Yesterday, we began our series in 2 Timothy by looking at the historical background. We found that Paul was writing from prison (probably via Luke, since it’s hard to write while you’re stuck in a dungeon) asking Timothy to come to see him in Rome – and to bring his cloak and study materials. He’s facing death, and this is possibly his last chance to write to Timothy.
So what does he write? Or to put it another way, what kind of letter is this?
Over the next three weeks we’ll be working our way through Paul’s second letter to Timothy. In prison and facing imminent death, these are some of the last words Paul ever wrote… or are they? This is the background issue we begin with today, before we get to the letter itself on Wednesday.
The big question about Paul’s circumstances when writing the letter is whether this was his final imprisonment before his martyrdom in 67AD when Emperor Nero decided he now didn’t like Christians very much. (Unless they were really on-fire.) You’d think so, reading this bit:
As we come to the final post in our trip (both meanings intended) through Revelation 4-11, we get to the seventh trumpet. Finally. (The sixth was way back in chapter 9.) In the interim, the church has been commissioned with a message, persecuted for preaching it, left for dead, and then raised back to life through the power of Jesus’ own resurrection. Now, all that’s left is the final trumpet.
At the end of yesterday’s post, we saw that God’s two witnesses (symbolising his church-on-mission) ended up suffering the same fate that Jesus himself did: killed in Jerusalem. Their bodies weren’t even buried, adding to the shame, and their enemies gloated over their destruction. (A bit like the gloating that happens in some quarters these days whenever Christians take a hit.) But… just like that weird story about Elijah and Enoch, and more importantly, just like Jesus… that isn’t the end of the story.
Yesterday we saw that although our mission to preach the little scroll to the world might get a little dangerous (involving the odd bit of metaphorical trampling-by-Gentiles), God has again measured us – his inner shrine – for protection. For we are to be his witnesses:
Rev 11:3 “And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”This verse does explain the general bad fashion sense of the church, but that’s not the main point. Here, we’re introduced to two witnesses who symbolise the church. But why two?
We’re almost finished with our series through what is often called the “first cycle of visions” in Revelation; just one chapter to go. So here’s the lightning-fast recap:
By the end of Revelation 9 (on Wednesday), we’d figured out that the taste of judgement God was giving his rebellious world wasn’t working. Yesterday, we saw that the time is short – there’s nothing left to happen before God’s plan comes to completion.
Except for one thing. It’s not enough for the scroll of judgements to be opened (Rev 6). Someone has to explain why these judgements are taking place. Who will that be?
If you’ve been following this series for the last couple of weeks, you’ll be pleased to know that we’re pretty much finished with all the judgement stuff. And by itself, it wasn’t really working. At the end of the first six trumpet judgements (which themselves had followed the seven seal judgements), despite all of the suffering and destruction and death, it was business as usual for a world in rebellion to God:
9:20-21 The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.
So by the start of chapter 10, another question has to be raised (following on from the previous series of questions we looked at earlier in the series.) And the question is this: the judgements don’t seem to be working; humanity isn’t turning back to God; this isn’t getting their attention; is there anything else that can be done?
Still going with all of those trumpet judgements. Not a good one to jump straight into today – I suggest you either start at the beginning of our series in Revelation 4-11, or at least from last Friday, the start of chapter 8. Yesterday, we saw the plague of locusts (that became some kind of demonic army) in 9:1-13. Today, it’s the sixth trumpet, or second woe:
9:13-16 The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.
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