𝙱.𝙰. 𝙿𝚞𝚛𝚝𝚕𝚎

J.I. Packer (1926-2020) “Live slowly enough to be able to think deeply about God.”

Pastor — On Sunday night, after laboring to preach/minister to the church, if you find yourself lying in bed wondering if you even belong in the pastorate any more, the best thing to do is thank God for saving you & get some sleep. The clouds will likely be gone in the morning.

This magnificent prophecy has not yet been fulfilled. But it will! Ezekiel 37.15-28: 15 The word of the Lord came to me: 16 “Son of man, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the people of Israel associated with him’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him.’ 17 And join them one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand. 18 And when your people say to you, ‘Will you not tell us what you mean by these?’ 19 say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph (that is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand. 20 When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, 21 then say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all around, and bring them to their own land. 22 And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king over them all, and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms. 23 They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 24 “My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. 25 They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. 26 I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and fmultiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. 27 My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 28 Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.”

Supersessionists: "The tribes of Israel no longer exist. They were scattered in 720 BC and haven't been a thing ever since." The God of Israel, 200 years after the Assyrian invasion: "For the LORD has an eye on mankind and on all the tribes of Israel." (Zechariah 9.1) The Lord Jesus, over 700 years after the Assyrian invasion: “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Mt. 19.28)

"The fathers are passing away, and breaches are daily making in the ranks of the standard bearers. Oh, that God would raise up a host of pious youths ardently waiting to catch the standards before they fall from the veterans of the cross." -John Summerfield (1770-1825)

@AlexAndBooks_ Books and my study.

Name a better combo than books + beach. I’ll wait.

Some of the theological labels we’ve given ourselves and some of the ways in which we’ve made labels/traditions matters over which to divide from truly regenerate brothers and sisters will be embarrassing when we all stand before the slain and risen Lamb.

Psalm 69:34-36– “Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. For God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and people shall dwell there and possess it; the offspring of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall dwell in it.”

@JeffreyPWiesner So true!

Much of pastoral counseling—for all its knotted complexity—boils down to three things: 1. This is what God accomplished in his Son. Will you rest in it? 2. This is what God promises in his Word. Will you wait for it? 3. This is what God commands in his Word. Will you obey it?

@jasonkovacs Amen.

Many pastors carry a pressure unlike anything else in history. The temptation to compare, to innovate, to keep up, to launch a podcast, to preach at a certain level, to grow the church, and to produce visible results are just a few. So many begin to feel like failures, questioning whether the ordinary means of grace can really accomplish what today’s demands require. Christ never called pastors to be celebrities, brands, or ministry entrepreneurs. He called them to be faithful shepherds. The Word preached, the sacraments administered, prayer offered, and people loved may seem ordinary in a world obsessed with metrics and platforms, but God has always delighted to work through what appears weak and unimpressive. The pressure to produce what only God can give is crushing. Results belong to Him. We plant, water, but God gives the growth (1 Cor 3:6). Pray for pastors today!

There's no such thing as a biblical ministry leadership role in which the leader is unaccountable to God, untethered from Scripture, or independent of counsel & correction from others. If you're in a role like that, fix it or flee from it. If you're led by someone like that, raise a concern or find a better context with better leaders.

With respect to Beale, Schreiner (et al), and I do have respect for them, I'm suspicious of putting "symbolized" forward as a better translation than "made known/revealed" for either Rev. 1.1b or Dan. 2.45. "Signified" is better, since it isn't as limiting as "symbolize" and can connote something broader like "informing," "revealing," "showing," etc. In any case, I think the order of definition given in the BDAG is most fitting (see below). Beyond that, "symbolized" doesn't seem to fit the point of the text itself, which is Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, the "revelation of Jesus Christ." In other words, It seems to me rather eisegetical to insist that ἐσήμανεν in Rev. 1.1 was meant to establish a "symbolic" hermeneutical construct for the whole book, rather than driving home the more significant point concerning the bedrock of the book's authority and its central message (which is "made known" in the text)-- namely, that God Himself gave this revelation of Jesus Christ through the angel to John "for the churches." The significant matter is not that there are symbols in the book (though there are!), and certainly not that John is putting forth a large box of post-Origenic hermeneutical 3D glasses for his readers, without which we would not be able to perceive the message. Rather, the point is--- God Himself is the one revealing, speaking, giving, conveying, making known. And it's Christ who is being made known.... and that revelation is being given to John, so that He might write it down "for the churches." Are there symbols in Revelation? Of course. There are all kinds of things, symbols included. But every strophe, every pericope, every verse, every macro-chiasm, every clause, every didactic word, every symbol, every OT allusion, every clause must be handled with care, contextually and exegetically. I suspect most scholars would agree with that on paper. But traditions and systems die hard for us all. Suffice it to say, I'm not convinced any of these things means John was saying by ἐσήμανεν that the whole book must be interpreted "symbolically." It's valuable to determine literary genres in Scripture as best as we're able, and to be mindful of how they affect authorial intent, meaning, and significance. But it's possible to inflate their apparent influence in such a way that creates hermeneutical assumptions the biblical authors weren't working from at all. I'm convinced that translating ἐσήμανεν as "symbolized," and beyond that especially, suggesting or insisting that John was establishing a symbolical-hermeneutical approach for the whole book, is one among many ways of failing precisely in that way; that is, by creating hermeneutical assumptions the author wasn't working from at all, or at least not in the same inflated way. ------------------- BDAG - σημαίνω (σῆμα ‘sign’, s. three next entries; Hom.+; ins, pap, LXX, TestJob; JosAs 23:8; Just., Tat. 17, 2; Mel., P. 95, 728) impf. ἐσήμαινον; fut. σημανῶ LXX; 1 aor. ἐσήμανα (X., Hell. 1, 1, 2; BGU 1097, 17; Judg 7:21; s. B-D-F §72; Mlt-H. 214f); pf. 1 pl. σεσημάγκαμεν (Aristobul. in Eus., PE 13, 12, 7 [=Holladay p. 172, Fgm. 4, lines 85f]). Pass.: aor. 3 sg. ἐσημάνθη LXX; pf. 3 sg. σεσήμανται 2 Macc 2:1. ① to make known, report, communicate (Trag., Hdt.+; ins, pap., LXX, En; TestJob 6:3; EpArist; Philo, Post. Cai. 155 al.; Jos., Vi. 206; Just., D. 114, 2 al.) τὶ someth. indicate charges Ac 25:27. τινί to someone (En 106:13; 107, 2; TestJob 6:5) Rv 1:1. ② to intimate someth. respecting the future, indicate, suggest, intimate (Ezk. Trag. 83, in Eus., PE 9, 29, 6; Just., D. 78, 9 al.; cp. Appian, Liby. 104 §491 προσημαίνειν τὰ μέλλοντα of divine prediction of the future) w. acc. and inf. foll. (Jos., Ant. 6, 50; cp. 8, 409) Ac 11:28.—Also of speech that simply offers a vague suggestion of what is to happen (Heraclitus 93 in Plut., Mor. 404e w. ref. to the Delphic oracle οὔτε λέγει, οὔτε κρύπτει, ἀλλὰ σημαίνει; Epict. 1, 17, 18f; Jos., Ant. 7, 214; 10, 241) w. an indirect question foll. J 12:33; 18:32; 21:19. ③ to provide an explanation for someth. that is enigmatic, mean, signify (Pla., Cratylus 393A; Aristot., Physics 213b, 30, Rhet. 32f; Dionys. Hal., Thucyd. 31) B 15:4, in ref. to a passage of Scripture (Just., A I, 65, 4 τὸ δὲ Ἀμὴν τῇ Ἑβραΐδι φωνῇ τὸ Γένοιτο σημαίνει) ἡ γὰρ ἡμέρα παρʼ αὐτῷ σημαίνει χίλια ἔτη for a day with the Lord means a thousand years (s. Ps. 89:4).—DELG s.v. σῆμα. M-M. TW. (William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000], 920.)

The phrase “made it known” (1:1b) ought to be rendered signified or symbolized (see HCSB, KJV), and the word signified alludes to Daniel 2. According to the LXX of Daniel 2:45, the word describes the symbolic vision that King Nebuchadnezzar saw: “the Great God has symbolized to the king what will come to pass in the latter days." In Revelation 1:1, John deliberately employs the language from Daniel 2:45 to demonstrate that the general content of Revelation is likewise symbolic. As a rule of thumb, then, the book of Revelation should be largely read and interpreted in a symbolic manner. See discussions in the commentaries of Beale, Schreiner, Osborne, Fanning, etc.

“The pronouncement of the word of the LORD concerning Israel: The LORD who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of a person within him, declares: 'Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes staggering to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah. It will come about on that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will injure themselves severely. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it.'" - Zechariah 12.1-3

The apostle Peter wrote that we who have been born-again are being "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time." Amazing grace. Imperishable hope. We're one day closer, saints.

Okay— Revelation 1:4-8 (Symbolic) Greeting to the (symbolic) Seven Churches [4] (symbolic) John to the seven (symbolic) churches that are in (symbolic) Asia: (Symbolic) Grace to (symbolic) you and (symbolic) peace from (symbolic) him who (symbolically) is and who was and who is to (symbolically) come, and from the seven spirits who are before his (symbolic) throne, [5] and from (symbolic) Jesus Christ the (symbolically) faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the (symbolic) ruler of kings on earth. To him who (symbolically) loves us and has (symbolically) freed us from our (symbolic) sins by his (symbolic) blood [6] and made us a (symbolic) kingdom, priests to his (symbolic) God and Father, to him be (symbolic) glory and (dominion forever and ever. Amen. [7] Behold, he is (symbolically) coming with the clouds, and every eye will (symbolically) see him, even those who (symbolically) pierced (symbolic) him, and all (symbolic) tribes of the (symbolic) earth will (symbolically) wail on account of him. Even so. Amen. [8] “I am the (symbolic) Alpha and the Omega,” says the (symbolic) Lord God, “who (symbolically) is and who was and who is to come, the (symbolic) Almighty.” This isn’t jiving. Oh, you meant that there are certainly prophetic symbols throughout Revelation that must be handled with exegetical and hermeneutical care? I see. But who denies that to be the case?

He’s reading the book of Revelation literally. Tell him Revelation 1:1 says to read it symbolically.

@MikeWingerii Gross.

Classy. Especially the giant demon that’s supposed to be me, labeled as the, “Accuser of the Brethren”

A man who wants Christ is a man who has Christ. - D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

George Whitefield, from his final sermon in England, preached in August, 1769; thirteen months before his death– “Weakness is the best of my strength.”

"Farewell sin!" -Thomas Vincent, on his deathbed.

The beautiful, invincible, biblical doctrine of free-will: “When Christ died, He died of His own voluntary free will.” -J.C. Ryle Jn. 10.17: “Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again.”