Matthew 2-An Exploration

¹NOW WHEN Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men [astrologers] from the east came to Jerusalem, asking,

²Where is He Who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the east ^[a]at its rising and have come to worship Him.

My favorite preacher, J. Vernon McGee, said there were prophecies in Eastern religions about a coming Messiah.  I haven’t checked that out yet…A quick google didn’t reveal anything significant…

⁴So he called together all the chief priests and learned men (scribes) of the people and ^[b]anxiously asked them where the Christ was to be born.  ⁵They replied to him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: 

⁶And you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, you are not in any way least or insignificant among the ^[c]chief cities of Judah; for from you shall come a Ruler (^[d]Leader) Who will govern and ^[e]shepherd My people Israel.

Matthew 1-An Exploration

¹THE BOOK of the ancestry (genealogy) of Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed), the son (descendant) of David, the son (descendant) of Abraham.

In the line of King David – a descendant of of Jacob – an Israeli.

Jacob the father of Judah

In the kingly line.

³Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar

Tamar was part of one of the most curious stories in Genesis:  She was married to 2 of Judah’s sons – both of whom died at the hands of God – which scared Judah about giving her his third son (per the custom of the day).  Tamar then tricked Judah into having sex with him – making her pregnant.  She was disgraced within the family and was due to be burned.  She escaped by revealing to Judah the unborn child was his own.   As the verse in Matthew shows, she gave birth to twins – in similar fashion to the birth of Jacob and Esau.

Being a Great Christian–Walking on Water

²⁸And Peter answered Him, Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.

²⁹He said, Come! So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water, and he came toward Jesus.

³⁰But when he perceived and felt the strong wind, he was frightened, and as he began to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me [from death]!

³¹Instantly Jesus reached out His hand and caught and held him, saying to him, O you of little faith, why did you doubt?

³²And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased.

³³And those in the boat knelt and worshiped Him, saying, Truly You are the Son of God!  (Matthew 14)

Reading this again, I was struck by how well it describes the life of a person of strong faith:

Peter had the strength to take a step out on the water.  The eleven others in the boat did not.  They were overwhelmed by the current conditions of the world around them. 

Peter concentrated on Christ.  Despite the ravages of the storm, his desire to be with Jesus was his central focus, and he begged to join.  And Jesus called him closer.

And Peter did walk on water.  He stepped out of the boat onto the tossing waves.  He was successful.

Revelation 9-An Exploration

¹THEN THE fifth angel blew [his] trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth; and to the angel was given the key ^[a]of the shaft of the Abyss (the bottomless pit).

²He opened the ^[b]long shaft of the Abyss (the bottomless pit), and smoke like the smoke of a huge furnace puffed out of the ^[c]long shaft, so that the sun and the atmosphere were darkened by the smoke from the long shaft.

³Then out of the smoke locusts came forth on the earth, and such power was granted them as the power the earth’s scorpions have.

These trumpets are part of the revelation that comes with the blowing of the 7th trumpet beginning Chapter 8.

The timing of this can not be doubted:  We have the release of Satan from the bottmless pit.  Clearly defined in Revelation 20 as coming at the end of the Kingdom and start of the real final war between God and evil.

Revelation 6 & 7-An Exploration

²And I looked, and saw there a white horse whose rider carried a bow. And a crown was given him, and he rode forth conquering and to conquer.

The Muslim Madhi is described this way.

⁹When the Lamb broke open the fifth seal, I saw at the foot of the altar the souls of those whose lives had been sacrificed for [adhering to] the Word of God and for the testimony they had borne.

¹⁰They cried in a loud voice, O [Sovereign] Lord, holy and true, how long now before You will sit in judgment and avenge our blood upon those who dwell on the earth?

¹¹Then they were each given a ^[b]long and flowing and festive white robe and told to rest and wait patiently a little while longer, until the number should be complete of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

The final judgment is the Great White Throne Judgment described in Revelation 20.

¹²When He [the Lamb] broke open the sixth seal, I looked, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun grew black as sackcloth of hair, [the full disc of] the moon became like blood.

¹⁴And the ^[c]sky rolled up like a scroll and vanished, and every mountain and island was dislodged from its place.

¹⁷For the great day of His wrath (vengeance, retribution, indignation) has come, and who is able to stand before it?

I am guessing most of the commentaries will link this to Armageddon during the Tribulation before the Kingdom – rather than the real final battle between God and evil at the END of the Kingdom – briefly mentioned in Revelation 20.

Zechariah 1 – An Exploration

Zechariah 1

¹IN THE eighth month, in the second year [of the reign] of Darius, came the word of the Lord to Zechariah son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, the prophet, saying…’

Darius – Reign 522 BC – 486 BC – So this would be 520.

Return to Me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you; it is the utterance of the Lord of hosts.

⁸I saw in the night [vision] and behold, a ^[a]Man riding upon a red horse, and He stood among the myrtle trees that were in a low valley or bottom, and behind Him there were horses, red, bay or flame-colored, and white.

¹¹And the men on the horses answered ^[c]the Angel of the Lord Who stood among the myrtle trees and said, We have walked to and fro through the earth [patrolling it] and behold, all the earth sits at rest [in peaceful security].

¹²Then the Angel of the Lord said, O Lord of hosts, how long will You not have mercy and loving kindness for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which You have had indignation these seventy years [of the Babylonian captivity]?

So, this vision comes when the 2nd Temple is about to begin again after the 70 year captivity that began in Babylon.  The Messiah (Jesus) comes riding a red horse to deliver the Word.

Zechariah 12-14 – Exploration Review

You can read how I first went through this prophecy here, here, and here.  Below, I’m going to give my initial reflection of the prophecy as a whole after taking some time to consider it and re-reading it without much pause.

I will stray away from the traditional interpretations of it.  I don’t see the horrors of Antiochus in it.  Nor do I see the horrors of the Roman destruction of 70 AD.  If they were present, they must have been passed over quickly, because early in the prophecy we see the direct, personal intervention by the Messiah fighting against Jerusalem’s enemies.

I do think most of the prophecy concerns the war of Armageddon and the establishment of the Messiah’s Kingdom on Earth.  But, I diverge again, I think, from other interpretations in believing that the greatest war and changes described in the prophecy concern the final war against evil that will come at the end of the Kingdom period as described in Revelation 20 – in which Satan and his forces will be released from the bottomless pit to join with others in the Kingdom for a final rebellion against God before the last judgment and establishment of a new Earth.

I will need to look at this some more, and read some other commentary more closely, but I think this does hold up…

(I quote more verses and look into them in the three earlier explorations linked at the start of this post.  Below, I try to summarize the outline I see in the prophecy but also give enough key quotes to support it.)

Chapter 12

Prophecy on Israel

Verses 1-9

Burdensome stone to neighbors

Zechariah 14 – An Exploration

This is a continuation of a reading of a prophecy on what will happen for Israel that began in chapter 12.  Here is my reading of  chapter 12, and chapter 13.

¹BEHOLD, A day of the Lord is coming when the spoil [taken from you] shall be divided [among the victors] in the midst of you.

²For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses rifled and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

³Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle.

This is curious — From the start of chapter 12, it has seemed clear to me that we are reading a time-oriented prophecy: that the further you go in the verses, the further in time you are moving.  Remember as well that these chapter divisions were not in the original text but were added later.  At the end of chapter 13 we had:

Zechariah 13 – An Exploration

Here is my exploration of chapter 12 which starts this prophecy concerning Israel to the End Times.

^{1IN THAT day} there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem [to cleanse them from] sin and uncleanness.

²And in that day, says the Lord of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they shall no more be remembered; and also I will remove from the land the [false] prophets and the unclean spirit.

This day seems clearly to be when Jesus returns – or for the Jews, the coming of the Messiah.

Look at the end of chapter 12 for the amazing parallels between this prediction of the Messiah and Jesus:

¹⁰And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace or unmerited favor and supplication. And they shall look [earnestly] upon Me Whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him as one who is in bitterness for his firstborn.

¹¹In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of [the city of] Hadadrimmon in the Valley of Megiddo [over beloved King ^[b]Josiah].

In this first verse of Zecharia 13, we have the inhabitants in Jerusalem who are weeping over the coming of the Messiah baptized in water and receiving the Spirit of grace.  For a Christian, these verses are truly amazing…

Zechariah 12 – An Exploration

 

¹THE BURDEN or oracle (the thing to be lifted up) of the word of the Lord concerning Israel:

On when Zechariah lived:

His prophetical career began in the second year of Darius, king of Persia (B.C. 520), about sixteen years after the return of the first company from their Babylonian exile. He was contemporary with Haggai (Ezra 5:1).  (Wikipedia)

Back to Zechariah 12:

²Behold, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup or bowl of reeling to all the peoples round about, and in the siege against Jerusalem will there also be a siege against and upon Judah.

³And in that day I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all peoples; all who lift it or burden themselves with it shall be sorely wounded. And all the nations of the earth shall come and gather together against it.

“I am about to” – would seem to provide a short timeline, no???

Since this is the time period in which the Persians ordered those nations under its control to allow the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls and the Temple, it would be fulfilled at that time.

It would also be fulfilled over and over in the history of Israel.  It has been a battle ground for many contending empires…

⁴In that day, says the Lord, I will smite every horse [of the armies that contend against Jerusalem] with terror and panic and his rider with madness;

Despite God using the nations around Israel to oppress them, due to their lack of faith in and acknowledgment of Him, Israel is still God’s people — and will ultimately be redeemed.

Islam teaches the Mahdi will lead armies to defeat Israel and found an empire in Jerusalem at the Dome of the Rock:

In their book, Al Mahdi and the End of Time, Muhammad ibn Izzat and Muhammad Arif, two well-known Egyptian authors, identify the Mahdi in the Book of Revelation, quoting the hadith narrator Ka’ab al-Ahbar.

In one place, they write,

“I find the Mahdi recorded in the books of the Prophets… For instance, the Book of Revelation says: “And I saw and behold a white horse. He that sat on him […] went forth conquering and to conquer.”

Ibn Izzat and Arif then go on to say:

“It is clear that this man is the Mahdi who will ride the white horse and judge by the Qur’an (with justice) and with whom will be men with marks of prostration (zabiba) on their foreheads.”^[44]

^{Back to Zechariah}

⁶In that day will I make the chiefs of Judah like a big, blazing pot among [sticks of] wood and like a flaming torch among sheaves [of grain], and they shall devour all the peoples round about, on the right hand and on the left; and they of Jerusalem shall yet again dwell and sit securely in their own place, in Jerusalem.