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Tag: prophets

  • Beyond Nineveh

    Beyond Nineveh

    Taking the long view – Beyond Nineveh and Nazareth

    “Do you think that I like to see wicked people die? says the Sovereign LORD. Of course not! I want them to turn from their wicked ways and live. Ezekiel 18:23 NLT

    You may remember the story of the Prophet Jonah, a ‘follower’ of God who turned a different direction when the LORD sent him to save foreigners. A later Prophet from Nazareth would refer to Jonah, by comparison:

    “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. – Matthew 12:41 & Luke 11:32

    What do we know beyond this reference of Jesus of Nazareth about Jonah?

    Jonah of Gath-hepher, a town of Lower Galilee, about 5 miles from Nazareth

    We do know this: religious leaders remain unrepentant because of their own sins, just like Jonah booking a ship away from the city where the LORD wanted him to preach.

    Wickedness and unrepentance remain as issues today. Jonah spoke it of the Ninevites and Jesus spoke to it in all of us. We, too are not sent to the righteous, but to sinners. Like Jonah and like Jesus we do not preach or prophesy only to the chosen, but to the nations.

    Assyria at the time of Jonah

    Nineveh

    Jonah 3:

    Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God.

    760-750 B.C. Hosea & Jonah Prophets in Israel

    These were tumultuous times in the 8th c. B.C. A mere 200 years after Israel had separated from Judah, by the end of Jonah’s century Israel would disappear from the map. Assyria was expanding from east of the Tigris and Euphrates beyond the borders of Judah, even further than the Nile. Prior to it’s own fall in about 625 B.C., Nineveh, Assyria’s capital was known as ‘the mistress of the East; but for her great luxury and wickedness, the prophet Jonah was sent, more than eight hundred years before Christ, to warn the Ninevites of her speedy destruction.’ source

    It was the largest city in the world for some fifty years [thus, the 3-day journey to travel through Nineveh] until the year 612 BC when, after a bitter period of civil war in Assyria, it was sacked by a coalition of its former subject peoples, the Babylonians, Medes, Chaldeans, Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians. Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, in the Ninawa Governorate of Iraq. source

    Jonah and Israel certainly believed that the Lord had no desire to save sinners in a far away city in a land of unbelievers.

    The compassion of the Lord reaches well beyond borders, His power beyond the horizon and beneath the depths of the sea.

    Yet time would tell a story of Israel destroyed, Jerusalem destroyed. The centuries from the falls of nations reveals the unseen power of the Lord to turn sinners to repentance and save the helpless from the powers of evils and the perils of sin and death.

    To be continued…

     

  • and new things I now declare – 4

    Isaiah 48:

    3 “The former things I declared of old;
        they went out from my mouth, and I announced them;
        then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.
    4 Because I know that you are obstinate,
        and your neck is an iron sinew
        and your forehead brass,
    5 I declared them to you from of old,
        before they came to pass I announced them to you…

    The Lord Declared

    I told you this a long time ago and to your ancestors many times.

    How do you like that? The Lord calls His chosen people, Israel or Jacob as they are called, obstinate.

    “You stiff-necked people!” the Messiah would call Temple officials generations after Isaiah. “You with ears to hear,” declare the prophets. What an indictment of a holy people supposedly separated to the Lord and redeemed again and again!

     6 “You have heard; now see all this;
        and will you not declare it?

    [ctt title=” From this time forth I announce to you new things, hidden things that you have not known.” tweet=”for a Savior of Jacob and the nations is born – the Messiah Jesus” coverup=”Rf04b”]

    7 They are created now, not long ago;
        before today you have never heard of them,
        lest you should say, ‘Behold, I knew them.’
    8 You have never heard, you have never known,
        from of old your ear has not been opened.

    The Lord’s Call to Israel

    [ctt title=”Isaiah 48:12 שְׁמַע אֵלַי יַֽעֲקֹב וְיִשְׂרָאֵל מְקֹרָאִי אֲנִי־הוּא אֲנִי רִאשֹׁון אַף אֲנִי אַחֲרֹֽון׃” tweet=”Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel.. The Messiah I AM is Christ Jesus.” coverup=”j14zE”]

    14 “Assemble, all of you, and listen!
    Who among them has declared these things?

     The Lord’s Call to the Nations

    Isaiah 49:

    Listen to me, O coastlands,
        and give attention, you peoples from afar.
    The Lord called me from the womb,
        from the body of my mother he named my name.

    Matthew 1:20b-23

    … behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

    She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

    All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

    Isaiah 52:

    8 The voice of your watchmen—they lift up their voice;
        together they sing for joy;
    for eye to eye they see
        the return of the Lord to Zion.
    9 Break forth together into singing,
        you waste places of Jerusalem,
    for the Lord has comforted his people;
        he has redeemed Jerusalem.
    10 The Lord has bared his holy arm
        before the eyes of all the nations,
    and all the ends of the earth shall see
        the salvation of our God.

    The Sin-Bearing Servant

    Isaiah 52: NKJV

    13 Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently;
    He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.
    14 Just as many were astonished at you,
    So His visage was marred more than any man,
    And His form more than the sons of men;
    15 So shall He sprinkle many nations.

    Kings shall shut their mouths at Him;
    For what had not been told them they shall see,
    And what they had not heard they shall consider.

    An Advent Declared for these last days..

    New things we now declare; for the completion of these last days approaches with haste. The prophets and watchmen of the past have spoken what was and is and is to come. The LORD has revealed the hope of redemption for all who believe and the just punishment of souls tormented in the dust.

    Revelation 22:12-13 ESV

    [ctt title=”“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”” tweet=”An Advent Declared for these last days.. http://ctt.ec/o6OBb+” coverup=”o6OBb”]

    Have you prepared your heart for Christmas? Would you like to celebrate the gift of our humble Lord born a sinless Son of Man, to a virgin – our redeemer sacrificed on a cross? In the advent of His return at the end of these last days, do you bow before the Almighty, rejoicing in the light of His coming on the clouds?

    “You have heard; now see all this;
    and will you not declare it?

    Isaiah 48:6a ESV

  • and new things I now declare – 3

    Advent 3

    third-week-of-advent-2015-t7lt0r-clipartFor those unfamiliar with Liturgical seasons like Advent, its most significant impact may be a calendar of study of appropriate scheduled scriptures. During Advent we celebrate the incarnation of Jesus, the Messiah who would have been well familiar with seasons celebrated in scripture and we celebrate the continuity of the Light of Christmas by lighting a new candle of an Advent wreath each week and the new light is added to others lit previously.

    If you missed the first two candles of our 2016 Advent season, just follow our scriptural journey through Isaiah and the Gospels by beginning on the links below. Today we add the Prophecy of Daniel to the warnings of John the Baptist.

    and new things I now declare – 1

    and new things I now declare – 2

    Advent 3 – Prepare the way of the Lord

    Isaiah 46:

    12 “Listen to me, you stubborn of heart,
        you who are far from righteousness:
    13 I bring near my righteousness; it is not far off,
        and my salvation will not delay;
    I will put salvation in Zion,
        for Israel my glory.”

    Who will save you? What man can save us?

    Is it not the Lord who saves and is is not the Lord whose power reaches out into time and touches the hearts of man?

    Only the Lord can overrule the defiant hearts of a people who refuse glory to the King of all creation.

    A Voice in the Wilderness Cries Out

    John the Baptist's Warning about the impending judgment
    John the Baptist’s Warning about the impending judgment

    In a first century preaching John, known as the Baptizer, warns a complacent chosen people subjugated under Herod and Rome of the coming of the Lord: the Messiah, Jesus!

    Using the voice of the LORD of the 5th century B.C. through the Prophet Daniel, John preaches:

    Daniel 4:

    13 “I saw in the visions of my head as I lay in bed, and behold, a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven. 14 He proclaimed aloud and said thus:

    ‘Chop down the tree and lop off its branches, strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts flee from under it and the birds from its branches. 15 But leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, amid the tender grass of the field. Let him be wet with the dew of heaven.

    Let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth. 16 Let his mind be changed from a man’s, and let a beast’s mind be given to him; and let seven periods of time pass over him. 17 The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.’

    Repentance becomes the Advent of Redemption

    From Daniel’s interpretation of the symbolic dream of Nebuchadnezzar we learn of the most powerful man on earth coming into a time of humiliation and of an earthly king’s recognition of the Most High. Like many of us, Nebuchadnezzar had times when he demanded the attention of his followers – bow down to the idol of gold – then humble men came before him with exceeding power of an almighty God.

    John the Baptist preached of the power of the LORD over the might of leaders of nations – authority above the corrupt and misleading rulers of religion. Repent! Purify your bodies of sin and prepare the way for the Redeemer who will certainly come.

    Behold, I send my messenger before your face

    Mark 1:

    As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
    “Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
    who will prepare your way,

    the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make his paths straight,’”

    John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

    Ἰωάννης

    muerte-san-juan-caravaggio_021John’s name means, “Jehovah is a gracious giver” and John the Baptist was son of Zacharias, a priest of the Temple and born to Elisabeth in their old age. John is the forerunner of Christ and preached the gospel of the coming of the good news of redemption for the souls of men.

    Repent! and purify your hearts; prepare for the Lord by changing your ways. Herod Antipas ordered the Temple guard to cast John into prison and afterwards beheaded him.

    We prepare the way of the Lord looking upon the innocence of a babe, an innocence maintained through every action and each word from the Messiah Jesus until upon the cross he proclaimed of the work of redemption: “It is finished.”

    Advent 3: and new things I now declare

    To be continued…