Monday, Dec 19 - Jody

Today's reading from the Chronological OT/NT Reading Plan is: Ezra 5-7, Revelation 11

Happy Monday Everyone!

I don't have a lot of personal insight to add today. These chapters in Revelation are so overwhelming and interesting to me. I don't know about you, but whenever I read Revelation, a whole different feeling comes over me, it's like this one book of the Bible holds a more urgent message than the rest of the books. I want to highlight some things that John MacArthur has to say in his message Two Witnesses Part 3.

I believe that it's during the Tribulation that Israel will be saved and the last events of the Tribulation will be the great movement of God that causes the most immense reaction in Israel to saving truth. Already we know a hundred and forty-four thousand Jews have been saved and they are a hundred and forty-four thousand witnessing missionaries all over the globe. They've been sealed to witness during the seven-year period. They are protected from death and they go about the world proclaiming the gospel truth. Already we know that they have had an effect. Gentiles have believed. Jews have believed.
But in this scene in chapter 11 we meet two other preachers and they are the ones who really are used by God as the instruments of the final harvest of the nation Israel, right before the very end of the day of the Lord. They are identified for us as two witnesses and I believe that there have been Jews being saved since the hundred and forty-four thousand started preaching, but now there is going to be a tremendous response and we will note it as we finish this great section tonight. And it will be at the prompting and the preaching and under the power of these anointed two witnesses.
Let's look again at verse 3. "And I will grant authority to My two witnesses and they will prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days clothed on sackcloth." Now let me remind you that this tells us about their duty, they will prophesy. These two men will preach warning. They will preach judgment. They will explain the coming wrath of God. They will explain what is going on at the present time since judgments have already been going on through the first of the seals and then the first of the trumpets and are about to break out in the final bowl judgments. They will be calling for repentance. They will be calling for belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Their duty, they will prophesy.

Won't this be amazing to see, whoever will be on this earth to witness it? MacArthur goes on...

But God is merciful and just before the final blowing of the seventh trumpet which contains the seven bowls which is the final rapid-fire holocaust at the end of the day of the Lord, leading up to Christ's return and the establishment of His Kingdom which involves the destruction of all the ungodly, before that happens the Lord sends two final powerful witnesses. Like Enoch and Noah before the Flood, like Moses in Egypt before the judgments, like John the Baptist before the Messiah and the destruction of Jerusalem, God mercifully sends preachers to warn.

Doesn't our God love us?? To even have a book in His Word like Revelation. To offer us so many teachings in the entire Bible, offer us all of the warnings and brilliant imagery in His final book - Revelation, and yet already have an added plan of grace and mercy in place for the final days of earth embodied in the Two Witnesses. Yes, our God loves us...

Tomorrow's passage:   Esther 1-2, Revelation 12