle is most likely to be understood as the demolition of Jerusalem.

The Lord here announces that He comes as a thief, which need not refer to His Second Coming. The same phrase was used earlier in Revelation to encourage the saints in Sardis to walk circumspectly (Rev. 3:3). The sixth bowl has been poured out. Very little time is left.

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Bible Challenge #34

Becky Pliego on

¡Hola, hola!  Can you believe this? We are on week 34 already! God has clearly prospered our plans and has been incredibly kind to us these past months. We have been learning to wear this new habit daily and it feels comfortable and natural to wear it now.

Today I want us to consider for a moment how the world we live in is one in which, more than ever, the written word abounds. No matter where we turn we find words to read. But the problem that many of us are facing is that we are no longer reading, but skimming through the words in front of us. We have been training our minds for the last several years to read superficially, to read headers and bold print, and words that are always accompanied with images. Words, not ideas. We no longer wrestle with the texts we have in front of us, we no longer want to wrestle with words. But if we are Women of the Word – and if we are Christians, which we are indeed – we must resist this temptation and learn (re-learn?) to read and read well. To read thoroughly and not skim the text, especially when we find ourselves in front of God’s Word open before us. We have mentioned many times that we should not despair if we don’t “get it all” the first (or second, or third) time we read a passage, and that is true. But we shouldn’t be lazy either and deliberately skim through the hard passages or difficult texts we encounter. Friends, God has given us a wonderful mind and has given us His Word and His Spirit so that we may know Him and His will for us. He is a God that wants to be known, and this means that He wants us to understand the Scriptures.

When we come to the harder passages or books of the Scripture, we must come knowing that God has given us extraordinary minds, yes, but also limited. We will never fully understand all the mysteries in the Word of God, but by His Grace, God will increase our understanding as we pray and faithfully open the Scriptures and wrestle with the passages in front of us. As we read and read again and resist the temptation to skim through it, God, in His kindness, will remember our frame and help us understand so that we may know Him more, love Him more, praise Him more, and obey Him more.

George Whitfield once said, “My mind being now more open and enlarged, I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books and praying over, if possible, every line and Word. This proved food indeed and drink indeed to my soul. I daily received fresh life, light and power from above. I got more true knowledge from reading the Book of God in one month–than I could ever have acquired from all the writings of men!”[1]

Let’s ask God this week to teach us to read, to help us pray as we read His Word, and to trust that His Word will never return void.

This week we will read the book of Daniel and start Zechariah. We will also read (and pray) Psalms 74-80, and Jude. We have a catch-up day on Thursday in which I recommend you read 1 and 2 Thessalonians (only 8 chapters all together). Read attentively, read prayerfully, read and do not skim the texts this week.

May our prayer this week be, “help us, O Lord, to build ourselves in our faith and persevere in prayer in the Holy Spirit, keeping ourselves, at all times in your love, and waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Jude 20-21)

Under His sun and by His grace,

Becky Pliego and the Ladies Fellowship Team of Christ Church

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 95

Douglas Wilson on

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

“And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and the kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds” (Rev. 16:10-11).

The way we are interpreting all these portents, the bulk of them are falling on Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the city devoted to utter destruction. But that does not mean that Rome was left unscathed. The center of attention is always Jerusalem, but the pagan nations are not out of view. Earlier in Revelation we read this: “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth [land]” (Rev. 3:10). Jerusalem is ground zero, but the rest of the Roman world was not unaffected.

So when the fifth angel pours out his bowl of wrath, he pours it out on the throne of the beast. We have seen earlier that this beast is to be identified with Rome, and not with Jerusalem. When this bowl is poured out, the kingdom was filled with darkness. This echoes the judgment that centuries before had fallen upon Egypt, when the darkness was palpable (Ex. 10:21-22). We see that these bowls are cumulative in their effect because the people here are still affected by the sores delivered by the first bowl of wrath.

In what way was Rome affected during this time? Jerusalem fell in 70 A.D. but Rome was drastically affected during the same period as well. In fact, there is little doubt that the troubles in Rome provided the defenders of Jerusalem with some of their vain hope. In 69 A.D. Nero was forced to commit suicide, and the scramble that followed is called the “year of the four emperors.” Galba, Otho, and Vitellius each successively ruled for a handful of months, and then they were succeeded by Vespasian—who was the general besieging Jerusalem. He returned to Rome, leaving his son Titus to capture the city. These transitions were tumultuous, and in 69 A.D. the great Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill was burned to the ground—the same fate that would come to Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem a very short time later.

And what brings repentance is the grace of God. Affliction by itself will never accomplish it. If pain could bring repentance, then Hell would be filled with penitent. There is a true mystery to lawlessness. These men, afflicted by their sores, covered in darkness, refused to repent. They gnawed their tongues in pain, and yet used those same tongues to blaspheme God.

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