In Revelation 5:8-9, after the Lamb has taken the book that could not be opened by any other, the four beasts and twenty-four elders fall down before Him and...
The "chariot of the cherubims" is part of the design of the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Solomon. This chariot is not mentioned anywhere else in scripture. Neither does there seem to be...
Yesterday I read Ezekiel 14:21, which states, "For thus saith the Lord GOD; How much more when I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast?" Of these four sore judgments, three make perfect sense to us today. The sword is war, famine is lack of food and/or water, and pestilence is disease in epidemic proportion. All of these are present concerns. However, we do not much think of the "noisome beast" as a threat. Of course, these beasts might come in the form of insects. However, we are seeing more conflicts from larger beasts. Today's newspapers report of a rash of alligator attacks in Florida. After only 17 deaths from such attacks since 1948, three people have been killed in separate incidents just this week. If God removes His protecting hand from us, we may have more to fear than we think from the "noisome beast."
In Genesis 3:15, God refers to the seed of the serpent. Many Bible-believing students have seen this as a reference to the antichrist who, in imitation of the virgin birth, will have a miraculous birth. Modern movies have played on the theme of the devil's seed. But the real seed of the serpent will be accepted as the true "Christ" and his birth will be heralded as a wondrous proof of his divine heritage. This viewpoint is seen in ancient myths. According to "The Virgin Birth" by Robert Gromacki (p.212): "Alexander the Great made the priests say that he was a son of Zeus. He denied that he was the son of Philip and affirmed that he was begotten by a serpent cohabiting with his mother. Later, the Roman Caesar Augustus wanted the story spread that his mother, asleep in the temple of Apollo, was visited by the god in the form of a serpent. Conceived, he was later born in the tenth month." As the Bible tells us, "there is no new thing under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
The Lord is clearly interested in beauty. Some form of the word is used 76 times in the Bible. We are told that God "hath made every thing beautiful in his time" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). He so highly exalts the proper concept of beauty that He often associates it with holiness (Psalm 29:2; 96:9; 110:3). Unfortunately, men tend to pervert beauty as they do all that they touch. God reminds us that outward "beauty is vain" (Proverbs 31:30) and human "beauty is a fading flower' (Isaiah 28:1). Men corrupt beauty and make the "beauty of a man" a focus for idolatry (Isaiah 44:13). Eventually, man's perverseness causes his "beauty to be abhorred" (Ezekiel 16:25). The very concept of what is beautiful is no longer recognizable.
The following is an excerpt from Soldiers in Training by Brother Daryl Coats.
