Lift this out, lift it off the text and see the spirit of what Jesus is saying. He’s not saying He’s condemning Jewish people by oh contra, He’s saying, let’s just take what this language says here, it says those professing to be Judeans. Now let me, let me go, let me give you another sidebar before I’m done. I’m going to hurry up.
I translated this is, I abbreviated Boheric Coptic verses Sahidic Coptic to show an example of something. It’s a little bit tricky because they kind of look a little bit the same. I’ve tried the thin one so you could see, make a little bit difference, the letters are a little bit different but let me just say this.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that they made a textual error when they translated this and left out this word, follow my pen here, this is the word for blasphemy te, the definite article and here’s a negative word but amenepetrafagioya. All right? What happened is somebody made a scribal error, which does happen or maybe it was deliberate, we don’t know the reasons why.
If you pull the letters you’ll see there are common thread letters in this two words up in the Boheric; otherwise the texts pretty much read the same thing and I don’t have the time to go through them except to show you people can make mistakes. But let me just read my two translations to show you the Boheric translation. I found not one from these who saved themselves that they be Jews, being not such but being a synagogue of Satan. That is this translation. The Sahedic says and the blasphemy of these who say they are Jews, not so but of the Synagogue of Satan. Now why is this being said?
Now I want to make this clear before I get into the text and I will reiterate it as I get into the text. Thank God we serve a God who does not discriminate, He does not see black, He does not see white, He does not see female, He does not see male, He doesn’t see crippled or full or skinny or fat. He sees us through the eyes of a loving God. Thank God for that. So take that and put that in your brain when we read this passage. It is not license for anti-Semitism, in fact what Jesus is saying to the Church is these people if they really were who they professed to be, they’d never do this.
Now I’m going to get back to this because this is a subject that I can really relate to over the last year and a half. I have much things to say on this. But what is amazing to me as we go through and we’ve just briefly looked at the history, you’ll see that as we pass from the Apostolic church that ends about 100 we get into the church at Smyrna which is the church of martyrdom and persecution that goes until 313 or so until the edict of tolerance is issued by Constantine. But these waves of things that happen they’re history I’m not making them up, this is not in my point of view, this is historical, historical things that actually happened. So it forces us to take another look not just at the Bible but it takes, take another look at ourselves.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that we call ourselves human beings and we acted so barbarically and I’m talking about every single person under the sun because there’s not one race under the sun that hasn’t done something, somewhere. You know a lot of people want to say well these folks have done this and those folks have done that. We’re going to look at what happen at Smyrna.
You’ll see this very large Jewish community who had extreme favor with the Roman government. And the reason for that you’ll see, Smyrna sides with Rome through the Mithridates and Carthage and the Seleucids. Always there and always a supporter behind the scenes you’ll find the Jewish populace. They were very strong and very influential. They represented 12% of the population and for a pagan world that’s enormous. So they had a lot of clout in that day. We’re going to go right into the text because I’ve got a lot to say on the text.
“Well, this is too hard a message for me. I thought I’ve arrived. I paid my titles, now I’m waiting for my blessing!” What about these seven things? I’ve got so much to say and so little time to do it. He says “I know your works.” Now I want to be careful when I address this. Jesus is not condemning this, when He says “I know your erga, your works.” Well He’s talking about works. And I want you to listen carefully because I really feel in my spirit that this body here has been conditioned to something. The minute you hear this, two flags go up: James and Paul. James: “Well, show me this and I’ll show you that;” Paul: “Sola fide.” That’s not. Try and get the mindset because this is something that I wrestled with the whole week. How am I going to get this across for people to not misinterpret? I started it last week.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that start and go back to Jesus. When in doubt, now I, I really I, when they had this fashion what would Jesus do? No! Go back and see what Jesus did. Set the, set the pattern there and then look towards what He told the disciples to do. That’s your starting point. If He said it, that’s my authority. Anybody else saying something different, they’re going to have to take a back seat. I went back to look you’ll find that most of the time when Jesus is talking, He is not talking about going to do the deeds that we commonly nowadays call ‘works.’ His ‘work’ was the work of the Father. He said He came to do one thing, the will of the Father which was the work, the meat, of the Father. For what? To save the lost, and He couldn’t just do it by being here. He had to lay down His life and raise again! Well, that’s a good start. Can I do those works? Now of all these people that are inflated with “I’m only going to do it if people can see me,” they’ll know you by your works. Well, that’s wonderful, but what did Paul say about this because Paul had a lot to say?
You comb through Romans 4, you comb through Galatians, you comb through Ephesians, you’ll find that the work that Paul’s talking about is the edifying of the body which we are calling the Church, Jesus Christ, period! Now somebody somewhere, I wish somebody would find, find me a place where it says we’re supposed to do otherwise “For the edifying of the Church!”
“And the same time there arose no small stir about that way. For certain man,” you’re very familiar with this if you read the book of Acts. I don’t want you to put the mindset; I want you to put the glasses on, that you’re looking at what Paul had to overcome in Gospelizing this paganistic world.
“A certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for,” and please: I’m going to everywhere it says “Diana” it should read ‘Artemis,’ and the King James put them as one and the same. The Greek text, my Greek Bible separates the two.
Come on over here for a minute, just so the folks can read, those that read Greek; I’ve put them in pink Artemedos. Everywhere there’s no “Diana” to be found in the Greek. Diana was an Italian goddess. Artemedos. You see it again here; it’s throughout the whole. Artemis, all right? So if I, if you hear me saying ‘Artemis,’ you’re not reading wrong; I’m reading from my Greek, I’ve made the corrections in my Bible, just for the sake of being correct.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that for a certain named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Artemis, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen; Whom he called together with the workmen of the like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we make our living this is how we make our money, making these little trinkets of Artemis that we sell in the temple. “Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost all throughout Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away much people, saying that there be no gods, which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in danger,” our livelihood’s in danger, “but also the temple of the great goddess Artemis should be despised,” and it should be; I’m going to show you a picture in a minute, “her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.”
Listen to this mindset! From this man’s vantage point, every single person in the world worships Diana, or Artemis can’t get out of the box. “And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians.
Absolutely not. “And the last to be more than the first.” And this is why the King James sometimes you’ve got to go ‘Okay, but it doesn’t make sense.’ Really if you forget about chapter and verse because chapter and verse was not here in this book when this was put together. And you read it through and you take out “Not withstanding” and read it how I’m going to translate it. He says “I know your works, I know your uncalculated love, I know your service to the ministry, I know your faith, I know your endurance and I know your works again. You’re doing a little bit better church at Thyatira than you previously doing but I have this against you.” So six commendations and here it comes. Let it go Jesus. Okay.
“I have a few things against thee” – back into the King James world of English – “because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication and eat things sacrificed unto idols.” Whew. There are going to be some spiritually immature children out there who are going to take this, because they don’t understand scripture, they’re going take this as a license to say ‘You see. Women are to not speak in the church’ because they’re too silly to know that this is not talking about a woman. It’s making reference to a woman representationally.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that we know Jezebel from the Bible. Everybody knows about Jezebel. In First and Second Kings she’s the one that, painted her face, she tied back her hair and she looked out a window in a day – it’s changed a little bit but back then when women weren’t supposed to wear make-up. If you wore make-up you were a Jezebel. And that became license to say ‘Well then if you put on make-up you ought to not look out a window.’ She did all that to seduce other people. She did something way worse than those three things. I tie my hair back. I put make-up on. I look out a window. She married – most of you know the story. I’ll tell it to you briefly. She married King Ahab. She herself was the daughter of a king. When I say this I hope it will sink into some of you. This tells me all you need to know about the woman. She was the daughter of the king of Sidon and Tyre. If I said no more that bell should be going off.
If you’re not yet, if your Faith is not yet settled on the Resurrection, I would make a recommendation take the time to study the Resurrection get tapes or whatever it is you have to do because once you settle that, your eyes are going to be open to something so incredible, you’re going to say “Why didn’t I see this before?
Here is, things being revealed to John in such, it’s so strong. It’s not just a, ‘They’re there now, go and they’re there.’ It’s saying, “Based on this authority that is in me” Jesus talking “Based on this authority, I’m proof that I’m living in front of you. Based on that, that I have the keys of death and hell. Based on that, you write these things down, and you send them.” “And the things which shall be hereafter.” I like this ‘hereafter’ word. It’s, I just move the markers from one place to another. “Hereafter” sorry about that folks ”hereafter, meta tauta.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that we’re going to encounter that word, two words, meta tauta. We’re going to encounter a lot of meta words. Metanoia is going to be one of them we’re going to see repeatedly. Meta tauta is not just the things that are going to be, the things which shall be. It’s the things after these things.
Now, John’s been through a lot. Can you imagine this is one day. He’s on the isle, he’s exiled, he’s not chained up, he’s free to roam around, and poor John staggering around, an old, old man. Jesus appears, and if it’s not bad enough that he hasn’t seen Jesus in some probably 60 years, now he’s going to have all these things in front of him.
This is why I said to you there’s no way it, as crazy as it looks on the surface, there’s no way that John made this up. And as crazy as it looks on the surface, this is our roadmap. I want this book to be, not something that you read and it has no application, because believe it or not out of all the 66 books that became canonized this one happens to have the last chapter for us in this time. Once you’ve read the whole Bible, there has to be some application, some realization, of what is yet to come, which is being revealed to us in this book.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us the temple was a museum, a bank, and an asylum for criminals. All of the kings stored their money and their treasures and a lot of stuff in the temple because it was the common thought no one would attack the Great Temple all great works of art in the temple. And anyone who was a criminal, more than a city of refuge, anyone who was a criminal of any kind, if you could make it to the temple it’s like “New York: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere” if you could make it to the temple, you’d be okay, you would have asylum. One fellow who wanted to make a note of his name, claim to fame, he burned the temple down.
Now it gets rebuilt one time and then gets rebuilt a second time. And through this, there’s the property, the land, is going to change hands many times. It’s Greek, then it’s Persian, and how did the Romans get involved? Want to know about the dumbest thing in history?
This king of Pergamum who controlled Ephesus, he wrote in his will “Upon my death I bequeath my kingdom to the Roman Empire.” So in 133 when he died, the Romans came in and it was officially under Roman control, though they really didn’t want anything to do with it, they controlled it from a distance. The consul sat and judged the people at a distance.
All this is important because when you read about Paul’s time, you will see by the time Paul evangelized, not only did he. If he would’ve just come there at the time that it was strictly this virgin goddess, probably it wouldn’t have been as difficult. But by the time Paul gets there, what is in the temple is so ugly and disgusting. At least Apollo’s sister was the picture of a virgin.
This Cybele, the multi-breasted goddess they worshipped, goddess of fertility, just an ugly thing, and the inside of the temple, just a hodgepodge, whatever went, people would just go in there and it was just, it was disgusting. What a task Paul had to go in there and preach the Gospel.
But numbers are important. We’re going to see that here. Now what I’ve done and I think I have time to do it, I have made a list of some of the numbers, Number 3 we have a lot of things that come in the Bible, Genesis 18 for starters, the 3 that appeared to Abraham in the plains of Mamre; Leviticus 14:14, in order to cleanse the leper, 3 places on the body, the right thumb, the right toe and the right ear required to make the whole man belong to God; the 3 temptations of Jesus; the 3 denials of Peter – can I do this in one breath, I’m not sure – the 3rd day Resurrection; Moses hid for 3-months; Jonah’s 3 days; the 3 gates at the East, North, South, West.
Whew! Then you have 10 added unto each number as an intensifier. Some of you that know this don’t tune me out, please. Makes it more and sometimes many and much more. So for example the 30-pieces of silver. You say “Well, was that divinely manifested? Absolutely, because you look what they did when they picked up the money, and what they did with the money there afterwards, absolutely. Gideon’s 300, I could go on and on and on but I don’t want to. I just wrote the brief things for you.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that we’re not going to do all the numbers because 1 is the number of God, 2 is the number of adequate witness, and we’ll get to those later on in the latter chapters of Revelation. I only want to deal with the few numbers that we’re going to encounter in the next message or two.
Four the number of the whole earth: 4 corners, north east south west; 4 seasons; 4 phases to the moon; 4 essential elements, fire, air, earth, water; in the book of Revelation, the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse; 4 walls to the city; the Euphrates, 4 heads, 4 parts; 4 winds; 4 angels of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. Now let me talk about 4 intensified because all these things, you’ve heard them a bazillion times. Noah’s 40-days, Moses, Jesus, Jonah, the list goes on and on the number of complete trial and testing. Five and 10 – 5 the number of Grace, 10 the intensifier. We’re going to look at 10 as the human number, not the number of man, but the number of human responsibility: the 10 Commandments; the 10 virgins; Luke 15, the woman with the 10 pieces of silver.
I took the liberty to photocopy something to read to you. It’s a letter from Pliney the Younger to the Emperor Trajan. Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that if you’ll indulge me for a minute because there are many people, some newer people and even those old-timers, I’m not sure that you’ve ever heard anything like this. This is an actual copy put into English for the reading. “I have made it a rule, Lord,” this is Pliney writing to the emperor and he calls him ‘Lord,’ the equivalent of what we would use to refer to God they called the Roman emperors ‘Lord.’ “To refer everything to you about which I’m in doubt, for who could better provide direction for my hesitations or instruction for my lack of knowledge?
I’ve never been present at the interrogation of Christians, therefore I do not know how far such an investigation should be pushed or what sort of punishments are appropriate. I’ve also been uncertain as to whether age makes any difference or whether the very young are dealt with in the same way as adults. Whether repentance.” Now listen closely. This is not a Christian writer and you can feel where this word slipped into our Christian realm in translation because this is a non-Christian using this word ‘repentance.’ “Whether repentance and renunciation of Christianity is sufficient, or whether the accused are still considered criminals because they were once Christians, even if they later renounced it.
And whether persons who are to be punished simply for the name of Christian, even if no criminal act has been committed or whether only crimes associated with the name are to be punished. In the meantime, I’ve handled those who have been, who have denounced their Christianity as follows: I asked them whether they were Christians. Those who responded affirmatively, I’ve asked them second and third time under the threat of the death penalty. If they persisted, if they persisted in their confession I had them executed.” Nice.
“For whatever it is that they are actually advocating, it seems to me that the stubbornness must be punished in any case. Others who labor under the same delusion but who are Roman citizens I have designated to be sent to Rome.” This is indeed why Paul ended up in Rome but not under the same course. “In the course of the investigations as it usually happens charges are brought against a wider circle of people and the following special cases have emerged. An unsigned placard was posted accusing a large number of people by name.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that it is showing just like we are in a pathetic state but looking at God that way and making Him man-like or human-like in His grieving towards mankind in this statement. “And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, beast, creeping thing, fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” Now I can’t find anything good to say on that except it had to be pretty bad.
Now we don’t have other than what is here and I certainly don’t want to go look at parallel literature, but I’ve peeked at the parallel literature that says what was going on, it was pretty gruesome. It is a pretty ugly state and we start with the little bit we know about Noah, “Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” The book of Genesis is the book of ‘first, so because of the name Genesis being ‘what is at the beginning, there is much conflict between what is being labeled ‘grace’ and ‘favor.’ The Masoretic text reads: “Veh Noah, and this is actually an ‘n, it looks like something else but it is an ‘n.’ “Va Noah matsa chen beyotne Yahweh.” “And Noah, he found…” and this word chen which is grace.
Now remember when we looked at Esther, Esther found favor with the king. There are many people that find ‘favor’ and the root word is the same, but here this word if you expand it to chanan is of a superior person bending or stooping down to help an inferior; so it’s not favor. Although grace is ‘unmerited favor, I am going on to show you why it is grace; and not favor. It is very, very thin line but it is important. “In the eyes of Yahweh.” That is the Hebrew.
The Aramaic has a little bit different twist on it. I took this from the Targum Onkelos and I took the liberty to not drag that big tome here but Targum Onkelos has: “And Noah, he found” different word and that is another anomaly – is how do you find ‘grace’? ‘Grace’ finds you; you do not find ‘grace.’ So, they use this word ‘compassion, not grace, in front of or before; and they won’t spell Yahweh so they put Yaya as the word for Jehovah.
Now briefly, I do not want to dwell on this. Twenty-Six Word Translation, I am going to use it twice, one time for this verse here and there are some different renditions of course: “mercy and pleasure and the Lord’s favor.” But the reason why I stress ‘grace’ is a little bit on the heels of last week. Now this is a polyglot, now you know why I only brought one with me, okay, couldn’t fit them all in the car today. I was thinking of strapping this one to the back of my dog and seeing if he could carry it. That’s a joke.