If you lived in that time and you were a Christian and you wouldn’t reproach Christ, good luck finding a job and making a living and you were considered the bottom of the barrel. This is history, this is not opinion, this is history. You were considered the lowest of the low to be a Christian in those days. If you made your living in the city around you had to work in the temples making trinkets for pagan gods.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that everything was focused on Caesar so if you didn’t want to do that, you would be destitute. And He says “I know your tribulation and your utter destitution but,” alla, “but.” I may not get to these other things, that’s okay. “But,” He says plousius ei. Plousius, we get our word ‘plutocrat,’ plousius ei, and I “You are rich.” But that’s a contradiction, that’s a paradox, of course. He says I know your tribulation and your poverty, your destitution but you’re rich. Holy mackerel! Okay.
Let me tell you 2nd Corinthians 6:10, let me read it to you, don’t go there. I’ll just turn there you don’t go there. 2nd Corinthians, I’ll find it in my book quickly, 6:10 what does it say? It would help if I was reading the right place, “As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” You read, unfortunately I take the claim out James, but James 2:5 says exactly the same thing, poor but rich. You’re winners people at Smyrna, and this is where we get into a little sticky situation. “And the blasphemy,” you can read that word blaspsemian ek ton legon, “of those saying,” Ioudaious.
Now I’m going to stop here lest anybody misinterpret or misrepresent what I’m going to say. If you’re going to be a Christian, be a Christian. That means and let me give you this equation before I go on, if I were to lift this phrase out that says “And the ones saying they are Jews,” and I prefer the word Jewish but it does read Jew, einai eautous kai ouk eisin alla, they’re not really…Let me pause there because we could put anybody in that to make that fit the bill. Lest anybody think Mrs. Scott is anti-Semitic person.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that to unify, to take back from the Persians, to take back whatever he could and then at some point once he passed that boundary he was on a, on this “I’m going to conquer and take all” and of course you know all the stories of all the Alexandria’s that starting popping up everywhere. It was going to be, you know if Alexander would not have had too much to drink and killed himself with liquor we probably would be living in Alexandria because he, he took over the world, his conquest. But it was to unify, the first initial was to unify the people.
When he came through in his brief descent through that country, he issued a decree and this is something that becomes very important later on for historical purposes. He issues a decree and remember, this area that he’s coming down through after they cross the Hellespont and they come down is primarily and predominantly pagan. But Smyrna had a very large Jewish community. He issued a decree saying that they could live in what was called insonomia, not insomnia, insonomia which means in their law, they had the freedom to practice their religion which is very strange that Alexander the Great did that. Nevertheless, his decree makes Smyrna flourish with a very large Jewish population. Now, that will become relevant when we move on. But other things happen along the way.
Now let me kind of just pretend you’re not here and transport your mind for a minute. If you were to approach Smyrna at this point you would, back in the day, you would, if you were a tourist you’d say, “Take me to the most famous place” you’d end up on something called the Golden Street, the most famous street of all. Analogous maybe like Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive where all the boutiques are, this had all the cult temples. You could walk down the golden street and have a temple to Zeus over here, Apollo over there, Aphrodite over there, just continue, continue, continue until you reach the top of the Acropolis, the top of Mount Pagos. Five hundred feet looking down over this beautiful crystal clear blue harbor, strikingly beautiful if you’ve ever been there, it, it still is beautiful, just looks different. I’m sure it looks nothing like what I’ve just described because there’s very little left of what was originally there.
You have, you can jot these down and check them out. You have, I made notes of them, in Haggai, I believe it’s Haggai 1:13, where he says the “messenger.” Haggai 1:13, “Then spake Haggai the LORD’S messenger,” aggelo. So you can see it’s interchangeable. You’ve got references like that in Malachi Malachi’s name, which in the Hebrew, malak, ‘angel,’ ‘messenger’ and he even delivers a message and says he’s a ‘messenger.’ “Out of the priest’s lips” the message, the ‘messenger’ will speak, aggelo. So I’m trying to make the case this is not some. Okay? It’s not that kind, all right? That’s number one. Number two, ekklesia. I have to do this before we go forwards because otherwise we end up trying to fight what certain things might mean.
This one, you old timers all know about this word I’m going to do this for the sake of the new people: ekklesia; prefix, ek, and klesia, kleo, actually ‘out from among,’ ‘called out’ people. Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that the word I had you circle, ‘assembly,’ in Acts, what you have happen there, if you go back to Matthew 16:18 you’ll, just jot it down and read it at home, when Jesus says “I’ll build my ekklesia and the gates of hades shall not prevail or overcome it,” what you have is the first use in the New Testament of ekklesia, referring to what Jesus had in mind, which by the way we’re conditioned that the ekklesia is the ‘out called ones’ which make up the Church, which is true, but if you think of the Second Coming it even emphasizes that more so. We will be the ‘out called ones’ when He comes again to take His Church, so it has a double meaning on there.
But you go back to look at the use through the Bible, and you’ll see by the time we reach the book of Acts the term is being used generically for ‘assembly,’ and no specificity is until, probably, at least after the first century, going into the second century, this word becomes a stamp on the Church. But for the sake of conversation while I’m doing this, lest anybody take this word and say we know from this our words where we get Spanish, iglesia; French, eglise from this word, but lest anybody say that this word and its use start in the New Testament, you look into the Septuagint and you’ll find in Exodus 3:4 when God is calling to Moses, to the bush, when He’s calling him, and He calls to him, He called him ‘out,’ He ekkelessened, He ‘out called’ him. The application goes way back.
You look at this word, aggelo. Our English ‘angel,’ and we talked about this briefly, the ‘angel.’ There are 77 times in the book of Revelation that this word is going to be used 77 in one small little book. That’s an awful lot. We’re only concerned right now with eight of them, the one that occurred in chapter 1, verse 20, and the seven addresses to the Church where to each one it says ‘and to the angel of this Church, and to the angel of that Church.’ The angels of the Church are the pastors; they are the communicators. They are not celestial beings, and I can make a good case for this. I feel like I’m going to anyway, so I might as well.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that if people that interpret Scripture and they want to say that these are angels in the Church, the only place where you read in the Bible of an angel that is sent to govern or protect is in the book of Daniel. Other than that, you have other references. Now I’m going to say that for the most part, we’ll say 90 some percent of the references to, to this word in the entire Bible are communicators of God’s Word and they may be like, for example in I believe it’s Matthew 1:20 when the angel comes and speaks to Joseph in a dream about the Child Mary’s going to have. That is the angel sent by God, aggelo. The angel that spoke to Mary, Gabriel, which is named by name in Luke 1:26, that angel, aggelo. It’s a reoccurring theme.
For the most part they are messengers of God, and then you’ve got that little percentage on the end which is the copycat Satan that comes along. Of course, he was the original one in the beginning that when he fell took a third of heaven with him. We’ll encounter those angels in the book of Revelation too, but right now we’re talking about terrestrial real beings, not celestial beings that are the pastors, messengers of the Church. And the irony, you can go through the Septuagint, I don’t think I brought mine, but you can go through the Septuagint you’ll see the Septuagint, which is the Hebrew translated into the Greek, Old Testament with Apocrypha, you’ll find that every time the word ‘angel’ is used you’re going to read ‘messenger’ or ‘angel’ interchangeably.
What is so easily dismissed as we read the Bible, and we seldom oh, you hear it now and again, the price that was paid to get the Book. Well, look at the price that was paid to set up the Church, and the complete ignorance everything that Paul had to, every hurdle he had to encounter, we’re just going to take a little glimpse of it in the 19th chapter of the book of Acts very quickly.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that starting at verse 1, “It came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: finding certain disciples.” Now listen, these are supposedly disciples. Listen! “He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? They said unto him, We’ve not heard of such a thing whether there be any Holy Ghost.” These are supposedly disciples. “And he said unto them, Unto what were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John’s baptism.” Get the frame of reference, and I’m going to build on this as we go.
The first thing he encounters are disciples that are not really disciples because if they were they would have been already Christ’s followers. They’re still in the Judaic frame of reference, John’s baptism. “Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
When Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them, they began to speak in tongues, and prophesied. The men, about twelve.” Notice, and it’s not a, it’s not a mistake. We have the reoccurring numbers again, twelve. I’m sure that these people that he baptized become an integral part of the growing Church that will be, but ‘twelve’ is not, it’s not a mistake. “And he went into the synagogue, spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God.”
Now if you have taken a look at Paul, you’ll know that probably he did a little bit more than “disputing and persuading” because he could be all things to all men. He probably won an awful lot of people to Christ, and I don’t like to use that word, though I just said it, but with the mindset that he’s fighting, all the odds are against him.
But He became dead, which means it was not natural to Him that He should suffer this. It’s subtle, but it makes a big difference in how we read it. He says “I am the living one, I became dead; and, behold, I’m living.” “I became dead, became necros, where we get our words for ‘necros, the words used in pathology and things like that. Dead, “I became dead and, behold, idou, that word we looked at last week, “Behold, living I am into the ages of ages.” Stop right there.
You want to confirm if Christ is talking, only Christ could say “I’m the living and I became dead. And I am living into the ages and ages.” Only Christ could say that. If you’re not sure about who’s speaking now, it’s time to wake up. Jesus is talking. He’s the only one that could do this, the only one on the page or scene or anywhere at any time that could say this and it be true.
And He’s appearing before John now: “I am living, I became dead; now I am alive into the ages and ages. And I have the keys of death, and the keys of death, and of Hades.” Now, If you have the keys to something, means you have access, authority. The King James switched the words around and they put “I have the keys of hell and death.”
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that there’s no, in the original, there’s no “Amen.” It doesn’t matter. ‘Amen’ is a good thing; I like ‘Amen’ but it’s not in there. “I have the keys of death and Hades.” He doesn’t say Gehenna and He doesn’t say ‘Hell, and there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of subtleties of why this word was used. Now let me say this, if He has the keys to death and Hades He doesn’t need the key to anything else. He has the keys to the seen world and the unseen world. And what’s so bizarre is what we think is real or seeable or tangible or whatever it is, it is not because in the realm that He’s seeing, He is not only in control of this world where we can’t see Him, but when we get to the unseen world, when we get there, we will see Him.
If that makes any sense to you at all, it’s like a reverse of things, and that He has the keys to these has to tell you one thing. Again, it’s a theological nightmare, and I’m sure a lot of people will just go, “Arrg gh gh!
Good morning. You may be seated, please. We’re looking at, we will quickly look at the history, very briefly, of Ephesus. And I want you to just think about something: How could a culture and a society so, I will say, advanced, acclimated, the major trade center, the emporium of the world at the time Asia Minor how could it just be mere ruins and rubbles? What happened to these people, what happened to their society and their culture?
When we talk about history, those are the things that should provoke thought. And some of you still might not be there, I don’t mean to insult your intelligence, but picture show me your hands! How many of you have been to LAX? Show me your hands! My condolences, but picture, you know, all the corridors and all the hallways when you go, it’s bustling.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that now, it’s not really bustling people are just standing in line. But picture, you’ve seen LAX with all the planes standing by and the engines running and people going and running and doing. And then imagine you could come back to LAX in 100 years or 200 years from now and it’s deserted. The pristine paint somewhere is now scraped away, the planes, what’s left, that have been cannibalized-parts. I’m being ludicrous, but it’s to say we, when we picture history and civilization that has now disappeared, we have this mindset that somehow we don’t get into “What happened to these people? And I take a current place you know of because Ephesus was the epicenter.
If you know a little bit about the geography of where it’s located, you’ll find it sits, or at the time of what we’re going to look at, sat right at the tip of the sea. Three rivers that supplied, right away there, three rivers you know are going to supply food and water. It was a bustling place. You have, in historical factors, things for example not the largest, but a very large artificial harbor that was made for Ephesus for trade, and the four roads that you could take to go anywhere if you were buying or selling goods in that time frame. We think of Ephesus and we think of Paul. We think of John, we think of the letters to the Church.
I wish they would have said Gabriel or identified them, but just ‘the angel, he’s got no title poor guy. “Of Him to the slave of Him John.” Now here again, Textus Receptus, some of you may have a semi-colon or a colon after ‘John.’ It’s one big run-along sentence from verse 1 to verse 2 there’s no stop, and it will make sense to you when you read it all the way through. Let me read it all the way through in the King James first because, “the things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John who bare record of the word of God,” just keeps flowing, “and the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all the things that he saw.” Okay.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that this is important because when you read it chapter and verse it almost sounds like we may be talking about Jesus, we may be talking about somebody else I don’t know. No, he’s talking about what John saw and I love what happens with the Greek in this, we’ll call it verse 2, but really not. You’re familiar with this we know the word that’s being used for ‘witness’ and ‘testimony’ at the root of it has the ‘martyr’ word. They’re using it. They’re translating it in the King James as ‘testimony’ I believe ‘testimony, ‘bare record’ and ‘testimony.’ Those are the two words both of those in the Greek are the ‘martyr’ words which from where you’ll normally see “witness.”
Here are the two words and you can see this puts it in the past behind, again another same concept: verb, indicative, ahorist active which means it’s a past tense, it happened in the past-historical event back there and the subject because it’s active, the subject is doing the action. Now, if you throw all that out the window what’s really important is this: you can read this verse, “who bare record of the word of God” and miss something so sensational. John refers to Jesus as the Logos – the Word, “In the beginning was the Word”, the Logos. He was, John was witness to, we’re going to use their judicial frame of reference, was witness to the ‘martyring of the Word.’ It’s woven in there just so ever so slightly that when we read the text we don’t come across with that sense. “Who bare the record of the Word of God”, as if I have a Bible and this is the record.
No, it’s more than that. He bore the record because he lived and saw Jesus in the flesh, but he also saw the Word being martyred. So, the Greek has a little spin to it. “The Word of God, and” this is really great because this word here, ten marturesen, is being used as a noun. This is being used as a verb which means action. This noun: person, place or thing. So, when we get down to reading the sentence structure itself, “who bare record of the Word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and all the things that he saw,” think of a courtroom. Think of something where you have the action committed and the witness who sees the evidence. He, John, is the person with the evidence. He “bore the record”, yes, but it’s the evidence of Christ.
I want to share with you what he amassed because it is so succinct with regards to where the ark landed. Because, we will get there, won’t be today. But if you read in your Bible just to give you some idea so we can come back to outside of the Bible for a minute, if you read in your Bible in I believe it’s 8 8th chapter, 4th verse, it says: “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains” mountains – plural – “of Ararat.”
Now I do not want to talk about Berossus because I just did in talking about Gilgamesh, the Gilgamesh Epic which we know Berossus was superb at deciphering and putting a lot of the pieces together. But just to show you how deep this problem because I know there is still people listening who are saying “Oh you know this is just a Bible story.” It’s not. And I wish, I don’t wish for someone to find this to validate the Bible.
I think the quest for it is, is exciting and it should be like you know if they find it there is one place that looks really, really, really, really good. But even so, the mountains of Ararat, which is very correct it is not one mountain; it is a mountain range. The Samaritan Pentateuch has the landing place of Noah’s Ark in the Kurdish Mountains north of Assyria. I do not know how we got here but it is what it is. The Targums, which I wrote the Aramaic out of one of the Onkelos being they have the ark in the Kardo Mountains; and as a sidebar some of you that have this Bible in the Aramaic text, look it up you will find the same thing – Kardo, not Ararat.
Josephus, historian – most people don’t really have any quarrel with what he had to say. Josephus living and writing during the first century A.D., Josephus was a man of Jewish birth who was loyal to the Roman Empire. He mentions the remains of Noah’s Ark three times. Now remember step back in time. The closer back or the further back you go the better the sources are which we don’t have anymore. So was Josephus making this up three different times?
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that the first is found in the 4th volume of his Antiquities of the Jews and it reads: “Then the ark settled on a mountaintop in Armenia. Noah, thus learning that the earth was delivered from the flood, waited yet seven days, let the animals out of the ark, went forth himself and his family, sacrificed to God, feasted with his household. The Armenians called the spot of the landing place they call it ‘the spot’ of the landing place for it was there that the ark came safe to land. And they showed the relics of it to this day.” There are plenty of photos but they are so poor in quality I won’t even waste time showing them.
And don’t turn here I’m going to read you Hebrews 11, we’re not staying there so I’m going to turn and read it to you. Hebrews 11:7 reads: “By faith Noah, being warned of God of the things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.” Now can you imagine this 500 year-old man? We know that the flood started in the 600th year of his life, with his three children, but can you imagine him building an ark? And step out of the frame of disbelief and just walk into a world where if you could visualize it: here is this 500 year-old man.
That is already preposterous. Who is going to build an ark and they’ve never seen rain before? Talk about crazy! I mean, probably they passed him by and said, “That old fool is out there, whatever he is building.” You know this is a joke; probably the butt of many jokes but it didn’t matter. He built the ark because God told him to. Now there was not the written word of God at this point, but Noah received the word of God by hearing, by God speaking or revealing to him; and he was obedient in Faith to conform to what God had told him to do. Build an ark. So he did. Faith, we know, substantiates.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that if you go back to the 1st verse in Hebrews, ‘Faith substantiates the things hoped for’ so when Noah was told, he did by Faith. Now going into the 6th chapter with a background, everybody here I am sure is familiar with the different origins of the flood. The one that everybody seems to be familiar with is the Gilgamesh Epic, which states the flood. We know the cuneiform tablets that were found they were interpreted and some scholar even said, “Wow! There is a semblance to the Bible.” Now many want to say that Gilgamesh and the Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Bible; that the Bible copied Gilgamesh.
God is not a copycat, okay. So, we may have a case of people not outlining timeframes. Certainly, we don’t have all the answers and it would be unfair to try and say we have all the answers in one hour, just cannot be done. Men have devoted their entire lives for generations for the answers which, like I said, some of them are just not available to us.