Wednesday, May 3, 2006

Good Morning  

 

Since I'll be out of town on Friday, we'll just have today and tomorrow's email.  Note again that I won't be class on Sunday, and that we just need a volunteer (or two) to lead things on Sunday. 

 

Today's Reading:   Barlcay 65-72 (for today and tomorrow)

 

-- in this section, Barclay takes a break from the book of Revelation to pull together a number of thoughts about the antichrist, since we are about to cover some passages that concern him.

 

-- let's start with some basics -- the word "antichrist" doesn't appear in Revelation -- it actually only appears five times in the Bible, in the 1 John and 2 John letters in the New Testament.

 

-- because of the word antichrist doesn't appear, then there are a number of different symbolic creatures that do appear in Revelation that people have assigned the name to.

 

-- prior to reading any of this -- Barclay, online, etc -- here's what I think I know about the antichrist -- My understanding has always been that the antichrist would be a single person, a world ruler, who would be impressive in his intellect and charisma and accomplishments and power, but who would be completely and ruthlessly against Christ and Christians. He would have absolutely no conscience, no morals and his goal would be to have people worship him, and he would have enough power that many will actually be persuaded to do that.  Just as an exercise, before you read too much of Barclay's study, you should think about what your current vision/understanding of the antichrist is.

 

-- as promised, here is the Wikipedia link to a discussion about the antichrist  -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antichrist

 

-- both Wikipedia and Barclay are similar in that they propose a lot of different scenarios/meanings for the antichrist -- is it one person, is it Satan, is it a group of people?  an organization?  a movement/spirit?  While we all have a very specific idea probably of what we understand as the antichrist, there is a lot of theological discussion about exactly who or what we are talking about.  So let's read Barclay and the Wiki and see what thoughts we have about this tomorrow.

 

-- also, here are a couple of related news stories about the upcoming 6/6/06 date

 

from the LA Times:  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-omen24apr24,1,3826622.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews&ctrack=1&cset=true

 

from the Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_3770815 

 

 

Today's Scripture 

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons.

1 Corinthians 10:21

Today's prayer requests:     Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

 

This war is going on and on, and another 15 Iraqis were killed by a suicide bomber today, we just need to remember that we still have thousands of Americans in a very dangerous situation everyday there, even though it isn't a front page story here everyday.

 

 Today's class member prayer: 

 

 Krystle Hatton     

Jay