Reading from Wednesday, December 22

Hey gang.

I'm uber sick. Been in bed for the past three days without the strength to read or post. I'm still shooting to finish by the 10th. Exactly a year.

Nine posts to go.

Reading for December 22
Zechariah 2:1-3:10
So Zechariah begins to prophecy about the coming of the savior. Though it appears that this prophecy is only for the Israelites. First you have a vision of the priest, Joshua standing before God and Satan. Joshua is wearing filthy clothes and God demands that he be stripped and clothed with new, pristine garments - symbolizing the taking away of sins. Joshua is only one man though...lets see what he says about everyone else...

⁹ See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua! There are seven eyes^[e] on that one stone, and I will engrave an inscription on it,’ says the LORD Almighty, ‘and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day. 

This land. That could mean Jerusalem, Israel, the Middle East in general or the whole world. I wonder if the original Hebrew gives any better indication about that...scholars...hit me up.

Revelation 13:1-18
This is possibly one of the most metal chapters in all of scripture. Dragons, fire, mortal wounds, swords, lions, war - Aspiring metal musicians - Revelation 13...read it.

So in the last post we read about a dragon who was trying to kill all the people of the earth. This dragon is Satan and he is trying to kill us all, spiritually. That's my interpretation anyway.

This chapter talks about how the dragon suffered a mortal wound but was eventually healed of it. My best guess is that the mortal wound is the salvation that came through Christ to all people, and that through time, people found less and less meaning and significance in that, and just like their ancestors, turned their back on their Lord.

The chapter closes with possibly the most infamous number of all time:

¹⁸ This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.^[e] That number is 666.

You know with all the pop culture references to that number, I wasn't sure if it would actually appear in the Bible or not. Kinda like how "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" is thought to be from the Bible, but in fact is not. 

Psalm 141:1-10
Consider it pure joy, brothers...

⁵ Let a righteous man strike me—that is a kindness;
   let him rebuke me—that is oil on my head.
My head will not refuse it,
   for my prayer will still be against the deeds of evildoers.

Proverbs 30:18-20
What?

 ¹⁸ “There are three things that are too amazing for me,
   four that I do not understand:
¹⁹ the way of an eagle in the sky,
   the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
   and the way of a man with a young woman.
 ²⁰ “This is the way of an adulterous woman:
   She eats and wipes her mouth
   and says, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’