From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] daily devotional
Evening...
1 Corinthians 1:30 Who of God is made unto us wisdom.
Man's intellect seeks after rest, and by nature seeks it apart from the Lord
Jesus Christ. Men of education are apt, even when converted, to look upon the
simplicities of the cross of Christ with an eye too little reverent and loving.
They are snared in the old net in which the Grecians were taken, and have a
hankering to mix philosophy with revelation. The temptation with a man of
refined thought and high education is to depart from the simple truth of Christ
crucified, and to invent, as the term is, a more intellectual doctrine. This
led the early Christian churches into Gnosticism, and bewitched them with all
sorts of heresies. This is the root of Neology, and the other fine things which
in days gone by were so fashionable in Germany, and are now so ensnaring to
certain classes of divines. Whoever you are, good reader, and whatever your
education may be, if you be the Lord's, be assured you will find no rest in
philosophizing divinity. You may receive this dogma of one great thinker, or
that dream of another profound reasoner, but what the chaff is to the wheat,
that will these be to the pure word of God. All that reason, when best guided,
can find out is but the A B C of truth, and even that lacks certainty, while in
Christ Jesus there is treasured up all the fulness of wisdom and knowledge. All
attempts on the part of Christians to be content with systems such as Unitarian
and Broad-church thinkers would approve of, must fail; true heirs of heaven
must come back to the grandly simple reality which makes the ploughboy's eye
flash with joy, and glads the pious pauper's heart-"Jesus Christ came into the
world to save sinners." Jesus satisfies the most elevated intellect when He is
believingly received, but apart from Him the mind of the regenerate discovers
no rest. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." "A good
understanding have all they that do His commandments."
Revelation 6:8
(8) And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him
was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the
fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death,
and with the beasts of the earth.
A minor controversy exists concerning the last half of verse 8: "And
power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with
hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth." The argument deals with
whether this sentence applies to the fourth horseman alone or summarizes the
depredations of all four. The latter seems preferable.
Jesus appears to treat the first four seals as a subgroup in His Olivet
prophecy, saying of them, "All these are the beginning of sorrows" ( Matthew
24:8). His intent is clear: These four judgments are a distinct set of
calamities that acts as a kind of warm-up for the exceedingly more terrible
judgments of the time of the end. As He warns, "See that you are not troubled;
for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet" (verse 6). It
is entirely logical to believe that the same Revelator would likewise separate
the Four Horsemen from the last three seals with a short summary of their work
as well as the limits of their authority.
Another proof involves the fact that the sentence restates the missions
of the red ("to kill with sword"), black ("with hunger"), and pale ("with death
[thánatos, meaning disease]") horsemen. Applying these means of destruction to
the fourth horseman alone would make the other two redundant and significantly
diminish their roles. In addition, lumping pestilence in with hunger, war, and
beasts as activities of the fourth horseman would obscure the role of disease
as a judgment of God.
Commentators argue that the plural pronoun "them" in Revelation 6:8 has
"Death" and "Hades" as its antecedents. They are certainly the closest
antecedents, but the Greek does not demand them to be the pronoun's true
antecedents. Besides, the real subject of the previous sentence is not really
"Death" and "Hades" but the singular "name" of the fourth horseman. If God
intended it to be a summary statement of the whole passage, we can easily
recognize "them" to refer to the entire passage's active characters-the Four
Horsemen-the ones to whom the Lamb gave authority to execute His judgment.
A final, curious factor is the inclusion of "by the beasts of the earth"
in the powers of the horsemen; it seems to come out of the blue. However, it
follows naturally in the progression of catastrophes. In times of severe war,
famine, and disease, depopulation occurs, which upsets the precarious balance
between human civilization and wildlife. Suddenly, with hunting and developing
of wilderness areas reduced or eliminated, the population of predatory
creatures expands, increasing the chances of animal attacks on humans.
The Bible provides an example of this in Genesis 10:8-9. It is thought
that Nimrod's rise to power over the post-Flood world began with his skills in
hunting and killing predators, which had the upper hand over the miniscule
human population at the time. Another example appears in Exodus 23:29, in which
God promises Israel, "I will not drive [the Canaanites] out from before you in
one year, lest the land become too desolate and the beasts of the field become
too numerous for you" (see also Deuteronomy 7:22; Ezekiel 34:25, 28).
Incursions of lions actually killed some Samaritans after Assyria took the bulk
of the Israelites into captivity ( II Kings 17:25).
Wild beasts are included in the curses for disobedience of Leviticus 26:
"I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children,
destroy your livestock, and make you few in number; and your highways shall be
desolate" (verse 22; see Deuteronomy 32:24; Jeremiah 15:3; Ezekiel 14:15).
Through Ezekiel, God prophesies that disasters such as the Four Horsemen bring
happen together with the scourge of wild beasts: "So I will send against you
famine and wild beasts, and they will bereave you. Pestilence and blood shall
pass through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I, the LORD, have
spoken" ( Ezekiel 5:17; see 14:21; 33:27). Though death by wild beasts is
included in the text of Revelation 6:8 without warning, it fits nonetheless.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
From The Four Horsemen (Part Five): The Pale Horse
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daily devotional
Mark 9:23
Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe.
A certain man had a demoniac son, who was afflicted with a dumb spirit. The
father, having seen the futility of the endeavours of the disciples to heal his
child, had little or no faith in Christ, and therefore, when he was bidden to
bring his son to Him, he said to Jesus, "If Thou cast do anything, have
compassion on us, and help us." Now there was an "if" in the question, but the
poor trembling father had put the "if" in the wrong place: Jesus Christ,
therefore, without commanding him to retract the "if," kindly puts it in its
legitimate position. "Nay, verily," He seemed to say, "there should be no 'if'
about My power, nor concerning My willingness, the 'if' lies somewhere else."
"If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." The
man's trust was strengthened, he offered a humble prayer for an increase of
faith, and instantly Jesus spoke the word, and the devil was cast out, with an
injunction never to return. There is a lesson here which we need to learn. We,
like this man, often see that there is an "if" somewhere, but we are
perpetually blundering by putting it in the wrong place. "If" Jesus can help
me-"if" He can give me grace to overcome temptation-"if" He can give me
pardon-"if" He can make me successful? Nay, "if" you can believe, He both can
and will. You have misplaced your "if." If you can confidently trust, even as
all things are possible to Christ, so shall all things be possible to you.
Faith standeth in God's power, and is robed in God's majesty; it weareth the
royal apparel, and rideth on the King's horse, for it is the grace which the
King delighteth to honour. Girding itself with the glorious might of the
all-working Spirit, it becomes, in the omnipotence of God, mighty to do, to
dare, and to suffer. All things, without limit, are possible to him that
believeth. My soul, canst thou believe thy Lord to-night?
2 Timothy 4:3
(3) For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but
after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching
ears;
"Heap up to themselves teachers" is another interesting illustration. We
might phrase it as, "They've got a whole smorgasbord of preachers to choose
from." We would not say that they heap them up-that brings to mind a picture of
bodies piled up, one upon another. We would probably picture what was happening
as more like a cafeteria, where a person could pick this preacher's
understanding of marriage, then a little further on, select another preacher's
understanding of faith, and a bit later, for dessert, choose this minister's
wonderful sense of humor.
Is that what we do? Do we dabble a little here, a little there? We fool
ourselves sometimes by saying, "I'm just getting a well-rounded approach to the
subject because this guy is really strong in this area. I need what he can give
me." Are we heaping up for ourselves teachers, so that we can pull one from the
bottom of the pile when we need it?
Do we flit from place to place as the mood suits us? Maybe this week we
are in the mood for something really sober, so we go to a particular
serious-minded group. The next week, perhaps, we want to fellowship, and the
people at the sober place are not really entertaining socially-but the people
at another place nearby really have a rip-roaring time after service every
week! Then the week after that, we hear that "Minister X" is in town, so we go
there. Is that the way we are? Yet, that is very much like "they heap up to
themselves teachers."
James 1:8 reads, "He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways."
How true that is! One cannot trust a double-minded person because he is
unstable; he flits from here to there. One never knows what corner he will be
in that week. James' brother, Jesus, says in Matthew 6:24:
No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love
the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You
cannot serve God and mammon.
Consider the principle here. God is interested in loyalty. He wants us to
be loyal to Him, as well as to those through whom He is speaking. Therefore, it
is best, for our own growth, to find one such minister and stick to him. Then
we will not be guilty of heaping up to ourselves teachers, for the basic
motivation of doing so is self-satisfaction. And how often does that get us
into trouble?
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
From Itching Ears
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