Let me explain it to you. Yes, inevitably they become interchangeable, they’ll be know as the great dragon, that old, all the names they all merge together, in the use here you’ll see the same things and it’s so beautiful the way it works out. Satan is a noun, person place or thing, person supposedly, right? And diabolos for devil guess what it is?
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that it is an adjective pronominal. Just like this, it’s pretending to be something it’s not, so typical of the devil. If you can remember that it will forge this in your mind that what starts here is nothing but a copycat want-to-be and it does that through your whole life, through the Bible, through everything. That’s why I love the grammar, it helps us to understand the words much more that just reading them as we go.
Now, I put on the board here and I’m going to use my cheat sheet briefly, put on the board here the Aramaic, Syriac because there’s something peculiar about what happens. There was a tendency to misunderstand what was being said in the text so rather than say ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’ and I personally think the better term, more politically correct is ‘Jewish,’ but the term being used is by the King James translators, but the language here translates it in a funny way.
It says “The blasphemy,” the blasphemy, the word here vela goop, velegodapa, this word here from, I told you I’m using my cheat sheet, ‘from’ dmn, d-m-n, aylayn which is ‘those’, I’m going to write underneath. Those who say, “those who say.” This is the most important part of where I’m going to get to because this word here being translated “they say of themselves,” I’m sorry I skipped over than, they say of themselves, this word here being zapeshene Judean, yudhhedaene, Judeans because they didn’t want to translated the word from the text, they changed the text as a sympathetic way of saying and that’s okay because I’m going to use the analogy from what I’ve just said. Again, “who say themselves Judeans,” Judeans, yudhhedaene cud. This word here ‘not,’ “they are not.” I’m glad that this analogy is here for me to do use. If I didn’t have it, I’d be stuck to try to explain.
They ended up tying him loosely to a stake and burning him. And while they have him tied there he promised he wouldn’t move, he didn’t. The flames encircled his body but they didn’t touch his body and the executioner stood and marveled thinking what is this man that the flames don’t touch him so he pierced him with a sword or spear. And it said that so much blood came out of the man that it extinguished the fire. They put his body on the pyre to be burned and if you read Fox’s Book of Martyrs, which I have a copy here, you’ll read tens of thousands of Christians that died. It makes this candy store Christianity that you see today a tragedy, probably God in heaven lamenting “What have the people done; that they’ve forgotten what price was paid?” starting with my Lord and Savior moving down through time when people wouldn’t belittle the name of Jesus Christ. They would die and count it an honor That was then. (applause)
Now if you recall I talked about Cybele, Kybele and I started researching that and it’s very interesting; I don’t want to talk too much about it cause it doesn’t pertain to anything really except that Smyrna had its local version of Cybele, the Mother Siplene or Mater Meter, strange name for a goddess or whatever it was, kind of freaky looking thing. But it’s amazing how history will kind of invert itself. And let me, let me say and preface because we’re going to go into the text, I need to preface something.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that there are many who have taken this text as license for anti-Semitism the text we’re reading, they’ve taken it as license for that. Just as the church at Ephesus had to deal with people that came forward saying “God had sent them” and that still exists today, “the Lord sent me and I have a message for you, He told me thus and so.” It existed in that day what Jesus is saying to the Church is there are people in your midst that are professing to be something they’re not.
The Apostolic Age is coming to an end; when he dies, the Apostolic Age is over. It must have killed him in his spirit, John, to see what’s happening with this Church. Remember, he’s on an island in exile, so. Maybe when he left, the Church wasn’t in this state; maybe when he left this was beginning to happen. It must have been like a knife through his heart, this pastor, this one, this Apostle of Love, to see what happened to his Church. So when you read about Jesus has the seven stars, which are the messengers, the pastors, and He’s walking in the midst of the Churches, you might say “Well, it’s His Church. Why, why wouldn’t He take care?” He did! And look at this, not one but two eyewitnesses to Jesus were pastor of that Church, and still I’m going to just jump to the, the bandwagon here still, what does it say about them?
The King James reads the problem with them, I’m going to get to their good things, but the problem with them, their bad things is it says “Because thou hast left thy first love.” Let me tell you what the Greek reads. The Greek says “You’ve abandoned your first love.” A little subtle difference between “I just left” and “I abandoned.” It means “Whack! That’s it!” So these seven words of commendation we’re going to look at culminate in this. Two eyewitnesses to Jesus, I really want this to sink in! I’m going to sound like a parrot, but two eyewitnesses to Jesus! What Church has the luxury of having had two eyewitnesses to Jesus? Paul and John being the pastor, and yet it still happened there. That tells me if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. With the best, most loving, most dedicated person at the helm of the Church it can happen. The letter also says “To he that overcometh,” and the word for ‘overcometh’ is being used of victory, like of someone running a race.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that to the person that overcomes, you’ll get this: you’ll get “to eat of the tree of life” which was taken away by Adam’s fall, will be given back to you which means life eternal. That’s what you’re going to get if you’ll cross the finish line, like the picture that you see when people run a marathon when they’re breaking through the ribbon with their hands up in the air. With their last push they cross the finish line. That’s what He’s talking about! Don’t quit; don’t give up; don’t stop!
So special note there, verse 11 and 12, “miracles not having commonly occurred,” period. “Then certain,” continuing on, “Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord, in the name of the Lord Jesus, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth. There were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, and chief of the priests, which did so. And the evil spirit answered and said,” and I’ve heard some of these, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” Well let me tell you something.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that God does the choosing and He does the separating. I’d like to find somebody find somewhere in the Bible where Samuel stepped up, he was probably the greatest in the land but he never announced himself “Pick me; pick me!” even though he was dedicated before he was born, dedicated and brought and still when he is brought to be with Eli, God calls him at that point three times: “Here I am.” “Samuel!” “Here I am.” So when people talk about “Who are you?” I come in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. These by the way you’re going to hear this all the time: “Jesus I know, Paul I know, but who are you?” You can give them that answer. “And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded.”
That must have been a real slam dunk. Who knows what else went on in there? “And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus; and the fear fell on them all, the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many that believed came, confessed, and showed their deeds. Many of them also which were, used curious art,” the sorcerers, and those types of people, they came, they “brought their books, they burned them; they counted the price of them, found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.”
“After these things were ended, Paul purposed in spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome. And he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, Timothy and Erastus; but he himself stayed in Asia for a season,” for a time.
I’m making you do some Bible footwork here. Turn in your Bible to Matthew 28:18. “Well, Mrs. Scott’s making me learn my Bible.” Maybe we’ll get to some of those ‘unused’ pages. I’m going to wait for you all to get here because this is very important. 28:18: “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
“All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore” therefore, based on that fact that all power is given unto me in heaven and earth, based on that authority that all power is given unto me in heaven and earth, based on that premise “therefore go and do this thing.” That’s the “therefore.” And how could such a little tiny word have such an impact? It forces you to go back to the previous statement and say “because of that.”
Okay, go back to Revelation 1:18 and 19 now. And you add in “Write ‘therefore.’” Now I’m going to tell I know there’s people out there listening to me that are going to say “Well you’re not supposed to add or take away from what the Scripture says.” That’s correct. I have access to some of the better fragments of the originals and I can tell you that the King James was not the original. So if somebody says we’re not to add or take away, that is true. What we’re doing is we’re saying here “What did Jesus say? Period. “Write the things” ”Write therefore the things which thou hast seen.”
“Write therefore, based on what? “Write therefore, based on the fact that I’m the living one and I became dead and behold I’m alive. I’m living unto the ages of ages and I have the keys of death and Hades.” On that authority, on that premise, on that knowledge, I’m standing right here in front of you telling you this, John. On, based on this authority, “Write therefore the things which thou hast seen, the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.”
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that it’s a little tiny word, but it forces you to go back to that first look at 1:18. And the beauty of all this is, if you are vacillating between how could this be and is this really real?
And if you know what the size of the Parthenon is, that’s staggering! A hundred and thirty columns lined the way two by two, each column gifted by a king – not just marble columns, but encrusted with gold and silver and jewels. People tend to cross-fertilize, if you will, the Temple Artemis, which we relate to Diana and Cybele, which the fact of the matter is if you look back and you find about the history of Artemis, she’s not who we see she is in the Ephesian book. Artemis, the original temple, was a beautiful temple to the virgin sister of Apollo, not to Cybele, not to Diana. Later, the Italian goddess.
In fact, no message is complete without a dictionary. I’m glad you like dictionaries. I like dictionaries too. I also like dictionaries when I have my glasses on because I can read better. Some of us, those of you that have been around, it’s kind of fuzzy because when you read the Ephesian letter, and we’ve been conditioned to think that this Artemis, Diana, is the multi breasted goddess. But in fact that goddess that came into the temple, that’s Celine or Cybele that was co mingled.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that the original Artemis was the sister of Apollo. We read here: “Artemis, probably the most popular of the Hellenic deities. Artemis was worshipped wherever the Greeks settled and by the Romans as Diana after she was identified with the Italian goddess of that name. Her occasional identification with the Greek moon goddess Celine had begun by the 5th century BC.” And we go on to read-I’m going to try and find here where it says “Daughter of Zeus by the titaness Lido and twin sister of Apollo, Artemis was born either on the island of Delos where the horn altar constructed the altar of horns.” And it goes on to tell a little bit of her history.
All I’m concerned with is making sure we separate something that happened. Too bad we couldn’t learn from them. If their goddess, Artemis, would have stayed pure and I say that, not co-mingled with another god but what happened is the night the temple the first time burned, and this is important to register all this, when it was rebuilt, by the way, the person who burnt down the temple, it’s kind of a strange story.
“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear,” Daniel was told to seal the things. John is told, we read, to write down what he sees. Now, we’ve covered, “the time is at hand.” John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: “Grace be unto you,” unmerited favor, “and peace,” cessation of againstness, “from Him which is, which was, and which is to come.” Now listen, there are numbers in this book like the number 7, we’ll read, “the seven Spirits, the seven churches, the seven stars, the seven…but there are also numbers in the text itself.
This is the first of these: “which is, which was, and which is yet to come.” There’s your triplet there and John will do that woven in. I don’t think he did it, I think he was scribing, if I can make up a word, and these are woven into the text and it’s so amazing when you read these you go, “Wow, this is amazing.” Woven right in. “And from the seven Spirits which are before His throne.” Now before I go too far, let’s do a little bit of history. 582 BC, Pythagoras did not write anything down, but he came up with the concept that the whole universe is based on numbers, that everything has a numerical value in the universe.
It’s true, we know that we can take elements for example like chromosomes or we can take genetic makeup. There are certain repeatables that have to happen. Music: seven notes, the eighth is the octave to go to the next higher or lower. So there are numerical things, I don’t want to get into string theory and we could talk about all of the numerical issues, I don’t want to go too far, I just want to say that before this was put down on paper we had somebody else talking about numbers. In fact I just happen to have the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, just happen to have it handy because you never know when you’re going to need to read one of these.
Whew! “Pythagoras: he emigrated from the island of Samos, off of Asia Minor to Italy, there he founded societies based on a strict way of life. They had a great political impact in southern Italy” and yadda, yadda, yadda. “Now his fame grew exponentially with the passage of time. Plato’s immediate successors in the Academy saw true philosophy as an unfolding of the original insight of Pythagoras.” I don’t need to read anymore. He single handedly set the stage.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that before Socrates, before Aristotle, here’s a mind the came up with and here’s what’s so funny when Copernicus came up with the laws that we still use, the Sun verses the Earth, the laws that we still use, the Church labeled him heathen and Pythagorean because of his numbers and their numerical value in the universe.
Well, unless he had some speed growth there, vines take a long time to grow. That means a long time and a long process to make wine. He did not just… it did not just happen. But possibly, he could have just had too much to drink not knowing it would make him pass out like he did, who knows? You know, but every body like Romans 3:23 says, everybody falls short. Okay, Noah got drunk so everything that he did before that gets wiped out because he got drunk. This is the interpretation of some of the people that you meet.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that chapter 7 begins with God saying, “Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for I have seen righteous before me in this generation.” The 16th verse, “They went in” “They went in male and female of all flesh, as God commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.” Outside of the ark there had to be universal reign of death. It had to be like that night of the Passover when they didn’t put the blood: those who didn’t put the blood over the doorpost, the angel of death did not pass over, and many died and were killed by the death angel. The screams had to be horrific. And then the water began to rise and probably those that mocked and ridiculed probably they heard banging on the doors of ‘let me in’ and ‘help me’ as the waters rose. But God shut Noah in – he and his family.
We know the story extends beyond this, but I want to wrap it up with five points of the types of Christ in what we have looked at. So I always like to make an appropriation to the New Testament. I am going to do it, I have penned the five points in my Bible and here they are: The ark was God’s provision to Noah as Christ is for us. All those that enter in will find rest. Matthew 11:28: “Come unto me, all that labour and are heavy laden, I will give you rest.” And it is funny, “Rest Noah; but God’s provision for Noah, the ark; for us, Christ. Number two. God revealed His design to Noah to carry out perfectly.
Likewise, Christ came to do the will of the Father perfectly and did it. Number three. Before construction trees needed to be felled – many, many trees as I have mentioned just like the trees or tree that was felled to sweeten the waters that were bitter Marah. Trees needed to be felled and cut down, a living thing to be cut down as an element in the process of salvation like Christ living needed to be cut as the Bible says cut short for salvation. Number four. The ark was the refuge for Noah from God’s judgment. Likewise, Christ is for us.
Noah is bid to come just like Peter, “Lord if it be thou, bid me come” just like Peter except a different fashion. And I go back to the passage where the Bible says, “He who comes to me I will in no wise throw out” – I won’t cast out. The invitation was to come.
These are five promises for us that you can take with you today. It’s fine and nice to be able to pull apart and see what is in here in these little words and treasures in the Hebrew and some other languages. But five promises to leave the building with today that all of this that God provided for for Noah is provided in one source for us today; and that is Jesus Christ.
I am going to continue this at a later time but that is my message for today.
“The English word ‘man’ is related to the Sanskrit manu through its German roots. Gothic, the oldest known Germanic language used the form mana for ‘man.’” Now it continues and gets a little bit more interesting and I think I am just going to read it to you. “In the Egyptian mythology Nu was the god of waters who sent an inundation to destroy mankind, familiar to the flood story “and Nu and his consort, Nut, were deities…” hey I didn’t make that up, that is in here “were deities of the firmament and the rain.” Imagine having a consort named Nut. “In Europe, the prefix ma seems to have taken over from da which is also an old word for water or river. This led to the name Dan in England and the European Danube.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that the first Greeks living in the coastal regions of Europe were called Danoi or people of water, variants of the name Danube, or Dano, Dana, Danu, Danao and Danai.” Say that five times. “The root of these names is danu which means flowing, the Latvian river Dvina was formerly called Duna and it is also from that root word duna. And he goes on to describe things, but there is one little thing he says as to the American continent, “Manu seems to have modified in several ways. The Sioux language took its form of the word minne meaning water; thus we have proper names for Minneapolis, the city of water and Minnesota meaning sky blue water.” So we have a nice little word study on the name Noah from Dr. Boice, but we know the name Noah in the Hebrew means ‘rest.’ That is what his name means.
Now we first find Noah in the genealogies. We know that he is in the descendant of the good Godly line if you wish and not the other line. And we encounter him in this moral decline – what is going on in the world. Every time I read this passage, I can’t help but think how pathetic if we believe that God created man, “Let us make man in our image” – how pathetic man had become that God would say in verse 6, it is being said of God: “And it repented the LORD that he had made man on earth” and that is a pretty sorry state “and it grieved him at his heart.” My husband used to use the word ‘anthropomorphic; I call this an ‘anthropapathia.’
The “good news” this word here is translated on your piece of paper “to the poor” and it describes not the poor necessarily that are homeless, that are needy of material things but destitution, someone who is destitute. The Gospel goes not just to those who don’t “have” financially, the King James was very high on trying to tout poor as in material things but poor as in destitute is what is being said here. “Sent” “he hath sent me” I put a comma because they were too close together, “he hath sent me.” Then we have this right translation here.
Pastor Melissa Scott telss us that this word is another important word. Now, that word reflects this “to bind up” is a different word, completely different I don’t even want to go into it, it’s not even worth wasting time on it. It’s a different word. There are many words in the Greek for healing. I’ve just put two of them, if you come up here please, David, Now just take a picture of that. There are two words, two Greek words the top one, let me put my finger there, can you read that, that says therapul from which we get therapy, can you see that. There are two words there, one on top of each other, if you’re looking at your handout you’ll know what you’re looking at, that’s good thank you. Therapul, which is therapy, to heal, and you can check this out when you go home. Don’t do it now, but Luke 9:11 “He cured those that needed healing.” The other word beneath it has a two-part action to it. It, it heals somebody but it also delivers them from “ceremonial” uncleanliness and you can work that out at home I don’t want to explain it to you, okay? But this word here is used specifically for sickness, ailments, not just to heal the brokenhearted. It is a healing of sickness.
You can be in need today of physical healing. I believe everybody right now needs some type of healing. Some of it is purely physical, some of it is spiritual. I said this a couple of weeks ago, there’re different kinds of healing but this one is intrinsic to disease, to sickness not some other issue, it is just what I’m saying. It’s not something like to mend the brokenhearted which sounds very, you know namby pamby, it doesn’t have the oomph that says not just healing but curing something, sickness, disease. Okay, I think I’ve killed that one to death.