Zechariah 1:13
“In that day a fountain will be opened for the dynasty of David and for the people of Jerusalem, a fountain to cleanse them from all their sins and impurity."
Nothing is sacred about a moment.
Nothing is sacred about a relic.
Nothing is sacred about idols.
Zechariah 13:2
“And on that day,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “I will erase idol worship throughout the land, so that even the names of the idols will be forgotten."
A man desires God's presence he's lost. He creates an idol to make a remembrance, and that idol becomes his god.
That lost blessing?
He's forgotten it, too busy remembering his idol.
In that day, the Lord himself will do battle against the AntiChrist. His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, and a fountain will open up. A new creation. A new river will spring forth from Jerusalem and cleanse the land and its people.
Ezekiel 36:25
"I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols."
And Christ and his righteous saints will come, and bring to pass his judgment upon humanity for rejecting his plan for salvation. And yes...they rejected him and mainly his plan, both gentile and Jew. They rejected his plan and made for themselves idols who would do the things they wanted, their way, their plan, or so they thought.
Their gods wanted wars for them to fight, win or lose, doesn't matter.
Their gods wanted sexual immortality in their worship and in all their lifestyle choices.
Their gods wanted them to chase after materialism.
Their gods wanted them to persecute the weak.
Their gods wanted them to forget about fidelity, divorce themselves from keeping faithful families and instead offer up their unwanted children to their idols.
Their gods wanted them to keep themselves enslaved to their passions, and turn a blind eye to all forms of sexual slavery, young and old, all around them.
Oppression, violence, cruelty, their gods wanted the destruction of all humanity. And all humanity worshipped them.
And in that day...
The false prophets will be banished. Their own gods will destroy the very same false prophets that played along with all the corruption. Anyone daring to prophesy will be executed by his own parents in fulfillment of the scriptural mandate. Even the false prophets will fear for their lives, only the Evil One will have a word from god, his word, his interpretation. The AntiChrist will not allow any resistance, even from his own corrupted church. These will truly be dark times.
And then...in that day...
The purging.
The winnowing. The weeds finally separated from the harvest.
Zechariah 13:8
"In the whole land,” declares the Lord, “two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one-third..."
The people of God will be diminished in size by two-thirds. And those who remain will be refined like silver, tested like gold. They will become uniquely God's own, finding their souls in complete relationship with Him.
In that day no one escapes Jesus' salvation plan.
For some, grace. The fountain will purge the land. Washing away all sin and impurity.
In that day we'll find out who's who.
Are you ready?
Philippians 1:10b-11
"Live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ—for this will bring much glory and praise to God."
Since the fall of man, Adam and every human being that followed, lost the capability to exercise holy reign over the whole of creation. Adam violated the holy command and every generation that followed did likewise. David and the nation of Israel continued this sinful trend. They too were unable to fully manifest God’s kingdom here on earth because of their unrepentant sin. Zerubbabel’s lackluster performance after returning to Jerusalem following the exile into Babylon proved that there always remains a spiritual problem of faithlessness to the law of God, a problem so prevalent that even God's wrath cannot cure it.
And I suppose this is why many Israelites rejected Jesus as the Messiah. His earthly mission was to inaugurate the kingdom and restore ...
Isaiah 5:18-19
"What sorrow for those who drag their sins behind them with ropes made of lies, who drag wickedness behind them like a cart! They even mock God and say, 'Hurry up and do something! We want to see what you can do. Let the Holy One of Israel carry out his plan, for we want to know what it is.'”
The soul believes that God is. The hearts believes that Jesus is the truth and full of grace, the heart believes that he's telling us the truth. And the Spirit through the word of God reveals the truth about grace and brings that truth both into recognition and into remembrance, making that truth clearer and more relevant for the believer. Spirit, soul, and body. By the works of these supernatural forces, faith comes to the hearer. Christianity then becomes what that hearer does with that truth and grace.
Today, there's a dichotomy of worldly ideologies surrounding the Christian church. The polarization is split between progressivism and bigotry. Neither is a good thing. Neither is a Christian worldview. The progressives starting ...
Zechariah 14:4-5
In that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley...Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him."
The Mount of Olives is east of the city across the Kidron Valley and is higher than the temple mound. Jerusalem becomes the source of living water when The Lord splits the Mount in two and a valley opens up from East to west. And a vast underground river rises up and pours out over the land towards the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. The Dead Sea is healed and becomes a fishing resort. And Jerusalem will be raised up, elevated above her geographical surroundings.
Zechariah 14:10
"The whole land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem."
And all the heavens will change. All we know about the universe will change. There will no longer be day or night. No darkness. Only the light of The Lord. One day, neither day nor night, as if ...
The interpretation in question:
Isaiah 7:14b (RSV, amplified)
"Behold, a young woman (Alma, virgin) shall conceive (future tense) and bear a son, and shall call his name Imman′u-el"
In the Old Testament prophecy, (Isaiah 7:13-14), we have the Lord promising a sign to Ahaz that “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” The Gospel of Matthew claims that Jesus’ conception by The Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary is the fulfillment of that promise, citing, Isaiah’s prophecy explicitly (Matthew 1:23). And so, conversely, unbelieving scholars do not take it for granted that Matthew’s interpretation of Isaiah is valid as pretty much all first century Christians did. These scholars are men who do not believe in the divine, and supernatural miracles. They maintain that Jesus was born like anyone else, with a human mother and father, and that his virgin conception was a later legendary embellishment. And they also weren't convinced that Matthew, the gospel writing evangelist, was even the same Matthew of Jesus' apostle fame.
...
Matthew 1:16
"and Jacob fathered Joseph the husband of Mary, who gave birth to Jesus who is called the Messiah."
Joseph and Mary were engaged. In the Hebrew culture this was the first of three steps in the marriage process. This engagement is basically an arrangement to be married. This could have taken place very early in their lives, even as small children. Engagement was usually arranged by the parents. Espousal followed this arrangement period and lasted about a year in the case where the couple are of age. This espousal stage was considered to be marriage to a certain degree, but the couple were set apart to prepare themselves for full consummation and so they were kept apart sexually. In fact the father kept tokens of his daughter's virginity in case any questions arose later on. It was at this point that "it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 1:18b)
Joseph was a righteous man, a Nazarene, a descendent of David. And he didn't want to disgrace Mary and open her ...
Matthew chapter 1
"This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham..."
From Abraham to the Messiah, by his seed (Abraham's), some 42 generations later, the birth of Jesus Christ (the Messiah) came to pass. Jesus' earthly father Joseph, the descendant of king David by the line of David's son Solomon, bore the genealogy of a cursed royal line because of Jeconiah. And yet Luke looks to Jesus as the son of Mary who traces her lineage from Nathan the son of king David, though Nathan is not of the kingly line, but he's also not cursed by the sin of Jeconiah. It seems that Jeconiah birthed quite a bit of trouble, I'm thinking about his grandchild Zerubbabel who was particularly problematic. Looking back to the minor prophets we've recently studied, maybe we'll recall, that Zerubbabel tried to lead a messianic movement for himself. Whether or not he did indeed try to lay claim to Messiah status is a little unclear, but he was indeed involved in the coming of Christ. Both Matthew and Luke list ...
