Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Good Morning

 

Remember that www.leapclass.blogspot.com has all of our back emails and links to various Methodist church resources.

 

Today's Reading:  Revelation 6:12-14; Pages 15-18 in Barclay, stop at "The Time of Terror"

 

-- opening of the sixth seal.

 

-- lots happening here.  Barclay's commentary is long, but essentially he is simply detailing for us the imagery from other portions of the scripture the imagery of the end times that John outlines here - the earthquakes, etc.  The point that Barclay is making is that John's description of all this natural diasters and calmities is completely consistent with all of the other end-times imagery from other biblical writers.

 

-- Barclay does say at the end of the passage that we shouldn't take John's language and descriptions here literally.  I can see that with other portions of Revelation, where the fantastical nature of what John writes makes you believe that he is really trying to describe something else.  But in this case, an earthquake is pretty straightforward, a dark sky in the middle of the day is pretty straightforward -- I don't know what he could be talking about other than -- literally -- that he was seing earthquakes and the day becoming dark.

 

-- in the spirit of people trying to figure out John's writings and how they apply to their times, we can look to the past to see some examples of what John "saw" in his vision.  We haven't had this happen to us in our times, but in fairly recently --- in 1883 -- there was an enoromous volcanic eruption at Krakatoa, which caused all manner of climate change, and cold summers in the US, and several weeks where days were darkened from the ash in the atmosphere.  You can imagine that a lot of people at that time thought that the end times were here, given the bizzare effects of the volcanic eruption.

 

Today's Scripture

 

Therefore, prepare your minds for action, be self-controlled, set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.

1 Peter 1:13

Today's prayer requests:   Corey, Megan's student

Corey has been on a prayer list for a while, for the seizures that he had been having and the long wait to have some tests run..  Here is an update from Megan:

His neuro-oncologist says that the tumor is not life threatening and will recheck him in 6 months.  As for his "spells", the seizure like activity (seizures have been ruled out), doctors don't know what they are or why he is having them.  His mother is taking him to another neurologist for a second opinion about the spells. Thank you for all of your prayers. 

Today's class member prayer:

Monica Harbarger

Jay