Reading from Tuesday, December 21

Ten posts to go. 

Howdy. So how about those birds and fish mysteriously dying? Wasn't that in Revelation? Uh oh...is this the third woe?

I'm kinda kidding, but I'm also kinda terrified.

Reading for December 21
Zechariah 1:1-21
Zechariah is gonna take up the majority of the remainder of this project from the OT perspective. A relatively big book amongst very short books. Must be good. Let us see.

Oh yeah. This is like the Revelation of the Old Testament - complete with the four horsemen we read about a couple nights ago!

⁸ During the night I had a vision, and there before me was a man mounted on a red horse. He was standing among the myrtle trees in a ravine. Behind him were red, brown and white horses.

Except these aren't terrifying murder horsemen. Their task, according to Zech's vision, was to go throughout the earth and report what they saw. Here is that report:

“We have gone throughout the earth and found the whole world at rest and in peace.”

YEAH! KILL EVERYTHING! JUDGMENT FOR ALL...wait...what?

"at rest an in peace"? "the whole world at rest and in peace"? This is still the Bible, right? God must be cooking up something really scary for the next paragraph. He wouldn't let us get too comfortable.

¹⁶ “Therefore this is what the LORD says: ‘I will return to Jerusalem with mercy, and there my house will be rebuilt. And the measuring line will be stretched out over Jerusalem,’ declares the LORD Almighty.  

Mercy? Where is the judgment? Where is the blood rain and fire hail and scorpions that torture us for five months but can't kill us?  It's not here. I'm not sure of the time differential between the end of the OT and the story of Christ, but if you assume they are relatively close, you can almost see God readying his heart for the eternal mercy which he will bestow upon his creation.

Revelation 12:1-17
Crazy. My friend Chris has been preparing me for this chapter, and I certainly wasn't fully ready for it. So there's a woman who gives birth to a male child who I don't think is Jesus. There's a super monster dragon waiting to eat the child as soon as its born, but God snatched up the child and brought it up to heaven with him.

The woman went to earth where she would be cared for for 1260 days - what is with that number? (Looked it up - it represents half of seven - 3 1/2 years) The dragon was hurled down to earth after a war in Heaven and pursued the woman and the rest of her offspring.

Here's my amateur-hour theory of what's going on here. The child actually is Jesus, but the "In the Beginning" version of Jesus that lived with God until he came to Earth on December 25th, 0000 AD. "The rest of her offspring" is Israel - and the dragon marched among them to tempt and torment them.

Psalm 140:1-13

¹² I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor
   and upholds the cause of the needy.
¹³ Surely the righteous will praise your name,
   and the upright will live in your presence.

Proverbs 30:17

 ¹⁷ “The eye that mocks a father,
   that scorns an aged mother,
will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley,
   will be eaten by the vultures.