House Church Talk - re: Echoes from a battlefield in Pennsylvania

[RoyalHeirling at aol.com]

David,

In response to your message "Echoes from a battlefield in Pennsylvania" may I 
direct your attention to the following scriptures which nicely complement and 
support MIlton's comments.

Daniel 8:

       10  And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down 
some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them.
       11  Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by 
him the daily was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.

It is the little horn that magnifies himself. This little horn comes out of 
one of the four kingdoms that resulted after Alexander the Great died. In 
chapter 8, a he goat with a great horn smites the ram. We are told later in verses 
20 and 21 that the ram having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. The 
rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes 
is the first king. Thus, the great horn is Alexander the Great. 

>From history we know that Alexander III conquered the world in a very few 
years (8 or 11?) and died at the age of 33. He took the world empire from the 
Medes and Persians. When Alexander died he left no successor but desired that his 
kingdom go to the strongest of his four generals. As it turned out none of 
them were strong enough and so the empire Alexander left was divided among them. 
Quoting from Wikipedia, the article Alexander the Great, "His empire was 
divided at first into four major portions: <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassander">Cassander</A> ruled in <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece">Greece</A>, <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysimachus">Lysimachus</A> 
in <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Minor">Asia Minor</A> and <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrace">Thrace</A>, <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucid_dynasty">Seleucus I Nicator</A> in <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia">Mesopotamia</A> and <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria">Syria</A>, and <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_I_of_Egypt">
Ptolemy I</A> (or Ptolemy Soter) in the <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant">Levant</A> and <A HREF="http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt">Egypt</A>." Thus, these are the four 
notable horns,or kings, which came up after the great horn is broken. (Isn't the 
Bible wonderfully clear in the use of its language?)

>From this we learned that the "beasts" represented nations or kingdoms and 
the horns represented the "kings". Thus, the little horn must also be some sort 
of "king" or ruler of a nation or kingdom. But he is a little different from 
his fellows because his kingship involves worship which detracts, takes away, 
replaces, or substitutes for true worship. 

History records the events after the fact while the Bible foretells of events 
to come. 

Jeff Logan

(In the KJV the word sacrifice in Daniel 8 is italicized, which, according to 
the authorized version, indicates it is a supplied word and cannot be found 
in the original text. Therefore, it has been removed in this quotation so that 
nothing is added.)




> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 12:27:45 -0500
> From: David Anderson <david at housechurch.org>
> Subject: House Church Talk -  Echoes from a battlefield in Pennsylvania
> To: <House Church Talk  at housechurch.org>
> Message-ID: <E1AMW78-0005qU-00 at swan.mail.pas.earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
> 
> 
>   Hi one and all,
> 
> Today is the anniversary of the Gettysburg address. Lincoln predicted 
> that it would be forgotten but things turned out otherwise. Some believe 
> it to be the speech of all speeches. Some of you likely memorized it 
> years ago.
> 
> A nation dedicated to the proposition that all men (mankind) are created 
> equal - I like that much. Now, how about a church dedicated to the 
> proposition that all men (mankind) are created equal? 
> 
> Now, a word from John Milton:
> 
> And this all Christians ought to know, that the title of clergy St. Peter 
> gave to all God's people, till Pope Higinus and the succeeding prelates 
> took it from them, appropriating that name to themselves and their 
> priests only; and condemning the rest of God's inheritance to an 
> injurious and alienate condition of laity, they separated from them by 
> local partitions in churches, through their gross ignorance and pride 
> imitating the old temple, and excluded the members of Christ...
> 
> For we have learned that the scornful term of laic, the consecrating of 
> temples, carpets, and tablecloths, the railing in of a repugnant and 
> contradictive mount Sinai in the gospel, as if the touch of a lay 
> Christian, who is nevertheless God's living temple, could profane dead 
> Judaisms, the exclusion of Christ's people from the offices of holy 
> discipline through the pride of a usurping clergy causes the rest to have 
> an unworthy and abject opinion of themselves, to approach to holy duties 
> with a slavish fear and to unholy doings with a familiar boldness. For 
> seeing such a wide and terrible distance between religious things and 
> themselves, and that in respect of a wooden table and the perimeter of 
> holy ground about it, a flagon pot and a linen corporal, the priest 
> esteems their layships unhallowed and unclean, they fear religion with 
> such a fear as loves not, and think the purity of the gospel too pure for 
> them, and that any uncleanness is more suitable to their unconsecrated 
> estate. 
> 
> BUT when every good Christian, thoroughly acquainted with all those 
> glorious privileges of sanctification and adoption which render him more 
> sacred than any dedicated altar or element, shall be restored to his 
> right in the church, and not excluded from such place of spiritual 
> governments his Christian abilities and his approved good life in the eye 
> and testimony of the church shall prefer him to, this and nothing sooner 
> will open his eyes to a wise and true valuation of himself, which is so 
> requisite and high a point of Christianity, and will stir him up to walk 
> worthy the honorable and grave employment wherewith God and the church 
> hath dignified him; not fearing lest he should meet with some outward 
> holy thing in religion which his lay touch or presence might profane, but 
> lest something unholy from within his own heart should dishonor and 
> profane in himself that priestly unction and clergy-right whereto Christ 
> hath entitled him. 
> 
> Then would the congregation of the Lord soon recover the true likeness 
> and visage of what she is indeed, a holy generation, a royal priesthood, 
> a saintly communion, the household and city of God. And this I hold to be 
> another considerable reason why the functions of church government ought 
> to be free and open to any Christian man, though never so laic, if his 
> capacity, his faith, and prudent demeanor commend him. And this the 
> apostles warrant us to do. But the prelates object that this will bring 
> profaneness into the church; to whom may be replied that none have 
> brought that in more than their own irreligious courses, nor more driven 
> holiness out of living into lifeless things.
> 
> >From "The Reason of Church Government," 1642. Milton was an English poet 
> and scholar who is best known for the epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). The 
> language is old but the truth is as fresh as the morning dew.
> 
>    David Anderson
> 



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The same power that upholds nature, is working also in man. The 
same great laws that guide alike the star and the atom control 
human life. The laws that govern the heart's action, regulating 
the flow of the current of life to the body, are the laws of the 
mighty Intelligence that has the jurisdiction of the soul. From 
Him all life proceeds.
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