Revelation 11 tells of the two witnesses, their power, death and resurrection. After that the seventh trumpet sounded and the Kingdom was proclaimed.
Zechariah 1 begins with a call to return to the LORD. Then is presented two visions; the vision of the horses in which the LORD promised to comfort Zion, followed by the vision of the horns.
Revelation 10 tells of the mighty angel and the little book. The angel announced there would be no more delay, and by the time of the seventh trumpet all will be set in motion. John is told to eat the little book, and then he was told to prophesy again.
Proverbs 29, more proverbs of Solomon; and yes, they still deal with the superiority of wisdom and righteousness over folly and wickedness.
Psalm 149. Praise the LORD and sing a new song. With the two-edged sword (of the spirit) the saints will execute judgement on the nations.
Revelation 9. By now we are deep into the last half of the tribulation, the fifth trumpet sounded and the locusts from the bottomless pit are released. Then the sixth trumpet sounded, featuring the angels from the Euphrates doing horrendous deeds. An army of two hundred million mounted troops were released to kill a third of mankind. When the Apostle John wrote this the total world population was about 250 million!
Haggai 2 describes the coming glory of God’s house, but the people were defiled. Nevertheless God promised a future blessing with Zerubbabel chosen to be like God’s signet ring.
Revelation 8 describes the precursors to the great tribulation with the opening of the seventh seal and the sounding of the trumpets. It begins with an earthquake. First Trumpet: Vegetation Struck, Second Trumpet: The Seas Struck, Third Trumpet: The Waters Struck, Fourth Trumpet: The Heavens Struck; one ecological disaster after another.
Haggai 1 is about having the right priorities. God had commanded the inhabitants of Jerusalem to rebuild His house. When confronted with their wrongful ways the people obeyed.
One of the most beautiful sights to watch is the full plume of the peacock’s tail.
Even Darwin had trouble explaining evolution when he saw the peacock’s tail. It is in strict violation of the “survival of the fittest”. The tail is so heavy that a peacock can barely fly, and it has underdeveloped wings and cannot climb more than about 50 feet, and must land on a tree limb or a roof to seek safety and wait out the threat. Darwin suggested “sexual preference”, meaning that peahens were attracted to the largest and most spectacular plumes, and only the most outstanding peacocks were allowed to breed. Then over millions of years and through random mutations these impressive tails developed. There are many reasons this is impossible, and I will concentrate on just one; the geometrical pattern of the “eyes” as seen from an observer. Every feather that has an eye has it in a mathematically correct place on the feather, and that is dependent on the order of the feather. The only way I can see this being possible is if there is a designer that encrypts the DNA correctly, so when it is time to form the yearly plume, the feathers form correctly and in its place. No element of random processes can produce that!
Enjoy God’s creation.
Revelation 7. The apostle John saw angels telling of the 144 thousand sealed of Israel, and then saw a multitude that came out of the Great Tribulation singing praises such as “Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.”
Proverbs 28, more proverbs of Solomon. Wisdom is important, so here are many more proverbs about wisdom and righteousness, and the consequences of the lack thereof.
Revelation 6. The first six seals are opened. First Seal: The rider on a white horse. He represents the conqueror or the Catholic Church. Second Seal: The rider on a red horse. He represents conflict on earth or the powers of humanism, secularism, communism and socialism. Third Seal: The rider on the black horse. He represents scarcity on earth from wars or the results of unrestrained capitalism. Fourth Seal: The rider on the green horse. He represents mass death on earth or the religion/state power of Islam. Fifth Seal: The Cry of the Martyrs. “It was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.” Then comes the Sixth Seal with the Great Earthquake. It is at this time I place the rapture of the believers. We are living in the time of the first five seals already being opened. Read all the Old Testament references and see if it makes sense to you. This is but one interpretation since Revelation is deliberately veiled, lest we would go ahead on our own trying to make human sense out of it.
Zephaniah 3. Jerusalem was full of wickedness but there remained a faithful remnant and they would rejoice in God’s faithfulness, restoring His people.
Revelation 5. Worship is continued in heaven and the Apostle John saw a scroll with seven seals. Nobody but the Lamb was worthy to take and open the scroll. All that were present broke out in praise, singing a new song, saying, “Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood” and “Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever.”
Zephaniah 1 is a prophecy of the Great Day of the LORD.
Zephaniah 2 is a call to repentance and a prophecy of judgment on many nations.
Revelation 4. The Apostle John was shown the throne room of Heaven. Someone was sitting on the throne. A rainbow was over it, 24 elders were around it, in the front were seven lamps, representing the seven-fold spirit of God. Around it were also four creatures, one like a lion, representing Jesus as king (Matthew), one like an ox representing Jesus as a servant (Mark), one with the face of man representing the humanity of Christ (Luke), and the fourth like an eagle representing Jesus is God (John). All sang or said praises, a true worship.
Proverbs 27. More Proverbs of Solomon. This chapter deals with the future, and what to do about it today. One notable quote: “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”
Psalm 148: Let all creation praise the LORD!
But God was not finished. He continued in Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, so that he may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
The keywords here are God’s Image. Man contains the same building blocks as all mammals, similar DNA, RNA and all instructions are of the same kind as the mammals. It says God made them male and female (and only male and female), so He cannot mean a physical image. It must mean we are spiritually made in the image of God.
Continuing in Genesis1:28-31 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was VERY good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Yes, once God had created man, it was very good.
Continuing in Genesis 2:1-3Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Up to this point the name of God is Elohim, which in Hebrew means ‘the strongest strong ones’, signifying the power of God in creation and life. Both animals and man have in them ‘the breath of life, and this signifies physical life.
The second account of creation of man is spiritual, not physical, and so the name of God changes from Elohim to JEHOVAH Elohim. Genesis 2:4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
Skipping to Genesis 2:7 Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
This was the second birth, first comes the physical birth, formed from the dust of the ground, followed by the spiritual birth. Skipping the garden of Eden story we move to verse 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
“The rib” is from the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. The original Hebrew meaning is “took part of the man’s side“, but since the Septuagint was the most used version of the Scriptures for the early Christians, the rib won.
So in verse 23 The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
And in verse24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they become one flesh. They are united in their bodies through procreation, but also in spirit, united in the Holy Spirit.
25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. These were ideal conditions, God and man had unhindered fellowship. All was perfect. But God had also created man with free will, so He had to put some boundaries on man. Genesis 2:15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Most of us know the story: Eve (Adam’s wife) was deceived by the tempter and ate, and Adam ate too, but willfully; so the guilt of the so called original sin fell on Adam, and they died that day. But Adam lived another 930 years, so he did die spiritual death, not physical.. The spiritual death is that the fellowship with God is severed, and God can no longer spiritually help us in all situations of life.
People took this in stride. “We can do all things well without God interfering.” In fact, when disaster struck they sad: “We will build back better.” (Paraphrased from Isaiah 9:10) And from a human point the brainpower we have to be able to think for ourselves is impressive!
We were created by God in his image with an expanded brain, capable of lifelong learning. This included a spiritual connection directly with God through His Spirit. This is the connection that died when Adam sinned and people decided they could function quite well without constant communication with God. Yet there remained a god-shaped void in their brains, a longing that wanted to be satisfied.
No more rough estimates. The average male human brain contains 86 billion neurons and 85 billion non-neuronal cells. Suzana Herculano-Houzel, CC BY-ND
With this brain you can store up to 2.5 million gigabytes of memory, which when stored fully compressed is equivalent to 3 million hours of watching standard resolution TV, but recalling memory is quite another thing. This starts to decline even before the brain is fully matured.
In addition we have about seven trillion nerve cells, close to twenty percent of all cells in our body. Their function is to send messages to and from all parts of the body, muscles, bones, ligaments, inner organs, the five senses and the brain.
We think of the nerves only as serving the sensory organs, but they are the chief messengers for just about everything concerning the body, so when we say: ‘Its only the nerves’ this is about as wrong as it gets. For a human body to function nearly everything has to function, it is good for us many organs are multiplied such as the lymph nodes, but many of the central organs such as heart, brain , stomach and so on are not duplicated. The nerves are the major communicators that makes it possible to develop from embryo to full maturity and help in the final decline in life.
But all mammals have the same or similar parts, so what is the difference between us and the animals?
We were created by God in his image with an expanded brain, capable of lifelong learning. This included a spiritual connection directly with God through His Spirit. This is the connection that died when Adam sinned and people decided they could function quite well without constant communication with God. Yet there remained a god-shaped void in their brains, a longing that wanted to be satisfied.
The next installment: Are we the way we are through nature or through nurture?
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 