Daniel 12:3

Daniel 12:3 is a verse that has come up a couple of times in the past week, and I can’t believe that it’s a coincidence, so I will attempt to elaborate on that verse today. First of all, that is part of a prophecy that was given to Daniel. The prophesy itself appears to be an end-times prophecy, but that particular verse would seem to be timeless: I do not believe that those words are just for the end-times.

It starts out talking about “the wise.” Clearly Daniel was considered to be wise, although I suspect that he would have denied that he was, pointing out that whatever wisdom seemed to come from him actually came from God. I would submit that true wisdom is simply allowing the Holy One to flow through you, and any attempt to take credit for such things would interfere with that process. In James 1, we are told that if we lack wisdom, then we should ask God for it, and that He gives liberally. James goes on to warn that we need to ask in faith believing, and that if we don’t fully believe, then we will not receive. Of course, if we ask for wisdom in order to benefit ourselves, rather than the Kingdom, we still won’t get it.

It goes on to say that the wise shall shine as the firmament of Heaven. In Matthew 5, Jesus commanded us to shine. In order for us to shine, do we have to be wise? Perhaps not, but Jesus also commanded us to be wise, anyway. In Matthew 10:16, Jesus told us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. That’s an interesting instruction, in and of itself. How wise are serpents? Well, if you stop to consider that serpents are cold-blooded creatures who can normally find sources of warmth when it is cold, and they generally are able to sneak up on their pray when they are hungry, I’d say that they are as wise as they need to be. Of course, if we are talking about two-legged serpents, they also are good at finding sources of warmth, because they are cold-blooded creatures, they are generally good at sneaking up behind people, (or blatantly walking up pretending to be friendly) and stabbing them in the back, and are clever enough to push their own agenda, and to get what they want by whatever means is available. There is a certain wisdom there, just not the “good kind” of wisdom that we’re used to. The point is, that Jesus wants us to be as clever and as subtle as we need to be to spread the gospel, but not to use that cleverness to hurt anyone (not even people that we perceive to be enemies of the gospel). Notice again that in Matthew 5, Jesus tells us to let our light shine, that others would see our good works, and glorify our Father… I mentioned earlier that God isn’t going to give us wisdom for us to fulfill our own selfish desires. What we do, we should do for the furtherance of the gospel, and not for ourselves. Whatever we do, we should be able to do so that people would be aware of God in us, and so that they can see how much God loves them.

The passage in Daniel also talks about turning many to righteousness. Remember that we are commanded to preach the gospel to every creature. Somewhere along the line, the term creature has taken a negative connotation (I think Mary Shelley is to blame for that), but a creature is simply a created being; we are all created beings. It was pointed out to me recently that, in this particular context, the term creature doesn’t necessarily include cats and dogs, although you can practice preaching to them if you want to. I would suggest that cats make better practice than dogs, at least your own dog. Let’s face it, if you tell your own dog that baking powder mixed with Sprite makes decent shaving cream, he will look at you as if to say, “Why that’s brilliant! Thank you so much for telling me! I never would have thought of that, but now I know exactly what to do the next time I run out of shaving cream!” Very few people will react anywhere near that enthusiastically when you tell them about Jesus. I believe that cats would give a better approximation of the sort of reaction that you can expect from most people.

Jots and Tittles

I picked up some interesting new information today: I had, somewhere along the line, been taught that a jot was the dot over a 'j', an iota was the dot over an 'i' and a tittle was the cross-bar of a 't.' I have actually argued with people that wanted to tell me that a jot was the dot over an 'i,' but, to be honest, up until today, I never actually looked it up. Jesus made reference to a jot and a tittle in Matthew 5:18, and I think that's where most of us picked up those terms. To be honest, it doesn't make any sense for Him to refer to the dot over a 'j,' since there is no letter j in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Latin. When the translators were translating the Bible into English, they used terms that would be familiar to people (in 1611, anyway), but what Jesus was actually referring to were marks in the Hebrew language that assisted with pronunciation--in other words, you could still get the meaning without those marks, they just made it easier to read.

Anyway, I saw this on the Just Free Stuff blog, and almost protested that they had the definition of the word 'tittle' wrong (see # 4), but I decided that I should look it up first. Turns out, I was wrong. The tittle is the dot over the 'i,' and a jot and an iota are the same thing--almost nothing. I'm glad I decided to check myself; I don't even remember who gave me those (erroneous) definitions of jot, iota, and tittle, but it was somebody I felt I had good reason to trust (I trust everybody. It's the devil inside them I don't trust).

In any case, Jesus' point was that we, as Christians, are responsible for every last detail in God's Word. Now, that doesn't mean that we are responsible for making sure people outside our faith are obeying God's Word, as I've seen happen all too often. We need to live a life of Christian example, but leave others to do what they will. If all they ever get from us is condemnation, they won't come to us--they will stay away from us, or attack us at every opportunity. "I'm not afraid of being attacked," you say, but, it's hard to share the love of Jesus with someone who despises you. Particularly if you've given them good reason to want you gone. "I'm not afraid of persecution," you say. There's a difference between persecution and stupi-cution. Jesus said to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. We have to be just as smart and as clever as those who would come against the message, but, at the same time, understand that people who attack us are not our enemies; they are victims. Our job is to rescue them. We can't do that by pushing them away. That puts us in a difficult position--we are trying to help people who don't understand that they need our help. Some of them really just wish we would go away (a lot of that is because of the actions of Christians who were not wise as serpents). We can't just be like Jonah, and sit on the side, waiting for God to destroy Ninevah because they really deserve it. We all deserve it--God's mercy has saved us from the fire, and He is depending on us to help share His grace with others. That's what we're here for.