Act 13:44 And the next sabbath day came almost the
whole city together to hear the word of God.
Almost a whole city
came out to hear Paul preach and teach the Word of God!
Why?
Why was it important
then and not now?
Do we need less
saving now than those back then?
So we who are living
today need to hear the Word of God less than those who came out to hear Paul?
This isn't truth, this isn't right at all.
Every single human
being needs the Word of God. Every
single one of us needs to 'come out to hear the word of God.'
So why aren't more
of us doing this?
Why do we refuse to
present ourselves to God, to listen to Him, to learn from Him?
Almost a whole city
together wanted to hear the Word of God.
Remember this--
Rev 1:3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that
hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written
therein: for the time is at hand.
That doesn't say-
blessed are those who read and hear the prophecy and keep them- but only if you
are alive in the days of the apostles.
ALL who read and
hear, and keep the prophecy are BLESSED, yet so few truly desire to be blessed
this way.
May God help all who
are reading this, may God bless all who are hearing, reading, and keeping the
things they read in this prophecy. Please God, help us as we continue to delve
into the prophecies You have given to us in Daniel, which ties in with the prophecy
of Revelation. Please…please.
All in the name of
our Savior Jesus Christ our Lord, now and forever!
AMEN.
******* Continuing our prophecy study-- Please
GO back and read the study from the beginning to gain full understanding of
where we are if you haven't been following this study daily. Thank you
:) God bless you! ******
History-Prophecy.
As we continue on we
need to look at the continuing history of Christianity. Missionaries eventually would go to all the
world, but closer to the declining Roman Empire -as wars were renewed and the
gradual disintegration of that empire was underway- we have an invading force
that were once known for their barbarianism.
This group of people were the Goths.
'Ulfilas, or Gothic
Wulfila (also Ulphilas. Orphila)[1] (ca. 310 – 383;[2]), bishop, missionary,
and Bible translator, was a Goth or half-Goth and half-Greek from Cappadocia
who had spent time inside the Roman Empire at the peak of the Arian
controversy.
Ulfilas was ordained
a bishop by Eusebius of Nicomedia and returned to his people to work as a
missionary. In 348, to escape religious persecution by a Gothic chief, probably
Athanaric[3] he obtained permission from Constantius II to migrate with his flock
of converts to Moesia and settle near Nicopolis ad Istrum, in what is now
northern Bulgaria. There, Ulfilas translated the Bible from Greek into the
Gothic language. For this he devised the Gothic alphabet.[4] Fragments of his
translation have survived, notably the Codex Argenteus held since 1648 in the
University Library of Uppsala in Sweden. A parchment page of this Bible was
found in 1971 in the Speyer Cathedral.[5]
His parents were of
non-Gothic Anatolian origin but had been enslaved by Goths on horseback.
Ulfilas converted many among the Goths, preaching an Arian Christianity, which,
when they reached the western Mediterranean, set them apart from their Orthodox
neighbors and subjects.
Pasted
from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfilas>
Read this…about the
Goths invasion of the Roman Empire--
'In the first place,
it was a great thing for Europe that when the Goths poured over Italy and even
captured Rome they came as a Christian people, reverencing and sparing the
churches, and
abstaining from
those barbarities that accompanied the invasion of Britain by the heathen
Saxons. But, in the second place, many of these simple Gothic Christians
learned to their surprise that they were heretics, and that only when their
efforts toward fraternizing with their fellow Christians in the orthodox Church
were angrily resented.11'
Let's look a little
bit at the council of Nicea too -
'The First Council
of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia
(present-day Iznik in Turkey) by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in A.D. 325.
The Council was the first effort to attain consensus in the church through an
assembly representing all of Christendom.[2]
Its main
accomplishments were settlement of the Christological issue of the relationship
of Jesus to God the Father; the construction of the first part of the Nicene
Creed; settling the calculation of the date of Easter; and promulgation of
early canon law.[3][4]'
Pasted
from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea>
This is why the
invading Christian Goths later on were considered Heretics, they were of
differing Christian beliefs than the ruling class in Roman.
The differing
confrontations to come, the many, many battles that would end up dividing the
Roman Empire eventually into ten main kingdoms for a time before three would be
'plucked up'…
(Dan 7:8
I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another
little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the
roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth
speaking great things. )
...would be
political and religious rather than strictly political- a BIG change from past
battles.
This next verse--
Dan 11:30 'For the ships of Chittim shall come against
him…'
Could only refer to
this man and his amazing naval forces.
'The Vandals had
suffered greatly from attacks from the more numerous Visigoths, and not long
after taking power, Genseric decided to leave Hispania to this rival Germanic
tribe. In fact, he seems to have
started building a Vandal fleet even before he became king.
Taking advantage of
a dispute between Boniface, Roman governor of North Africa, and the Roman
government, Genseric ferried all 80,000 of his people across to Africa in 429.
Once there, he won many battles over the weak and divided Roman defenders and
quickly overran the territory now comprising modern Morocco and northern
Algeria. His Vandal army laid siege to the city of Hippo Regius (where
Augustine had recently been bishop — he died during the siege), taking it after
14 months of bitter fighting. The next year, Roman Emperor Valentinian III
recognized Genseric as king of the lands he and his men had conquered.
In 439, after
casting a covetous eye on the great city of Carthage for a decade, he took the
city, apparently without any fighting. The Romans were caught unaware, and
Genseric captured a large part of the western Roman navy docked in the port of
Carthage. The Catholic bishop of the city, Quodvultdeus, was exiled to Naples,
since Genseric demanded that all his close advisors follow the Arian form of
Christianity. Nevertheless, Genseric gave freedom of religion to the Catholics,
while insisting that the regime's elite follow Arianism. The common folk had
low taxes under his reign, as most of the tax pressure was on the rich Roman
families and the Catholic clergy.
Added to his own
burgeoning fleet, the Kingdom of the Vandals now threatened the Empire for
mastery of the western Mediterranean Sea. Carthage, meanwhile, became the new
Vandal capital and an enemy of Rome for the first time since the Punic Wars.
With the help of
their fleet, the Vandals soon subdued Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the
Balearic Islands. Genseric strengthened the Vandal defenses and fleet and
regulated the positions of Arians and Catholics. In 442, the Romans
acknowledged the Carthaginian conquests, and recognized the Vandal kingdom as
an independent country rather than subsidiary to Roman rule. The area in
Algeria that had remained for the larger part independent of the Vandals turned
from a Roman province into an ally.
For the next 30
years, Genseric and his soldiers sailed up and down the Mediterranean, living
as pirates and raiders. One legend has it that Genseric was unable to vault
upon a horse because of a fall he had taken as a young man; so he assuaged his
desire for military glory on the sea.
In 468, Genseric's
kingdom was the target of the last concerted effort by the two halves of the
Roman Empire. They wished to subdue the Vandals and end their pirate raids.
Genseric, against long odds, defeated the eastern Roman fleet commanded by
Basiliscus off Cap Bon. It has been reported that the total invasion force on
the fleet of 1,100 ships, counted 100,000 soldiers. Genseric sent a fleet of
500 Vandal ships against the Romans, losing 340 ships in the first engagement,
but succeeded in destroying 600 Roman ships in the second. The Romans abandoned
the campaign and Genseric remained master of the western Mediterranean until
his death, ruling from the Strait of Gibraltar all the way to Tripolitania.
Pasted
from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genseric>
AMAZING! The victory
of this man of the sea! This verse of
prophecy- Dan 11:30 'For the ships of
Chittim shall come against him…' is truly fulfilled in this!
The Roman Empire was
fighting for its survival and failing.
We'll continue with
the 30th verse tomorrow… little by little, all by the GRACE OF GOD!!!!!!!
In His amazing LOVE!
Amen.
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