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Apocalypse 8 – Martyrs + the saints cry out
“How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who live on the earth?”
Revelation 6:10b NASB – the cry of the martyrs from beneath the altar

Martyrs

UNANSWERED Questions of those who died for their faith in Jesus Christ:

Where is JUSTICE for those who die by the hands of the evil?

Who will JUDGE those who kill the innocent and oppress the righteous?

the Stoning of Stephen- painting by Rembrandt

And all who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at him and saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

“Are these things true? ” the high priest asked.

“Brothers and fathers,” he replied, “listen: The God of glory appeared..

.. and Stephen proceeded to preach the Gospel until those who rejected the God of Glory and cut by Truth silenced him in rage, stoning Christ’s martyr by the weight of their own guilt.
Roger @ talk of Jesus {dot}.com on Acts 6:8-8:3 excerpt from CSB
Stephen, the Apostles & many more martyrs among the saints

The Acts of the Apostles record the power of the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen, but also the suffering by the saints of the church for witness of the Gospel to those who would believe.

Resource: https://www.ccel.org/f/foxe/martyrs/fox101.htm
Acts of the Apostles:
- 4:3-4 And they laid hands on them [Peter & John] and put them in prison.. and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.
“You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.. and you have now become betrayers and murderers of Him; you who received the Law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it.”
Acts 7:51-53 excerpt NASB – indictment of the Jews through the martyr Stephen
- 8:1b And on that day [of the stoning of Stephen] a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except for the apostles.
  - DATE: ~A.D. 33-36
- 12:2b-3a [Herod Agrippa I] .. had James the brother of John executed with a sword. When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter as well.
  - DATE: A.D. 44
- 14:19b–20a .. they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. But while the disciples stood around him, he got up and entered the city.
  - After many additional attacks, Paul would be executed in Rome – DATE: ~ A.D. 64-68
- Simon Peter was also crucified in Rome during the persecutions of Nero – DATE: ~ A.D. 64-68 as were many other saints killed throughout the Empire both before and after the fall of Jerusalem.
When will justice be served to those who crucify Truth and destroy the lives of the faithful?

DATE ~A.D. 94–96 + John wrote the Revelation of Jesus Christ

The deaths of martyrs mentioned had already taken place when John writes Revelation. The opening of the seven seals gives the Church a glimpse of Justice at the End of these last days.

Jerusalem would fall in A.D. 70. The Sanhedrin would no more convict Christian or Jew.

Rome would divide and crumble by the third century and the Empire would fall in A.D. 476.

Even so, we realize now in A.D. 2021, the prophesy of the last days revealed by John is for a time nearer to US than that of the Apostles.

The Fifth Seal

the saints cry out!

Revelation 6:

9 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been killed because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained..

It is the Altar of the Holy Throne Room of Heaven! The Lamb stands surrounded by seraphim and four living creatures, angels and elders of the heavenly court, hearing the prayers of the saints as these plead for justice.

They cried out with a loud voice,
“Lord, the one who is holy and true,
how long until you judge those who live on the earth and avenge our blood?”
Revelation 6:10 CSB

Oh Lord, δεσπότης – despotēs – as a bond servant addresses one’s Master, as one of the saints, bound to our Lord Christ as husband to the church.

Jesus Christ is HOLY AND TRUE! –

ἅγιος – hagios (an awful One) & ἀληθινός – alēthinos – Real in name and resemblance, but the real nature corresponding to the name.

“How long, O [Master], holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who live on the earth?”
- Do you not judge and avenge?
Rest yet a while longer

You servants of the Lord

take comfort in His answer to you;

for only He IS righteous in judgment

and vengeance belongs only

to the Lamb on the Throne.

And white robes were given unto every one of them; and 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.
Revelation 6:11 KJV

NEXT Unsealed :

The Great Day of the Wrath of the Lamb
February 17, 2021
COVID – the Affliction of Social Distancing
Solomon’s Jerusalem – the end of an era

Until the death of Solomon in 931 B.C., a glorious city of Jerusalem overlooked a great empire blessed by the LORD God, but then the politics of Israel divided the great land.

In just a few generations Israel (Samaria) succumbed in 722 B.C. and Judah when Jerusalem was sieged and the Temple burned in ~586 B.C.

Prophesy: Affliction Now!

אֵיכָה יָשְׁבָה בָדָד הָעִיר רַבָּתִי עָם הָיְתָה כְּאַלְמָנָה רַּבָּתִי בַגּוֹיִם שָׂרָתִי בַּמְּדִינוֹת הָיְתָה לָמַֽס׃ ס
Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah Eicha 1:1 WLC

Our Loud Cries, “HOW?”

Jerusalem falls [~586 B.C.]. Three years later the Jews and Jeremiah are forced to depart to Egypt. For forty years from (ca. 645–605 B.C.) Jeremiah had preached to Judah of the LORD’s judgment against it.

The Septuagint [Greek O.T.] introduces the crying out loud of Lamentations:

“And it came to pass, after Israel had been carried away captive…Jeremiah sat weeping [cf. 3:48, 49, etc.]…lamented…and said…”
Introduction to Eicha (Lamentations) 1 :: Septuagint (LXX)

How lonely sits the city
That was full of people!
She has become like a widow
Who was once great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
Has become a forced laborer!
Lamentations 1:1 NASB

Lamentations for the lonely cities

You may have felt that recently for a virtually empty NYC New Year’s Eve broadcast. Or perhaps the closed shops of your town caused anxiety that maybe you should where a mask in public.

What we knew as home and comfort, security and blessing — all those things have changed until God knows when.

The affliction of our hearts in this year of our Lord 2021 still struggles with COVID and countless crowds of displaced people have NO place to work. Some will be evicted from their meager subsistence in cold rooms rented from the rich princes of our darkness.

All the world suffers a great loss of normalcy as we cry out, “HOW?”

Will we find hope in our despair?

For in A.D. 2021, we feel just as lonely and afflicted as those forced from Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and also in A.D. 70, Jews and Christians into a crumbling Roman Empire.

Our journey into this unknown world of COVID doesn’t look so hopeful just now.

excerpts from Lamentations

She weeps bitterly in the night,
And her tears are on her cheeks;
She has no one to comfort her..
3 Judah has gone into exile out of affliction..

All her gates are deserted..

Her little ones have gone away
As captives led by the enemy.
6 All of her splendor
Is gone from the daughter of Zion;
Her leaders have become like deer
That have found no pasture,
And they have fled without strength
From the pursuer.

Social Distancing

Fleeing from the world’s uncleanness

It was never just the Jews fleeing Jerusalem or multi-ethnic victims of a holocaust perpetrated by a 20th century thousand-year empire who suffered affliction.

Solomon suggested that there is nothing new under the sun.

Sieges of our empty cities of our empires in the time of Assyria or Rome, the U.S. or China, and even current afflictions of our political princes and their followers or victims do not surprise Almighty God.

In every era some in all nations some will succumb to war and hunger. Souls suffering by circumstance must flee from the wrath that is to come.

A pandemic of sin forces social distancing from the love of the LORD and each other. Throughout the self-idolatrous nations of their ‘mother earth,’ a covert COVID infested world will do what is right in their own eyes.

Wail out from the depths of your soul

The funeral dirge of your affliction
For it is not only for the sins of Jerusalem
But for the afflictions of the world
Fleeing from the Lord God.
Roger@ talkofJesus.com Jan. A.D. 2021
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to be continued...

NEXT: in COVID - the Affliction of Social Distancing - part 2
we will define affliction & look to Scripture for our cure.
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January 4, 2021
Jesus Leading Toward Gethsemane
PAUSE — for a moment — & look out over the Kidron Valley as the Disciples would have done when Jesus led them from the Holy of Holies in an upper room in Jerusalem to their quiet gathering place at Gethsemane.

.. he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron…

Toward Gethsemane

When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples.
John 18:1 KJV

Toward Gethsemane

In the previous few chapters John sums up for us what Jesus had done which leads right up to this moment and will bring us to the Cross.

Now — after just three years of teaching, ministry and miracles — our timeline of witness of the Son of Man compresses into just hours and occasionally into excruciating detail of the last minutes of our Lord’s mortal life.

Let us tarry here for just a while in just this first verse of John 18; for we often view the events leading up to the crucifixion of Christ Jesus much too quickly.

First, in context of John 13-17

It all took place in one day (if you think of in contemporary terms).

From their last time entering Jerusalem with Jesus to returning to it now in the darkness of the same night, John and the ten faithful will follow in fear. These faithful Disciples will now be separated from the prisoner of sin’s Sacrifice, Jesus, who was betrayed by one of their own. Soon the Disciples will into the accusers court of consequence and rejection by the world.

Earlier this evening…
The Lord’s Supper
John 13: Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God…

Jesus washes the Disciples feet
The Disciples conversation leads Peter to ask John to ask Jesus for more information about which one will betray our Lord
Judas leaves to betray Jesus

Jesus gives disciples a new commandment!

.. that you also love one another.

The Lord promises the Holy Spirit to disciples who will love Him
Jesus uses the vine and the branches to connect Father, Son and Holy Spirit to disciples of the Lord Jesus.
Jesus again tells of His death and resurrection

ALL THIS — on the night on which He was betrayed and prior to leaving the upper room in Jerusalem with His friends.

And in addition to this, after Jesus had taken the cup and the bread, sharing a new covenant with the Disciples, our Lord intervenes as a Perfect High Priest for us in prayer.

Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come…
I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.
John 17: excerpt from Jesus’ High Priestly prayer

“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word..
John 17:20 NASB

24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they will see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the world’s foundation.
Jesus will later reveal to John and the church much more about this mysterious glory He has willed to those God loved before creation and forever.

From Blessing to the place of Personal Prayer

Jesus, followed by just eleven Apostles

— Jesus, who humbly washed their feet — Jesus, who shared the cup and bread of the new covenant with them

— Jesus, who brought them into the Holy of Holies

— this same Christ,

their beloved friend and Master,

emerging from a Last Supper now completed opens the door and descends some stairs followed by His Disciples.

Jesus then leads them past Jerusalem’s guarded gates, exiting down a path into the Kidron Valley toward a familiar garden where they could gather one last time — a garden known as Gethsemane.

After Jesus had said these things, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron Valley, where there was a garden, and he and his disciples went into it.
John 18:1 CSB
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To be continued...
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September 5, 2020