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.
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!
Revelation 3 ends the message to the seven churches: To Sardis, the church that claimed to be alive, but in God’s eyes was dead; to Philadelphia, the church that kept its faith, and as a reward will be kept from the hour of trial that is coming; and finally to the church of Laodicea, the church that thought it had it all figured out and prospered, when in reality it had nothing. These can be seen as seven historical churches, which they were, but also as seven types of churches as they exist today and through history. They can also be taken as seven states of the individual believer. However you take it, there is something in it for every believer, even today.
In Habakkuk 3 is recorded Habakkuk’s prayer, a hymn of faith.
Psalm 147 is a great Psalm of praising God for His protection and creation, for His care and power, for His provisions, wisdom and His word. It ends with praise to the LORD for His special attention to Israel.
First now it was time to create the mammals. This is Genesis 1:24-25 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. i25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
What the creation story has described so far is the creation of a functional ecosystem. It starts simple with water, ice and clouds, populating the atmosphere with water molecules. The earliest life forms are not preserved so we have no physical record of the order and how it occurred, but it started in the ocean (God’s spirit hovered over the waters). `then plant life with chlorophyll using sunlight was created, then fish and birds and finally mammals. Every step took place in order. Each step occurred after the conditions had been met to sustain the new life forms with food. The fossil records indicate there were long phases of stability, and suddenly the next level of ecosystem was generated. Our ecosystem is fragile and must operate within strict limits, not too warm, not too cold for life to flourish. In addition the Ph of the ocean must be within limits and land and sea must be reasonably free from poisons. Every now and then there are great extinctions of life, such as the dinosaurs and the woolly Mammoth. The cause for extinction was always that the Earth got too cold or too poisoned, never too warm. some extinctions occurred because a more efficient life form took over. All this speaks of evolution as I got taught in biology 70 years ago. Since then much have been learnt of what goes on in life, so let’s look at what goes on in the body of a mammal, let’s say, the Virginia Opossum.
Opossums come in 126 species, in 16 genres and has one of the most complicated DNA of any mammal. They are marsupials. I was taught that the evolutionary inferior marsupials were extinct except in Australia, but the opossum doesn’t know that, so it still thrives among all the other evolutionary superior mammals.
Let’s look at what is inside every cell in the Opossum (except the eggs or sperm cells)
The cell consists of many interesting parts, all of which have to be there for the cell to function. The control center is the nucleus, and it consists of among other things the DNA.
The DNA is formed as a double helix and could be seen as containing information code. There are 4 different states, C,G,A and T (see figure above); this is the basic encryption in the double helix. There are about 3 billion so called base pairs in the nucleus of every cell in the opossum. To grasp the size of the code, let’s say you are a court recorder, typing away the letters at a speed of 18.75 letters a second (the qualification speed for court recorders). You do it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year (2 weeks vacation and 11 holidayWe 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.s), it would take over 23 years to transcribe the code. A court recorder has to have better than 95% accuracy, but we are dealing with genetic encryption, so it has to have been done with much better accuracy for it to be valid for reproduction. This code defines the species, in this case the opossum. It has all information necessary to reproduce the species. Sometimes cosmic radiation or strong ultra violet light can cause breaks in the DNA, but the resulting mutations tend to reinforce the species boundaries rather than cause evolution.
Of course, an encrypted message is totally worthless without a decrypter. The one that is successfully mapped is the RNA decrypter, called messenger RNA. It interprets 3 base pairs as a codon. This is a code that is optimally designed, but since there are only 20 amino acids, most are expressed more than once. In addition 3 of the codons tell when the decoding stops.
Messenger RNA (mRNA): Created during transcription, mRNA carries the genetic code from the cell’s DNA to the ribosome, where it is used as a template to build a protein. Below is a picture of the ribosome RNA (rRNA) as well as the transfer RNA (tRNA).
The properly decrypted mRNA with its proper length is transported to the ribosome units. With the help of the tRNA that transports and checks in the proper amino acid, the ribosome binds the one amino acid to form an amino acid chain. Here is a picture of hemoglobin:
What makes hemoglobin usable is the heme structure containing iron. It is very similar to the structure in Chlorophyll:
But back to the DNA, the super encrypted code that makes advanced mammalian life possible, from how to make an egg or a sperm, how to perform fertilization in the right environment, how to do cell multiplication and perform specialization in the cells, how to form part of an eye iris or an eyebrow, it is all there, how to make joints and nerves, how to make bone structure and place marrow inside it, cells that produce hemoglobin, which is somehow transported into blood that is pumped around in the body via the heart, and so on, It is all information encrypted in the DNA. But not only that, the DNA contains repair code that kicks in when damage occur, wounds, viruses, harmful bacteria, bad fungus, poisons and even cancer.
This was the first half of the sixth day, and God saw it, and it was good.
God was not finished with the sixth day, so next installment is the creation of man.
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 