Jaw-dropping Jewels about Jesus
Rarely does Jesus, God the Son, do exactly what we expect of Him. It seems odd that He so frequently surprises us, given that He never changes. Hebrews 13:8 makes this absolute statement: “Jesus the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Still, though He is blessedly consistent in His goodness, Jesus does unforeseen things. Even when He does what is expected, He does not always do it in the way that we anticipate. Let us join with Jesus on a jaw-dropping journey. (I will be using this opening paragraph for each of the brief messages in this series. The following material will change daily.)
Revelation 12:6 speaks of God’s protection of Israel during the latter half of the Tribulation: “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.” Using the Jewish lunar calendar, we see that this period of time is a little less than 3 ½ years and correlates exactly to the second half of the Tribulation, what is sometimes called the Great Tribulation. In Matthew 24:15-22, Jesus predicted this event. It is triggered by the Antichrist’s desecration of the Temple at the midpoint of the Tribulation: “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand:) then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains” (verses 15-16). We appreciate the continuity and consistency of the Bible, from the specific prophecy of Daniel 9:27 to the words of Jesus in Matthew 24 to the book of Revelation. The unrelenting malice of Satan against the Jewish people would lead to their genocide if not for the special provision that God makes – for them in “the mountains” somewhere in “the wilderness.” Good Bible scholars believe that this location is Petra in modern-day Jordan, based upon Isaiah 63:1 (“Bozrah” being at the entrance of the way to Petra), but we cannot be certain. What we do know is that our Lord is in control of the details of this time to come, just as He is in both the large and small things of our lives.