Beginning to Begin Anew

Tags

dead, death, earth, fire, hades, lake, second death

Rev 20:13  And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

Rev 20:14  And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, even the lake of fire.

Rev 20:15  And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire.

Ok here is something I bet none of us ever considered.  Look at verse 14, death and hades are cast into the lake of fire.  When we think of death, we think of cessation of bodily function as in the heart arrests and stops and the lungs fail and cease to bring in the oxygen we so desperately need for physical continuance in the physical plane or the world around us. The eyes close the final exhalation and the brain madly scrambles to perhaps restart things or run the video of your life before your eyes, and you … die.  But God sees this form of death as a pause and discontinuance of the life in the flesh; never forget Jesus experienced this process first hand.  He experienced it in perhaps one of the most gruesome manners ever, Roman crucifixion. Now Jesus being fully God as if He were no man AND fully man as if He were not God is His own conundrum of existence, He being God in flesh had a “deathless life” He actually had to permit Himself to be torn apart with whips and bruised with impacts and pierced with nails and allowed to let go of that which made His body function even under such strain.  It is said that the true cause of death may very well be a “broken heart” in that the strain may have actually ruptured His heart.  If He keeps all things by the Word of His power and those things are the universe around us how hard do you think it is for Him to keep alive despite all the major damage until the precise moment when the wrath of the Father had fully spent itself and that is another thing altogether in that this wrath He took and took and took until there was no more to take must have had an impact on Him physically.  Thus once the task of redemption ransom expiation propitiation atonement and fulfillment of His own law was complete His purpose for remaining was over and He committed His spirit to the Father.  But having died on one day and being entombed the next and over the night part of the third (Jewish days run sundown to sundown so they start at night) such that as the sun rose perhaps during what we would call the morning watch part of the third day, Jesus body not only is restored to full function but that void of decay and somehow it slips it bindings.  It is said that the thing which made the disciples believe was that the wrappings of the body from the neck down were INTACT or still as if wrapped around something but the something was missing.  The napkin over the face is what was tampered with in a manner that suggested the occupant was finished with His occupancy. At least that is one theory put forth of the facial napkin and the other may be that it was not tampered with at all and simply lay as if it had been covering something that sunk beneath it and was gone.  Either way it was its own mystery until He showed up in a locked upper chamber of someone’s home.  Is it not interesting that the gospels don’t record that the owner of the house below the locked upper room never saw Him at all?  So the way we view death is not the way God views death.  Also if you go back to the passage in Revelation that talks about the prophetess Jezebel, Jesus speaks of killing her children WITH DEATH.  It would appear that to God Death and Hades are entities which might also be places but all this goes into one lake that burns eternally.  A lake of fire with brimstone is only place… where the lava is constantly molten.

Rev 21:1  And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more.

Now there are passages all over scripture that allude to this verse.

2Pe 3:5  For this they willfully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God;

2Pe 3:6  by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

2Pe 3:7  but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

2Pe 3:10  But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

2Pe 3:11  Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness,

2Pe 3:12  looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

Mat 5:18  For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.

Mar_13:31  Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.

Luk_21:33  Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.

Heb 1:10  And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands:

Heb 1:11  They shall perish; but thou continuest: And they all shall wax old as doth a garment;

Heb 1:12  And as a mantle shalt thou roll them up, As a garment, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, And thy years shall not fail.

In fact this is even referenced to in the Old Testament.

Psa 102:25  Of old didst thou lay the foundation of the earth; And the heavens are the work of thy hands.

Psa 102:26  They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:

Psa 102:27  But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end.

Isa 34:1  Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye peoples: let the earth hear, and the fulness thereof; the world, and all things that come forth from it.

Isa 34:2  For Jehovah hath indignation against all the nations, and wrath against all their host: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.

Isa 34:3  Their slain also shall be cast out, and the stench of their dead bodies shall come up; and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.

Isa 34:4  And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host shall fade away, as the leaf fadeth from off the vine, and as a fading leaf from the fig-tree.

Isa 34:5  For my sword hath drunk its fill in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Edom, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment.

Isa 34:6  The sword of Jehovah is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for Jehovah hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.

Now verse four is what we are looking at but I chose the passage because it also speaks of the last major battle before the second death.

In each verse we find the old being “rolled up” or gathered up or burned up and being destroyed and disposed of, which means our monuments and legacies will go with them, so much for enduring testimonies of men.

(Rev 21:1  And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more. )  So we have NEW GENESIS, God has created again.  Recall that He has told us He will make all things … new?

But lets go on.

Rev 21:2  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.

Now it may seem as though this is   It is a ready-made place and in today’s thought of building and construction one might say it is “modular” and they would be correct.  This is a complete ready to go assembly that will be placed on a massive piece of real estate.  What we need to remember here is that the maps of the Earth as we know it with its seas do NOT exist now.  So the land masses are different which means the national boundaries are different.  This then gives credence to certain passages of the Old Testament.

Isa 11:16  And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.

Isa 19:23  In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.

Isa 19:24  In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land:

Isa 19:25  Whom the LORD of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.

Isa 35:8  And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

I cannot at present locate the passage I want but it talks about there being land set aside and sparely inhabited all throughout the Palestinian lands ( I think) It is a massive foot print.

Rev 21:3  And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God:

This is Temple, the Greek word of Tabernacle is a tent or a gathering place as it were, but this place is where the Living God will now once again be among humanity but as King of the Nations and those who are not fearful, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sorcerers, idolaters, or liars, these do not inherit the Kingdom because this is the Kingdom fully manifest.  Here there will be no sorrow no tears no pain no sickness no evil, in the presence of This King no sadness or darkness will be. Because Jesus will remove all the reasons of the heart and circumstances for it.

Rev 21:4  and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away.

Rev 21:5  And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true.

Rev 21:6  And he said unto me, They are come to pass. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

Rev 21:7  He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

He who over comes….  This references the first three chapter so the book which I shall cover.

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The Pause before Round Two

Tags

angel, antiochus, daniel, earth, God, high priest, judgement, mercy seat, revelation

Rev 8:1 And when he opened the seventh seal, there followed a silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.

This is like taking the silent breath in and holding it for a moment. This is a poignant pause. We have seen significant happenings here. The sealing of the representative what have you from the tribes which in itself is its own mystery. How on Earth does anyone but God KNOW who these people are and from what lineages and whatever? Only God can do this. There is if you consider this to be like the curses of Deut chapt 28 a good reason for the pause, a time of grace unto repentance. Because when He continues the whole thing ramps up a considerable notch.
If we as believers are in this may we remember who has sent it and BE GRATEFUL.

Rev 8:2 And I saw the seven angels that stand before God; and there were given unto them seven trumpets.

This is the transition now to the next phase. Formerly we opened the scroll which will contain what? Prophesy Edicts or … could this be DANIEL’S REVELATION. Now I know we all can read the writings of Daniel who is not considered a prophet by Judaism because he did not preach. But he was told to SEAL it unto the time of the end. When we look at Daniel and at History leading from Alexander the Great through to Antiochus Epiphanes, a son of a Seleucid king who wound up be reared in Rome of all places, imbued with Roman culture and mythos and honoring Roman gods, not Seleucid or Macedonian/ Medo-Persian gods, who was extremely contemptible. But when we get to chapter twelve it’s almost as if someone stole out a page. Thus we have these verses which seem out of place with everything else. “Dan 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” ,and “Dan 12:9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel; for the words are shut up and sealed till the time of the end.” Ironically the texts involved seem to be dealing with the final pitched battle of Lucifer and Jesus as it were and the Great White Throne Judgment, or so it is called. That by the way doesn’t happen until after the millennia of rule and the second and final confrontation of Satan and God. Meanwhile the trumps are being distributed.

Rev 8:3 And another angel came and stood over the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
Rev 8:4 And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.

Now in this piece of action there are images that converge on each other that call to specific images in the Old and New Testaments. I want to point out first the altar. When Mary discovers that the gardener at the tomb is her Lord she is excited to see Him and I would suppose she might have either tried to detain or to touch Him. He warns her off saying He had not as yet ascended to His Father. Later on He has no problem at all being touched. One the Cross He cries the Greek word “teleo”(Strongs Greek 5055) which can be translated among other things as either finished, executed, complete or paid (Jn 19:30) but is it really? Is the completion of all the work of atonement complete? On the Cross He has taken our place and received unto Himself the out poured wrath of the Father as the sacrifice offered up; but in Hebrews He is the High Priest and the High Priest annually does one thing; he brings the blood to the Mercy Seat.(Heb 9:7) We are told to come boldly to the Throne of Grace to receive mercy and obtain grace in time of need. (Heb 4:16) Can you see the connection here? Jesus had to still come before His God (also His Father) as HIGH PRIEST and pour out that blood or essence or whatever it was HE offered up before the Throne of Grace. You see our atonement is IN His SHED BLOOD and that blood was poured out onto the ground from the cross, and from the whipping post. In that the ground had been our “kinsman redeemer” and was thus cursed for our sakes when His blood hit it, it was cleansed, for He has become our “Kinsman Redeemer” for all time. This is but a few aspects of all that He did for us on the Cross.

Now then In the Earthly tabernacle the golden altar of Incense wherein prayer was made stood before the veil to the Holy of Holies wherein was the ARK. In my opinion it would appear that the Ark and the Throne are seen as one and the same. For us the Ark holds the representations of Christ as Priest King and Apostle/Prophet. In this verse we see the real altar of which the Earthly Tabernacle is but a representation. Interesting, no?
The next image is the angel who pours out incense and “prayers of the saints” this would have to be all the prayers from of all time quite possibly or it could be those who are in the persecution or have been persecuted over the centuries, but whatever prayers it is once its offered up the censor is refilled. You see the prayer incense thing went up before God from the Angel’s hand.

Rev 8:5 And the angel taketh the censer; and he filled it with the fire of the altar, and cast it upon the earth: and there followed thunders, and voices, and lightnings, and an earthquake.

What is being cast to Earth now is a response. One heavenly censor of unknown proportions full of fire… and here is thunder voices lightening and an earthquake… wait didn’t we just have a massive quake? Well its either an aftershock or another or it could be that in the economy of the book itself certain things tend to wrap together. It could be that this is the quake of the seals that is so devastating. I tend to doubt it but no one got the Incarnation right so how are we to know the actual real time truth of this book? All that is in this study could be nothing more than pure speculation. I hope there is revelation instead. My thought is that this could be aftershocks. Remember a Tectonic plate shift on a global scale will most certainly have aftershocks and then there is the matter of a censor from heaven manifested as (what?) hitting the Earth from whatever angle and its spilling fire. Oh now that will most certainly cause yet another round of shaking. Scripture sits silent as to the things the voices said.

Rev 8:6 And the seven angels that had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.

Round two is about to commence.

Seal Six and Seismos

Tags

blood, boiling sky, earth, moon, revelation, sackcloth, siesmos, sun

Rev 6:12  And I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood; 

Rev 6:13  and the stars of the heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig tree casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind. 

Rev 6:14  And the heaven was removed as a scroll when it is rolled up; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 

Stop right here…. This is devastation on a massive scale.  What could be happening that such a massive series of events happen?
Everything in this verse has in the English like or as which makes it metaphor and or simile.  This is John in his day describing what he is seeing in comparison to known examples of his day.  A great earthquake; or a “mega seismos” in the Greek, takes place. These Greek words are just that, a great commotion or shaking or quaking or movement. Now the conjunctive kai or and the sun or helios (…the sun; by implication light) becomes black like sackcloth.  Now notice I included a partial definition (helios Strongs Greek #2246) of this word because of relevancy.  The writer may well not be talking about the orb itself but the light we see from the vantage point of the Earth! Now if we presume to think in this manner, as the word itself does lend to that thought, then it is the light of the sun that becomes like as if covered in sackcloth.  The word for black is the color black (melos) but it black as sackcloth.  I want to look at that word for sackcloth for a moment.  Strongs Greek #4526 sakkos Of Hebrew origin [Strongs Hebrew # 8242 śaq From (Strongs Hebrew #8264 shâqaq A primitive root; to course (like a beast of prey); by implication to seek greedily: – have appetite, justle one against another, long, range, run (to and fro).) ; properly a mesh (as allowing a liquid to run through), that is, coarse loose cloth or sacking (used in mourning and for bagging); hence a bag (for grain, etc.): – sack (-cloth, -clothes).]; “sack” cloth, that is, mohair (the material or garments made of it, worn as a sign of grief): – sackcloth.

Now all these images converge the images of coursing about or a mesh that liquid can run through which is made of mohair.  I went online and looked into mohair and found it to be of a goats hair, that is wiggly in strand (coursing)When made into clothing it has a complete cover in its weave, as it were, of the skin; thus very opaque.  So then something is obscuring opaquely the light of the sun, not the sun itself.
At the same time the moon becomes like or as blood. The moon (selene) … “brilliancy”  so then its not the orb itself again but the brilliancy or COLOR that changes to the color of human blood (aima) uncertain derivation literally blood figuratively grape juice. Either way it will be a dark crimson to purplish color at night.  As if this was not enough we have stars (aster) falling to earth in the same manner as a fig casts of unripe or hard figs when shaken in a (mega animos) mighty or great wind. I will have to ask a horticulturalist friend of mine about this but I could imagine the figs would pelt the ground in waves as they are ripped from the tree during a sirocco or high speed wind storm which one would have gotten in the Mediterranean of John’s day.  Now if this is so then we have “rocks” pelting the earth in the middle of all of this.  Good God what could do that?
To put the frosting and icing on this cake the whole thing does two more things.  First it causes EVERY, John is very specific here, mountain and island to be “moved out of place” and second it causes the sky to roll up like or as a scroll being rolled closed.

Now the first is nothing short of a tectonic plate shift on a global scale.

The second I have pondered for a long time until I considered a small scroll being rolled shut.  Large scrolls would have two staves at each end of the scroll and they would roll towards each other furling the paper scroll around them till they touched and then it would be bound shut.  But a smaller one might only have one.  It would be then rolled like a roll of paper towels or toilet paper.

Now if clouds are seen to be doing this the action would be that of roiling or boiling sky.  If there were two massive thunderhead type cloud formations rolling into each other making the sky “boil” what would be devastating enough to cause all this at one time.  The effects of the bombs over Nagasaki and Hiroshima approximate the boiling sky but not the rest.
Here’s where I go out on the limb.  What if, as my brilliant daughter put forth, the “astera” weren’t space rocks but debris returning from being flung into orbit?  When certain volcanoes erupted in recent years they produced ash that occluded the light of sun locally for quite a few hours.  At night it could produce a blood moon.  It could produce the ash columns rising like boiling sky but it would be local and it might rain debris.  When Krakatoa blew in 1883 the seismic activity was allegedly reported until early in 1884.  But this is worse… far worse.  What if Yellowstone blew up?  It is a caldera class volcano and is said to be the park itself as being on the caldera.  Apparently this is a 34- 45 mile wide caldera which is a corner of Wyoming, of all things.  This is huge.  If it blew there would be catastrophic damage done planet wide and the United States would most likely be gone for good or at least reshaped beyond belief!  The ash and debris of the park would be flung upwards fairly high up maybe into the stratosphere only to rain down again.  The ash would be a planet wide problem and it might even produce an reduction of light by the sun and moon for a part of the day and the night…  its said the thing is overdue for a major blow out.
There was a program on Netflix about Dr Shoemaker of the Shoemaker-Levy comet.  He discovered that our planet does it’s solar orbit amid a plethora of asteroids and meteors some of which are easily the size of mountains.  They seem to run in near miss orbits around us as we move through space.  If ever any one of them were to hit us places like Crater Lake in Arizona would be the result. He did a major study on impact and his findings eerily match the descriptions of this catastrophe.
Nuclear exchanges could also do similar damage, of a certainty but they would almost certainly also truly ruin the environments globally. I cant rule this out however.  So then what we have is something that will cause a global tectonic plate shift that is noticeable.  It will cause the effect of “boiling sky” it will kick up or cause enough cloud cover to occlude the sun and such an effect might also make the moon look like a blood moon.  Interestingly enough also there are blood moons that occur naturally from time to time… could such a catastrophe happen during one of them?  The point in all this analysis is this; the preceding impacts of the horsemen and the above mega disaster are enough to right at this point have men of low and high stature running for cover and seeking to suicide rather than face what they perceive to be the GREAT DAY OF THE LORD.

Look at the response to all this below…  THEY KNOW!
Rev 6:15  And the kings of the earth, and the princes, and the chief captains, and the rich, and the strong, and every bondman and freeman, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains; 

Rev 6:16  and they say to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: 

Rev 6:17  for the great day of their wrath is come; and who is able to stand? 
Can they see His face?  How do they really know? Or as is most likely, is this a very human reaction to difficult times and horrific disasters during such times?   What if anything actually stands out here?  In Paul’s day he was in some part driven by that he wanted to see the whole world won for Christ and the church well established by the time of the “second return”, which he felt could be in his lifetime.  The Christians in the Roman era on the night Rome burned (you have to admit that locally the sky was boiling with smoke!) thought “this is it, here He comes”.  Over and over during human history since Jesus and since the utterance of John’s words Christians have tried to put the puzzle together in practically every generation.  Paul is well spoken to say “wherefore comfort one another with these words” because the comforting thought in such times is that Christ is going to return and set things right.  One thing I can say of a certainty here is this climate will purify the church like nothing else will.  Persecution and dire circumstances will have His people call on Him faster than any known or unknown revival.  Sadly we shouldn’t need such things to cause us to look on high, but it seems we do.
Now taking a last look at these verses in light of the preceding; the fact that everyone from every stripe and rank of society is heading for caves in mountains and thus, high ground, indicating that below a certain altitude there may not be land or people or society per se, and hiding themselves in caves and what not, tells us the scope of devastation of the local society.  It is so bad that there is no other place to flee to.   One last note here, though it doesn’t apply, are the words of Jesus about the Abomination that desolates.  He told people to flee to the mountains to get out of town as it were, when they saw it.  All this may well be, but a birth pang.