Wednesday, August 22, 2007

After Two Days



Hosea 6:
1 "Come, let us return to the LORD.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.
2
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will restore us,
that we may live in his presence.
3 Let us acknowledge the LORD;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth."

John 2:
18Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?"
19Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."
20The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

Hosea was one of the minor prophets in Israel who was trying to revive the people from their apostasy. Verse 2 above mentions 3 "days." "Within two days, God says, I will revive you. On the third day I will raise you up."

2 Peter 3: 8 says, "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." Also Psalm 90:4.

Back in the days of Hosea, and continuing on into Peter's day, there was a belief that history would last 7 millennial days. The idea went that there had been 2,000 years from Adam to Abraham they called the "age of chaos." There would be 2,000 more years that were the "age of law." Then there would be 2,000 years of an "age of the Messiah." These rabbis thought Messiah would come, then, at about the time of Jesus. He did come, but many didn't recognize him.

According to this reckoning, a day was equal to 1,000 years, and Jesus arrived right at the close of 4,000 years from Adam (using biblical chronologies). So we see that Jesus said, "After two days He would raise up the temple," but he was speaking in veiled terms: he meant his own body.

There are two "bodies" in scripture with regard to Christ. One is his own body and one is the corporate body, the church. He raised his own body after two literal days when he came out of the grave that Sunday morning. He will raise his church also, we may reason, after two millennial days.

In Acts 1 we see that Jesus rose into the heavens, presumably in 30AD, the most likely year for that event. Ten days later the church was born on the feast of Pentecost. If we add 2,000 years (2 days) to that birthday, we have 2030AD as the possible end of the Gentile Age, or what the Jews had called the "Age of Messiah."
Is this a prophetic key? It won't be too long until we know.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brother Al, The picture looks like a man to me.

Owl said...

It is a man. And He is still that man. He isn't going away. He has all power.

And you're a man, too. Made in His image. Congratulations. You have great things ahead of you. The present sufferings can't be compared to the glory He is going to reveal in you. Some now, perhaps, but in the ages to come, wowie zowie.

Everybody believes He came as a man. But what kind of man? The God-man. Ain't never been a man like this and never will be.

Anonymous said...

Ah. I thought he brought many sons into glory? If he was God man then our salvation is flawed and the devil has a leg to satnd on. No he was all man and he over came the devil in the likeness of sinfull flesh. Only when he had a chance to sin , He didn't. That is why he is Highly exalted and given a name above every name. Your are saved by the man Jesus Christ