Rev. 22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come! And let the one hearing say, Come! And let the one who is thirsty come. And he willing, let him take of the Water of Life freely.
With the war breaking out in Ukraine there is a lot of speculation that we are in the end of days with the apocalypse on the horizon. Everyone who knows me knows I’m not a gloom and doomer, that I do acknowledge the days we are living in, but remain expectant and focused on the birth of the Kingdom.
The book of Revelation begins with the word “apocalypse” in Greek. “Apocalypse” (Apokalupsis) can be translated as “disclosure” or the “lifting of the veil”! And we find that the Revelation of Yeshua culminates in a marriage, as the Heavenly Bridegroom unites with His Bride.
“The spirit and the Bride say, “Come!”; [Rev.22:17] In the ancient (and some modern) weddings in the middle East, the bride was veiled before being presented to her husband. In a sense, we, Yeshua’s Bride, are still veiled in mortal bodies, that is, until the time when we shall see Him, “face to face” [1 Cor. 13:12], and we shall be as He is. [1 John 3:2]. Then, the veil will be fully removed!
Yet, paradoxically, even in this world we can taste this reality and walk with our faces “unveiled”; “But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit”; [2 Cor. 3:18]. And since the veil was torn in two, [Hebrews 10:19-22] we have access to the most holy place of God through what Yeshua (Jesus) did for us!
A wedding is coming soon, and the veil of this temple, your mortal body, will be forever removed and replaced with immortality. If there are wars and rumors of wars be assured, that looking up, your redemption draws near, and a marriage supper is being prepared for you. Nevertheless, even now you go with your face unveiled revealing the glory of the Lord, and all the more as you walk in fearless anticipation of that soon-coming day when you will be removed from this veil of tears and be wed to the King of Kings. So walk unveiled until the day when your unveiling will be complete in the resurrection of the dead. As a young woman anticipates her wedding day, view these end-time events as harbingers of the happiest day of your life, when your Bridegroom sounds the shofar announcing His return for your wedding! Simply allow Him to prepare you as a bride without spot or wrinkle! [Ephesians 5:25-27]
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Approaching a new year always seems to carry a sense of adventure and expectation, although that attitude is not normally mixed with the level of trepidation we might be feeling just now. Moses’ successor Joshua, one of two faithful spies, seems to have embodied this sense of courageous expectation much of his life, but even he needed an extra dose of Divine encouragement as the Lord commanded him to cross the Jordan and take possession of the promised Land.
As we approach the New Year, we’re back to making New Year’s resolutions … but this year is a bit different, since it’s not only a New Year but a New Decade! During the past ten years we’ve seen such radical changes in our society; the definition of marriage, millennia-old norms of gender identity, bath and locker-room privacy, have all been affected by court decisions as a sea change in social mores has swept through the western world. People of Biblical faith are witnessing the fulfillment of Isaiah’s warning, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” [Isaiah 5:20]
There were thousands of people bundled up in freezing New York weather to witness a few short seconds during which a descending ball of light announces the arrival of a New Year — 2023. These hardy people endured the freezing air to mark the passage of time, but even more, because they were anticipating a “new beginning!” Saying goodbye to a tumultuous 2023, they were looking forward to making a fresh start in 2024!
Yeshua (Jesus) gave a remarkable parenthetic instruction in the middle of His Olivet discourse on the time of His coming and the end of the age. While it is unlikely that He himself said this, He certainly inspired Matthew to insert, “..let the reader understand”, concerning this critical event prophesied by Daniel, the Abomination of Desolation. His exhortation intended us (the readers of Matthew’s gospel) to learn what this means.
When I teach about “understanding the will of God,” I’d like to talk about a story that is told in all the synoptic gospels, except that Luke’s account gives a significant nuance. (Many skeptical Bible “critics” point out differences in the gospels to argue that they can’t be reliable — yet it’s actually the differences that support the validity of these accounts because they reveal that the events recorded were simply experienced and told from slightly different viewpoints, a very common circumstance when people are telling a story.)
Charles Swindoll wrote about these men who bring in animals from Africa for American zoos. They say that one of the hardest animals to catch there is the ringtailed monkey. For the Zulus of that continent, however, it’s simple. They’ve been catching this agile little animal with ease for years.
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