whydoneit

Awaiting…

Biblical prophecy is astounding.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

Herod called the chief priests and scribes and asked where the Christ should be born. They quoted Micah without hesitation — "Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet" (Matt 2:5).

They had the verse. They had the geography. Bethlehem was about five miles from where they stood — less than a morning's walk.

They did not go.

The wise men, who had no temple, no scrolls, no priestly pedigree, travelled to follow a star. They went (Matt 2:1-12).

How do you have the verse, the address, and a walkable distance — and still not go?

The chief priests had the truth as information. The wise men had the truth as a journey. One group quoted prophecy from the comfort of an office. The other group spent time on the road because of it.

The Spirit through the Word is not a verse I can quote. It is a verse I can only hope to obey when it comes.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

Thirty pieces of silver. Zechariah named the price about five hundred years before Judas took it (Zech 11:12).

The chief priests counted the coins out. They placed them in Judas's hand (Matt 26:15). They had quoted that exact prophecy in the courts for generations.

They had the verse. They had the receipt in their palms. They did not see the prophecy being fulfilled in the receipt they were handling.

How do you have the verse and miss the moment?

I have done what they did. I have read the prophecy. I have nodded at the parallels. And I have missed the receipt in my own hand.

From the inside it doesn't feel like missing. It feels like Wednesday.

I am haunted by the idea that when the moment arrives, I am going to miss it. The only way I see not to is to actively talk with God through the Spirit, and ask Him to tell me when it happens.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

The Bible's prophets did not have platforms. They had wilderness, prison, and a short obituary. Elijah ran for his life and thought he was the only one left (1 Kings 19:10). God told him there were seven thousand more, none of whom we ever meet by name.

John the Baptist lost his head over a dinner party (Mark 6:25-27). Stephen was stoned by an audience that included a young Saul holding the coats (Acts 7:58).

The pattern is brutal and consistent. The ones God sends are dismissed, exiled, beaten, killed. The ones the crowd celebrates are usually the Hananiahs.

So when I take stock of whose voice I am letting shape my view of what is happening — am I tracking the polished, the welcomed, the platformed? Or am I open to the awkward ones who keep getting cancelled and keep being right?

The Spirit does not arrive with applause. He has never had to.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

THE CROWD LOVED HANANIAH.

Jeremiah preached for forty years that Judah would fall to Babylon and Jerusalem would be burnt. He was beaten. Put in stocks. Thrown down a cistern. Read aloud by the king who then sliced the scroll into a fire (Jer 36:23).

Hananiah stood up in the same temple and said the opposite — within two full years God would break Babylon's yoke and restore the temple vessels. He spoke with confidence (Jer 28:2-4). The crowd loved it. It was the inspirational, hopeful, positive word.

Jeremiah said one sentence in reply. "Amen: the Lord do so." Then he added — "the prophet which prophesieth of peace, when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the Lord hath truly sent him." (Jer 28:9)

Hananiah died within the year (Jer 28:17).

The crowd-pleasing word is almost never the true word. The hard, slow, unpopular word is almost always the true one. That is the pattern. Every time.

If a message I find online or in a pulpit lands easy on me — that is the start of the test, not the end of it. The Spirit through the Word is what tells me which Hananiah I have just nodded at.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

PETER. THREE YEARS. ONE SERVANT GIRL.

Peter walked on water. Peter said "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt 16:16). Peter watched Christ transfigured on the mountain. Three years of personal training. Front-row seat.

A servant girl asked if he was one of the disciples. He said he was not (Mark 14:66-68). She asked again. He denied with an oath. A bystander asked. He cursed and swore (Mark 14:71).

Not a soldier. Not a torturer. A servant girl.

If three years with Christ Himself could be unwound by a teenager's question in a courtyard — what unwinds me?

Peter wept bitterly (Mark 14:72). That is the only honest response any of us has, on a long enough timeline.

The remarkable thing about the Bible is that the man who collapsed in the courtyard is the same man who preached at Pentecost. Failure is not the disqualifier. Pretending I am not vulnerable to it is. The Spirit restores what the courtyard breaks — but only if I admit it broke.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

FAITH IS NOT SEEN

Joseph had a dream at seventeen. Sheaves bowing. Sun and moon and eleven stars (Gen 37:7-9). His brothers heard him out.

Then they sold him.

He spent the next thirteen years of his life inside the contradiction of that dream. Pit. Slave. Potiphar's house. Falsely accused. Prison. Forgotten by the butler.

Genesis tells us the same thing four times in those years — "and the Lord was with Joseph" (Gen 39:2, 21, 23). The text says it. The chapter shows it. The chapter does not say Joseph could feel it.

Faith is not the certainty that God is here. It is the willingness to act as if He is, when every visible signal says He is not.

Thirteen years between the dream and the throne. Joseph did not know it would be thirteen. He did not know it would be a throne.

When my own waiting drags into years, Joseph's chapter is where I go. "The Lord was with him" is written across the slave market, Potiphar's house, and the dungeon. God being with him did not shorten the years.

The Spirit and the Word do not promise me the door opens this year. They promise He is with me whether it does or not.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

@martypartymusic @elonmusk Lekker, met eish ja.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

EVEN GOOD PROPHETS GET DECEIVED.

A man of God came out of Judah to Bethel. God's instruction was clear — pronounce judgement on the altar, eat no bread, drink no water, return by a different way (1 Kings 13:9).

He pronounced the judgement. The altar split. The king's hand withered and was restored. He turned for home.

An old prophet caught up with him on the road. Sat him down. Said an angel had spoken — God says it is fine to eat and drink at my house (1 Kings 13:18). The text says plainly the old prophet lied.

The man of God believed the older man's word over God's own instruction to him personally. He ate. He drank. A lion killed him on the road home (1 Kings 13:24).

Even good prophets are deceived by other prophets.

The clearest word I will ever get is the one Scripture has already given me. Anyone who comes later with a softer version is on me to test, by the Spirit, against the original.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

@TNTJohn1717 :)

[PaulsCorner-VerseQuest @TNTJohn1717]

Fixed it 👇

[Josh Barzon @JoshuaBarzon]

The Bible tells us that Hezekiah was one of Judah’s greatest kings. Then archaeologists found his seal. Stamped with the words, “Belonging to Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, king of Judah,” it is one of the few artifacts that can be directly connected to a king mentioned in Scripture.

[Josh Barzon @JoshuaBarzon]

Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of a statue. Daniel interpreted it as four successive empires: Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Each was replaced by the next until a rock not cut by human hands destroyed them all. Daniel 2 is one of the most remarkably specific prophetic passages in Scripture.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

ALMOST OBEYED.

Samuel told Saul to wait seven days before sacrifice. Saul waited six. He could see the Philistines amassing. The people were scattering. Samuel was late. So he offered the sacrifice himself (1 Sam 13:8-9).

Samuel arrived as the smoke was rising. He said the kingdom was taken. One day short. One ritual misplaced. One "the situation forced my hand."

Saul almost obeyed.

Then God told him through Samuel to wipe Amalek out — all of it (1 Sam 15:3). Saul did most of it. Kept Agag the king. Kept the best of the cattle. Claimed he had saved them for sacrifice (1 Sam 15:15).

Samuel: "to obey is better than sacrifice" (1 Sam 15:22).

Saul could not see what was wrong with almost. From inside almost-obedience always looks like obedience plus practical wisdom.

The only thing that ever tells me the difference is the Spirit working through the Word. I cannot trust my own assessment of how close to obedient I am.

[Josh Barzon @JoshuaBarzon]

The entire Book of Revelation is a giant chiasm. 🤯

A chiasm is a literary device where ideas unfold in order (A B C) and then repeat in reverse (C B A), forming an X shaped symmetry that aids memory and draws attention to the central point (C).

The Bible is amazing.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

OF NONE EFFECT.

"Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye." (Mark 7:13)

Jesus said that to the most Bible-literate people who had ever lived. They could quote whole books. They tithed mint and cumin (Matt 23:23). They were not lazy. They were not indifferent. They were the gold-standard of religious seriousness in the first century.

And He said their tradition had cancelled the word out.

"Of none effect" is not "in tension with." It is the word still on the page but no longer doing anything in the room.

If the Pharisees could read Scripture every day, memorise it word for word, build a civilisation around it — and still have their tradition switch off the voltage — what makes me think repetition alone protects me?

The thing I inherited may be the thing I have to test against the page. Tradition without the Spirit through the Word is liturgy without current.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

OPEN THE BIBLE. LOOK FOR THE VERSE.

Pick something you absolutely believe is biblical Christianity. Anything. The way you take communion. How you keep Easter. What day you go to church.

Now open the Bible. Look for the verse.

Just the verse. Not the verse plus 1,500 years of explanation. Not the verse plus what your pastor said last Sunday. Just the verse.

You may find it. You may not.

Josiah was king of Judah. He inherited a temple where the book of the law had been lost for so long that nobody noticed it was missing. The workmen pulled it out of a wall during repairs. They read it to the king. He tore his robes (2 Kings 22:11).

He realised that they had forgotten it. Their daily priestly routine, which was the symbolism of what it is really about, had become more important than the thing it was pointing at.

I must not get lost in the liturgy. Only the Spirit of truth and its illumination of the Word can remind me of what it is really about.

It is not about the act. It is about what it represents.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

FLATTERY

Hezekiah was one of the good kings. He tore down the high places. He smashed the bronze serpent of Moses when the people started burning incense to it (2 Kings 18:4). He prayed against Sennacherib and God answered.

Then Babylonian envoys arrived. Diplomatic visit. Hezekiah took them through the treasure-house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the armoury, "and all that was found in his treasures" (2 Kings 20:13). He showed them everything.

Isaiah came afterwards and asked what he had shown them. Hezekiah said, all of it. Isaiah told him every one of those treasures would one day go to Babylon. Hezekiah's response — "Good is the word of the Lord which thou hast spoken. … is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days?" (2 Kings 20:19)

Even a good king can be undone by one good day. Comfort plus flattery and the keys to the kingdom come out.

What flattery am I unguarded against? Only the Spirit shows me the answer to that one before it has already happened.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

NEITHER HOT NOR COLD

"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." (Rev 3:17)

That is what the comfortable last church says about itself, right before the door knocks.

Laodicea was a wealthy banking city. Famous for its eye salve. Known for its black wool. It funded the rebuild of its own temple complex after an earthquake — turned down imperial aid. They did not need anyone.

They were the most self-sufficient church in Revelation. And the only one Jesus says He is about to vomit out of His mouth (Rev 3:16).

I live in the most comfortable Christian moment in human history. Climate-controlled sanctuaries. Apps for daily verses. Coffee in the foyer.

If comfort is the test that put a whole city to sleep with prophecy in their lap — am I awake, or do I only think I am? The honest answer comes from the Spirit, not from the comfort.

[whydoneit @whydoneit_]

ADAM WALKED WITH GOD. AND ATE.

Adam walked with God in the cool of the day (Gen 3:8). Not heard about Him. Not read about Him. Walked with Him.

And still listened to the serpent. And still ate.

If the man who knew God face to face failed — what chance do I have, scrolling between sermons and ads?

Adam was fooled because the alternative offered to him sounded reasonable even exciting. "Ye shall not surely die … ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." (Gen 3:4-5). It sounded like an upgrade.

The deception did not look like deception. It looked like a better understanding of the situation.

It is going to be the Spirit through the Word — or it is going to be Eden again. I would have eaten too.