12/28/2017 DAB Transcript

Zechariah 12:1-13:9, Revelations 19:1-21, Psalms 147:1-20, Proverbs 31:1-7

Today is the 28th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s great to be here with you today. Man, I can feel the end of the year upon us. Can’t you? It’s like, holy cow, we’ve just about finished reading the whole Bible in a year again, but I’ll try not to get ahead of myself in my life or in the Bible. So, let’s just be where we are. It’s 28th of December and we’re reading from the Gods Word translation this week. Zachariah 12:1 through 13:9 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, clearly, we only have a few days left in this year. So, clearly, we are coming to the final days in the book of Revelation as well, which we’ve been kind of diving into this year. And today we come to a great banquet, but also a great battle in which the dark forces of the evil one are conquered and the evil one itself is done away with. And the scene begins with a loud, huge crowd from heaven saying, ‘Hallelujah, salvation, glory, and power belong to our God. His judgments are true and fair. He has condemned the notorious prostitute who corrupted the world with her sexual sins. He has taken revenge on her for the blood of his servants.’ And, of course, this is coming on the heels of what we read yesterday in the downfall of Babylon. This world system ruled by evil fractures, implodes, is judged, falls, is done away with. So, we should observe the contrasts that are happening in today’s reading. So, Babylon, these dark forces of evil that have been controlling the world, they fall apart, they’ve been condemned, the notorious prostitute that is this whole system has been condemned because it corrupted the world with her sexual sins. So, we can certainly go, like, okay, this evil empire is very sexual in nature. And, so, this is definitely speaking about sexuality. But, also we should understand that this kind of language, from an allegorical perspective or a figurative view, is about union. I mean, at the most basic level that’s what sex is, union, giving yourself over to someone. So, these dark forces demanded worship, demanded loyalty, and allegiance, demanded union and the result of that was a war on God’s people, a cosmic attempt to stamp out God’s plan. That is in stark contrast to the second song or poem coming from this large crowd that is so big it sounds like raging waters. On the one hand, they’re applauding and worshiping God for the judgment, the downfall of evil. But then they have more to say, ‘Hallelujah the Lord our God, the Almighty has become king. Let us rejoice, be happy, and give him glory, because it’s time for the marriage of the Lamb. His bride has made herself ready. She has been given the privilege of wearing dazzling pure linen.’ So, contrasted with the great prostitute or whore of Babylon, this bride was true and faithful and sought union with no one but God and gave her loyalty and devotion to no one but God. And then in the next scene we see heaven standing open. There’s a white horse with a rider on it named Faithful and True and he’s going he’s going to battle. And the armies of heaven wearing pure white linen, like we just talked about, are following along on white horses of their own. And a sharp sword comes out of his mouth to defeat the nation’s. Some scholars would say these are the Angel armies. This is Jesus with the angel armies going to finish the judgment, finish the final battle, while other scholars would say, no, these are God’s people going along with Jesus to finish this final battle so that this banquet can begin. And an angel cries out to the birds, ‘come, gather for the great banquet of God. Eat the flesh of kings, generals, warriors, horses and their riders, and all free people and slaves, both important and insignificant people.’ And it’s been noted that this is probably a parody. So, on the one hand there is this a great banquet, this great wedding feast where darkness and evil have no place, and not only just have no place, it doesn’t exist, this beautiful, banquet, this consummation of all things being made new. And that contrasts with what the angel is saying to the birds. There’s going to be this great banquet for you because all evil is being extinguished. So, it’s like two sides of the same coin. On the one side there is judgment, on the other side there is salvation. And, so, the battle commences and the beast and the false prophet who had done miracles for the beast were captured and were subsequently thrown into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. So, the forces that were at work in this dark, evil kingdom were cast away and the rider on the horse, on the white horse, had a sword coming out of his mouth and finished the battle. And a great banquet happened for the birds even as a great banquet in heaven is getting ready to begin.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. This is the 362nd day of this year and every day we have feasted upon Your word. And there are just a few days remaining. And we invite your Holy Spirit to continue to speak deeply to us, transforming us on so many levels. We are most certainly at the place that we can look in the mirror and see that we’re not the same as we were when we started this journey on January 1st. And we’re thankful for that. We’ve been through plenty. It’s been a challenging year, but You have been faithful and You have guided us through Your word and through the power of Your Holy Spirit and we’re grateful. This builds confidence in our faith. You are maturing us. And, so, we welcome this to continue. And even though we will finish this year and will finish it well, we look forward to all that You will speak to us through Your word in the coming year. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudibiible.com is the website. It’s home base. It’s where you find what’s going on around here. And we’re getting ready to switch into a new year.

And one of the things that are going on around here is the brand-new Daily Audio Bible App for your Android or Apple devices and the new web player that’s available at dailyaudiobible.com. And, of course, the new app is totally free. So, if you haven’t gotten it yet, definitely get on board. We’ll be phasing out the old app over the next weeks and months. So, all you have to do is go to the app store that pertains to the kind of device that you have and search for “Daily Audio Bible mobile app”. That’s the new one. We couldn’t use the same name as the old one. So, if you find “Daily Audio Bible mobile app” that’s the new one. So, now is a good time to update that as we get ready to launch ourselves into the new year. And like I said, it’s free. So, let everyone in your sphere of influence know about it and invite them to take the journey with you into 2018.

I also want to remind you about the More Gathering for women, our annual women’s conference that’s coming up in April. Early registration pricing for that is in effect until December 31st. So, just a few days from now. So, take advantage of that. You can find out all about it and moregathering.com or at dailyaudiobible.com in the Initiatives section.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible here in the final days of the year, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the new Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

This is Jerry from Duluth Minnesota. It’s Christmas Eve and I ordered five of the Daily Audio Bible Journal and Pencil sets with the Black Wing case. And I wanted to read one of the ones that I wrote to my son-in-law, to Peter. 2017 has been a year of loss. After my dad died on August 8th I went through the deepest depression of my life. While I was going through alternative experimental catenin treatments, I listened to the Daily Audio Bible. At the end of one of the podcasts on August 27th, 21st rather, Brian told the story of his mom dying and how he discovered the Black Wing pencil, the best pencil in the world. So, I ordered a journal and pencils and found that the tactile exercise of writing in a journal helped release some of my frustrations, my fear, my worry, my doubts. I listened every day to the DAB for many years when I did my paper route in Duluth and I’d like to encourage and challenge you to try it on your commute every morning in 2018. I believe it will change your life. May 2018 bring hope for the future. God is working all things together for our good. Love you family. Have a great 2018.

Hey everybody. This is Pelham from Birmingham. Or Addicted to Christ is my spiritual name because addiction is my weakness but it has also become a weapon in my battle that He’s chosen me for. Anyways, I’m calling because the last time I called my job had suddenly closed because the owner had a baby born with major medical problems. And, financially, we were doing very well but it’s a sad…it’s just been a hard time because it’s no one’s fault and it happened right before Chri…and the Holy Spirit that has been right here with me and has been trying to tell me, hey, we’re always here and we’re leading you in a new way. We’re bringing you to a new place. So, the Marsh’s are doing fine. We’re struggling, of course, we have our battles, but I’m going to be the manager of a much better company. There’s a restaurant opening, literally, a block away from where I had to go for work before. So, there is income. It’s not…you know…I…you see…I’ve got to come to grips with my pride and know that God’s doing what God does and I need to just be happy. He just wants me to be happy, just like my son. He wants my son to be happy. He wants my wife to be happy. I want my son to be happy. And he wants that for me. And I can’t get it into my head that He knows what’s best for me. Not me. I don’t know what’s best for me. So, we’re coming right along. Merry Christmas everyone. I love you. I’ll call back. Blind Tony, thank you.

Hello everyone. This is Victory Victoria calling from Missouri. I’m calling specifically today for 15-year-old Noni that I heard call on the 22nd. Today is now the 24th but I just want to let you know Noni that we are praying for you. You said you were new to the Bible and prayer and you are searching for friends to help you through, onto this journey, I guess, to help you through this and understand the Bible. I want to let you know you have come to the right place. We are so thankful that you have been led here Noni and you are already among many, many friends, ___ friends, who are already praying for you. I want to encourage you to start fresh in January with Brian in the reading of the bible every day. Check out the new app. It’s beautiful. And some of us have been here listening to the bible through the DAB for many years. I am one that has only newly discovered it this year and I am so very thankful. I know so much more about the Bible now than I did in January, a year ago. Noni, also, checkout, to see your new found friends, check out the Facebook page, the prayer wall. Submit your prayers to the prayer wall. You will find so many faithful prayer warriors in this circle of friends. Father, I want to thank You for Noni and that You led her here. Thank You for her desire to become closer to You and to seek out Christian friends for this journey of hers. Please strengthen us as her new friends to be the friends that she needs to help her grow in Your word, to help her know how much she’s loved by…

I see the Lord seated on the throne. Exalted, the train as his robe. Fill the Chapel with glory and the whole earth is filled with His Glory. Gloria from New York, this is Candice from Oregon and I’m just echoing the beauty of the song that you sang. And you’re joining the whole multitude of heavenly hosts, and the cherubim, and seraphim. We worship our Lord and our King and participate in His suffering. And even as He wants us to be in communion with Him like that, He wants us to be in communion with each other. And I just want you to know that I have wept with you. And our God reigns and He is the restorer of all things including your mothers heart. And he will restore everything. He will restore the years that the locusts have eaten and all the enemy’s ploys will seem pathetic on that day. So, look to Him and be radiant my sister, in Jesus’ name.

12/27/2017 DAB Transcript

Zechariah 10:1-11:17, Revelations 18:1-24, Psalms 146:1-10, Proverbs 30:33

Today is the 27th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is great to be here with you today, man, as we really focus in on the end of the year. After today there’s only four days left in the year 2017. So, let’s press in. Let’s finish strong and finish well and begin the new year well by keeping the rhythm of the Scriptures in our lives, each and every day a part of that story. So, we’re reading from the Gods Word translation this week. Today, Zechariah chapter 10 verse 1 through 11 verse 17. And we’ll read that before we dive back into Revelation chapter 18. But first, Zechariah chapter 10.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Revelation we witness the fall and destruction of Babylon in today’s reading. And again, as I’ve been saying like a broken record, we have to decide how we are going to look at this. Mostly why I bring that up today has to do with time. When we started the book of Revelation we talked about time. Like, when is this happening? Where is this happening? How? All of these questions that come up. And you can read the book of Revelation from front to back as a linear book and go, well, this happens, then this happens, then this, then this, then this, because it’s all in order. While many scholars would point out, this is probably the order that John saw things in, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the order in which they will occur, which is completely valid. And to pour some more vegetables into that stew and stir it around, a very generous portion of the scholarship on the book of Revelation identifies the fact that it’s cyclical. And a lot of confusion arises trying to read it linear because it feels like were jumping all over the place and it’s hard to grasp the flow of time. But if you’re reading from a cyclical perspective, you begin to realize that your reading the same story from different perspectives several times. So, we read of the judgment and destruction of Babylon, but Babylon has been a theme that we’ve been kind of traveling with throughout the book of Revelation. And we’ve looked at literal views of it, we’ve looked at historical views of it, we’ve looked allegorical views of it, we’ve looked at futuristic views of it, presentest views of it, and have come to realize that we have to, at least in part, be willing to look figuratively. And, so, Babylon, figuratively, represents ancient Rome, but likely from the perspective of John, the writer, and the time that John was writing in, but more broadly it represents an entire world system of evil that is set on total domination and control so that the evil one can make an attempt at establishing sovereignty of some sort, and attempt to battle with God. So, figuratively, what we read today is the judgment of that entire system. The façade of this world system is exposed for the façade that it is and its underpinnings are exposed, the skeleton is exposed. And, at the core, there is only evil, the serpent, the evil one has been guiding this all along. And in this judgment, it is completely exposed. And then another angel from heaven calls God’s people out. ‘Come out of Babylon my people so that you do not participate in her sins and suffer from any of her plagues.’ And this is patterned after Isaiah’s prophecy in the 48th chapter and the 52nd chapter, but also from Jeremiah, where were told in the 51st chapter, ‘come forth from her midst my people.’ And since were talking figuratively, we’re not talking about God’s people fleeing a city, like literally fleeing from a city to try to hide somewhere else. Rather, this is a call to not participate in the sins that brought, like, the evil that brought the whole thing down. Don’t participate in any of that, which doesn’t mean, don’t go to grocery store or buy groceries, don’t buy clothes, like, don’t participate in the economy, like, that’s not what’s being said here. This is a spiritual thing. Do not get involved with the darkness. It is being exposed. It is being judged. It is being done away with. Don’t find yourself in that camp. And this understanding goes all the way back to the church fathers. And it’s been pointed out that this is likely a parallel or a reference to clean and unclean, a concept that’s introduced in the Torah and that follows throughout the entire Bible. So, although this isn’t speaking in reference to physical cleanness and uncleanness by the Torah, this is talking about the same thing, spiritually - get away from what is unclean, don’t touch it, don’t make yourself unclean, don’t disqualify yourself, stay away from it, stay away from evil altogether. And then judgment comes. And it affects everything. And the great and powerful who had participated with Babylon, who had participated in this darkness, who’d grown rich because of it, who had found fame and prestige because of it, they’re all standing back watching the whole thing fall apart. And they lament because of the implications. It’s going to affect them so profoundly. And God’s people are invited to rejoice over this, not in an arrogant or insensitive way, but rather, this system of utter evil that had dominated and had done everything conceivable to stamp out the gospel and the witness, the lampstands, from the earth to do away with God’s people completely has failed. Evil has been judged and those who have given themselves in worship to evil, who have given themselves over to the to the dark side have no power to come against God’s people any longer. And that’s where we end up today.

I also want to draw attention to our reading from Proverbs today because it’s simple, stark, direct, and elegant in the way that it simply tells us the truth. And if we would commit it to memory, if we would remember it and incorporate it into our lives, it would be such a rescue from so much conflict. So, the proverb tells us, as churning milk produces butter. Right? So, that’s just a fact. If you’re going to churn milk you will eventually produce butter. I’ve done it myself. So, it’s one of those obvious things. If you churn milk you will produce butter. If you punch someone in the nose, that’s going to produce a bloody nose. So, we can see that the proverb is just saying, stating the obvious, but it’s the last one that’s not quite so obvious to us. So, stirring up anger produces a fight. It produces a fight in the same way that churning milk produces butter or punching a nose produces a bloody nose. Stirring up anger produces a fight. And yes, sometimes in life you’ve got to step into that territory of confrontation, but stirring up anger certainly produces a lot of conflict that doesn’t have to happen and we would do well to remember that.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for the way that it speaks to us, the way that it unsettles us, the way that it stirs things up within us, the way that it comforts us, and directs, and guides our steps. It touches everything about us and we thank You for the gift of it and we invite Your Holy Spirit to plant these words deep in our lives. Help us to hold onto the hope that Babylon will fall, that evil will be eradicated from our experience, ultimately. And help us to stay true and keep the light burning. And Father, part of that is certainly not stirring up anger that produces a fight for no reason. It is sure to happen, just like churning milk or punching a nose. And, so, we take that to heart as well as we move forward. Help us to remember the proverb that tells us, a gentle answer turns away wrath. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudibiible.com is the website. It’s home base. It’s where you find what’s going on around here. Obviously, we’re in the week of transition, getting ready to move ourselves into the new year. So, that’s a flurry of activity around here, just getting ready.

But I remind you of the brand-new Daily Audio Bible mobile app. It is out. It is available. Thousands of you are using it. Its where we’re headed as we continue to build community around the rhythm of the Scriptures in our lives each day. So, you get it now. Whether you have an Android or an Apple device, just go to the Google Play store or the App store for Apple and search for ‘Daily Audio Bible mobile app’. That’s the new one. That’s the one you’ll be looking for. We have our previous app that’s still out there. So, we don’t want to confuse you. So, just search for ‘Daily Audio Bible mobile app’. It’s totally free. Download it. Tell all your friends about it. Get them to download it. Get ready for the new year. Oh my gosh, that’s just days away.

And speaking of days away, if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible and would like a tax deductible receipt for that for the year 2017, then, first of all, humble, humble gratitude for your partnership in keeping the global campfire burning, and the community thriving around this rhythm that we have together. But secondly, just, if you want it to be for 2017 then make sure it is in 2017. Those are the rules we have to follow. So, thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the new Daily Audio Bible app, just press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello my name is Femi. I’m calling from London. I’m calling regarding the call that Noni played today, the 22nd of December. Noni, you are loved. You have come to the right place in the midst of the loved ones. You are not alone, not any more. I’m so proud of you to have called and you are on the right path and you will be such a blessing in the kingdom of God. Keep it up. You have nothing to fear. And I’ll pray along with you that God, Lord God almighty, will empower you and God will show himself faithful unto you. At your age, desire to get closer to God…ah…God will get closer to you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. You are such, so loved. Don’t worry about anything. God is always with you. Jesus is always with you. Jesus is your Emanuel. Stay blessed and be happy and enjoy the ride. It is going to be wonderful. And 2018 is going to be glorious for you. Just keep it up. You’ve got nothing to fear. God loves you and Jesus loves you much, much, much more. Stay blessed. God bless you. Femi from London. Thank you.

Hey guys. Couple things. One, I just heard a prayer for…a sister called in saying you don’t have any friends, that you don’t have anyone to go through the bible with, you just started, you’re just getting close to the Lord again. And I just want you to know sister, you are definitely not alone doing this. We’re all here with you. All kinds of people are praying for you and heard your prayer request. Maybe check out the new app, there’s a prayer, I mean, a prayer wall. Check out DAB friends on Facebook, that’s a great way to stay in touch with other believers and just not be alone during all of this. So, we all love you, praying for you, keep us updated, and God bless you. And also, guys, if you could pray for my wife and I, she is pregnant with twins and she’s hurting. She still has six weeks to go, Lord willing. And she’s having a bunch of contractions, like, practice ones and just having a lot of issues and we’re trying to figure out how to get the right amount of time off from work so I can…I’m trying to balance it because I don’t want her to overdo while…before the babies come, we want them in there as long as they can be in there. We just…we’ve got a lot of decisions…and there’s a lot of stress…and scares. The babies have a bunch of extra food and stuff but my wife knew they were going to come earlier and all kinds of stuff. I know God’s got it in control. I’ve got a lot peace about it. Just…I guess…I need a wisdom and peace for my wife and prayers for the babies and our other daughter…all kinds of stuff. That a lot. But I love you guys. I’m praying for you. If you could pray for us that’d be great. And…

Hello Daily Audio Bible. It’s Duane from Wisconsin. All praise and glory to God. I’m calling from beautiful North Carolina today. We are here visiting my wife’s youngest daughter, the one I spoke to you about. She had a little baby girl the other day. So, I just want to thank you for all your prayers. So, we’re visiting our granddaughter. But I’m calling in with a heavy heart. I told you about my nephew, Nicholas, and the cancer he was the fighting over the last year and then he had a stroke and they did an artificial heart surgery. My sister called yesterday and they are moving him to hospice. They are only giving him a couple of days, so, I ask for your prayers please. He’s so young. So, I ask you please lift up Nicholas and there be a miracle and he’d be okay. But if not, that’s God will and I pray You’ll be with his wife Erin, my mother, my sister Connie, and dad, Dennis, and his sister Shavon and the rest of family and friends. If you’d please lift them up in prayer Daily Audio Bible, I’d appreciate it. This is Duane from Wisconsin. All praise and glory is to God and Merry Christmas to you all. In Jesus name. Amen. And God bless.

I thought that I was standing tall but really I was down
Smiling broadly ear to ear trying to hide that frown
Believing I could do all things while running from the doubt
Saying straight and narrow is the path but walking in and out
Confident and self-assured trying to hide my fear
Growing stronger day by day yet dying every year
Life is one big paradox
We say and still don’t do
Heavenly Lord we reconcile and surrender all to you

blindtony1016@gmail.com Like to give a shout out to Kim and Dean S., and Sherlock W., and Michelle from LA, and also Drew from the bay area. Hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday. You know you are in my prayers every day. And, once again, my love to go the Hardin family. Thank you, Brian, for this wonderful podcast for God’s Holy Spirit to flow through the earth. Keep it flowin’ y’all. Alright. Bye-bye.

12/26/2017 DAB Transcript

Zechariah 9:1-17, Revelations 17:1-18, Psalms 145:1-21, Proverbs 30:32

Today is the 26th day of December, the day after Christmas. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It’s great to be here with you. I hope you had a Merry Christmas and some time to relax and rest. And I hope this new day finds you refreshed as we take the next step forward toward the end of the year. Obviously, that’s in sight, which means that we are getting ourselves pretty close to the final pages of the Bible. Today, we’ll read from the Gods Word translation, which is what we’re doing this week. Zechariah, chapter 9 verses 1 through 17.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we have a little bit of catching up to do in the book of Revelation since we last talked about this on Christmas Eve. And at that point I said we’re going to begin zooming out toward more major themes because we’ve spent a lot of time kind of going right into the nitty-gritty and seeing that there are, like, it’s pretty clear now, there are lots of ways that people have looked at the book of Revelation and interpreted the book of Revelation. So, I think we’ve honored that. But we’re going to stick with the major themes and only kind of zoom in if we run into things that have been highly contentious throughout church history. So, the last time we talked about this we were in the process of setting up what looked like clear parallels to the book of Exodus to the plagues that God sent upon Egypt that ultimately destroyed Egypt because it hardened itself against what God was doing in judging them for not allowing his people to leave. So, yesterday when we read the portion from Revelation we saw that happen. There were seven angels with seven bowls that were poured out upon the earth causing plagues. And again, if you read this from a literal perspective, then, there’s no…I mean…it's…it’s literally there. For example, the first angel poured out his bowl on the land and ugly, festering sores broke on the people who had the mark of the beast. But truly most scholars end up in the allegorical or figurative reading and come down somewhere in the vicinity of this - this plague parallels the Egyptian plague of boils. And from an allegorical point of view, is are probably not blisters or some kind of sores that are that are represented physically, they probably represent torment, anxiety, all the kind of psychological torment that we’ve talked about previously. And a great unrest that then hardens the people, like Egypt, bringing about the second and third bowls that are poured out on the sea in water. And from a literal perspective, the sea turns into blood, like a dead person, and everything in the sea died. And the third bowl was poured out on the rivers and the springs of water and they became blood. And we’ve already seen imagery like this back when the trumpets were blowing. When the second trumpet blew something similar happened, the sea became blood, 30 living creatures in the sea died. This time it’s not a partial thing. This time when the bowls are poured out it’s a total thing. So, the parallels are striking very, very clear. Most scholars would agree, the second trumpet and this second bowl represent the same kind of judgment. One was partial. The other was total. From a literal view, we’ve already looked at what that would look like, we just read it. From an allegorical view, this would be a judgment that will probably bring about famine, will probably make destitute those who make their living in water, and because this judgment is total, it will wreak havoc on the world’s food supply and the world’s water supply. And then the angel in charge of the waters declares that this is just and right and then the altar in heaven responds accordingly. And many people have drawn parallels that this is God’s way of declaring that He has multiple grounds for doing what He’s doing. And the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun. The sun was allowed to scorch people with fire and they were seared and they cursed God and refused to repent and glorify Him in a very similar fashion to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. So, this could certainly mean that something in the atmosphere, something in the weather, something is going to change. And by the way, I should insert here that it it’s not clear, like, these happen day after day after day or month after month after month or even year after year after year. We don’t know how long it takes for these things to happen and proliferate and cause their desired results. So, like we don’t know if these things take seven seconds to pour out these seven bowls or they take, you know, seven days, seven months, seven years, seven hundred years, we don’t know. From an allegorical view, one way of looking at this is that, the patterns that everyone is used to working and operating within is disrupted. And this scorching heat is a metaphor for how difficult things are becoming, things that people put their security in, especially economically, aren’t working. And metaphorically it’s scorching people. Or this could be a view that this change, that’s happening either in the atmosphere or economically, is bringing about famine, the food supply is touched. And this comes from Deuteronomy, where it’s explained that the people who break the covenant will be consumed by burning heat. And this is linked to being wasted by famine and all of the economic implications of a mass worldwide famine. But again, there’s only a hardening of the heart, bringing about the fifth Angel pouring out his bowl on the throne of the beast and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. And a similar plague fell upon Egypt from the book of Exodus chapter 10. So, in this plague, the throne of the beast itself is attacked and affected by this plague of darkness. Whether you’re looking at the beast as an embodied person that becomes kind of this dominant figure or whether it’s the whole world system that is consolidating its power together and claiming everyone within its realm to be its property. Everything is plunged into darkness. So, if you want take kind of more of a futurist literal view, then something happens with the power or something like that. Things are plunged into darkness. But allegorically, and truly the majority of scholarship on this would say, this this darkness is confusion. And people are thrown into darkness because of what is happening and is very, very confusing. They’re gnawing their tongues, they’re in pain, they’re suffering this torment from the other plagues. They’re so deeply affected and things have become so unsettled that the foundation of the world system is becoming unstable. Then the sixth bowl was poured out on the great Euphrates and its water was dried up, preparing the way for the kings from the east. So, from an allegorical perspective, you have some allusions here to the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea on dry ground. But there are also prophecies in the Old Testament about the great Euphrates being dried up, prophecies from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah. And this actually happened. When the Persians went to war with the Babylonians and defeated Babylon, one of the ways that they did it was to divert the Euphrates, which then allowed King Cyrus to cross the river and unexpectedly invade and defeat Babylon. And that victory by Cyrus led to Israel’s release from their exile, their Babylonian exile. So, because this literally happened, many people think, okay, this Euphrates rivers in Iraq and Syria, and Turkey. Lots of soft going on. This is a real thing. This is going to really happen at some point in this process. At the same time, we’ve seen many references to Babylon. We’ve talked about the association with the Roman empire and why according to the time that John wrote this. We’ve also spoken allegorically about Babylon as the entire system that will come together to dominate the people that are opposed to God, the people who belong to the beast, in other words. And the reason that we’re bringing this up at all, at least at this point, is because of what comes next. Three evil spirits that look like frogs come out of the mouth, one each out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. All things that we’ve looked at previously, both literally and allegorically. And they’re responding to these plagues by performing signs, not unlike the magicians of Pharaoh in the plague story in the book of Exodus. And in response they perform signs and gather the kings of the whole world to go to battle on the great day of God and they draw everybody together to this place called Armageddon. And, of course, this image of frogs falls in line with the Exodus plagues as well. And some commentators have pointed out that this imagery was probably used because frogs croak. Right? So, they can be very noisy and loud and croaking, but it doesn’t mean anything. So, in response to these plagues they go out, they perform signs, they’re croaking, and there’s so much confusion happening. The people are in darkness, confusion is everywhere, things are coming apart at the seams, and everything comes to this place called Armageddon, or Har Megiddo, the mount or mountain of Megiddo. And Megiddo is an ancient city that sat at ancient crossroads. And its ruins still exist to today. I’ve been there many times. I’ve looked out over this valley that’s called Armageddon many times. There’s no mountain there though. Probably the nearest thing that could be called a mountain would be Mount Carmel. And as big as the valley might be, it’s not big enough for all of the armies of the world. So, we kind of get into some divergent thought because Armageddon, I mean, everybody’s heard of Armageddon. So, there’s all kinds of thought about it. And this is one of the places that we flip, often, from an allegorical or figurative view into a literal one. So, obviously, a literal view is somewhere…it’s not really a mountain…but somewhere around Megiddo, somewhere around Armageddon, this is all going to go down. Others would say, well, Old Testament prophecies of this sort, without exception, like, this kind of final battle idea, always takes place somewhere near Jerusalem. And with a futurist view, yeah, I mean, if you’re an airplane, Megiddo or Armageddon isn’t far from Jerusalem, but if you had to walk, like, if you were in John’s time, it would be like a two day journey. So, some would still can’t keep a literal view that this can happen, but Armageddon only plays part, like, it’s only one location in a sprawling war, while others would take a more figurative view, you know, just like Babylon. Babylon, the city, the ancient city of Babylon, has been in ruins for thousands of years. So, this must be at an allegorical view. Or the Euphrates River has been looked at allegorically for a long time. So, this must be an allegorical view. Same with Armageddon. This is not necessarily pinpointing a geographical location. It more allegorically represents the coming together of a disintegrating world system that subsequently, in part, destroys itself, which brings us to the seventh Angel pouring out the seventh bowl that is the seventh plague. And it’s thrown into the air and a loud voice from the throne says, it is done. This definitely has allusions to Jesus saying, it is accomplished or it is finished. And whether you are, like, from that point on, from verse 18 on, whether you are reading literally, or whether you are reading allegorically and figuratively, things go berserk. And that’s where we ended our reading yesterday.

In today’s reading, one of the angels who had one of the seven bowls, so one of the angels who poured out a plague came and talked to John and took him away in the spirit in order to show him what was happening to, what is known as, the whore of Babylon as all of this is taking place. And we can read this figuratively for a couple of reasons. One, John is caught up into the spirit. So, whatever he is seeing, whatever vision he is seeing, is a spiritual one, but also because the angel explains to John what the symbols represent. So, John sees a woman sitting upon a beast in the desert. She is ornately and seductively clothed. And she was drunk, but she was drunk on the blood of God’s holy people, those who had stayed pure, who had stayed true, who kept their light burning, who kept their witness in the world. And John was astonished. But the angel said why are you astonished? Let me tell you what this all means. And he says, the beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the abyss and go to its destruction. And it’s been pointed out that this is probably a parody or a mockery of the beast. So, we’re very familiar with how this would be said of God, the One who was, the One who is, the One who is yet to come in. And in this case the beast is, the one who once was, who now is not, and yet will come up out of the abyss to go to its destruction. Right? So, the one who has been trying to make himself God, who has been trying all along to elevate himself above God, cannot and will not prevail. So, on the one hand when you look at this more literally and say that this is what will happen to Satan. More figuratively, we can say this is what will happen to the entire system of evil that exists in the world, with the devil simply being the personification of all evil, because the angel then goes on to describe kings and kingdoms, little and small, who have been and are still coming and will all find the same destiny. We’re not going to get into all that because it would take way, way, way, too much time because there’ve been so many associations with, you know, who these kingdoms, these kings, these powerful kings, these smaller kings, who this all could be. And I don’t want to wander into even well-thought-out conjecture. What happens though, is that the beast and the 10 horns, likely representing a very powerful faction of this, the world system of evil, that demands worship from its people in ownership of its people is falling apart. Because John is told that the beast will hate the prostitute. So, the beast will hate the whore of Babylon. So, this world system of religion and politics and economics and military is coming apart. The beast with the 10 horns hates the prostitute and they bring her to ruin and leave her naked and eat her and burn her with fire. So, they destroy that aspect of their own kingdom. The plagues have done the work of cracking the foundations and the entire system of evil is coming apart. And that is where we end up today.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You, we thank You, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for the time that we had to celebrate Your arrival, the beginning of all of this yesterday. And as we press in to finish this year well and to finish this year strong, we invite Your Holy Spirit to continue to speak to us through Your word. And we ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudibiible.com is the website. It’s home base. It’s where you find what’s going on around here. There’s been plenty of things. It’s been…I’ve been, like, pulling my hair out for the last couple of weeks. There’ve been so many things that are happening.

The brand-new Daily Audio Bible app is available. And it is available free on the Google Play store and in your Apple App store. And it’s been exciting to hear from so many of you who are now using the new app. If you have the old app, you might want to consider updating to the new app, because the old app will begin to be phased out over than the next little bit. All you have to do is go to your app store, whether Google Play or Apple App store and search for “Daily Audio Bible mobile app”. That’s the new one. Because we have a couple of them, so, just want to make sure you get the right one – “Daily Audio Bible mobile app”. If you use the Daily Audio Bible web player then you’re already using the new one and your set to go. So, make sure you get the new app. Get it installed. Get going. Get ready for the new year. Tell all of your friends they can download it for free and go through it with you. And this is an exciting time.

And we’re also getting ready to launch Daily Audio Bible Chronological. And we talked about it, what, about a week ago with China when she came on. That will begin January 1st. But those channels are in the new app, in the new web player, all set to go. So, I guess, the long and short of the story is make sure you download the new app.

Also, want to remind you about the More Gathering for women, which is our annual women’s conference that takes in April. Early registration for that lasts until the end of the year. So, take advantage of that if you plan to come. Hope you do. You can find out all about that moregathering.com. Or just go to dailyaudiobible.com and go to the Initiatives section and you’ll find everything you want to know.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible here as we approach the final days of the year, then, like I always say, thank you. And I always say that because that’s true. We do what we do together. Thank you for your partnership. There’s is a link on the homepage and dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the new Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174. And if you want to be able to receive a receipt for that giving in the year 2017 then that would have to be postmarked or received by the 31st of December.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi Daily Audio Bible family. This is Mimi in Atlanta. I just want to ask for prayer. Jay from New Jersey was praying for reconciliation for my family years ago. He called in and told me that he was praying. And I’m hoping he’s listening because he’s been struggling. And Jay you’re still being prayed for, but I just want you to know that mountains are being moved. Rick is the dad. Joshua and Nathan are the two sons that are grown that have just struggled terribly with reconciling and forgiving and walking in newness after their stepdad passed in 2013. They’re just struggling and the Lord is moving and doing amazing things. So, I just want to let Jay know that you’re still being prayed for and to know that your prayers are being answered Jay. Each one of us as we’re praying for one another, it’s huge what happens. I’m hearing everybody call in and giving praise reports. Blind Tony…oh my gosh…you started my morning. Your voice is heaven in my heart. And yes, Victoria. S., she…y’all just…y’all just go to those places when you pray and when you bring your gifts because we’re having to learn to walk by faith, which is not site. So, Tony, you’re helping us come along to the deeper places of life. And your prayers are just amazing, your heart for all of us. Viola, I’m missing you too. Ladies, I’ve signed up for More Gathering. Hello!!! I think I may have been, like, one of the first ones. I told you all last year that I was going to do that and I’ve done it. So, by faith, I’m trusting God and I’m just throwing it out there, I have a house, if you come to Atlanta and you need to stay, it’s right here just an hour from Sharp Top mountain. So, thank you all so much. Blind Tony you are a blessing.

Hi. This is Kathy from San Diego. And I just heard one of the callers talking about, I believe it’s Tony from Toledo, a woman who received the call about the death of her 21-year-old son due to an overdose. And I just want to let her know that I completely understand. I lost my son a little over a year ago. Got that same call. And I’m just here to say that God is gracious and He’ll carry you through and that I will pray for you and that He will lift you up. When we get to where we’ve never been before and the grief that is this great, all you can do is be carried by God and I pray right now for Tony and her family, for the grace of God that surpasses everything she’s ever known will lift her up to see her through, and day by day, she will walk with faith, and she will feel blind and she will feel loss and pain and she will find out one of the greatest truths that you can only find out through experience and that is, and He is with you still. And I ask that God, holy God, You would show Your compassion and Your comfort and give her the wisdom she needs. Her family and everyone around her Lord, I just ask that You would be glorified, that there is good that will come one day, and she just has to hang on, and she will find out that You are the best all-inclusive God that takes it all into consideration, and especially when we don’t understand. And so, Tony, I am with you in spirit as so many others are and I just pray that you will hold on and that God will provide you everything you need. Amen.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family. It’s James R. the Teacher Redeemed…the Whatever in LA. I’m just calling to say thank you for all your prayers for myself and my wife for me getting done with loads and loads of work at the end of a semester for my teaching and my classes I’m taking and my wife for the end of her pregnancy. We now have a brand new beautiful daughter, 8 lbs., 3 oz. on December 17th and we literally had about 3 hours warning from the beginning of labor to the time that that little beauty just popped out. Yeah. Feeling your prayers guys. Everything lined up so perfectly. Thank you so much. Love you guys and if you know me on Facebook, if you see me on Facebook DAB Friends, you can see all sorts of pictures. Love you guys. Bye.

Hi. I’m calling in for Nony, She’s a 15 year old girl is a first time caller and has just started listening to the Daily Audio Bible. Nony, I just want to encourage you that you are not alone. You do have us. We are your friends, we are your family. My name is Rayna, I live in Los Angeles California and the journey that you are about to take is amazing. Don’t turn back. Stay focused. I can’t even tell you what this app, the Daily Audio Bible family has done for me. And I’m just so excited for you and I will keep you in prayer. And again, you are not alone in this journey. You have all of us here. And there’s so many. I am so thankful and God bless you Nony, wherever you are. Stay focused and just enjoy this journey. It’s beautiful. Jesus loves you. We all love you. God, bless. And I love all my Daily Audio Bible family, by the way. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Brian, for your ministry.

12/25/2017 DAB Transcript

Zechariah 8:1-23, Revelations 16:1-21, Psalms 144:1-15, Proverbs 30:29-31

Today is December 25th. Merry Christmas! Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is great to be here with you today and every day, but today we rejoice because the Savior has arrived, the Savior has come for us. So, Merry Christmas everybody. It’s good to have a few minutes with you together as we take the next step forward in the Scriptures, which includes Christmas day. It’s exciting in the midst of all of the celebration and festivities that should be happening, we should be rejoicing, that we take these few moments just to step away, take a deep breath, re-center ourselves, and allow God’s word to have a place in our Christmas celebration. So, we started reading from the Gods Word translation yesterday as we began our week and that’s what we’ll continue to do all week. And we’ll pick up where we left off yesterday, Zechariah chapter 8 verses 1 through 23 today.

Prayer:

Father, it is Christmas day, a day of festive activity the world over, and it’s all in celebration of Your arrival. And, so, we rejoice. We rejoice that You cared enough that You loved us enough to come for us. We worship You Lord. And as we give and receive gifts, we consider the amazing gifts that You have bestowed upon us, and that You bestow upon us every single day - the gift of breath in our lungs, the gift of life itself, the gift of one another, the gift of family, the gift of community, the gift of Your word, the gift of Your Holy Spirit to lead and guide us into all truth, the gift of your Sacrifice, restoring us to God bridging the chasm that could not be spanned. The gifts that You have poured out on us are overwhelming and good and on this Christmas Day we certainly can say, joy to the world, the Lord has come. So, come, Holy Spirit into all the activities of this day. May Your presence be felt in all of our travels, in all of our gatherings, in all of our celebration. Come, Jesus. We pray in Your holy name. Amen.

Song:

Joy to the World

12/24/2017 DAB Transcript

Zechariah 4:1-5:11, Revelations 14:1-20, Psalms 142:1-7, Proverbs 30:21-23

Today is the 24th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Welcome to a brand-new shiny, sparkly, new week. And today, obviously is Christmas eve. So, it’s exciting to be here on this day of celebration as we prepare our hearts to commemorate and celebrate the coming the arrival of the Savior. And like we do every beginning of every new week we’ll switch translations. And this week we’ll read from the Gods Word translation. And, of course, pick up where we left off. Zechariah chapter 6 verse 1 through seven verse 14 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we read from Revelation chapter 15 today. And what we read is actually a transition into what’s coming next. And at this point I’m going to try to start zooming us out toward the major themes that arise in the rest of this book because we’ve spent substantial time together, you know, kind of diving into some of the minutia, which is so interesting because what we’ve talked about in the book of Revelation since we started this year is probably less than 5% about what scholars and interpreters and theologians and translators and anthropologists have to say. And we’ve been doing that, in part, to just simply acknowledge the complexities of interpretation of the book of Revelation. It’s easy enough to say, well in the end, Jesus wins, that’s all I need to know about the book of Revelation. And yes, God having the final say in bringing His kingdom to the world is certainly good news. But this book wasn’t written just to give that assurance. This book was to remind believers to endure and stay true until the very end. And that’s something that the book of Revelation will not allow us to forget. And it’s very important that we do not forget it. But along with that comes a lot of symbolism and statements that have been interpreted in very diverse ways. And these diverse theological understandings have been so influential that entire denominations of Christian believers have formed around them. And at the Daily Audio Bible, we’re all over the map, like, literally all over the map, geographically, but we’re also all over the map in the kind of church we go to the kind of understandings that we have. So, I’m trying to get behind all of that and look at some of the main ways that this book has been looked at. But I think we’ve gone into it sufficiently enough to know, okay, this has actually been looked at a number of ways and here are some of the main ways so that we can zoom out a little bit because it can certainly get a bit tedious. So, we begin our reading today with something spectacular and amazing, another sign in heaven, and seven plagues that are the final expression of God’s anger. So, we’re told what’s going to happen. And then John sees what looks to be a sea of glass mixed with fire and everyone who was victorious, everyone who stayed true, kept their witness, kept the light burning, standing on the sea. What an amazing sight to see. And their standing on the glassy sea, which, you know, so they’re walking on water, as it were, which may be an allusion to Jesus doing the same thing. And these people are holding God’s harps and singing something interesting. They’re singing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. So, we begin to see clearly, Exodus imagery. Right? The imagery when the children of Israel left Egypt and went into the wilderness in order to attain the promise land. And that imagery snaps a bunch of things into place by paralleling God’s judgment by sending plagues upon Egypt in order to force them to relent, acknowledge God, and set his people free. And, in like fashion, we begin to see that this is kind of the pattern God is using in the book of Revelation with these final judgments. So, when God is bringing plagues down upon Egypt, what that does is make life harder for the children of Israel who have been enslaved. So, it gets harder for them before it gets better and they’re even complaining to Moses about the whole thing, that he’s come in and said he’s carrying the words of God, and he’s going up against Pharaoh. But it’s only making things worse for them, which would parallel God beginning to bring his kingdom and all of the unrest that that brings. And the conflict that brings simply makes it harder for God’s people temporarily, but in the end they find their freedom and eternal rest. And when the victory is complete, when the children of Israel are truly free, Moses has a song to sing. And, so, we’re seeing this kind of addendum to that song sung by all God’s people. But they’re doing this while standing on a sea that is like glass and fire. And this has been paralleled with the Red Sea experience that the children of Israel faced when they had to go over on dry land and Pharaoh’s army was then washed away. So, after they sing their song then the temple opens in heaven. Seven angels with seven plagues come out of the temple. One of the four living creatures gives the seven gold bowls full of God’s anger to the Angels and the temple is filled with the glory of God. And that’s where we end today, with the set-up, but we see the clear parallel imagery of the Exodus story and these plagues just as they descended upon Pharaoh are about to be poured out upon the earth, but will have to wait for that until tomorrow.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. And we ask your Holy Spirit to continue the work of planting the word in our lives and in our hearts. We ask You to continue to bring up things in us that need to be healed and restored or let go of. It is our desire that we be among those who can sing this song. So, come Holy Spirit and continue to do the work of sanctification within us. And we also acknowledge that this is the eve of the day that we celebrate Your birth, Your arrival, Your invasion of this planet on our behalf. And, so, even as we celebrate the joy of Your arrival, the joy of Christmas, we also acknowledge that we long for Your second arrival, for your return. And we thank You for the glimpse that You have provided us with as we move to the book of Revelation. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website. It is certainly home base and it is certainly where you find out what’s going on around here.

Today is Christmas eve, so it’s no doubt a very, very busy time for most people. We had a beautiful Daily Audio Bible family Christmas this year with our Christmas program. I just want to take this one more opportunity to tell you how much we love you and how much we wish you a very Merry Christmas.

Song:

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

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12/23/2017 DAB Transcript

Zechariah 4:1-5:11, Revelations 14:1-20, Psalms 142:1-7, Proverbs 30:21-23

Today is the 23rd day of December, which makes this Christmas eve, eve. And it’s also the eve of a brand-new week. So, here we are. It’s Christmas time and we’re at the end of another of our weeks together. And we only have a week and today left in this year. So, let’s make it count and let’s finish strong. We’ve been reading from the Names of God Bible all of this week, so that’s what will do today. Zechariah chapter 4 verse 1 through 5 verse 11.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Revelation, we should be noticing by now that there are things that are happening in the earthly realm and there are things that are happening in the heavenly realm and the book of Revelation is showing us both. So, we see a series of things happening on the earth and then we will have a pause and we’ll see what’s happening in heaven, probably simultaneously. And, so, we’re moving between these realms while also looking at, you know, what is literal and what is allegorical, what is symbolic and what is not, and discovering how the tensions around this book arise from the different ways of reading this book. So, as we read from the 14th chapter of Revelation today, we can kind of see things happening in both the earthly realm and the heavenly realm pretty clearly. The lamb, so Jesus standing on Mount Zion, so this is the earthly realm, unless there’s another Mount Zion in the spiritual realm, or unless this is a symbol itself. The lamb is standing on Mount Zion. It’s 144,000 people with him that have been sealed with the name of God on their foreheads. But then John says he hears a sound from heaven, so we’re kind of like in both places, and this sound is like raging water and it’s super loud like thunder, and it turns out it’s music coming from heaven. There’s a new song being sung, a new one, in front of the throne of God and only the 144,000 people who are with the lamb at Mount Zion are able to learn this heavenly song. And this 144,000 people are pure, like virgins, and they follow the Lamb wherever he goes and they were bought from among humanity as the first fruits offered to God. So, immediately, we see the contrast between the beasts that we saw yesterday and what we’re looking at now. So, we’re seeing a very, very clear delineation between the forces of darkness, who are trying to claim sovereignty and make it look like they are supreme, and God who is sovereign and who is supreme and doesn’t need to make it look that way, it just is that way. So, we’re seeing a clear delineation between the two sides here. There are scholars who think that this picture is a heavenly picture because the lamb referred to in the book of Revelation is only ever spoken of as being in heaven, while others would say, no, this is this for real, this is really, really going down and it’s happening on earth at Mount Zion. The Messiah has come, he will defeat the foe, this is the end of time, this is the final consummation. While still other scholars would say, no, not quite that. This Mount Zion that’s being referred to here is a reference to this new Jerusalem. And, so, it will all come down out of heaven and become a part of the new creation as this old one is passing away. The 144,000 people, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen 144,000 people. And, so we’ve already spent some time talking about whether we should look at this literally or allegorically. But we’re looking at literally, then it’s 144,000 people with the lamb on Mount Zion on planet Earth. If we’re looking at allegorically then 144,000 is a number that represents completeness. This is the complete family of God who are being born into the new creation. They have stayed true, they have kept their light burning, they haven’t fallen into idolatry, they haven’t compromised, they have been pure, they’ve been virginal, which probably doesn’t refer to human sexuality, but more of the purity of their heart to God, their faithfulness to God throughout anything that comes their way. The picture here is of a people who follow the lamb wherever he goes. And we know that Jesus went to the cross. So, these people are so in love with Jesus, so passionate for Him, and pure in their motivations toward Him that, like Him, they’re not holding onto their life, there human life isn’t the end of anything and they know it, so they will follow Jesus wherever He goes. And then the book of Revelation begins to turn us toward imagery of a final harvest. We have harvest imagery. An angel flies overhead speaking the good news to every nation, tribe, language and people. And the angel’s telling the earth, fear God, give Him glory, the time is come. So, in other words, this is about to happen. This is the final harvest and judgment. And, so the call goes out to worship the one who made the heaven and earth. Then another angel, a second one, comes and declares that Babylon has fallen. So, if Babylon the great has fallen is a literal thing, then that happened. It just happened to happen more than five centuries before Jesus was born. If Babylon is a metaphor, which it has been used in other Old Testament prophecies, then Babylon was an ancient world empire that led the children of Israel into captivity. In John’s time, when the book of Revelation was written, this would correspond to the Roman empire. Babylon attacked Jerusalem and destroyed the first Temple and lead God’s people into exile. The Roman empire destroyed the second Temple and all of Jerusalem, forcing them into exile. And, so, the two have been linked for centuries. So, symbolically, Babylon is any ungodly system on earth that dominates the social and economic and political systems that control people and move them toward idolatry. And, of course, idolatry is a big deal in the whole Bible, including the book of Revelation. And it doesn’t just mean bowing down in front of an idol or a false god, rather, it represents anything that we are willing to give our hearts to in hopes of life in return. So, this second angel is declaring that that is over. There will be no more deceptions. This is the actual end of all of that. And then there is a third angel who also has a message that spoken in a loud voice. ‘Whoever worships the beast or it’s statue, whoever is branded on his forehead or his hand will drink the wine of God’s fury which has been poured unmixed into the cup of God’s anger. Then he will be tortured by fiery sulfur in the presence of the holy Angels and the lamb. The smoke from their torture will go up forever and ever. There will be no rest, day or night, for those who worship the beast or its statue or for anyone branded with its name.’ And, so here is where we begin to step into some theological quicksand because what exactly eternal punishment is going to look like has been up for debate for a long time. And the debate rages on and it gets very contentious. But entire theological understandings and worldviews and dogmas come out of spout passages like this. And so, what I’m doing here, in taking us through the book of Revelation this year like this, isn’t intended to tell you here’s the right way, here’s what you should believe. That would be me trying to interpret this for you so that you then don’t have to think about it. What I try to do when we get to hotly debated portions of Scripture is to approach it from a scholarly perspective with the intention of trying to get behind everything that we’ve heard and find out where it came from, how these conclusions were arrived at. So, we’ve got this third angel, basically, with this last and final warning declaring that anyone who has aligned themselves with this world system, or figuratively, those who are worshiping the beast and the serpent who gave the beast its power, will find themselves in torment. So, let’s look at, what I think are, the two major schools of thought regarding this torment, from which all of the debate arises. On the one hand, you have those would say, okay, human beings can only live so long, like, they didn’t live forever in their physicality in their human body, that’s maybe in 100 years or less. So, if this punishment is actually eternal then it’s probably not in the human body, which pulls us immediately into the spiritual realm, which also naturally pulls us toward symbolic understanding. So, looking at it that way, the torment is a spiritual thing, a psychological suffering. And, according to the book of Revelation, this is going to happen in front of Jesus and the holy angels. So, yes then, those who have thrown in their lot with the beast. Right? Those who have put their faith in a world system that is demanding worship will certainly experience a great amount of torment as they have to stand before the lamb and his holy angels and acknowledge him even as they realize that they will be separated from him. And in this way of thinking, the fire that we’re talking about here is a figurative thing because, throughout the book of Revelation and throughout the Bible, fire is a figurative term for judgment and suffering, especially the suffering that results from judgment. And part of the reason that there is even this line of thought is because of the fact that this passage seems to be taken from Isaiah, from the 34th chapter of Isaiah, in which God is describing judgment that he is going to place on Edom. And he says, ‘her valleys will be turned into pitch, and her land into brimstone, and her land will be as pitch burning night and day, and it will never be quenched, and her smoke will go up, it will be made desolate throughout her generations.’ So, in this case, the readers of the time and everyone since wouldn’t say, okay, this was a judgment on the land of Edom and, wow, it came true because Edom is still smoldering. And it’s kind of one of the wonders of the world. People go there to see the smoldering of Edom because it will go on forever. The point was that Edom would never rise again. And, so, this is where the idea of annihilation comes from, because this passage is based on the passage in Isaiah, and Isaiah is speaking of the historical annihilation of Edom because of its sin, and because he used figurative language of smoldering or burning going on forever, because it’s agreed-upon that this is figurative, then the absolute and complete destruction of Edom parallels the absolute and complete destruction of these people that stand before the lamb for their judgment. And following this line of thought, then they simply cease to exist at all. Now the other line of thinking is very different. For the most part, scholars agree that the whole line of thinking that I just told you is a possibility, but later in Revelation, the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are judged, and they are banished to the lake of fire and brimstone where they will be tormented day and night forever. And we haven’t gotten to that in the book of Revelation yet but we will, but it comes into play here, because it doesn’t seem to be indicating that they would just cease to exist at their judgment, that they would be annihilated. It seems to be that they will be tormented day and night forever. And because there are so many parallels between the path of good and the path of evil in the book of Revelation, it is argued that God’s people, ultimately, will receive eternal rest and shalom, while those who are not God’s people will, at the same time, be receiving eternal damnation. And that is because this word, torment, that’s used in Revelation, or for that matter in the Bible, doesn’t seem to indicate a person’s ceasing to exist. So, many scholars have argued that God’s punishment involves real, ongoing, forever, eternal, conscious torment, while acknowledging that where the lake of fire is or when the lake of fire is is unknown. So, following that line of thinking then, the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever, which isn’t just a picture of a past judgment or present judgment, but of an ongoing one. The smoke of torment isn‘t the smoke of complete destruction, it’s the smoke of their torment contrasted with the welcoming rest that God’s people receive. So, those in torment would see annihilation as a relief, but they get no rest. So, from there, from these kinds of lines of thinking, begin to branch out and be reinforced with all kinds of things. And, so, there are many ways of looking at it through different lenses. The book of Revelation gets it right as it comments on that scene. ‘In this situation God’s holy people who obey his commands and keep their faith in Jesus need endurance’, which would seem to be a superior stance to theological warfare against each other. So, after that, there’s a white cloud and someone who looks like the Son of Man sat on the cloud. He’s got a crown on his head, sharp sickle in his hand, and an angel comes out of the temple. So, out of the temple of God, we’re talking spiritually here, before the throne of God, and he cries out to swing the sickle and gather the harvest. The time has come. This is the end. The harvest is overripe. So, the Son of Man does this, and we can assume this is Jesus, although there are scholars who argue, very persuasively, that this is an angel, but, nevertheless the harvest was completed. Then another angel comes out and he’s got a sharp sickle and there’s, like, one more pass. Some scholars would argue, persuasively, that this is the last ingathering on the earth of those who belong to God, while others would argue, very persuasively, that this entire scene, where the cloud and the Son of Man, and the Angels in the harvest, and the sickles, this is all a picture of a final judgment on earth. And that’s where we end today. And this is where it’s important for us to zoom out a little bit and remember that what we’re talking about here is the absolute and utter overthrow of evil which results in all things being made new. And it happens when God ordains it. And however this judgment that we read about today happens, whatever it ends up looking like, it descends upon those who have had every opportunity to avoid it. So, rather than zooming in on people, we need to zoom out and see that this is the overthrow of evil, period, final and complete. This is not meant for those who have the seal of God on their forehead. Right? So, this is not meant for those who have stayed true no matter what. And what would an existence without the existence of evil even be like? Well, we’re going to find out. We’re going to find out in the book of Revelation. And were going to find out for ourselves one day. 

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for this glimpse. It’s definitely a situation where we are seeing through a glass darkly. But one thing that is very clear to us is that You are good, You are holy, You are righteous, and evil has no place with You, nor does it ultimately have any place with us. So, come Holy Spirit. We look forward to the day that all things are made new and we intend to keep the fire burning. We love You Lord. So, continue to plant Your word into our lives, transforming us into Your image. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here.

And it was a happy day to announce the launch of the new Daily Audio Bible mobile app yesterday. And I’m excited to get as many of us migrated over to the new app as quickly as possible. In part, so that you can start using and taking advantage of all that’s been built to continue to unite us together in community, but also to give us a real broad wide range of experiences to help us stress the system as we get ready to go into the new year. So, if you haven’t gotten the new Daily Audio Bible mobile app yet, go to your app store and get it. It’s completely free. Just search for ‘Daily Audio Bible mobile app’ and find that. If it says that that’s the one you’re looking for, because we also have that the older one that we’ve had for several years still in existence. So, search for ‘Daily Audio Bible mobile app’ at either your Google play store or your Apple App store and download the new app and start using it. It’s beautiful and a lot of planning and blood and sweat and tears went into this. So, be sure to get the new app and you can certainly tell anyone you want to about it now that it has been released. It is completely free to download and to use and to jump into community.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the new Daily Audio Bible mobile app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And as always if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports:

Hi beautiful family. This is Pastor Gene from Bradenton Florida. I want to say hi to all of you. I missed the opportunity to record in our online DAB Christmas party and I just want to wish everybody a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas. May God bless each and every one of us into a renewed relationship with our Savior and a stronger walk with God. And I also want to glorify the Lord today because my husband and I celebrate our 19th year anniversary and it wasn’t always cookies and cream. 9-½ years ago we walked into a Christian counselor office thinking that we had probably allowed the marriage to deteriorate too much. One of the most important things that she told me was, Gene you can be right and win or you can save your relationship. I don’t think you’re going to be able to do both off them. And since I love God with all of my heart and I did not want to preach into the gospel. I have to be honest, that that was my first motivation. I decided that I would lose the argument. My husband did exactly the same. And together we started rebuilding into what has become a wonderful marriage. Not perfect. We still have fights, we still have disagreements, we still hurt one another, but we are a lot more aware of how Satan can use one another to hurt each other and we are a lot more vigilant about our relationship. And, so, I use this testimony to encourage everybody that is married, whether their marriage is very happy or whether their marriage is on the rocks for each and every one of us to stay vigilant and to fight for the gift that God has given us in one another. I love you family, very, very much. Continue to pray us. We continue to rejoice in your victories and morn with you too. In His mighty name. This is pastor Gene from Bradenton Florida.

Good morning DAB family. My name is Sachem and I’m Gia. About a month ago my father asked you all to lift my sister and I up in prayer and we just wanted to take a quick moment to thank you all, specifically, Joyful Noise, for your prayers. We’ve been able to both feel them and witness them at work. I am professional soccer player and missionary in Europe. And though the harvest is plentiful the workers are few. I’m now home for Christmas. Yahweh has opened doors for the gospel to be shared with my teammates, for seeds to be planted with my coaches, fans, and opponents, and even for one player to give his life to Christ. So, while I was back I wanted to make sure we had an opportunity to share what the Lord was doing overseas. Please continue to pray for courage, open doors, and humility as I and the rest of Yeshewa’s servants in Europe seek to till the land for the kingdom. And as we would say over there, ___. Thank you and God bless you. Merry Christmas.

Hello DABbers. This is Sue. I’m going to read you a poem. I’ve always loved the night before Christmas poem and recited it to all of my younger brothers and sisters with my daughter. Here’s my version for you.

It was the night before Christmas and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse
The DABbers were waiting for Brian to start reading us __ and a smile no doubt
Saying fondly, it’s great to be here with you
While DABbers wonder what’s next in today’s rendezvous
Jill arrives with her special coffee cup in hand

Sitting down next to Brian for a chat with some friends
When out from afar comes a loud cheerful noise
Ezekiel’s here to spread Christmas joys
Get off the phone get the family Zekey is here
Bring cookies and enjoy the Christmas party cheer
The greetings from DABbers from all over the world
Express love for our Lord and for each other
The words whirl and swirl and rise like a dove
From those who listen and share Gods words of love
Praise and thanks from DABbers to God above
God’s gift to us on Christmas day is Jesus Christ His only son
We’re so grateful for this perfect gift
Oh God our dear Father now our journey has begun
Please hear our prayer and keep us strong to share the good news all year long
To sing and dance and help the lost find the peace and joy You offer
To all who accept you as our Lord and Savior
Love and Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night

From Sue C., Bakersfield, California

DABbers, hey, It’s Keith from New Hampshire. Listen, about 2 or 3 years ago I called up asking for prayer for son Asher. He was in a youth group at church, but he definitely was not walking with God and at the time, you know, I think I said he was a typical teen ager. He was really struggling, you know, caught up in the world and all of its attractions. And he got invited to go on a mission trip to Haiti. And he went with his youth group and I asked for prayers about that. Well, how times and things have changed. He’s 21 years old now. The Lord’s got a hold of his heart. He’s a converted man. He’s planning to go to seminary. He’s engaged to be married in May to a Godly woman. But he’s also working as an EMT. And I’m calling for prayer, more for him today. Last Saturday he got called on a call. And a little boy that he knows, that he saw on a daily basis in this town, was sledding and sled into the road and got run over by a car and was killed and Asher was one of the first on the scene, just performing CPR and trying to save him and he didn’t make it. And I saw Asher last night and he’s just really sad and really down. I’m worried about him because he’s relatively new in his faith. He’s got a strong faith, but I know that these types of things really can…the enemy can use them to really test us and try us. I just ask my community, please pay for Asher. Help him to see clearly that the Father of all has everything in His hands and He knows well beyond what we can fathom…the whys…and all the things that happen. So, please pray for Asher as we enter into a new year and he gets prepared for his wedding day and embarks on the life. And I thank you so much for the prayers before because I think he’s where he is today because of the DABber community for praying for him when I asked you to. Thanks so much. God bless.

12/22/2017 DAB Transcript

Zechariah 2:1-3:10, Revelations 13:2-18, Psalms 141:1-10, Proverbs 30:18-20

Today is December 22nd. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. And it’s great to be here with you as we approach the close of another week and we’re just days away from the Christmas holiday. Gosh, one week from today will be through all of that. Christmas time is here. And speaking of that, stay tuned all the way the end. There is a special announcement today. But first let’s turn to the Scriptures. Alright, now, we are traveling through the book of Zechariah in the Old Testament and the book of Revelation in the New. We’re reading from the Names of God Bible this week and today we’ll read Zechariah chapter 2 verse 1 through 3 verse 10.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we’re getting into the thick of it in the book of Revelation and we’re heading into some highly debated and contentious territory, which invariably means that it’s more well-known and you are likely to have heard many things about it. And our job here isn’t to, you know, interpret it correctly and set the record straight for everyone who’s been studying this for thousands of years. That would be fairly arrogant. What we’re trying to do is just walk into the territory, avoid the hysteria, and look at what the text says, and look at some of the main ways that this is been interpreted. So, we’ve got a beast coming up out of the sea, that had 10 horns, 7 heads, and 10 crowns on its horns and insulting…like a lot of symbolism. The beast that John saw was like a leopard. Its feet were like bears feet. Its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And all these symbols and, you know, bears feet, lion’s mouth, these have been associated with all kinds of things. So, this idea of coming up out of the sea could be literally just that. Somehow this beast just rose up out of the ocean, but it’s been noted that this appearance is most likely the kind of appearance that would happen from the ship. Not that the beast is a ship with the imagery itself. Like, if you’re standing on the on the beach and looking out at the ocean and something large, a big ship or something, comes onto the horizon. It looks like it’s coming up out of the sea. So, it’s something that’s coming. And a lot of the corresponding imagery here comes from the book of Daniel and the seventh chapter, in particular. So, there have been interpretations in antiquity of sea monsters that this is a sea monster coming up out of the sea because any allusions to sea monsters and that kind of thing in any of the Old Testament writings always represent evil or an evil kingdom or evil that is against, that is set against, God’s people and His covenant. Others say that the sea represents the abyss so that evil is coming up out of the abyss. And the crowns that this beast wears are false claims of sovereign authority. And this beast has been associated with ancient Rome for a very long time, very consistently. And that’s in part because that would’ve been the world that John understood when this was written and because of all the things were happening in the Empire at the time. But it’s deeper than that. In the Jewish writings, interpreting Daniel, or so many of the parallels for this portion of, well, for that matter, for all of Revelation comes from, those Jewish writers associated Daniel 7 with Rome. And perhaps this beast’s characteristics can be associated with allied empires and nations or just assimilated nations that are now part of the Roman Empire and they all, together, make up this one beast. But there’s wide interpretations if you’re looking at this from a presentest perspective, like, then you’d be looking at what’s happening now to make these identifications. If you’re a futurist, then this is something that can happen, and you make speculation. And then if you work your way back in history all the way to John’s time, then you find other associations. But the bottom line here is, no matter how these associations are made, or if they are correct, what’s happening here is not…it’s evil…evil is coming up and the serpent, who’s been associated with the devil, gives his power to this beast. So, all of a sudden, we have interesting parallels look like is very, very unholy trinity that’s materializing. So, whereas the father gave his authority to Jesus, now we have the serpent giving his authority to this beast. And, although this beast had seven heads, one of them had a fatal wound, but it’s fatal wound was healed. So, some almost, like, unholy resurrection imagery is here. And a lot of commentators over the years have associated this beast with the Emperor Nero, who committed suicide, but then there were all kinds of like Elvis style rumors that he wasn’t really dead and maybe that he had been spotted and there were people impersonating him and that maybe he was going to come back. But in the end, Emperor Nero’s death wasn’t fatal to the Empire and instead it showed the resolve in their power. So, a potential deathblow turns into a recovery. So, there’s just a good number of interpretations. And what happens from a straight reading of the text is that the world is dazzled by all of this and they worship the serpent. Right? Because it had given authority to the beast. So, you can see these parallels. They worship the beast and they praise by saying, who is like the beast, who can fight a war with it? Which is not unlike Old Testament declarations and prophecies, who is like our God, who is like you Lord, who could who could possibly fight with you, who could? This kind of stuff. And this beast was allowed to wage war against God’s people, and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation. And everyone living on earth worshiped it. Everyone, that is, whose name is not written in the book of life. So, this is the kind of place where you have to decide how you’re reading this. If you’re reading it from a literal perspective, then there is a sea monster unlike any creature we’ve ever seen before that is going to come up out of the sea and receive the dark powers of evil and claim sovereignty and the world is generally going to believe in and worship this beast who will subsequently consolidate power and go to war with God’s people. And this would personify evil into one being or at least this activity into one being. And, of course, the beast is associated with imagery of the Antichrist, who has been depicted as, you know, as some kind of emerging world leader, a person in popular culture. So, we run into this problem of trying to decide time. You know, when will this happen? Are we to look allegorically and figuratively or are we to look literally at these kinds of things. And we have to acknowledge that, for the most part, the figurative interpretation is where we land. But, so often, we just flip to literal because we’ve been kind of programed to do that. And, so, when we get to the Antichrist we have to determine whether we’re talking about one person or if we’re talking about anything that is anti-Christ. So, for example, in first John, which we read recently, we were told that. ‘you have heard that the antichrist is coming. Even now many antichrists have come. And who is the liar except the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the antichrist.’ So, we have to decide if this is embodied in one person at some point in history or if we’re talking about the world consolidating itself in a way that is anti-Christ and oppressive to God’s people. And more than oppressive, antagonistic, and at war with God’s people. But, nevertheless, according to the Scripture, this beast was allowed to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it’s hard to make that allegorical. Because if we’re talking about spiritually then we would say that this war against God’s holy people conquers them spiritually. That would be hard to reconcile because God has put His seal on their foreheads as we read earlier. And so much of the book of Revelation and so much of the New Testament itself is about enduring these things or these kinds of things, staying true, keeping the light burning. And we have to acknowledge, at least at this point in the book of Revelation, we haven’t seen any indications that God’s holy people are going to be zapped away from all this. It seems to be an encouragement to endure and keep the light burning like the rest of the New Testament does. And to keep us keep us focused on the fact that our bodily death isn’t the end of anything. And if we zoom out to the 30,000 foot view, we would have to say, this is what it looks like for the transition of the kingdom to come. And, so, there’s this conquering that takes place, which doesn’t necessarily mean killing, it means conquering. And this happens because the world follows this beast. Everyone worships this beast. Everyone who’s not written in the book of life. That book, I’m reading this from revelation, ‘that book belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered before the creation of the world.’ And this gets really contentious and really prickly because now we’re talking about predestination. And, generally, that’s the idea that everything was already preordained before it ever started. The way that this whole thing was going to go down was already preordained, including every name of every person that would be written in the book of life. Which brings up all sorts of things to think about, like, is my is my name in the book of life? Right? That would be the primary question. And what name is it exactly that is in the book of life if my name is in that book? For example, my name is Brian. Is Brian written in the book of life or did God give me a new name in the book of life or do I actually have a different name that was ordained from the foundation of the world and that’s how God knows me but my earthly parents gave me the name Brian? Is this an actual book or is this figurative language, simply describing everyone who belongs to God? And this idea of preordination or predestination or not has been a point of debate throughout pretty much the majority of church history. And I don’t think I’m qualified to do every shade and nuance of that and I know for certain we don’t have time. So, basically, on the one hand, we have the idea that everything was preordained. Everything that’s going to happen was already written and now it’s just playing out, including the lives of those who will ultimately be in the book of life and belong to God. This was preordained. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. Some were chosen to be God’s people and they will. There’s nothing they can do about it and it has nothing to do with what they do. The ones who are not written in the book of life, well, I mean, they simply weren’t written in the book of life. And, so, they are preordained to oppose God and God’s people. And all of this was predetermined before history began. On the other hand, you have a more collaborative view. And that would be that people get to make choices and those choices get to matter. It’s what I think Blaise Pascal called the dignity of causality. And, ultimately, that basically means that God loves us and we get to choose whether or not we love him back. And this plays out in a thing called a relationship. And this idea basically starts in the book of Genesis with Adam and Eve. They were able to make a choice to eat from the tree that was forbidden. And then throughout the rest of the Bible we encounter this overarching narrative that tells us that God is passionate for people and wants to collaborate and interact in life. The problem that gets prickly there, theologically, when viewed through the lens of predestination is that, everyone must be in the book, which can lead a person in all kinds of directions. So, on the one side, it doesn’t matter what you do, you’re either in the book are you not in the book and that was determined before history began. And, so, that can lead a person into all kinds of interesting directions. Whereas the idea that everyone is written in the Lamb’s book of life can also lead a person in all kinds of interesting directions. The idea here would be that humanity was destined for God. He wanted everyone to be with Him, everyone that was ever born, or, like according to second Peter, chapter 3, ‘the Lord is not slow in keeping His promise as some understand slowness, instead He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.’ Or from Romans chapter 6, ‘the death He died’, so Jesus, ‘the death Jesus died, he died to sin once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God.’ And, so, in terms of predestination, everyone is predestined for God but we get to collaborate in that choice and we can choose otherwise, thereby eliminating ourselves from this book of life. So, how you understand this definitely affects how you read the Bible, but it certainly affects the way you would understand the book of Revelation. And I think the book of Revelation is speaking correctly when it says, ‘in this situation God’s holy people need endurance and confidence.’ And then the next thing that happens from our reading today is that there’s another beast. And this one comes up from the earth and has two horns like a lamb but it talks like a serpent. So, now we have this great serpent whose given authority to this beast and now there’s a second beast. And we see these kind of father, son, Holy Spirit, these kind of parallels in a dark way here. And this second beast is able to perform all kinds of signs and wonders that are very deceptive for those living on earth. And it just kind of reiterates and consolidates the false authority and power of the serpent. And this second beast has a statue made of the first beast who was wounded by a sword and still lived. And then the second beast is allowed to put breath into that statue. And then that statue puts to death whoever will not worship it. And scholars have drawn parallels here for a long, long time and in significant numbers, that the imagery here would harken back to Daniel’s time when King Nebuchadnezzar made a statue that everyone had to fall down and worship when the trumpet blasted. And that’s what got Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego thrown into the fiery furnace. A literal reading of this section of Revelation would be a literal reading. There’s a statue of the first beast, who has been given the authority of the serpent. The second beast comes along. The statue comes to life. And anyone who won’t worship the statue then is killed. An allegorical reading would be that all of this symbolizes an empire or an authority, a national authority, that influences the entire world. And its consolidated its religious and its economic and political powers to stamp out anyone who will not go along with it. And God’s people are caught in the crosshairs. But one of the ways that this happens is also another very, very popular image that’s highly contentious. The way that it does this is that it causes everyone to either be branded on their right hand or on their forehead. Right? So, the mark of the beast. And, man, has that been debated and has that been imagined. And if you take a more presentest or futurist view of this, then it’s everything from you know, computer chips of some sort being, you know, deposited under the skin and all of this kind of stuff, what the mark of the beast is. So, if we move back a couple of millennia and we get ourselves back into John’s time when this is actually being written down, it would be, you know, a computer chip put under the skin isn’t even something they can conceive of, but a mark is, a tattoo of some sort is, a branding of some sort is. And, so, for the widely diverse interpretations about what exactly the mark of the beast is, we can probably safely say it’s some sort of branding that speaks to the fact that the beast sees its worshipers as his property. Whether you see the beast as a consolidated embodiment of a person that is evil or if you see it as a work of darkness in the world. So, the idea here is, if you’re not on board with that, then you’re going to be economically impacted tremendously and you will be driven underground because you can’t participate in the culture. So, we hear these things and then we literalize these things and then we try to imagine these things. But in the process, we might be missing the parallels because there are stark parallels between good and evil and between Jesus and the evil one. Before we ever got here, to the mark of the beast, we first saw the mark of God put on his holy ones. on their foreheads. And we had no problem looking at that allegorically. Like, we would all say yeah, you know, the mark of God is on my forehead. I am sealed in Christ. And we don’t, in any way, think about that as a computer chip or a tattoo, but then we get to the counter mark of the beast and we start literalizing. Whereas, a little bit more allegorical view would be that God has sealed those true and who have kept the lamps…that have kept their witness burning, while the forces of evil come in to counter that with the dark mark, after the same fashion, denoting who a person belongs to. And it is of note and quite interesting, this mark of the beast that can be on your hand or on your forehead, because in the book of Exodus, God tells the children of Israel that the law, the Torah, was to be a sign on their hand and a reminder on their forehead. It was a constant reminder of who they belonged to, who they were in covenant with, where their commitments were, where their loyalties were to lie. And Orthodox Jews continue, indeed, to practice that until today. All of this brings us down to the final verse that we read in today’s reading, the number of the beast, 666. And even saying it evokes hysteria in some hearts. And, so, we have to decide, is this a literal thing? I mean, can we add up the numbers and find out who this person is? Is this essentially a math question? And people who have been trying to look at it from that perspective have found lots of names over the centuries that would potentially fit the bill. Numbering a person’s name actually has a name, Gematria. And it basically goes like this, in ancient times, in certain ancient languages, there were no numbers per se, the letters of the alphabet also represented numbers. So, for example, in the Greek alphabet the first nine letters of the alphabet represented numbers one through nine. So, using this method, for example, the name Jesus would be the number 888 and this beast’s number is 666. So, going way back to the time of the writing of this, people have identified 666 with the Emperor Nero. But it took a little finagling. Nero wouldn’t just add up to that so they had to do Caesar Nero to make it work. Others have noted that there are discrepancies in the manuscripts. And, so, in some manuscripts the number’s 616. So, there’s been a lot of names that have showed up on the list of potential antichrist figures over the generations. And this is obviously where you go if you’re trying to do a more literal reading. But it’s fair to ask the question, you know, did John put a mathematical problem in the book of Revelation that was to disclose what was going to happen? Like, is this an intellectual mathematical exercise and only someone magical skills can actually figure this out? Or was John calling for insight, wisdom, and vigilance in this matter? And many scholars have noted that it doesn’t make a ton of sense for John to be so cryptic here when he’s being so outspoken. And if he’s trying to hide the number, like, if he’s trying to make this a riddle so that it’s kind of passed around as code, why he would be doing that? He’s already in exile and his whole message is to tell the church to be vigilant and keep their lamp burning and keep their witness strong and to stay pure and to stay true no matter what happens, even if they have to die. So, doing this in code has its own set of problems. But if we continue to look at this allegorically, there are some things that could be said. First would be the use of the number seven in this book, and not just in this book, throughout the Bible, but in particular in the book of Revelation. Right? So, like, there’s seven lampstands, there’s seven seals, there’s seven trumpets. And many scholars over many centuries would say, seven is a number that seems to indicate completion in the Scriptures. Right? So, God made the world in six days and then on the seventh it was complete, He rested, as one example. And as we travel to the book of Revelation, six things happen and then there’s kind of a pause, and then the seventh one. And the six things seem to have to do with the judgment, whereas the seventh thing that happens, like, the seventh trumpet has to do with the consummation of the new, the new kingdom, this thing that God is doing. So, the number six then is a picture of something that is incomplete. And to say this three times, 666, is like the ultimate of incompleteness. So, whereas God is moving to complete things, to make all things new again, the dark forces of evil in the world are perpetually and will only ever be incomplete. So, on the one hand you have a personified antichrist who embodies evil and sort of a picture of a dark trinity that will take over and ultimately try to stamp out God’s people. And one of the ways of consolidation of power will be the mark of the beast that will, maybe, be a computer chip that’s put under your skin somewhere or something like that or you have an allegorical view that shows us that the dark powers that are evil, evil that is in the world is moving the world toward utter and complete incompletion and that will invariably lead to difficult times. But God’s people have to take the long view and remember that we are not rooted only in our physicality. At the end of our physicality isn’t the end of anything. And that is where we end up in today’s reading.

Prayer:

Father we thank You for Your word and we thank You for the way that it stretches us and challenges us and forces us to consider beyond what we think we know. And we’re grateful for that. We’re grateful that You are committed to our maturity. And we’re grateful that You’re making all things new. And that is our hope. And that is where our faith lies, that in the end all things are restored and made new. So, come Holy Spirit, and plant what we’ve heard today into our lives, and may it yield the fruit of the Spirit in us and in the world. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website and its home base. It’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And I’ve got a big announcement.

So…pay attention. A couple days ago we released the new web player and many of you have been using that for the last couple of days. That’s very awesome. And those of you use the web player, you began to notice all the new things that you can do and how it’s all interconnected. It is all interconnected. The new app, the web player all connects so that wherever you Journal, however, your listening, it’s all there. In addition to the new web player, we can now tell you the new app has been released to the public. And  because of those of you who contributed to the Global Campfire Initiative, it is released to the public, completely free. So, if you have an Android or an Apple device, you can now also begin using the new Daily Audio Bible app. And you can begin telling your friends because it's…they can download it for free. But before you race off to do that. Couple things I want to tell you. 1) When you get the new app or using the new web player. The first thing is can ask you to do is login. Of course, you don’t have to login. You can continue as a guest and use it. No problem. But logging in lets you use it to its full capacity. For example, it will check off the days that you’ve listen to so that you can quickly find days that you may have missed or you can star an episode and say, yeah, I want to remember this one, this one meant something to me, I want to come back to this later. That can’t happen if it’s not connected to your account because you’ll star it and there won’t be any account for it to be attached to. Same with journaling. You can Journal in this new app, you write your thoughts down. If something sticks out to you and you want to be able to come back to it and see what you were thinking or kind of Journal your way through the Bible and the things that really stood out to you and to be able to review them later, if there’s no account for that to be attached to then there’s no way to retrieve it. So, logging in lets you…I mean…that’s what we worked so hard for so many years…to kind of begin this process of connecting the community. So, I think the long and short of what I’m saying is, login. And if you don’t have an account at Daily Audio Bible, like, if you’ve never been on the website before, you’ve never done anything before, then just make one. There is no big brother at the Daily Audio Bible. Like, we don’t have any capacity to try to follow you around nor do we have any desire. So, don’t worry, logging in or making account, all that was developed simply to serve you. And then, here’s the other thing that you need to know right now, because it’s a brand-new app. So, it has to kind of, all the links have to start coming in so it can rise up in the search criteria in the app store’s. Search for ‘Daily Audio Bible mobile app’. That will take you to the new one, to the right one. Alternatively, you can just go to dailyaudiobible.com and scroll into the second box. It talks about the app and just click the button and it will take you right to it. And you’ll be able to install that for free and start using it. I can’t even believe I’m saying that. It’s been such a journey to get to this point. And my shout out to Daniel and his team in Kansas City and Chet and his team up in Indiana for all of the hard, hard work. These brothers have been around the Daily Audio Bible for years and they worked their butt off to get us here so [clapping] we salute them. I also want to remind everybody this is 1.0, like, this is the beginning. I mean, literally, dreaming this up happened years ago. And I went through that all on the Global Campfire Initiative, where it was, like, man, we realize we’re going to have to build something from the ground up and it took this long to get here. This is only the beginning of what we’re dreaming about for this new app and web player. So, we will be updating it along the way. And I will certainly keep you posted about that. But you can get it now. You can start using it now. You can start telling your friends about it now. Like, off we go and we pray.

Lord Jesus, you’ve seen that we’ve worked hard and diligently. You’ve seen that we’ve been faithful to this process and we’re just asking your blessing over it. You told us to do this and we have and then You told us to give it away and we are. So, come Holy Spirit upon this technology as it begins to wind its way around the world. Come, Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible in the last days of the year, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There’s a link right on the homepage. If you’re using the new app, you can press the Give button in the upper right hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow. Hopefully you’ll be listening on the new app or the new web player. Either way, I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports:

Hi. My name is Melanie. This is my first time ever doing something like this. I’ve just recently become close with God and I was wondering for prayer because I don’t really have any friends to go through this with. I’m still in January of 2017 and this is my first time reading the bible. It’s just prayer because I don’t know what I’m doing. And I don’t really have anyone to do it with. That’s it. Thank you. My name is Moni. I’m 15. Bye.

Hi this is Victoria S. I’m just calling in and would like to pray for some of the DABbers. I wanted to pray for you Eunice, the one with stage four cancer. I just want to let you know that God has got His hands on you and I’ve been having people telling me about people having stage four cancer are getting healed so much better because the medicine is so much advanced and I’m just praying that God to work that miracle for you and that you be able to tell someone what a great and wonderful God and what a healer He is. That God is able and He’s faithful. I would also pray for Lawrence in Birmingham…or Pelham in Birmingham, whatever you’re going through, I want to let you know, hold on, that God is with you. Right now, it may feel like he’s not with you. But remember, during a rough time He carries us. So, continue to remember that. I wanted to say hi to Joe the Protector. It’s so good to hear from you. I continue praying for you because of the different things that’s out there, that God will keep His protective hand and hedge around you. I just want to also pray for my friend Gloria and just…we want victory, we want miracles in her life in the challenges that she’s going through and want all the DABbers to pray with her and the challenges that she’s going through. I wanted to pray for the sister with the twins. I want to let you know, you continue to hold on my sister, that God is faithful. During the time of my pregnancy I had complications, but I stayed praying and I stayed listening to God and I let the doctors say what they wanted to say. One doctor had the nerve to say something to me because I had to go early and he was saying that if anything happened to my baby that he wasn’t going to do anything. And my husband got all upset…

Hello my DAB family. This is Mark S. from Sydney Australia. Today’s Tuesday, the 19th of December and I’ve just been through listening to the Tuesday podcast and I heard China speaking with Brian. And I’ve not been with DAB long enough to know this whole story. That’s the first time I’d heard the full story about China. Reading almost 10 years with the DAB…and that’s wonderful…and I want to pray too for her ministry too. So, heavenly Father, we come to You to say thank You so much for Brian and his family and the work they do for You as a family, Lord, and keeping them in love with You Father. Father, I ask You now to help China on her new mission that You’ve sent her on, Lord. Bless her and keep her inspired to keep reading Your word. Lord, may 100s of 1000s of young teenagers and young adults be inspired to come and listen to the word through China during next year Lord, that our next generation of Christians, Lord, will be risen up to worship You, Lord. Lord, I ask in Your name. I love you all family. And, once again, Brian and family, thank you so much for your commitment __. Love you all. Good bye.

Good morning DAB family. This is Victorious Vanessa from Maryland and I probably missed the greeting for the holiday. Today’s the 17th but I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, especially to Brian Hardin and his family. And from the family of Vanessa C. and her husband Tony (say Merry Christmas Tony – Merry Christmas), we’re wishing you a prosperous New Year. Expect great things and remember, He always wins…

12/21/2017 DAB Transcript

Zechariah 1:1-21, Revelations 12:1-13:1, Psalms 140:1-13, Proverbs 30:17

Today is the 21st day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It’s great to be here with you today for the next step forward through the Scriptures and the next step forward into Christmas week here. So, in the Old Testament, we read the book of Haggai in its entirety yesterday, which brings us today to the to the second to the last book in the Old Testament, the book of Zechariah. And we are already reading through the last book of the New Testament, the book of Revelation. So, we’ll be spending all the way through Christmas up to the last two days of the year here in the book of Zechariah and then moving to the final book, Malachi, in last couple of days of the year.

Zechariah:

Zechariah was written during the reign of the Persian King, Darius. And this falls within the same general time period that we were talking about when we read Haggai yesterday. Haggai and Zechariah, the book we’re about to read, they were contemporaries. And as we begin to read the book of Zechariah we will probably recognize pretty quick, right within the first few verses, one of the central themes of the Old Testament, one of the things that the prophetic voices were always saying, return to me and I will return to you. So, throughout this book of prophecy, God confirms His acceptance of authentic worship and it shows that God is indeed at work. It confirms God’s sovereignty and clarifies His control over the beginnings and endings of man, something that we’re also seeing in the book of Revelation. And this is not to say that God usurps a person’s free will. Everyone is responsible for their own choices. But God remains sovereign over all. And there are eight visions and two oracles that we will encounter in the book of Zechariah. And much of the imagery is a clear and beautiful foreshadowing of Jesus. And through that imagery we’re offered great hope and promise. And, so, we begin. Zechariah chapter 1 verses 1 through 21. And we’re reading from the Names of God Bible this week.

Commentary:

Okay, let’s go back into the book of Revelation for a minute. Yesterday we were talking about the book of Haggai, but up until that point we had been waiting for this seventh trumpet blow and that happened and we missed it. So, let’s go back and try to catch ourselves up. Because with the book of Revelation, like, if you blink you miss something and there’s just so much going on. So, six trumpets blew and then there was this, kind of, aside. There was sort of this side story going on in between the sixth and the seventh trumpets that we were working through. And we continued that yesterday where a temple being measured and two witnesses in sackcloth who are prophetic and speak on behalf of God being sent out for 260 days. And again, we have to pay attention to the way in which we’re reading this. We’ve looked at a lot of things through a literal perspective and understood, wow, this would be really hard to be literal. And then we’ve looked figuratively at a lot of things at what scholars have researched for centuries in order to understand the symbolism. But it’s interesting how we can move back and forth between literal and symbolic language. So, for the most part, we’ve agreed, like, a lot of this is symbolism and what does the symbolism mean, but then we move into other things and because of popular culture or novels or films or whatever, we moved back into literal. So, we have this temple being measured. We’ve seen this before in other prophetic books. And, so, from a little literal perspective, we’re imagining a third temple, another temple being built in Jerusalem. And some people are so deeply convinced that this will literally happen that preparations are being made. Like, all of the utensils that would be needed for the temple, according to the Torah, have been and are being made. And there’s even a museum in Jerusalem that you can go see some of these things. A figurative view of this would be that, what’s being measured here, is referring to this new world, this new thing that God is doing and perhaps can only be seen through spiritual eyes, while others would say this just the measure, this is the spiritual kingdom of God, the covenant being represented and this courtyard and everything around it is for God’s people. This represents the entire community of faith whose job is to be a prophetic witness in the world. And the we get to these messengers. Right? These guys in sackcloth who are profits and who are going to find themselves getting killed and then they’ll be resurrected. And we see this sometimes from a literal perspective and its zombielike and kind of scary stuff and we see it depicted in films, when all along we’ve been mostly looking allegorically. And, so, it’s funny how we’ll get pulled into literal versus allegorical symbolism and get confused. So, some people think that these two witnesses are literally a reincarnated Moses and Elijah or other prophets, while others would say, no, they’re just unnamed, we don’t know who they are. They’re like John the Baptist, who came in this spirit and power of Elijah. So, they’re just like that. While those who would look more symbolically would say, this simply represents the prophetic witness of what God is doing in the world while He’s doing what He’s doing in the world. And what He’s doing in the world is transforming it, making it new. And that transformation is causing a lot of unrest. But God will not allow His prophetic witness to be stamped out. And, so, there are two of these witnesses. And it would require two or more witnesses to testify to the truth of something, like that was a legal thing. Or the Bible tells us when there is two or more than the Lord is in the midst of them. So, these aren’t, like, real, actual prophets at all from that view, they represent the ongoing prophetic witness in the world. And if we continue to look at it through that lens, I mean, these guys end up getting killed. They’re causing a lot of unrest because of their prophetic witness. And because of what’s going on in the world everyone turns on them. They’re killed and their bodies are left to lay for three and half days. And Revelation says, those living on earth will gloat over the witness’s death, which has pulled many people more toward a literal view and let interpretations, like, oh, this must be television. Television must be being prophesied here in the book of Revelation, because that’s the only way that those living on earth could gloat over the witness’s death, because their physical bodies are laying in one place, but that can only be seen around the world. There some kind of Internet communication or television communication, which leads us back around to the problem of time that we talked about a couple days ago. Those who are more presentest or futurist in their view of the book of Revelation are looking for the signs. And, so, you have modern-day interpretations where World War II is one of the signs, the unrest in the Middle East is one of the signs, the country of Russia is one of the signs. And, so, we’re back to literal. And that’s fine, but has problems. And the top one for me, anyway, would be that this book was written nearly 2000 years ago. And the first readers of this book read it 2000 years ago. They could have not imagined television, satellite communication, Internet, or any of that stuff. They couldn’t have imagined it. So, if the book of Revelation is actually speaking about this time, now, they could have never found a way to understand it. There would be no context whatsoever. And it’s important to at least take into consideration how the first readers of this work would have understood it, because God chose to inspire it at a specific time. So, when that context is removed, well then, every generation thinks this is all going down in their time. So, for example, if we look at World War II and say, this has got to be one of the signs because nothing like that, that kind of mass destruction, that kind of loss and conflict had never happened in the world before. So, that’s got to be something. As true as that might be, humanity has been suffering through catastrophes all along. So, for example, if you’re living in the first century and your living in Israel and you’re people are warring with the Romans, but the Romans are taking victory, and they ultimately do become victorious and stamp out the rebellion and completely level the city of Jerusalem and destroy and burn the temple of God, ike, if that’s your time, you’re going, nothing worse in the world could happen than this. So, every generation has its own share of catastrophe and people look to those things for the signs. And, like I said, there’s nothing wrong with that except for context and except for the fact that everyone, everyone who has thought that to this point has been wrong. And, literally, to date, everyone who has made predictions about specific dates for specific things to happen has been wrong, which probably means that the allegorical view is the most comprehensive way of looking at most of this. And trying to understand how the first readers of this work understood it is also important. So, as I was saying, if we’re literally looking at this then there’s a couple witnesses in sackcloth that are like, they appear to be like Old Testament prophets. We don’t have them named. They prophesy, they give witness, which is the point. They give witness, prophetic witness, to what God is doing in the world, but they are opposed in dramatic fashion all the way until their deaths and their bodies lay for 3-½ days, and the whole world sees it because the Internet or television or something. But those who look at this more symbolically, allegorically, or figuratively, would say, no, these witnesses, there’s two or more, there’s two of them. They can witness to the truth of what they’re saying. They represent God’s people, his prophetic witness of what He’s doing, the good news, the gospel on this earth. They can be seen throughout the earth because they’re all over the earth and they will be dramatically opposed and it will look as if they have been killed. So, we’re not talking about people now, we’re talking about the witness of the gospel. It will look as if it has been completely stamped out and the any enemies of God will gloat the world over over this. And before all that happens they’re able to be a prophetic witness for 3-½ years, which has led to many people to make this correlation to Jesus because that’s about the length of his earthly ministry. And then when they are killed they lay for 3-½ days. And, so, there is a rough correlation there to Jesus in the tomb. And, unexpectedly, they are resurrected, following in line with Jesus. So, when this resurrection occurs a great fear falls upon all those who had seen this go down. Once the witnesses are resurrected from the dead and a great awe and fear surrounds the event a loud voice from heaven calls them back up and they go up to heaven in a cloud and their enemies watch them. So, from, you know, like if you’re looking at this literally, then that’s what happens. If you’re looking at a little bit more symbolically, then you can see the correlations to Jesus. And from allegorical interpretive perspective then this witness, this prophetic witness, that is been upon the earth right until the very, very end, it’s called up and immediately a giant earthquake happens, a powerful earthquake that kills many people and the people who had seen all this go down gave glory to God. So, some interpreters would say, this whole thing, like, the prophetic witness in the world and this seeming stamping out of God’s people, and then the unexpected resurrection causes a lot of people to turn their faith and put their hope in Christ.  Other people would say, no, that’s not what happens at all. They are in great fear, great fear falls upon these people in the same way that great fear fell upon Egypt when the great plaques and the Israelites deliverance was at hand. Either way, Revelations says once this happens, the second catastrophe is over and the third catastrophe will soon be here. And finally, the seventh angel blows the seventh trumpet. And it’s like we’re expecting, like, the world to blow up at this point because we’ve been told that the second catastrophe is over and the third will soon be here. But when the seventh angel blows his trumpet something completely different happens. It’s as if we’re seeing the inauguration of the kingdom of God right before our eyes. And it’s here that we kind of need to pause and look at how we’re viewing all of this. Usually, whether were trying to read this literally or figuratively or whether we’re trying to figure out the symbols, it brings this disruption to us because we’re focused on the difficulties that appear to be happening on earth, whether spiritually or physically. And we start thinking, why do things have to be so catastrophic? Why did they have to be so dramatic? Do I have to go through that? Will I have to experience any of this? Is this really going to happen or is it symbols? And it brings a great disruption. And we lose sight of the bigger picture of what’s actually happening. One kingdom does not overthrow another kingdom without a significant amount of unrest. And we have the accountings of several thousand years of human conflict to show us that. But when Jesus came and was seemingly defeated, only to be resurrected in victory, things changed dramatically in the world. And as believers we are engaged in the story that we are reading about. We are witnesses in the world for the good news, of the good news. And what we are watching play out in the book of Revelation is the good news being consummated, the kingdom of God that we hope for actually coming to be. So, when the seventh angel blows the seventh trumpet, we’re back in heaven. There are loud voices and they are saying, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah and he will rule as King forever and ever. Right? So, this transition is upon us the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah. And when that’s said the 24 elders on their thrones in God’s presence how and worship God, and they have something to say. We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was because You have taken Your great power and have begun ruling as King. So, we can say God is sovereign and He could have stepped in and done this at any point, but where getting a vision of when he does. He begins ruling as King. And when this happens Revelations says the temple in heaven was opened and the ark of God’s promise was seen inside his temple and there was lightning and noise and thunder and an earthquake and heavy hail. So, we ended our reading yesterday by getting this majestic picture of the transformation that is happening in heaven and on earth as the story continues forward.

And then we get into today’s reading and we got this crazy story about dragons and a pregnant woman and war in heaven. And many commentators draw attention to this story because it contains all of the mystical elements that we are drawn to even until today because we have extraterrestrial beings. Right? Strange beings coming to earth in a grand struggle between good and evil. And a lot of movies are made, they make a lot of money depicting this kind of thing, not the book of Revelation, but the mythical qualities. And some commentators would say that’s really how you need to read this, or to understand this whole book. And I’ve heard the Star Wars phenomenon used as an example of this. We’ve had these films around, what, for more than 30 years, and they touch us mythically because they speak of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. And, so, you have some people who have never seen any of the films. You have some people who maybe have seen some of them but it’s not super connected to them, but they understand the general idea of these movies. And then you have other people that are so into it that they have costumes for their favorite characters, the ones that they want to be, and they’ll go to conventions and walk around and try to impersonate these people and have these conversations. So, for example, if you are a Star Wars buff, you really, really like it a lot, you probably have a group of friends who also like it a lot. And at some point or another you may have had conversations that lasted maybe even hours as you try to understand the deeper meanings that may be hidden in the films so that you have an awareness of what is really being disclosed, what is really being revealed. And, so, people do this with, like, film trilogies like The Matrix or series like The Leftovers. You have these conversations trying to reveal the hidden meanings, trying to find the Revelation. So, I don’t know about all that, but I do know what we’re trying to do is walk into the territory of the book of Revelation and look around. Try to get our bearings for the way that this book is been understood and acknowledge that it’s been understood a lot of ways. And, so, the vision that we read today is definitely mythic and epic and has been interpreted in a number of diverse ways. So, we began our reading today in the 12th chapter of Revelation by hearing a spectacular sign appeared in the sky. So, I guess we should we should say this is symbolic. It’s a sign. And the way that this plays out is that there’s a woman and she’s dressed with the sun and she’s got the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head and she’s pregnant and she’s about to give birth. She’s in the agony and the labor pains of giving birth. And then another sign comes into the sky and this is a fiery red serpent with seven heads and 10 horns and seven crowns on its heads. And on its way down, it sweeps away one third of the stars in the sky and throws them down. And the serpent confronts, or is in front of, the woman who’s about to give birth. So, she can’t very well defend herself. She’s about to give birth. And what the serpent wants is to eat the infant the second it’s born. But the babies born and it’s a boy and he is to rule all nations with an iron scepter. And the child was snatched and taken to God, to the throne room, to the throne of God. And then the woman, after just having given birth, fled into the wilderness where God had prepared a place for her so that she could be safe for 1260 days. So, it’s hard to miss the parallels with the Christmas story. Right? With the birth of Jesus story here. Although it’s a very, very different story, leading some to believe that this isn’t about Jesus. This isn’t a picture of Jesus birth. While others would say, no, this woman is Mary and she’s having Jesus. And what we’re seeing here is simply the Christmas story from a heavenly or spiritual perspective. But these have problems. Another allegorical way of looking at this is that the woman represents God’s people on the earth, a form of true Israel. This is why she’s got a crown of 12 stars on her head and her travail in childbirth is simply the birth pains of the kingdom, to this new thing. So, after she has her baby and her baby is saved, she’s led into the wilderness, which would coincide with the story of the children of Israel and their deliverance from Egypt, from slavery, on their way to the promised land. And God prepared a place for her in the wilderness so that she would be protected for this 1260 days, which is the exact amount of time that the final witnesses, those two witnesses we just talked about from yesterday’s reading, were able to put be a prophetic voice. And by looking at it this way, we have to almost reconsider or reframe our idea of wilderness. We’ve talked a lot because a lot of the Bible happens in the wilderness or in wilderness experiences. And, so, we’ve talked a lot about the wilderness shaping and forming us. But in this picture, the wilderness is also a place of protection. And, so, where this meets with our lives is that when we find ourselves in a wilderness experience most of our prayers about our about how God can quickly deliver us from it. When actually, what God might be doing by leading us into wilderness experiences is protecting us. And then the next thing that we see in the story is that war breaks out in heaven. And Michael and his angels fight with the serpent and his minions and the serpent is defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven, the book of Revelation says. The huge serpent was thrown down, that ancient snake named devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world was thrown down to earth, its angels were thrown down with it. And this is where we get that imagery about how Satan fell. Normally, though, we think that that happened before there were any human beings created. And we think that because a serpent shows up in the garden of Eden. But let’s just talk this through for a second. We have examples in the Scriptures of what Satan or what the devil, what his work is about. And what he does is accuse in slander the true, he deceives. And we have pictures of Jesus being our advocate in heaven before the throne of God. In other words, Jesus shuts the accusations down. But it leads us to wonder if Satan is allowed to be in the presence of God in order to make these accusations. Is he allowed to move between heaven and earth, back and forth. And that kind of messes with our theology because if he’s the enemy of God, why would he be allowed in God’s presence and why would God listen anything he has to say? But there are many examples of this in the Bible. We could take the book of Job as a prime example of Satan being in the presence of God making accusations and God operating in his sovereignty over Satan. So, when we get to this war in heaven in today’s reading, it’s interesting because the battle happens and, of course, Satan is defeated along with all of his followers and they’re thrown out. But now they don’t get to come back. According to Revelation, after this happens, there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And, so, the great serpent was thrown down and his angels were thrown down with him and they were not allowed to go back. So, then, after that happens, a loud voice in heaven speaks these words, ‘now the salvation, power, kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah have come. The one accusing our brothers and sisters, the one accusing them day and night in the presence of our God has been thrown out’. Which would mean there’s no one to accuse God’s people anymore. So, that is beautiful and even exhilarating, but leaves us with a time problem. If what we’re seeing here is a vision of the very beginning of time, why are we finding that out in a book about the end of time? And what about all the subsequent references in the stories that came after the beginning of time about Satan accusing people before God and being able to move in and out of his presence? So, some would say, well, the crucifixion of Jesus, His resurrection, His work on the cross, that casts out Satan down for all time. And while others would say this is this is something that’s going to happen, but hasn’t yet happened. Which then leaves us with the same theological problems of, okay, so, Satan goes to the presence of God, he can move in and out of the presence of God and accuse us? So, I mean, you can do your own scholarship and come to your own conclusions because I don’t think it’s completely clear. Which is why I say often, in any given year of the Daily Audio Bible, we don’t know all we think we know. But I do think it’s somewhat compelling to think that this utter demise, this utter stamping out of evil in the world is something that is progressively happening. And we find out from the book of Revelation, in our reading today, that the ultimate victory here happens over Satan because of the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. And it makes us realize, we have been talking about the word of their testimony in literal terms and in figurative terms since the very beginning of this book. And whether it has already happened, whether it is progressively happening, or whether it is something that will happen, the day comes that there is no more accuser in the presence of God and evil is ultimately defeated because of the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. And, so, in the imagery Satan is cast down and he can’t go anywhere else. He’s cast down and he can’t get back to God to make accusation and he for reeks out. So, here’s how Revelation describes it. They won the victory over him because of the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. They didn’t love their life so much that they refused to give it up. Be glad for this reason, heavens, and those who live in them. So, it’s saying, be glad about this those of you who are heaven dwellers. But how horrible it is for the earth and the sea because the devil has come down to them with fierce anger, knowing that he has little time left. And, so, Satan, the serpent realizes he’s been thrown down to earth and freaks out. He goes after the woman who had given birth to the boy. So, like, depending on how you think this woman is, that will be your interpretation, but if the woman really does represent the people of God who are on the earth that would make sense. He has no one to accuse to anymore. And, so, he is just freaking out on God’s people, trying to destroy in rage and anger, which is where we ended our reading today. So, what’s challenging is piecing all this together in a linear fashion and then trying to date it and find all the signs that correspond to it and all this. This has been a problem all along. But the encouraging news is, in the end, there is no one to accuse us. In the end, the kingdom does come. In the end, yes, it causes a great unrest. But, in the end, we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word as we do every day and we thank You for all that You are speaking to us in spite of the complexities of the book of Revelation. And we thank You for everything You have spoken to us throughout this entire year. You are good. Your mercy endures forever. And in the end, there is no one to accuse us. And You have let us be a part of this story. So, we invite Your Holy Spirit to come continue to speak to us as we ponder and meditate on Your word. And come and guide us forward that our light might shine and our witness might overcome. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website…ah…should not be taking drink coffee when you trying to talk at the same time. Sorry about that, but I thought I deserved a little sip after all of that talking.

Okay. dailyaudiobible.com is the website and it is home base and it is way find what’s going on around here.

Yesterday, we told you that we have launched the new web player. And that is part of rolling out this whole new system that the Global Campfire Initiative was all about. So, that’s in place and you can see it and use it by going to dailyaudiobible.com and just scrolling down to the second little box that says, you know, there’ll be a little box that talks about the app and the web player, just click web player. Boom! You’re in. And, as I mentioned yesterday, and as I will continue to mention as we roll out the app, when you go to the new web player, you’re going to immediately be greeted with a login screen. Now, you don’t have to login. You can click continue as a guest. No problem. However, if you login, and you have to login with your Daily Audio Bible account. So, like, if you’ve ever gotten anything from the Daily Audio Bible store or done anything on the Daily Audio Bible website before, you have one. Use that email and password that you set up. When you login then you can use everything, things that can be attached to your account. For example, it will check off the days that you listen to. And, ultimately, when the app gets out, it won’t matter whether you’ve listened on the app or the web player, whatever. It will be all across the platform. It will remember that you’ve listened to this day so you can see the days that you may have missed if you want to go back. That can’t happen unless there’s an account that it’s attached to. Or there’s a journal built into the new platform so that you can just type out some notes, some little things. If something in the Scriptures stood out to you, that you want to remember, you can journal it right within the web player or the app, but has to be attached to an account or there’s no place to put it. Or there’s a star, you’ll see a star in the new app and the new web player, that you can star days that you don’t want to forget, that you may want to go back and listen to another time. Well, to remember what you’ve stared specifically, it’s got to be attached to an account. So, by logging in, you unlock everything that it can do. And I’ll keep reminding everybody of that for a little bit. But the new web player is up and live and in the wild. So, be sure to check out. And the app is close on its heels and will update you as soon as I know anything.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, here in the final days of the year of 2017, thank you, thank you, thank you. What we’ve done as you’ve heard me say before, we have done together. We are in this together. We are a community together. Thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports:

Good morning Daily Audio Bible people and community. This is Diane Olive B. calling from Newburg Indiana. And I’m speaking an praying over Lawrence. Shalom, Shalom Lawrence. I speak shalom shalom over you and over all of us who are dealing with sorrow and pain and suffering, even when things seem to be going good.  And know that, Lawrence, I speak 2 Corinthians 4:7, that we here are on this earth with a treasure within us only earthen vessels so that the excellency of the power of God may be shown and know to be of Him and not of us. So, I’m learning something, that no matter what we face, no matter what we are going through, that we have a savior. We must guard our hearts above all else. For out of our hearts shows the issues of life. Shalom, shalom. Nothing missing and nothing is broken. And you ae healed. Embrace your healing, embrace your Savior, embrace your suffering to make you pure and holy. That is wisdom. That is glorious love the Father has for us. The Lord’s my Sheppard I’ll not want. He makes me down to lie in pastures green. He leadith me the …

Hello Daily Audio Bible family, this is Jay calling from New Jersey. Calling to pray for Greenwood Christian academy and all Christian academy’s that are out there that are struggling. Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, God we just praise You this morning, we lift You up, we magnify Your name, we bless the name of God this morning. And Father, we thank You for another day to just start or enjoy or end our day with the Daily Audio Bible, absorbing Your word into our hearts and our minds. And father, as we do this we just confess now before you and our family of any sins that we’ve committed knowingly or unknowingly. And Father, we pray and know of Your forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ. And Lord, we lift up Greenwood Christian Academy that is just struggling right now Father as they teach the next generation of believers of potential believers and they stand as a shining light of your grace and mercy in this world full of public schools and private schools that really want nothing to do with you Jesus. And Father we pray for Greenwood Christian Academy and we pray for financial blessing. Father we pray for longevity. We pray for Your will to be done for this school. We pray God that each and every teacher will have a job, each and every administrator and staff member will have a job Father. And we pray God for every other Christian Academy that is teaching children about Jesus Christ. We pray Father that You will continue to provide them what they needs financially and administratively and human capital. In the name of Jesus, Christ we pray. Amen.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family and campfire tenders. This is Nathan from Bloomington Illinois. I hope that everyone is having a joyous holiday. I know that some us don’t during this time because of certain things. But that’s just for another phone call. So, we’ve been dealing with Revelations and so many people get wrapped up in what’s this mean, what’s that mean, where am I at, where am I heading. You know, my church went through a revelation study and our senior pastor said, you know, there are several different ways we can look at revelation but the bottom line is, so what. So, I want you to reflect on where your heart is, not where Revelations is. Because we may never understand that. And Brian is doing and awesome job spelling it out for us. But the bottom line is, where’s our heart?  Are we focused on what Jesus wants? Are we focused on the Christ, Jesus the Christ, who came to save us? And, if our heart is there, then it doesn’t matter were everything else lays because we are responsible for our own salvation and our, own destiny, and that’s for another call too, but, let’s not get wrapped up on what everything means. Although, focus on what Brian is telling us because there’s still a message there for us. Alright. So, I just want us to ponder this today. Hope everyone is having a great day. Have a great day. Make it a great day.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family. This is Jackie in St. Louis. I’m also known as __. I called a few weeks ago to ask for prayers for my sister Valerie. And I think all of those who did say hello to her __ listener and pray for her depression. I’d like to ask for prayers for her again. She is, besides being depressed, she is diabetic. And this week she developed a sore on one of her toes. And now that she’s been in the hospital a day or two they did a biopsy and they think there’s infection in the bone of this toe and that’s very serious. I would like everyone to pray for her. Again, her name is Valerie. I don’t know for sure yet what the plan of action is for her other than antibiotics for right now, but Please pray for her that she doesn’t have to have like an amputation or disabled from this. I’d also like to pray just for a minute for…I heard a mom…or the sister of a mom called in that wanted prayer for her autistic or Asperger’s son. I think they said that his name was Togo. I’m sorry if I don’t remember it clearly. I totally understand what you are going through there because I have a Asperger’s son as well. So, let’s pray for these moms as well. Dear heavenly Father, thank you for blessing us with the gift of children. I ask that You especially touch moms in our DAB family that have special needs children. Help the ones that have Asperger’s know that they would be able to know what to do and what is best for their children. We ask this in Your name. Amen.

This is my holiday greeting DAB family. I hope I didn’t procrastinate too long on this. Hey Brian and Jill and family, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you guys. Love you guys. I love this forum. It is so awesome. You are doing such a great thing here Brian. Words cannot express how I feel about this family and to everybody who calls in it feels like they’re brothers and sisters and you hear them calling in their requests and you pray with them and pray for them. It’s so awesome. Love you guys. Again, it’s Michael from Texas, Fort Worth Texas. Love you guys. Hope you guys have a great Christmas and happy birthday Jesus. Love you. Talk to you again. Bye.

12/20/2017 DAB Transcript

Haggai 1:1-19, Revelations 11:1-19, Psalms 139:1-24, Proverbs 30:15-16

Today is the 20th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is great to be here with you in this middle of Christmas week. So, it’s good to be taking the next step forward toward Christmas, but it’s also good to be here together as a community taking the next step forward through the Scriptures. And, in the Old Testament, we have one more book that we will read in one day. And this will be the last time we read a book in a single day for this year. And this is the book of Haggai. So, let’s get our bearings as we move into this last book that will read in one day.

Haggai:

Israel was carried away in exile by the Babylonians, which we looked at extensively as we went through that territory in the Old Testament earlier. It was a terrible time for them, great sorrow, perhaps the lowest moment for the children of Israel in all of the Bible. About 540 BC, Cyrus, the king of Persia, then invaded and conquered Babylon. And in 538 BC or thereabouts, a couple of years later, he issued a decree allowing native Israelites to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple and worship their God and rebuild their culture. This was, obviously, a great day of liberation for God’s people. And the book of Haggai comes about 18 years into that process. So, they’re set free, they’re able to go home, they’re able to rebuild, and now we’re 18 years later. And it’s a snapshot that’s immensely relevant to us today because it takes a hard look at motivations. And through the prophetic words of Haggai, God challenges his people about what matters most to them. And God also offers hopeful promises to those who will take courage even though they’ve grown weary because of the realization that Jerusalem and the Temple, for all of their building, it may never be rebuilt to the splendor that Solomon had built it. And Haggai invites us all to turn the spotlight on ourselves and see whether it’s God’s work or our own satisfaction that we hold highest in our lives. And it invites us to put on our big boy pants or our big girl pants in the face of discouragement, knowing that God is supremely faithful and sovereign. Once the light of truth comes crashing into our lives it invites us to repent and live pure lives and it shows us that we can live courageously for God, building his kingdom because He’s always with us. He is ever present, regardless of circumstance. Circumstance has nothing to do with His presence. We are secure. And as we’re faithful to God, He is faithful to us. And, so, we begin. Haggai chapter 1 verse 1 through 2 verse 23. And we’re reading from the Names of God Bible this week.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we need to talk about the book of Haggai for a second because we only have one day with his book and there’s so much for us to consider. This parallels our lives in so many ways. So, what we’ve got going on here is that the children of Israel had been taken into exile. And we read through all of this in great detail, all the warnings and prophecies coming up to it and then the happening of it. And there were two exiles. Right? So, we had the splitting of the kingdoms immediately following Solomon’s reign -  the northern and the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom was carried into exile by the Assyrians and the southern kingdom was carried into exile and conquest by the Babylonians. And that was not a good time for any of them. The northern tribes, the 10 tribes of the north, disappeared and the remaining tribes carried into Babylon, well, they were Babylonian exiles. But then Babylon was conquered by the Persians and the Hebrews were allowed to leave exile and return to their homeland and try to reestablish themselves and their worship. So, I mean, what joy in that. And we read of what joy in that, that this could happen, but it was problematic. There were all kinds of issues. And we read a lot about that when reading through Ezra and Nehemiah. And now we’re 18 years into this thing and people are spending their time and their focus and their energy on building their life while the temple remains incomplete. And they’re experiencing hardship in drought and in lack. So, they’re working so hard to survive and all of their energy is being put into their own well-being and their own lives while the temple remains incomplete. So, basically, the people have gone through a long stretch, over 100 year stretch, well over 100 year stretch, of this kind of devastation in the northern and southern kingdoms. And then they’re liberated. Their prayers are answered. God lets them go back home. God lets them start over. And what they start over on is what’s going to make them the most fulfilled, they think. Their focus has moved from rebuilding the temple and the walls to their own life. And the parallels to our own life just become immediately apparent. We go through our own seasons that feel like exile. We’re constantly in lockstep with God praying for deliverance. Then it comes and what do we do? Usually, we, briefly, are very, very grateful and continue on in that blessing, but things start going pretty good and we start focusing on our own lives, forgetting that we were liberated for a reason and there is unfinished work, unfinished inside ourselves and unfinished in the world. But we’re so busy and so overcommitted to our own lives that we forget all about it. We forget all about the kingdom that’s happening in and among us and focus solely on ourselves. We forget that we are the temple and we ignore what’s going on inside of us because we’re too busy trying to order our exterior world and it leads us back into drought and lack. And then we’re working so very, very hard to maintain the status quo that all we’re doing is surviving. In the story told in the book of Haggai, the people that lost their center and we see where it led them to. We also see that as they regained their equilibrium the promises of restoration abound. So, we are ultimately invited to consider where we have truly placed our faith, where our hope truly lies.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into those contemplations, because the truth is that we find ourselves in this book. This looks more like us more than we would care to admit. And we see very clearly that when You are no longer the object of our devotion and affection, we’re leading ourselves into drought and lack and confusion. And, so, we turn our heart, our devotion, our affection upon You. Right now, we reach to You like children and invite Your Holy Spirit to show us the ways that we’re doing this. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website. It’s home base. It’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And obviously we’re in Christmas week. I mean, I guess that’s not technically true, because Christmas is technically next week, but we’re sort of in the countdown for the final days and during Christmas week and have had some announcements to make.

So, China came on yesterday and we announced Daily Audio Bible Chronological, that we’re so excited about. That will begin on January 1st. China is about to finish her ninth year, seven days a week reading the Bible out loud. She began with Daily Audio Bible Kids and then moved to Daily Audio Bible Teen and is now not a teen and is moving into Daily Audio Bible Chronological, where a community will form around the chronological reading of the Bible. And I mentioned that that will be in the new app and the new web player. So, I have a couple more announcements for today.

Tonight, we will be launching the new Daily Audio Bible web player. And the web player and the new app, they are linked together on the same system. So, they do all the same things. For example, once you are logged in and, logging into the web app or the web player is just your…if you’ve ever done anything on the Daily Audio Bible website you have an account and so you just login. And if you’ve never been on the Daily Audio Bible website, you just make an account. And the reason for the account is so that the system could do with the system does, which is, when you listen to a day it just makes a checkbox for you, automatically. This is a day you’ve listened to. Or, if you want to create a journal entry, because you can journal on the web player and the app. If you want to write down some thoughts from any given day or every day, then it saves it to your own unique account. Or if you star something, you’re like, I don’t want to forget this day, this day meant something to me, and you put a star on it, and you go back through the year and look at the places that you’ve stared. It can remember that. It can remember that it’s you. So, those of you who listen on the web player every day, it’s going to be all new tomorrow. And those of you who are kind of wanting a sneak peek to see what the new app is going to be like, you’ll be able to do that tomorrow. You just go to dailyaudiobible.com and scroll down just a tiny bit, just to like the little second module and you’ll see ‘web player’.  And you click that and it launches the web player. So, we will be rolling that out and getting it into place tonight. And, so, tomorrow it’ll be the new web player. And we’ll get that in place. The new Daily Audio Bible apps for Android and Apple are submitted. And, so, we’re just waiting. It’s especially more stringent process to move through the Apple approval process for apps. And we’re just praying for that to go through smoothly. They will be shutting down for the holidays too. So, we’re just kind of praying that maybe this could get through the approval process before the weekend. If not, then probably sometime next week unless we were run into some issues that we’re not aware of. So, let’s be praying about that. There’s just a number of things that are happening right now that as a community we need to remember in our thoughts and prayers. And that is the covering over the launch of Daily Audio Bible Chronological, the rollout of the new web player, and then the rollout of the new Daily Audio Bible app. So, thank you for your prayers over all of these things.

The other thing that we have to announce today is, Daily Audio Bible family Christmas will show up right along with your Daily Audio Bible tomorrow. And the Daily Audio Bible family Christmas is kind of our annual, virtual, Christmas party, our opportunity to get together and just talk about the year and move through the Christmas story while hearing all of the voices of the community and all of the wishes from around the world for the new year for the joy of the season that we’re in. And it’s always a beautiful thing and it’s always a time that we reveal and we talk about the word, the word that comes over each year. It  becomes kind of the NorthStar and the focus in the Scriptures. And, so, we’ll be talking about that on Daily Audio Bible family Christmas. So, that will show up along with the Daily Audio Bible tomorrow.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible as we move into the last days of the year, then we all thank you profoundly and humbly for your partnership. There is a link. It’s on the homepage of dailyaudiobible.com. If you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports:

Hi friends. This is Gloria in New York City. It is Saturday, December 16th. I just listened to the podcast and the message afterwards. I wanted to encourage us all to or wanted to all join together to pray for, as Brian said at the end there, may we all stand with a cloud of witnesses that we brought. May God use us all to reach other people, to bring, that when we stand at the throne, that we’ll be standing there with witness for the people that we did. Some maybe we hope we affected and influenced for Christ…with Christ message…with his love, and some of them that we didn’t even know, that we just came across and influenced. So, my prayer and wish her Christmas for always is that we would just be seeing…I’m praying that we see in the new year our loved ones coming to the Lord. We have so many. We all have loved ones who don’t want to hear anything about it. Then around now…especially Christmas time…it’s hard because you just want to celebrate Jesus and it becomes about so many other things. So, I’m lifting up my own family members, my brothers, my mother, my daughter, her boyfriend, as well as your family members, loved ones, children, siblings, and…I don’t know if I’m out of time…I didn’t time this one, but I also want to specifically pray for Eunice from Jersey, just overwhelmed with this discovery of cancer. And Eunice, your very special in my prayers today. Alright…and I will speak to you all soon. God bless you.

Hello saints. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy New Years. I’m calling today…and I hope I’m not stepping over bounds here…but I’m calling for a dear sister of our Daily Audio Bible group. Her name is Tony and she’s from Toledo. And this week she got a call that no mother should get. Her youngest, who just turned 21, overdosed and we’re having the funeral on Tuesday. Saints, I would just really appreciate you covering this whole family. Tony is real solid in her faith, but this can rock you. And her kids are struggling with it. And it’s just such a sad thing. My heart is broken for her. So, I would ask right now that you would just, please, continue to pray for her through the year, through the years, and join me in prayer right now. Heavenly Father, I just come to You right now, Lord, I ask You give her strength, I ask Lord that you give her peace, I ask that You comfort her Lord, and I ask that You just lift her up Lord, high above this, Lord, and I ask that You cover her family Lord and show them that this was not You, it was the enemy, and he is a defeated soul…even though it doesn’t look like it right now. We ask it all in Jesus’ name. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you Daily Audio Bible. You mean the world to me. God bless you. Bye.

Hey this call is for…I think you said brother your name was Keith…it might have been Pete, I’m not sure. I didn’t here you say where you were from but you are having a super hard time and really stressing and said that you were trapped in your own mind. I just want you to know brother, you’re not alone, we’re praying for you and we love you and just hold close to God man. He’s there and He’s got you. And keep us updated and just let it all out. Alright? I love all you guys and I’m praying for you and I’m also praying for that Christian Academy that needs $100,000 and a new place to go. I’m praying for that. I love you guys. I’m praying for everyone and I’ll talk to you later. Oh…and…the wifey and I are doing great. Thanks for your prayers and thanks for praying for my family. All is going great. So, praise God. Thank you.

A Christmas Poem
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Praises were coming out of everyone’s mouth
Our faith had been built up step by step with great care
Because every step along the way God’s grace and mercy were there
Moms no longer here and neither is dad
But both of them were responsible for the great faith that I’ve had
Looking intently to the father above
Who gave his only begotten son as the ultimate act of unmerited love
And now here I sit in eager anticipation
Of the upcoming Christmas day with great expectation
Eager and ready to lift up my voice
With the voices of all men let the whole world rejoice
Peace on the earth to all men of good will
Our savior has come all prophesy to fulfill
Giving us the victory, the power to win
Over Satan, the world, and the darkness of sin
Things are not great but thanks to Jesus our future is bright
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night

blindtony1016@gmail.com. I’d like to give a shout out to Victoria S. and Viola. Haven’t heard from you lately either. Miss the sound of your voices. And Pelham, hang in there brother. You can make it if you try. __ family stone that one. It’s true. Yup. If you don’t give out and you don’t give up, and you don’t give in God will strengthen you.  Okay, and once again, my love to the Hardin family for this wonderful podcast for God’s Holy Spirit to flow. Keep it flowin’ y’all. Merry Christmas.

12/19/2017 DAB Transcript

Zephaniah 1:1-3:20, Revelations 10:1-11, Psalms 138:1-8, Proverbs 30:11-1

Today is the 19th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s wonderful to be here with you today in this most wonderful time of the year. And even as we count down the days until Christmas, we’re counting down the books that remain in the Bible to read this year. And we’ll move through one of those books in its entirety today as we get to our Old Testament reading. We’ll read the book of Zephaniah.

Zephaniah

Zephaniah is another of the books of minor prophecy, obviously, contained in the Old Testament. It’s written in full in three chapters. And, although Zephaniah’s prophetic words are for the children of Israel, they’re also a call to repentance for all of the surrounding nations and, for that matter, even the whole world. Zephaniah’s prophecy contains similar themes to some of the other books of prophecy. It announces the onset of judgment, the judgment of God. It’s a call to repentance and a declaration of restoration. God always restores. And we find that theme throughout the entire Bible. And even though these words were written, probably, in the seventh century BC, we can look at them through the lens of the 21st-century and find dramatic relevance there. The heart of man, the drive and passions of mankind are remarkably similar, and if we change the names and places, things look remarkably now as they did then. And, so, we begin reading from the Names of God Bible. Zephaniah, chapter 1 verse 1 through 3 verse 20.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Revelation we’ve been moving through trumpet blasts and there are supposed to be seven trumpet blasts and we’ve gotten through six of them and were expecting the seventh one, but in today’s reading we kind of encounter another aside. A similar thing happened were going through the scrolls just before this. Six scrolls were opened and there was kind of like an aside before the seventh seal. So, what we encounter in chapter 10 of the book of Revelation is a powerful angel coming down from heaven and several things have been noted about this. First of all, it seems like a change of location for John, because previous to this he had been kind of caught up into the presence of the Lord in heaven, but now he appears to be back on earth because he sees this angel coming down from heaven. And this isn’t an angel being cast down, like a star falling from the sky kind of imagery. And it’s been observed that this angel is unlike any other angel, at least in description. He was dressed in a cloud. And there was a rainbow over his head and his face was like the sun and his feet were like columns of fire and he must’ve been awesome in appearance to be able to stand on the sea and stand on the land at the at the same time. And he shouted with a voice like a lion. And as with just about every other word in this book, you know, it’s been examined from every conceivable angle and there are various interpretations. Obviously, from a literal perspective, this is an angel. And then we describe what this angel looked like. But a good many interpreters would say this imagery, of a being with the face like the sun, coming in the clouds with a voice like the roar of a lion, this is more than an angel, this is a divine being. And some would say, for sure, this is Jesus, while others would say this is the angel of God, or God himself. So, coming in the cloud, voice of a lion, rainbow, face like the sun, standing on the land and the sea, this is a picture of ultimate sovereignty, complete control. Which is fascinating to think about because it’s coming between trumpet blasts, it’s coming between the sixth and the seventh trumpet blasts that this happens, where Jesus or a spectacular divine representative comes down in the midst of this showing complete dominance and control and authority and sovereignty and when he speaks the thunders respond. So, it seems like kind of a big deal. And the seven thunders speak and John was going to write down what they had to say, but then he was told not to, to seal it up, and not write it down. Which has caused many, obviously, to wonder, okay, what was said? What was it that wasn’t written down? But, I mean, it wasn’t written down. John was told not to write it down. So, I guess, at the end of the day, it wasn’t written down. So, we don’t know for sure and this has puzzled many a scholar. Some say that God was making a point, that He was withholding, that He was demonstrating that He was sovereign and in complete control by not revealing all the future judgments. And, so, everyone not knowing all of the judgments forced those who believe to be more dependent, press in deeper. Others have drawn parallels with the apostle Paul, who claimed to be caught up into the third heaven and heard things that he couldn’t retell, that he couldn’t write down. Others have speculated that God had disclosed many things about the transformation of the apocalypse and the judgments and what would come from them, but He’s unwilling to totally reveal his complete plans. They will be hidden from humanity until they happen, until the end of history. Others argue, convincingly, that this is a pause, that God isn’t going to do whatever those things being spoken were, that he’s relenting, that he’s pulling back, which is true in many prophetic instances in the Bible. But the fact still remains that whatever was spoken that John was going to write down, he was told not to write down, so he didn’t write it down, so we don’t know what it was. Immediately after this exchange, the angel who’s standing on the sea and on the land, raises his hand and swears an oath to heaven, ‘by the one who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and everything in it, the earth and everything in it, and the sea and everything in it. So, the oath is being sworn in the name of the Almighty Sovereign God. And the oath is, there will be no more delay. In the days when the seventh angel was ready to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God will be completed as he had made this good news known to his servants the prophets. So, whenever this seventh trumpet does blow, the mystery of God will be completed as God had spoken through the prophets. So, in other words, the long overarching plan of God’s redemption is completed, as had been foretold by the prophets. And there’s been plenty of conjecture on exactly what this mystery of God is, but most will land somewhere around the fact that this is God’s plan all along, this is his plan of redemption all along. And, basically, Jesus arrival signifies the beginning of the end. And the end is the beginning of the New World. So, God’s plan of redemption had been foretold all along through the Scriptures. But the mystery of God’s plan began when Jesus was revealed in his first coming. And this idea comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans, from the 16th chapter of Romans, where it says, ‘now to him who is able to establish you according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested. And by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God has been made known to the nations.’ So, that’s pretty compelling evidence that the mystery of God spoken of here in the book of Revelation is exactly that. So, the idea here is that the mystery of God is the way that he brought about redemption. He came in the flesh, and by human standards, by cultural standards, he was utterly defeated. So, he came into the world and he was light in the world, but the world didn’t see the light and instead tried to stamp the light out. And, so, Jesus was crucified and died in what looked like absolute complete defeat. But the mystery is that this was God’s plan. And Jesus was resurrected as the firstborn of essentially a new species, the family of God. And, essentially, that was the beginning of the end. And, so, as we read through the book of Revelation, then, the troubling things that are happening on earth are part of that plan. The hardships catalyze who is with God, and who is against God, who is God’s enemy. And as the enemies of God persecute the people of God, it could look like utter and complete defeat. It could look like the faith is being stamped out, like the light is being extinguished, God’s enemies triumphing over God’s people. But following along with the mystery of God’s plan as played out in the life of Jesus, you find your life by losing it. And, so, what looks like utter defeat and humiliation is actually complete and total victory. The next thing John is told to do is go and take this small scroll from the angel and eat it. And it will be sweet in his mouth but bitter in his stomach. And that’s exactly what happened. John eats the little book or scroll and its sweet in his mouth and bitter in his stomach. And we end today’s reading with John being instructed, after he has eaten this, that he must continue to speak what God is revealed. So, a literal reading here, I guess, is theoretically possible. He could have somehow eaten a parchment that, somehow, tasted sweet to him, but soured his stomach, but most think this is symbolic. Some would say that this is a commissioning or a recommissioning of John himself as a prophet, like he’s taking these words and putting them inside himself, and this is a symbol that he is being set aside as a prophetic voice. And the reason for this is because the prophet Ezekiel was told to do something very similar, and that’s pretty compelling. But what’s also interesting is that John eats the words and they’re sweet and then they become bitter and his stomach. So, we have a bittersweet thing going on here. So, on the one hand, John is experiencing sustenance and sweetness in the words of God, but what he has to prophesy is also difficult. So, it’s bittersweet. Another way of looking at this would be that, the word of God as its ingested is a sweet sustaining thing, but when it goes inside of us it disrupts, it brings up all kinds of things that have to be dealt with. And that could be what this imagery is representing. Others have looked at this imagery and concluded that the sweetness is a reference to the overall plan, God’s redemptive grace, long-suffering, and kindness in his plan of salvation. But the reality that exists throughout the entire New Testament is that perseverance, endurance in the face of suffering, is part of the story. Grace is experienced in hardship. So, no matter how we look at this, we can say that the bitter and the sweet are intermingled and that John is instructed, in spite of the bitter and the sweet, to continue to speak what God has revealed. And that’s where we end up in our reading from the book of Revelation today.

Prayer:

Father, as we contemplate these things that we have read from Your word, not just from the book of Revelation, but also from the book of Zephaniah, and the Psalms, and the Proverbs, we invite Your Holy Spirit to continue to churn and grow our faith. We see clearly in the Scriptures our utter dependence on You for life itself and we see the ways in which we turn to other things to sustain us. But we also see clearly that, in the end, there is nothing but You, there is no other place to put our hope. And, so, we take this moment to turn our hearts toward our utter dependence on You and You alone. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Daily Audio Bible Chronological – Interview with Brian Hardin and China Hardin

Brian: dailyaudiobible.com is the website. It’s home base. And, so, I have a big surprise for you today. I am sitting next to my daughter, China. Hi China.

China: Hi.

Brian: How are you?

China: I’m good. How are you?

Brian: I’m good. And we have a bit of an announcement to make today. There’s so many things that you and I could talk about right now that I don’t know that everybody knows. You have been reading the Bible every day almost as long as me.

China: Almost.

Brian: Almost. I think 2010. Right? 2010 was the first year.

China: Ah, yea.

Brian: I think that’s right. I’d have to look at some old calendars or something to figure that out, but I think that’s about right. And you were 10 years old. Right?

China: Yea. So, this is finishing my 9th year.

Brian: Yea, every day, seven days a week since you were 10 years old and you’re just finishing your ninth year. And you’ve just turned 20. So, it was really your vision to launch Daily Audio Bible Kids back in those days.

China: Way back when.

Brian: Way back when, in another life, when you were half your age. And, so, we did that together and then you went on to do that by yourself for many, many years. And then the day came when you’re like I’m not a kid anymore.

China: As all kids do.

Brian: As all kids do. And, so, Daily Audio Bible Teen grew out of that. But now you’re not a teen anymore.

China: I know.

Brian: And, so, but your desire for reading the Bible and having that as the rhythm of your life and continuing what you’ve been doing for, you know, for nine years was still your desire. And, so, we were talking about that during the summer and even during the spring. And, so, now we’re about to launch something brand-new in the Daily Audio Bible family of programs called Daily Audio Bible Chronological. And you had that idea, actually, for this year, 2017. And that’s kind of how you’ve read through the Bible on DAB Teen this year. And you found some love for that. What is attracting you to the chronological reading?

China: I think, ultimately, starting in the New Testament with the kids for a long time definitely gets you interested in the character of Jesus. But then, moving forward in teens, then having the desire to read all of Gods word and doing just the old testament for a year and then doing both. I was like, I think it would be cool to switch it up, to read it, like, in order. And I honestly didn’t even know that chronological was a word or, like, what it was. And, so, I remember coming to you and praying for what 2017 was supposed to look like and saying that I just wanted to read the bible in order, in sequence of events, and I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense in terms of, like, the books of the Bible as being a little bit interrupted with each other. And I really didn’t understand what that would look like. And you were like, okay, chronological. And I was like, ah, sure. I don’t know what that word is. But then understanding that people had even, like, asked for it, or had a desire for it was really just confirmation that the Lord had spoken and said I want you to read this. And not only just that but placed that desire in my heart. And, so, I just was like, well, I’m going to do it this year and commit to it. I can’t really back out half way through and we’ll see how far we go into this before I’m like either totally in love with it or totally, like, never doing that again. But I think, honestly, it was the second week that I was, like, ready to, like, fully commit to this. And you were like, well, we’ve got to wait until next year. And I remember thinking, okay, like, I’ll give this a full year. I’m going to devote a year to this and see where this goes. And I think, like, more than half way through the year we were still in the old testament and I was like man, like, this is going to go on forever, like, is there, where does Jesus come into this? But then going into the New Testament and having those same stories of the gospels being read, like maybe the same story three times within a day, helps you retain the information better. And just understanding the sequence of events, like, it makes it feel a little bit more real to me because the story keeps going. And, so, I personally, I just loved it as a person who really likes order and things to make sense. It really did for me. And, so, we haven’t finished the year yet. Still, I think we’re entering into the last couple of books of the New Testament, but I’m already kind of like, man, this year really flew by just with reading in a year, going through. I mean, we’ve done this forever, it feels like, but to have the same story but reading it in order brings a different perspective to things.

Brian: Yea, it does. It does. And, so, I mean, I’ve been excited to do this all year long. I’ve been excited for…literally…I’ve been looking forward to the time that we could have this conversation most of the year… just to announce this because we’ve been planning on it for most of this year. You know, since, like you said, you found a love for it.

China: Right.

Brian: And, so, I’m excited that we can offer this new rhythm of a way to go through the Scriptures, and now that you’re all grown up, I’m excited to see a community grow up around the chronological rhythm of the Bible as well. And, so, we’re super excited to launch Daily Audio Bible Chronological. That will begin on the 1st of January. And China will begin leading a community through the chronological Bible while I continue to move through the one year plan that we use at Daily Audio Bible. And I think it’s can be fantastic and the communities will be united, we’re the same community, this is the Daily Audio Bible. And, so, you know, all of the things that are going on in the Daily Audio Bible community will be in both of these programs, including, you know, a number to call, and the prayer calls, and the community, and all of the things that go along with the Daily Audio Bible will be in Daily Audio Bible Chronological. So, I couldn’t be more proud of you. I told you, we had a meeting about this a few days ago, that I don’t know anyone, like I’ve literally never met anyone in the world that’s your age that has been, you know, reading the Bible every single day, hasn’t missed day in this many years, and has done it just like I have. So, you’re my hero. And I’m excited to see all that God is going to do through DAB Chronological through you. So, you’ve been reading the Bible every day since you were 10 years old. We started talking about this when you were 9. I think some of what inspired this was that you and I went to India together back then.

China: Right.

Brian: And that was like a huge disruption for you.

China: Yea.

Brian: It took you way, way, way out of your comfort zone. And…but it was also…just…I think…a real formative thing that happened and Daily Audio Bible Kids grew out of out of that. What happened? I mean, for you as a person, who’s done this, you know, between the ages of 10 and 20, what has having the Bible in your life everyday been like for you.

China: I think it’s meant different things at different times. I think as a kid you’re not super aware of, like, everything that you’re reading. And I think that’s ultimately why we chose the New Testament, because it is a little bit easier for a kid’s mindset to understand. And, so, growing up with that. But honestly, I think at some point it started becoming like muscle memory and just was becoming like a reading thing. And that’s ultimately when I was like, okay, I’ve got to either just stop this because this isn’t really sticking with me, it doesn’t mean anything to me. Like, I want this to become real. And I think that’s ultimately when I wanted it to be Daily Audio Bible Teens, because I wanted it to be like, you know, I’m going to make sure like, through my teenage years this is what is the foundation of it and this is what’s going hold me accountable to everything and really stay into it. But, I mean, it wasn’t always easy. It’s a sacrifice you have to create how you do it. And it’s not this really quick thing. And it’s an everyday thing. It’s not really like you can do like 5 or 6 and then be done. It’s like you need to stay freshly in it. And I think, ultimately, I became really challenged with, you know, what are you reading, and how are you applying that to your life? And that’s, ultimately, really been cool to go back and listen to some of the commentaries and listening and like this is totally Holy Spirit lead because 1) I don’t super remember this, but 2) just to hear your own voice in different places of your life and how different things stood out. And. so, I think it’s very cool that that followed me my whole life. And I think that is a really cool thing that the Lord instilled in me. And I’m really thankful that He chose to do that, like, He chose me at such a young age. And that I’m almost…not almost 21…but next year it’ll be 10 years and that’s just insane to me. But I think, ultimately, this year reading it chronologically, I was like, wow, okay, this really feels real. And especially after going to Israel and putting physical places with the words is when it really started making sense. And it was like, this is not just words. This is real life. This is a story. And, so, I think through all of that it’s been really helpful and it’s created a lot of healthy discipline that can only set one up for success. So, I think I owe a lot to the Daily Audio Bible for that.

Brian: Could not agree with you more. And I am so proud of you. So, we just wanted to get on the mic at Daily Audio Bible and just tell everybody in the community, hey, let’s all, as a community, be in prayer over this. Let’s cover China and cover this new channel in our prayers. And if you’ve wanted to go to the Bible chronologically, that can happen beginning January 1st on Daily Audio Bible Chronological. And China will be there to lead you through.

China: I think it’s always weird, like, ending a year because it makes it sound like, I’ll see you next year, but it’s like, there’s no breaks. It’s like, literally tomorrow. It’s the next day. So, it’s only a couple of weeks away, which is really exciting to finally talk about it and to announce it because now it’s not like a super secret. Like, it’s actually happening.

Brian: Yes. And the new Daily Audio Bible Chronological will be in the new Daily Audio Bible app. And we are preparing that now. A little Daily Audio Bible app update is that we’ve been beta testing this since the global campfire initiative. And a shout out to the 500 of you that have participated in that, you have been an immeasurable help to us in uncovering things that we had no way to find out without putting it out there. So, we’ve been working feverishly and uncovering things that we just didn’t know about. We’ve had some great victories and run into a couple of snags. I think we’re just running a few days behind where we wanted to be. We’ll probably end up being about a week, a week and half, behind where we wanted to be. I was hoping that the new Daily Audio Bible app would be out now but we’re not far. And it’s just the Christmas holidays have hit. And, so, we’re kind of moving through the process of moving the apps into the stores and stuff like that. So, I’ll keep you posted. But Daily Audio Bible Chronological will be in the new player, in the new app. Of course, it’ll be in the old player and the old app as well. But the day will come when that will be retired and will be all on the new system. So, continue prayers over the app and its launch and prayers over to the launch of Daily Audio Bible Chronological and over China will be so much appreciated. We’re so excited to step into this next season. So, let’s pray about that together as a community.

Father, we thank You for every single day that we’ve been able to be together over all of these years centered around the rhythm of Your word in our lives. And we thank You for the spoken word of God going out every single day for all of these years. It’s humbling that You would let us be here. And we thank You for the community that surrounds this rhythm. And, so, as we step into some new things - new app, new Daily Audio Bible Chronological - we ask Your blessing, Your direction, Your clarity, Your wisdom, in all of it. And we pray for your anointing to be on China as she begins this new quest and this new season. And we acknowledge her faithfulness throughout her childhood to Your word. And, so, we can’t wait to see what You will do with Daily Audio Bible Chronological. As we pray nearly every day, come, Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website. It’s home base. It’s where you find out what’s going on around here.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible as we get here into the final days of the year, then we thank you profoundly and humbly. As I say so many times in a year, everything that we’ve ever done we’ve done together as a community and it can’t be done if we don’t do it together. So, thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com or if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports:

Hi friends. My name is Beth B. I’m in South Carolina. I’ve been listening for a long time. I think it’s been about 4 years since I called in. I found the Daily Audio Bible when I was looking for an audible bible. I have a visual disability and my vision, you know, God healed me about 25 years ago and it was amazing because I was able to drive and watch my kids grow up and really __ in a lot of ways. My vision started to tank several years ago, maybe 6, 7 years ago. I had to stop driving. I can’t see my families faces. I cannot read. But God’s provided for me in amazing ways. However, I’m calling because He has prompted me to call you and asked you pray for healing for me. And I understand that healing comes in many forms and many ways because I’ve experienced all of them in my life as I’ve moved from brokenness to healing of my soul and my relationships and my heart and my vision. But…so…I don’t know what He has in mind now, but He definitely wanted me to call and ask y’all to pray. And our prayers are powerful. I know that and I love you all. I am so grateful for the steadfastness of this family and of Brian and your family. I wouldn’t trade much for the sweetness of the scriptures and it gets sweeter and sweeter every year. And your commentary is so important to me. So, thanks to everybody and I promise to let you know how I am healed because I know He has something in mind for me. Thank you. Merry Christmas.

Good afternoon. Good evening Daily Audio Bible family. This is Lee from New Jersey. Merry Christmas to you all and God bless you. So, I just wanted to leave out there for present family listening to the DAB I’ve ordered my Box set for the first time. So, I am really excited to receive it…and I think I ordered a few other things as well from the DAB gift shop. So, I’m really excited about that. So, if you guys are going to do it, get it done. You know how it is. Times going by fast. We’re already on the 14th day of this month. Wow! So, the rest of this call is dedicated to my sister from New Jersey, Unis. Unis, it’s your whacky brother, Lee from New Jersey. Yes, I call myself wacky because I’m always on the run, always rambling when I call. But I get it done. One way or another I pray for my brothers and sisters. And I just love you all and thank you for being so patient. So, let’s get it started. Unis, we pray in our Lord and Savior’s name for you on your behalf. We agree with you. We agree with our sister Unis Lord. We agree with her that, yes, let it be Your will, may Your will be done. Lord, I’m __ happy. I want to pray for a miracle Lord. You are the king of miracles. You are in the business of miracles. You have made miracles happen from the beginning of time and we can’t forget that You are miracle maker Lord. We ask that if it is in Your will, Lord, that You will create a miracle here so our sister Unis can give testimony to Your miracle Lord. And if not that she can give testimony to your unfailing love. Regardless of what it is, she’s willing to go all the way through and trust You all the way through with this situation Lord. And as for my sister, I am praying on her behalf that she loves You, no matter what. She’s going to love You to the end just as Job loved You no matter what he was going through, no matter what the devil…

Hey DAB family, this is Byron out in Florida. Real quick, I was at the gas station filling up my tires with air and there was this gentleman standing beside the pump with a bicycle just kind of being friendly to people. It was sort of weird. And he started talking to me. I was filling up my tires and said that someone had just given him the bike that he was standing next to. And he was very thankful for it. Just thanking God for the bike and I said okay. So, I went, and I got a track out of my car and I went to go talk to him about the Lord. And come to find out, he knew the Lord pretty well. He was homeless. He’d lost his home through an eviction and he is out in the street. And I just talked to him for a while. His name was Marvin and you could just tell he really knew the lord. He knew the Lord in a way that people who go to church all their life don’t know the Lord. It was very, very interesting. But, anyway, Marvin is diabetic and he showed me his foot. His toe has been amputated but he’s got a wound right in that area. A diabetics wound don’t really heal. So, imagine having a nasty infected wound on your foot and you being homeless and walking around everywhere. So, I want you guys to pray for Marvin for healing for his foot. He’s talking to people about Jesus. I didn’t just give him a track. I gave him dozens because he’s going to turn around and hand those things out. He’s walking for Jesus, so I want you guys to pray for Marvin for healing on his foot. I know you guys will do that and I thank you for it. Love you all. Bye.

Hi this is lance in San Diego. Hey, I was just listening to the prayer requests and Casandra it was from Arizona called in for her twin children are going to go…undergo an in-utero procedure for an issue they’re having. And I just wanted to let you to know that my heart just beat in my chest when I heard your prayer request. And I can feel the pain and anguish. And one of our children had a thing in utero also. So, I felt then…a connection there…the unknown. And, I just wanted to pray with you and lift up God’s mighty hand upon this procedure now. Lord, Jesus, Lord I just as ask in Your mighty name Lord, that You would be with those doctors, Lord, that You would guide them through this procedure, and that You would bless Casandra’s children, Lord that Your will would wrap that family in love, and community, Lord, and we, Daily Audio Bible, we just want to wish her all the love and warmth Lord, that we are there for her and we would just pray God that You would bless these little babies God. Get them through this procedure Lord and that they might come to term and be mighty women of God in the future. We just pray in Jesus name. Amen.