Friday, July 7, 2006

Good Morning 

 

It's been awhile, but I will be at church on Sunday.  Been missing all of you.

 

Today's Reading:    Revelation 18:1-5, Barclay 168-172

 

-- we start chapter 18, getting close to the end -- only three chapters to go after this one.

 

-- we learn a new term in Barclay's commentary for this section -- "doom song" -- which is his description for the passages in this section that reflect on Babylon's fall. This form has other examples in the Old Testament, as prophets there foretold of the destruction of various cities, such as the actual Babylon.

 

--  Just a reminder, Barclay's take is that Babylon is ancient Rome.  Our challenge is to see whether we accept that, or if we think Babylon represents some other country to come, one that is a world power wielding significant political, religious and cultural inflluence.

 

-- A couple of times in Barclay's commentary, he continues to say something to the effect "John must have been thinking about this passage or that passage" in the Old Testament when he wrote portions of Revelation.  That continues to bug me, as to me the implication is that John is writing what he thinks, rather than what he is seeing.  He very well my be revisiting the language and format of the Old Testament, but I'm not happy with the idea that he is doing so because he is making this up as he goes along.  Perhaps I'm more fundamentalist than I think, but I'm of a mind that John is writing about a vision that God revealed to him.  I'm not ready to say that John was simply making this up as he wrote.

 

-- The fact that Barclay says that I think explains why he is sure that Rome is the beast, etc.  If John did not see the future, and he was simply making all of this up, then he follows that he would write about what he knew, and John knew about Rome.  There actually would be no need for him to be "in the Spirit" to see all of this -- most of it happened during his lifetime.  It's clear to me that Barclay's approach is that John took two things he knew -- Roman history, including its attitude towards Christians, and his knowledge of Old Testament apocalyptic literature, language and symbolism, and merged them together to form this new 'revelation' that was his personal 'inspired' take on what the future holds. That is a far cry from being a book that looks thousands of years into the future to warn and educate people about what is to come.  We still have three chapters to go, so perhaps I'll come around to Barclay's thinking once I've read the entire book. 

 

--  I think that it is clear that Revelation really challenges us as Christians about our attitudes about scripture and the Bible, and what we believe about the words written there.  The content of Revelation is so different, and so challenging, that whatever belief we have about what is written in the Bible -- that every word is literally true, or symbolically true, or a mix -- is challenged by what John has written.

Today's Scripture 

 

Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.

 

Isaiah 12:2

 

Today's prayer requests:       Saundra Aaron

 

Valerie's brother's mother-in-law continues to go through treatment for cancer.  We did get a good update on her on Tuesday from Valerie's sister-in-law, but she still needs our prayers as her treatments continue.

 

Also need to continue to remember Kelley Thaxton and her husband Don, and Megan's friend Kayla.  

 

Today's class member prayer: 

 Krystle Hatton      

 

Jay