Christ Church

Bible Challenge #22

Becky Pliego on

¡Hola, hola! Welcome to week 21 of our Bible Reading Challenge! Woohoo! How abundant are His mercies to those who believe, right? Think of these mercies, for example:  The gift of hunger. The gift of thirst. The gift of God Himself drawing us to Himself. The gift of being willing to come. The gift of knowing that we can’t persevere on our own. The gift of undeserved grace.  The gift of being able to read. The gift of the Bible -printed in our own language, in our favorite format (large print, with wide margins, light weight, with notes, without notes, etc.). Yes, all is gift flowing from His Grace. And so with hearts overflowing with gratitude we come and take the book of God and read it. One more verse, one more chapter, one more book, one more day and we drink and drink and we find out that our soul is starting to learn to be satisfied in Him and in Him alone.

“But wait,” some of you may say, ”yes to what you said in that first paragraph, Becky, I get it. It sounds beautiful and great. But …. it is just hard to consistently make the time, to actually make it happen every single day. Finding the time, you know? I guess you just don’t understand because you don’t see me running around every day.” So to you I write now, Friend. Yes, the season in my life might be very different than yours today, but our Father is the same. And our Mediator, Jesus Christ, is the same. He knows our frame and our specific circumstances. He is the God who sees, who hears, but He is also the God who comes and meets us where we are to give us the strength we need to do what He has commanded us to do. We cannot choose the terms of our coming to Him. Have we forgotten that He is God and we are not? He bids us to come to His throne by faith and in Jesus’ name and we must then come in prayer and in His Word to meet Him. Friends, our obedience is never dependent on our circumstances. The devil and our flesh are clever and when you put together those plus feminine hormones and two pinches of self-pity you have the perfect recipe to bake the most understanding excuse for not getting up earlier to meet with your Creator and Redeemer.  So what now? Repent and believe. Repent of your indifference. Repent from thinking that God can be accommodated into your busy schedule some days… and that if it doesn’t happen, “He will surely understand.” Repent from living as if you were God, the sole owner of your days and times.  And believe that in Christ there is forgiveness from all our self-pity, our poor management of time, our complaining. Believe that His Word is powerful and it can indeed change you and bring you joy when you are downcast, that it can bring you strength when you have none, that it will strengthen your hope in the long days of waiting for answered prayers. Believe that He was not yet finished His work in you, but that He will indeed complete it. Believe that His love for you is so immense that nothing can separate you from it. He wants you to come, so why would you not come?

This week we will finish reading 2 Kings and on Tuesday we will have a happy catch-up day (I can see you are already smiling). For those who are current in their reading and want a suggestion, I say read the book of James and Romans 10, I believe it will be a wonderful way to wrap-up the book of Kings and continue reading the book of Proverbs. We will start reading the Minor Prophets on Wednesday and I cannot begin to tell you how much I love these books in the Bible. They have been living water to me many times. I have learned so much from the character of God in these books, so much from my own nature too, and so much about living the Christian life that I pray you will enjoy swimming deep in those waters next week. On Wednesday we will read Joel along with Acts 2 and psalm 138, and you really don’t want to miss it! I will be sharing more about these Minor Prophets and some of the lessons we don’t want to miss on our weekly webinar on Monday, January 29 at 10:00am PST. I hope you can join us.

May our prayer this week, “Lord, I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what you will say to me.” (Heb. 2:1a)

Under His Sun and by His grace,

Becky Pliego and the team of Christ Church Ladies Fellowship

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 83

Douglas Wilson on

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

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six” (Rev. 13:16–18).
In order to understand this (often misconstrued) section of Revelation, we must (literally) return to our ABCs. In English, we use Roman letters and Arabic numerals. When we want to spell a number out, we write three. When we want to use a symbol for it, we write 3. We are so used to this system that we hardly ever even reflect on it. It is a very good system, if I may say so.

But Hebrew, Greek and Latin did not work this way. They did not use Arabic symbols for their numbers, but rather used the letters of their own alphabets for both phonetic sounds and for numbers. Thus, in Greek, the first letter alpha (corresponding to our letter a) made its particular vowel sound, but it also represented the numerical value of 1. I trust you are all still with me. This system was common in the ancient world, and is called gematria.

If English had an analogous system, it would be easy to compute the numerical value of our names. For example, my name is Douglas. All we would have to do is add the value of the numbers up: D (4), O (60), U (300), G (7), L (30), A (1), and S (100). The number of my name would therefore be 502. And while this strikes us as odd and contrived (because we don’t do it), it was very common in the ancient world. Greg Bahnsen once pointed out that graffiti at Pompeii has been found that said, “I love her whose number is 542.” There are not enough digits there for it to be her phone number. And the Roman historian Seutonius pointed out (about Nero) that some doggerel poetry was circulating in Rome that pointed out the numerical value of “Nero,” and “murdered his mother” were the same. This was pertinent because Nero had murdered his mother. And because we are talking about a particular intellectual skill set, someone once figured out that if you rearrange the letters of Presbyterians you can spell out Britney Spears. There are always people like this, and so we can be grateful that gematria died out before Facebook was invented.

Now mark this. John knew the name of the person he was thinking of, and he also believed that any reasonably clever member of the churches in Asia would be able to figure it out also. Let the one “with understanding” calculate the identity of the beast. It would be odd in the extreme if young Demetrius of Ephesus stayed up late the night after Revelation was read to their church, and in the morning asked his father who Henry Kissinger might be.

The system John was inviting them to use would have been obvious to them all. But it couldn’t have been too obvious, or else the officials censoring the mail leaving Patmos would have found out that John was writing seditious letters to his churches. The land beast that represented Rome is destroyed in this book. And so John was inviting the readers to transliterate the Greek name Nero Caesar into Hebrew, which the censors would not pick up on. In Hebrew, it would have been Nrwn Qsr. Once the vowel markings were added, as commentator Larry Ball points out, it would have been pronounced as Neron Kaiser.

So what is the numerical value of Nrwn Qsr? As it happens, it is 50 + 200 + 6 + 50+ 100 + 60 + 200 = 666. Nero was the head of the beast who was ruling at the time this revelation was given, and it seems to me that his identity as the sixth head of the seven-headed beast is secure.

It is worth mentioning that in the original, there is nothing like 666 or six six six. The value is found in the sum, in the total. The number given is six hundred and sixty six.

One additional comment should be made about the mark of the beast. The persecution included shutting believers off from the means of sustaining life, using economic chokepoints. You were not allowed to buy or sell unless you were willing to take the mark, or the name, or the number of the name onto your right hand or forehead. This is a diabolical parody of God’s requirement for faithful Jews, who were to bind the law of God on their hand and on their forehead.

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Bible Challenge #21

Becky Pliego on

¡Hola, hola! Welcome to week 20 of our Bible Reading Challenge. Isn’t that great? We have been learning how to wear this new habit, every day we feel more comfortable wearing it, and I trust that people around us are starting to notice how we are wearing it every day. Because this is what this challenge is about: owning our time in the Word and in prayer. It is not about feeling guilty for not having read a day, but about not wanting to miss a day. It is not about checking boxes, but about the joy of taking the Book and reading it, one more verse, one more chapter, one more book. This is not a challenge about feeling good about ourselves for reading the Bible consistently, but about realizing that coming to the Word every day is our life line.

This past week I was thinking about a few books I have recently read, and how each author retells what the Word of God did to them.  Rosaria Butterfield in her book “Openness Unhindered” talks about how reading her Bible, in large chunks of whole books at a time, transformed her and set her free from her sins. She makes it clear that the more she read the Bible, the more the Bible worked in her. It impressed me as a vivid testimony of what the Lord said of Hs Word: “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” How encouraging, Friends. Let’s keep reading the Word of the Lord, Friends, knowing that every time we open it, it is accomplishing something in us. The other book I want to mention is one by my friend Hannah Grieser, “The Clouds Ye So Much Dread.” In her book she narrates how, when her family endured the hard Providence of knowing that one of her sons had been diagnosed with Leukemia, she pleaded with God for him: “The Psalms and hymns that I had sung for years and committed to memory  -sometimes without much thought – were now surfacing in my head and heart and providing to be both priceless and indispensable. All this pictures as God as a refuge, as a fortress, as a rock, as a tower, as a physician, as a friend now meant something far more concrete. Here was comfort beyond imagining. Here was peace beyond understanding.” How this testimony should encourage us to persevere in the Word! The Word of the Lord is food for us today but we must not forget that when we read it, and pray it, and mediate on it regularly we are filling our head and heart with it so that, when difficult times come, the Holy Spirit will draw it back to our memories to strengthen us and give us hope. So Friend, be encouraged! Take the Book and read it!

This week we will continue reading the book of Kings. We will finish I Kings on Wednesday and Thursday we’ll start with II Kings. We will read some Psalms (140 and 139) and Proverbs (4-7). Note that on Tuesday, we will be reading James 4-5. That is not a mistake. I purposely decided to do that because I want you to keep seeing how the Bible is all unified. James is, in a way, the Proverbs of the New Testament. In Proverbs 5 we will read Solomon’s warnings against adultery and the same day we will read James’ warnings agains worldliness, covetousness, and and anxiety. Keep your eyes opened to see how all these warning are intrinsically related.

It will be a great week filled with great readings. We will read of the lives and ministries of Elijah, a type of John the Baptist, and of Elisha, a type of Christ. Also, Friends, pay attention when you read James 5, because in it we’ll see what is the lesson we must learn form Elijah. Isn’t it wonderful to know that the New Testament is the inspired commentary of the Old Testament?

May our prayer this week be, “Yes, Lord.”

Under His sun and under His grace,

Becky Pliego and the team of Christ Church Ladies Fellowship

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 82

Douglas Wilson on

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

“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed” (Rev. 13:11–15).

We have identified the beast from the sea—a great and threatening beast—with the Roman Empire. Its seven heads are seven hills, and its seven heads are also seven kings—the sixth one, Nero, reigning at the time the Revelation was given.

But we now come to a lesser beast, a beast who arises from the land. This beast does not look terrifying the same way the sea beast does because it looks like a lamb. But it speaks like a dragon, showing that it is just as evil as the sea beast, and like the dragon Satan behind the sea beast.

In order to ascertain the identity of the land beast, we have to piece together a few clues. The first is that John identifies this land beast with the false prophet to come later.

“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” (Rev. 16:13).

“And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone” (Rev. 19:20).

“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Rev. 20:10).

So the land beast is described as a religious figure (a prophet), but one who gives a blessing to those who would worship the sea beast, Rome. There is obviously a cozy relationship with Rome. This beast also has the power of working signs and wonders. This beast comes up out of the earth—the word for this is ge, which should be best understood here as the land, meaning the land of Israel. Putting all this together, I take the land beast as representing the priesthood of apostate Israel, with the high priest as a likely representative.

We have an example of this in how the religious leaders of the Jews treated Jesus.

“Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation” (John 11:47–48).

And Caiaphas, being high priest that year, spoke for them all when he said that Jesus must die for the nation (John 11:49).

But what about the signs and sorcery? We have indications of that kind of behavior among the Jews also.

“But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one” (Acts 8:9).

“And when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-jesus” (Acts 13:6).

Some of them even tried to use the name of Jesus as though it were a charm.

“Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth” (Acts 19:13).

The Jewish rebels who finally brought about the destruction of Jerusalem were a very different group from the Jewish quislings who worked hand in glove together with Rome. Satan was behind Rome, and these men were prostate before Rome, making them a synagogue of Satan. They were, as Jesus once put it, of their father the devil (John 8:44). The Jewish leadership at this time was demonic.

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