//It’s hard in today’s enlightened world to appreciate the wonderment of the ancients. Imagine them looking up to the sky in bafflement. What makes the sun and moon trek across the sky? What holds the earth up? Or perhaps my favorite question of all: where is all of the snow and hail kept up in the sky, for when it is time to fall? In today’s verse, God asks Job if he’s ever visited the storehouses.

Small wonder that the “sky gods” of various cultures reigned supreme. One cannot truly appreciate the Bible without transporting yourself back into the age of wonderment.

//The above verse was a favorite of preacher John Murray in the late 18th century. It was a time when Calvinism ruled, and many people fatalistically accepted its doctrine of predestination. God had appointed some people “to prosperity, others to labor; some to ease, others to pain; some to fame, others to obscurity; some to salvation, others to be damned.” Murray couldn’t stomach this idea, and preached a dangerous alternative, using the words of Paul. God didn’t plan his wrath upon anyone, but appointed everyone to salvation.

Shades of Universalism? How do today’s Calvinists (who rely heavily upon other teachings of Paul) counteract this verse? Paul was an enigma who seemed to preach contrary messages depending upon what his listeners needed to hear, in order to embrace Christ. Did Paul believe that we were all predestined–destined to salvation?

Certainly there are a plethora of verses used by Universalists to support their stance that everybody goes to heaven. There are also a plethora of contrary verses quoted by exclusivists. It’s this smorgasbord of contrary Bible interpretations that keep my blog alive.

Ah, who really knows the nature of God?

//One day, not too long after Jesus ascended into heaven, Philip is instructed by the Spirit to journey into the desert, where he meets an influential eunuch from Ethiopia. A eunuch, in case you’ve forgotten, is someone who has been castrated.

The eunuch asks Philip what hinders him from being baptized? The answer is obvious to us, the readers, but apparently not to Philip. This quaint rendering of the law in the King James version explains:

He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD. –Deuteronomy 23:1

Baptism, then, at least in the Jewish sense of a ritual cleansing, was inappropriate. But how would Philip know about the man’s “privy member?” So Philip baptized him, and God apparently approved, for immediately afterward “the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing.”

★★★

This is a no-frills, straightforward introduction to the preterist interpretation of Revelation. Nothing new is presented. It’s a short little booklet you can read in a couple of hours.

Preterism is the belief that most closely fits my own historical-critical treatment of Revelation, so I’m on board with the author. If you’re looking for a scholarly-yet-respectful interpretation, you do need to be aware of the preterist way of reading the Apocalypse. I just didn’t find anything too captivating about this presentation. The basics of Uttinger’s book follow:

1. The radiant woman of Revelation is Israel, waiting for the arrival of the Messiah.

2. The beast of Revelation is Rome.

3. The “mark of the beast,” 666, points to Nero Caesar, who persecuted Christians in the first century.

4. First-century Jerusalem is the “Babylon” of Revelation, and was destroyed as Revelation predicts.

5. The New Jerusalem is a present reality … Revelation’s promise of a new age has already begun.

Recommended for those wanting a glimpse of preterism, but such an abbreviated treatment will prove unconvincing.

//I happened to mention in an off-hand comment during a radio interview that if you lived in Asia Minor at the time Revelation was being written, you wouldn’t be able to buy or sell without confessing allegiance to the Caesars. I realized afterward that I hadn’t explained the situation at all.

Many of Revelation’s passages are directed against Caesar worship, and the prominence of the Imperial Cult (the Cult of the Caesars) in Asia Minor (current-day Turkey). It was to seven Christian churches there that John addressed Revelation, encouraging them to stay true. Today’s verse hints that they may not be have been able to even “buy or sell.”

Indeed, it was so for strict Christians. Commerce and religion were intertwined, in the trade guilds and the market places. If you did not give an offering acknowledging Caesar as God, then you were distrusted and unable to participate economically. You would eventually starve. Some scholars hypothesize that a system was instigated in order to identify who had made an offering to Caesar and who hadn’t, by leaving some sort of mark on your person. Thus, the “mark of the beast.”

In my book about Revelation, I suggest a different interpretation of the “Mark of the Beast” as Roman coinage, with Caesar’s image imprinted and described as a god (a “mark” is an imprint.)

Whatever the intended meaning of the “mark of the beast,” it’s clear that economics were directly influenced by the cult of the Caesars; particularly so in Asia Minor, where Revelation was directed.

//This is an absolutely fascinating prediction made by Isaiah. The “highway” language of Isaiah surely influenced the Christian language of “the way” in the New Testament and early church, but where does this prophesied highway run?

From Egypt to Assyria, through the middle of Jerusalem. Surely, these were Israel’s two most hated enemies, and Isaiah says they will meet together, serving God together. Israel will be the blessing in the midst of the land.

But there’s more. God calls these two hated enemies his “blessed people” and the “work of his hands.”

“In that day,” Isaiah says, the most hated enemies will become friends. What day do you think he means? Has it come yet? Have all people come together, across the earth, in mutual respect and love and peace? Or is this something we’re still supposed to be working on?