Christ Church

Surveying the Text: Obadiah

Joe Harby on

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Introduction

God has two ways of destroying His enemies. One might be considered the old school method—with the fire coming down out of the sky. This is the method that leaves a smoking crater. But the other is a far more glorious method, and that is His method of destroying enemies by turning them into friends. That is a far more wonderful destruction indeed. In order to accomplish the former, all He had to do was exercise His Almighty power. But to accomplish the latter, His Son had to die.

The Text

“The vision of Obadiah. Thus saith the Lord God concerning Edom; We have heard a rumour from the Lord, And an ambassador is sent among the heathen, Arise ye, and let us rise up against her in battle. Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen: Thou art greatly despised. The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee . . .” (Obadiah 1-21).

Background of the Text

The most likely setting for this book is after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. and before Babylon’s campaign against Edom in 553 B.C. Edom was a mountainous region, due south of the Dead Sea. Just to get you oriented, this was the era when Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) was born in Nepal, King Croesus ruled in Lydia, and when the temple of Artemis was built in Ephesus. The Edomites were descended from Esau, and godliness was not unknown among them (e.g. Job). But in this instance, they had rejoiced in an ungodly way during Judah’s Babylonian crisis, and Obadiah pronounces a judgment upon them as a consequence. At the same time, the ramifications of this prophecy extend far beyond the immediate fulfillment.

Summary of the Text

The small book begins with a “vision” concerning Edom (v. 1). Armies are already gathering against her. As they had held Judah in contempt, so they were going to be held in contempt (v. 2). They were a small nation, misled by their pride and apparently invulnerable mountain fortresses (vv. 3-4). Who will bring Edom down? God will. Ordinary thieves would usually leave something behind—but not here, not now. Esau will be stripped completely bare (vv. 5-6). Just as Edom betrayed Judah, so also will Edom’s allies betray them (v. 7). Just as they “cut off ” Judah’s refugees (v. 14), so also will they themselves be cut off (vv. 8-9). Mount Esau is a way of referring to Edom, and Teman was a chief city of theirs, named after Esau’s grandson (Gen. 36:9-11). They failed to help their brother Jacob in the day of violence (hamas), and will be judged for this sin of omission (vv. 10-11). Failing to intervene led them into even worse sin— gloating, rejoicing, boasting, looting, and even capturing and turning over refugees (vv. 12-14). The day of the Lord, the day of recompense, was upon them (v. 15). To drink sin is to drink wrath, and destruction is the result (v. 16). But deliverance will come to Zion, and everything will then be restored (v. 17). The house of Jacob will be on fire, and the house of Esau will be fields of stubble (v. 18), with predictable results. People from all over will possess Edom (vv. 19-20). Deliverance will come, and Zion will judge Edom, and the kingdom will be the Lord’s (v. 21).

Learning to Read

The Bible teaches us—comparing passage to passage—that you all are part of the fulfillment of Obadiah’s prophecy. In Obadiah 18-20, the prophet quotes Amos 9:11-12. And the prophet Joel quotes Obadiah 17 in Joel 2:28-32. The phrases in question are these: “that they may possess the remnant of Edom” and “in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord has said.” This is significant because that very section of Amos is then quoted by James, the Lord’s brother, at the Council of Jerusalem, referring to the inclusion of the Gentiles through the gospel (Acts 15:12-21). And the relevant passage in Joel is quoted by Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:16), with the claim that it was all fulfilled on that day. So though neither James nor Peter mention Obadiah by name, they do tell us what he is talking about by direct implication, by good and necessary consequence. So in what day will Mt. Zion rule over Edom? What day will that be? It will be the day the Tabernacle of David is reestablished. And what will be the day of escape for those in Jerusalem? It will be the day of Pentecost. Where are you from? “I am from northern Idaho.” And what are you doing here at Christ Church today? “I am possessing Mt. Esau” (vv. 19-20).

The Sin of Schadenfreude

This is the sin of delighting in the misfortune of others with a vindictive spirit. Take care. Remember the deadly progress of malice in vv. 12-14. It is a small step from rejoicing when someone falls to kicking them as long as they are down. God hates it, and the sin of Edom in this regard was quite striking. It is rebuked in Ps. 137:7 and again in Lamentations 4:21. Remember this perverse tendency of the human heart—once you have wronged someone significantly like this, you might never be able to forgive them. Be angry and sin not. Do not rejoice over your enemy’s failure, even if he is your lawful enemy (Prov. 24:17-18). Indignation, even at its best, is like manna—it will rot overnight. Remember that Judah deserved her destruction (as Jeremiah was telling them), but Edom added an ungodly amen. Do not be like those who do not know what spirit they are of (Luke 9:55). But the way to avoid this sin is not to search out some sort of room temperature tepidity.

Men of Fire

John Chrysostom once said something striking about the apostle Peter. “Peter was a man made all of fire, walking among stubble.” This is the image that we have at the end of Obadiah. The house of Jacob (that’s you) will be a fire and a flame (v. 18), and the house of Esau (the unbelieving world) will be fields of dry stubble. God’s people are called to be a fiery people—fire came down upon our heads at Pentecost (Acts 2), and fire comes out of the mouths of the two witnesses (Rev. 11:5). Our spirits are supposed to be on the boil (Rom. 12:11). We are a fiery people in a combustible world. This is not surprising, for our God is a consuming fire, and we are in Him (Heb. 12:29).

Read Full Article

Surveying the Text: Amos

Joe Harby on

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Introduction

Now let us consider the prophecy of Amos. Apart from what is revealed in the course of his writing here, we know nothing about the man. Among the minor prophets, he occupies the vanguard in this period of Israel’s history, even though he is placed third in the canonical order. He is very much a prophet.

The Text

“The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. And he said, The LORD will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither” (Amos 1:1-2).

Overview

Tekoa was about ten miles south of Jerusalem, and this small town in Judah is where Amos was from (v. 1). But Amos was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel, and so it was that he conducted that ministry as a satiric outsider. He prophesied two years before “the earthquake,” a notable event remembered in Zechariah 14:5. The most likely date for his ministry is between 760 and 755 B.C., right near the end of Jeroboam II’s reign. The earthquake serves as a great metaphor for Amos’ message of impending judgment. As mentioned at the first, Amos was a shepherd, and if there is anything that a shepherd dreads, it is the sound of a lion’s roar (v. 2). The Lord, who had been Israel’s shepherd, had now become Israel’s predator. In the prophecy of Amos, the Lord was roaring. Moreover, He was doing this from Zion, and His voice was from Jerusalem. That was where God had established His name, and yet the northern kingdom had established false worship at Dan and Bethel. As a result of God’s predation, the pastureland of Carmel was going to wither, and the habitations of the shepherds would wither.

A Host of Sevens

Amos is from an obscure place because God loves to rebuke the sleek and fat of this world with those who are little in the eyes of the world (1 Cor. 4: 9). But Amos is far from being some kind of hick or cornpone. This is a book of magnificent poetic force, and the literary abilities exhibited by the prophet are considerable. He is no court flatterer, but his abilities are not at all beneath the task of rebuking a corrupt aristocracy.

One of his favorite literary and structuring devices is that of the organizing power of seven. There are at least twenty-three places where Amos relies on the number seven to organize his material, which you can find throughout the book. He asks seven rhetorical questions (3:3-6), there are seven empty rituals that Israel performs (5:21-23), there are seven plagues (4:6-11), seven verbs of exhortation (5:14-15), and so on. Moreover, the entire book is structured in a seven-fold chiasm.

a Judgment coming toward Israel and her neighboring countries (1:1-2:16)
b Destruction of Israel and Bethel’s cultic worship (3:1-15)
c Condemnation of fat cat women (4:1-13)
d Call to repentance (5:1-17)
c’ Condemnation of fat cat men (5:18-6:14)
b’ Destruction of Bethel’s cultic worship (7:1-8:3)
a’ Judgment coming toward Israel and promised deliverance (8:4-9:15)

The Great Themes

The book of Amos is a book of rebuke and denunciation. According to Amos, the two great sins committed by Israel were, first, compromised and corrupt worship, and second, a resultant abuse of power. The same thing comes up in the book of James, a New Testament book with a strong similarity to the book of Amos. What is pure and undefiled religion? The answer to that question is two-fold, not solitary. The famous part of the answer is to visit widows and orphans in their affliction (1:27). But James also says that pure and undefiled religion keeps itself “unspotted from the world” (v. 27).

It is not the case that good deeds stand alone. Good deeds cannot justify a sinner, as we all know (Eph. 2:8-9). But good deeds cannot even justify themselves. All true living flows from true worship. Any one who worships at Dan and Bethel will inevitably grind the poor. And any one who tries to implement a syncretistic alliance between Zion and Bethel will do the same. Wisdom says that all who hate her love death (Prov. 8:36).

This is why the great order of the day today is reformation of the Church, and restoration of true worship. This is not because we want to bottle true worship up to hide it from the world, but rather because we want unspotted religion to be what visits the widow and the orphan. To skip over the question of right worship, discarding the question of immoralities and heresies, for the sake of the poor and oppressed, is extremely short- sighted. To say, as one evangelical leader (Jim Wallis) has done, that we should not be that concerned about sodomy in the church because we mustn’t get distracted by secondary issues when the question of global poverty is so pressing, is to fly in the face of the message of Amos. To argue this way is to assume that Amos would agree that so long as we quit grinding the poor, worship at Dan and Bethel would be fine with God. It is to assume that it would be fine with James to be corrupted by the world so long as we visited widows and orphans. But not only is it not fine, we need to flip this around. So long as you worship at Dan and Bethel, no matter what you say, or how eloquently you say it, the poor are going to catch it in the neck. False worshippers always stand up for the poor . . . the way that Judas did.

The Engine and Drive Train

To say that worship is the center of everything, is not to say that worship is everything. In our worship of God, we have our names and identities established. Once we are named by God, we are then commissioned to go out into the world, and to represent Him there. One of the central tasks that God has assigned to the Church in this regard is the task of mercy ministry—which in recent years we have been doing more and more. But this is just like everything else we do. We worship God on the Lord’s Day. Everything else we do—art, literature, education, business, politics, economics, and mercy ministry—must be connected to this worship. The drive train has to be connected to the engine, which is true and faithful worship.

Promise Fulfilled

Amos is a fierce and biting book, and our generation needs to hear and heed its message. We need to be ready to be convicted, prodded, encouraged, and rebuked. But the book drives inexorably toward a glorious conclusion, one where the promised salvation of God does come into the world. As we allow the unbending righteousness of God to speak to us, we must constantly fix our eyes on the promise fulfilled in Christ.

Read Full Article

Surveying The Text: Joel

Joe Harby on

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Introduction

The occasion of this prophecy was a swarm of locusts that devastated the land of Judah. That was a true disaster that was a portent of another follow-up disaster, an invading Gentile army. Joel calls upon the people of God to repent, and promises them true restoration if they do so. Part of his description of all this contains a prophecy of the day of Pentecost, which shows that God will in fact bring that repentance about. God invites Israel to repent, and promises that same repentance.

The Text

“And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: For in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, As the LORD hath said, And in the remnant whom the LORD shall call” (Joel 2:32).

Summary of the Text

The reason for this great judgment was that the religious life of Judah had become external only, and therefore degenerate. The judgment falls on their ability to worship God ( Joel 1:9, 13-14, 16). They are called to worship God in response ( Joel 2:15-16), but they are pointedly told to refrain from mere externalism. “And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil” ( Joel 2:13).

Judgment comes on Judah in waves. The first is the locust swarm ( Joel 1). The second chapter may be a particularly vivid description of that same locust swarm, or it may be that the locusts were a precursor to an advancing army. In other words, in the expression of one sage, the first chapter was a statement that things were going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse.

But in the middle of the second chapter, God invited His people to repent, and by the end of that same chapter, He promised that they would in fact do so. In the third chapter, God promised vengeance on the nations that had come against His people, and He declared that He would then bless His people with great prosperity.

Decreation Language

The New Testament teaches us how to understand and interpret the language of the Old. In this passage of Joel (2:28-32), we are told that the restoration of God’s people is going to be striking—when the Spirit is poured out on all flesh, their sons and daughters will prophesy. Old men will dream dreams. Young men will see visions. But this is described in language that seems to go far beyond people speaking in tongues in the street. No, there will be wonders in the heavens. On the earth, there will be blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon will become blood.

All this will happen before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

So when the inhabitants of Jerusalem were wondered if the first disciples had been drinking too much, Peter gives them a reason for doubting that—it was too early in the morning for it—and then goes on to say that this whole section of Joel was talking about the day of Pentecost. The New Testament tells us that this apocalyptic vision was fulfilled then, there.

But everywhere else such language occurs (Is. 13: 10; 34:4; Ez. 32:7; Amos 8:9), some kind of cataclysmic judgment is in view, which means that the 70 A.D. judgment on Jerusalem by the Romans may be lumped together with the prophecy about Pentecost. This is particularly the case if you couple Paul’s citation in Rom. 10:11 with his use of Is. 28:11 in 1 Cor. 14:21. Tongues were a precursor, a foretaste of what was to come, and it was a sign of judgment for unbelievers. If you will not understand precept on precept, then maybe you will understand when your streets are filled with soldiers speaking another language.

The passage concludes with the promise that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, and so Peter goes on to invite them all to do just that.

Jesus is Jehovah

But much more is involved than learning how to interpret current events with a set of apocalyptic glasses. All of this is ultimately about who Jesus is. Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4), and after His ascension into Heaven, He was granted universal rule and authority. He was given an iron rod, and the first city He smashed with it was the city of Jerusalem (Ps. 2:9). This meant that the men who condemned Him would see this judgment with their eyes (Mark 14:61-64).

In the Hebrew of Joel 2:32, we are told that everyone who calls on the name of YHWH will be saved. YHWH was the covenant name of Almighty God, Maker of Heaven and earth. God had revealed Himself to Moses in a special use of YHWH (Ex. 6:2-3). In that passage, He is God Almighty, but He also has the name YHWH. So according to Joel everyone who calls on the name of YHWH will be saved.

Our pronunciation of Yahweh comes from the use of the consonants of YHWH, and the vowels of Adonai, another name for God. Our English Jehovah comes to us via a similar route. Somewhere along the line, the Jews became wary of saying this name for God, and so no one really knows how the name was originally pronounced. Fortunately, it does not matter because the translators of the Septuagint rendered YHWH as kurios, and the apostle Paul does the same thing in Romans 10. This shows that God is not particular about His name in translation.

More important is the identity of this God. In Romans 10, Paul insists that the fundamental Christian confession is that Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:9). Everyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame (Rom. 10:11; Is. 2816). Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord [kurios] will be saved. This is our faith; this is our life.

Read Full Article

Surveying the Text: Hosea

Joe Harby on

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Introduction

Apart from what we can glean from the book itself, we do not know a lot about the prophet Hosea. He was a prophet from the north, and the hard date we can gather from Hosea 1:4 means that his ministry was around 743 B.C. The theme of the book is Israel’s unfaithfulness to YHWH as typified by Gomer’s infidelity to Hosea. The problem, simply stated, was that Israel did not know their God (Hos. 4:1, 6, 14; 8:2-3). We have, in turn, vivid descriptions of infidelity, consequences, and restoration.

The Text

“Come, and let us return unto the LORD: For he hath torn, and he will heal us; He hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: In the third day he will raise us up, And we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: His going forth is prepared as the morning; And he shall come unto us as the rain, As the latter and former rain unto the earth” (Hosea 6:1–3).

Summary of the Text

The sin that is expressly dealt with elsewhere in Hosea is assumed here. In order to return to the Lord, you have to have departed from Him (v. 1). And when we depart from the Lord, He chastises. Here it is expressed as a tearing or smiting. Where He has torn, He will heal. Where He has smitten, He will bind up (v. 1). There is then a glimpse of the coming resurrection. Christ was raised on the third day, and so also will we be raised on the third day (v. 2). Having been raised, we will live in His sight. In that condition of having been raised to life again, we will follow on to know the Lord. The blessing will be like morning, and like lifegiving rain to the earth (v. 3).

A Key Note of Scripture

“For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6). When Jesus was ministering to IRS men and courtesans, He was challenged on the point by the fussers (Matt. 9:11). When you consider how biblical His adversaries wanted to be, His response had a really sharp edge. “But go and learn what this means” (Matt. 9:13). Wanting to be teachers of the law, the Lord’s adversaries had missed the foundational rudiments—the deep footings for God’s building are made entirely out of mercy. He says something similar a few chapters later when the Pharisees were being persnickety about the disciples picking grain on the Sabbath (Matt. 12:7). There He says something like if you only knew what you were talking about . . .

The problem with hardliners is not that they see the hard edge of God’s judgment on sin. There are plenty of passages in Hosea that could be culled to create a portrait of an unsympathetic God. But this would be to miss the whole point of the whole thing. “I desired mercy . . .” Hardliners separate truth from mercy, which becomes untrue.

Sentimental saps separate mercy from truth, which becomes hard and unkind.

“By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: And by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil” (Prov. 16:6).

New Testament Commentary

We see in a number of places how the New Testament writers are drawn to this book.

The judgment pronounced on the rulers of Samaria (Hos. 10:7) is taken up by the Lord and applied as a lament for the residents of Jerusalem (Luke 23:30). Hosea then describes the Exodus in a way that shows us that Christ is the true Israel (Hos. 11:1; Matt. 2:15), the final Israel, the complete Israel.

Near the conclusion of the book, Hosea gives us a great promise of redemption and his language is picked up by the apostle Paul in his great chapter on the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:55). “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes” (Hos. 13:14).

If you put these three passages together, you can see the trajectory of all of redemptive history. The apostate nation of the northern kingdom of Israel was a stand-in for all the infidelity throughout the time of the old covenant, culminating in the destruction of Old Israel. We see that God does in fact judge sin, and that He plays hard ball. At the same time, we see that God does not level Old Israel without creating, in a glorious way, a New Israel. That New Israel is the Lord Jesus Himself. He comes up out of Egypt as a baby, He is baptized, He is in the wilderness for forty days, He invades the land of Canaan. And, at the end of the process, just like Israel, He dies. But, unlike Israel, He comes to life again. And this is the last of these three prophecies. Death, where is your victory? Grave, what destruction can you have?

Not My Kid

Hosea had a son, a daughter, and then another son. They were given names that indicated the deep trouble Israel was in. Jezreel meant God will scatter. Lo-Ruhamah meant no compassion, and Lo-Ammi meant not my people. But however deep the trouble Israel was in, God’s mercy ran deeper still. Paul quotes Hosea 2:23 to show God’s kindness to the Gentiles, and then quotes Hosea 1:10 to show His kindness to the Jews.

“What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? As he saith also in [Hosea], I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved” (Rom. 9:22–25).

There are in fact vessels of wrath. There are in fact vessels of mercy. But go and learn what this means . . .

Read Full Article

Surveying the Text: Revelation

Joe Harby on

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Introduction

The book of Revelation is written in a genre that we in the modern world no longer use, and consequently it can be a very difficult book for us to understand. G.K. Chesterton said that John the apostle saw many strange monsters in his vision, but none so strange as any one of his commentators. And Ambrose Bierce said that it was a book in which St. John concealed all that he knew. The revealing, he said, is done by the commentators, who know nothing. So as we attempt to survey this book in one message, the goal will be to tread lightly, but with some hope of edification.

The Text

“I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:16–17).

Defining Our Terms

The images from Revelation are quite familiar. But the language of those images is not, and one of factors in the difficulty is found in how the entire book is set. There are four basic options. The first is the idealist view. In this understanding, the book is a giant parable in the sky, with no actual historical anchors. The second is the futurist view, in which the book is understood to be talking about events at the end of the world, which is of course in our future. The third is the historicist view, which understands the book of Revelation as finding its fulfillment down throughout church history, like an unrolling carpet. And the last is the preterist understanding (preter referring to the past), which locates the fulfillment of most of the book in the first century (i.e. in the prophet’s future, but in our past).

My approach here is preterist, with the exception of the last two chapters, which I think must be read in a historicist fashion.

And Another Thing . . .

Another major factor in interpreting this book is found in when you believe it was written. There are two basic schools of thought—one holds that it was written in the nineties, during the reign of Domitian. The second view, the one I hold to, is that it was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, and is in fact all about that destruction. If you locate the book after the leveling of Jerusalem, it is difficult to understand what the book could possibly be about, thus opening the door to killer bees, atomic blasts, and nefarious computers in Brussels. The late date depends largely on external evidence. Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, a disciple of John, says the vision “was seen not very long ago, almost in our own generation, at the close of the reign of Domitian.” Domitian died in 96 A.D. The evidence for an early date depends largely on internal evidence. “Things which must soon take place,” etc.

A Sampler

One of the advantages of approaching your study of this book with a preterist understanding is that the past happened the way it did, and there is little opportunity for any funny business. By way of contrast, the future is infinitely malleable. Your creative interpretation can always fit exactly . . . until it doesn’t. Here are three examples of how the fulfillment of Revelation can be understood in a preterist way. All of these examples have to do with numbers.
42 months—the dragon gave power to the beast, and it says: “And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months” (Rev. 13:5). The beast, which is Rome, is given power to persecute the saints for 42 months. Nero set the city of Rome on fire, and when suspicion fell on him, he blamed the Christians for it, and launched the first Roman persecution of the church. That persecution lasted from November of 64 A.D. and it continued until June 8, 68 A.D. It lasted for 42 months.

666, the number of man—“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. 13:18). Notice that John knew who he was talking about, and he expected some of his readers to be able to figure it out. Recall that the practice of gematria was common then. So why would it take someone who had “understanding”? If you transliterate the Greek of Nero Caesar into Hebrew, it added up to 666. And if you go from Latin into Hebrew, you get 616, which some manuscripts of Revelation have, even though it is not nearly so spooky.

5 are fallen—“And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns . . . And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space” (Rev. 17:3, 9–10). Rome was renowned as the city of seven hills. We know instantly what is meant by the Big Apple, or the Windy City, or the Big Easy. It was the same kind of thing here. But the seven heads are seven kings, not just seven hills. So let us count—Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius. There are the five, and the one that is “now” is Nero.

Back to the Text

The dragon hates the woman, and the dragon has always hated the seed of the woman (Rev. 12:1ff). But the seed of the woman will crush the head of the seed of the serpent. And thus we have the main characters in this cosmic drama—we have the antagonist, Satan, and we have the Christ and we have the woman. And so it is that both the Spirit and the bride issue an invitation to all mankind—who have only two choices. Either you remain with the serpent, or you come and drink the water of life freely. We know the course of wisdom here because we are told how the story ends.

Read Full Article