Thursday, May 19, 2016

Almost a whole city came out to hear the Word of God spoken by Paul

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.



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]'


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.


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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