Waiting…
Been waiting a long time for the coming of Christ? Think of what it must have been like to wait for nearly 4000 years for His first coming! Waiting is difficult, and while people wait, they come up with theories that don’t come true. When their theories don’t come true, they give up on the promises and slip into indifference, then lose faith.
This time of year, it would be well to review the anticipations and pitfalls leading up to the first coming of Christ. The first promise was given to Adam and Eve—Genesis 3:15. When their first child was born, Eve declared, “I have gotten me a manchild: even the Lord!” Genesis 4:1, translatted from the Hebrew. She thought Cain was the Messiah! From that time on, every woman who believed the promises thought her child might be the promised One.
In fact, the belief in a coming Deliverer was so wide spread that even when Tammuz was born to Semerimas in Ancient Babylon, the thought was that he was the fulfillment of the promise. After all, he was the first one born by an immaculate conception—so they were told. Only Semerimas and whoever fathered the child knew differently. Others were told that he was the product of his father Nimrod who had become a god and was living in the sun. One of the sun’s rays alledgedly caused the conception. Semerimas was elevated to a goddess, Ishtar, and Tammuz was considered a son of the gods. When he died an untimely death in his youth, all Babylon wept—their false hopes dashed. Each year in the month of his death, they would weep again.
The Jews had long looked forward to the coming Messiah. They had a rich heritage of specific prophecies that said He would be born through them. Fourteen hundred years from the promise to Abraham, the Jews found themselves in Babylon as war hostages. Their beloved city was in ruins, the promised land was being overtaken by wild animals, weeds and thistles. All their hopes seem to have come to naught—because of their own unfaithfulness. Could it be that their unfaithfulness had led God to abandon His plans to send a Redeemer? They wondered. While in Babylon, according to Ezekiel chapter 8, the Jewish women joined in weeping for Tammuz. Perhaps they joined the Babylonians in thinking that God had sent His Son, but evil had triumphed, and the promised One had been overcome? That would cause anyone to weep? At any rate, they were in this hopeless condition when Daniel received the confirmation that the Messiah would come, and was given the timetable for His appearing. It was in the form of a riddle—Daniel 9:24-27. Many of you have studied that chapter in your Sabbath School lessons this past week. This must have been the most encouraging thing that could have happened to Daniel. He probably told as many as he could, and as quickly as he could. But why did God couch the timetable in a riddle?
Revelation 12 reveals that there is a real war going on between Christ and Satan; Christ’s followers and Satan’s. During war, messages sent from headquarters to the troops on the front line are always encoded, lest they fall into the hands of the enemy. If it is known that the messages will be intercepted by the enemy, they are often encoded in such a way that they give misinformation—to throw the enemy’s energies in the wrong direction. That was precisely what God did in Daniel 9! No one wanted to know when the Messiah was to come more than the devil himself. He wanted to be ready and foil God’s plans. By doing so, he might give himself his only possible chance at eternal survival. He probably read Daniel’s riddle with great eagerness.
70 weeks to the messiah! The count would begin from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem. I am sure the devil began the countdown each time there was a decree—and there were three. No wonder Sandballot and others did so much harm to the progress of rebuilding the city. Perhaps the devil thought that if he could thwart the fulfillment of the decree, the Messiah would not have the conditions necessary for Christ’s birth. Whatever he thought, he sure did pour all of his energies into stopping the progress of rebuilding the wall.
But, the wall was finally completed. And, 70 weeks went by with no Messiah. The devil had to go back to his calculations and see where he missed the point. Perhaps the weeks of days represented years? God had used that trick before! His energies were renewed. But from which decree? Cyrus’s, Darius’s or Artexerxes’? To further complicate his calculations, the question came to him: would the Messiah come after 69 weeks of years? Or after 62 weeks of years? Does the prophecy point to His birth or to His sacrifice? (The devil knew that the Messiah would die a substitutional death, as he had been watching the rite of sacrifice for many years.) When you see how many possible options the devil had at figuring out when the Messiah would appear, we can see clearly why he was caught off guard when Jesus was born and he had to scramble and pull off a desperate scheme of killing all the baby boys in Bethlehem.
When one understands why prophecy is often couched in symbols and riddles, it becomes apparent that the student of prophecy needs the Holy Spirit to guide him in the interpretation. It also helps one to know why some prophecies such as the last verses of Daniel 11, and the sixth trumpet of Revelation, are simply not understood yet. God will make it plain to the troops on the front lines when the time is ripe.
Which takes us back to Christ’s first Advent. How did the wise men from the east know when to go in search of the new king? They read Daniel 9, with an understanding heart enlightened by the Holy Spirit. That is the only way anyone could make sense of the riddle without the advantage of hindsight.
So, don’t give up on the promises of God. His second coming is as sure as was His first coming. The devil probably has all his computers going full tilt 24/7 to figure out the prophetic riddles. His energies are often spent needlessly. Meanwhile, God has people who “hunger and thirst after righteousness,” who “keep His commandments and have the faith of Jesus,” who, like the wise men of old, will be ready and waiting when Jesus comes.
Dennis
dennispumford.com
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