Bible Study on Matthew 24, verses 4 to 31, Christ preaches on the end times, part 2

 

PART 2 There will be a temple rebuilt and there will be the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, showing that he was not talking about the era he lived in when he wrote;

 

Daniel 9:27  And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

 

Daniel 12:11  And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.

 

Antiochus Epiphanes, a type of the Antichrist after Daniel’s day, sacrificed a pig on the altar and offered up prayers to Zeus.

 

The defiling of the new temple will take place in the middle of a week of years and last for 3 ½ years. An organization called The Temple Mount Faithful is focused on rebuilding the temple.    

 

Then, Christ talks about the Jews final persecution, the Time of Jacob’s Trouble mentioned in Jeremiah 30 and in Revelation, chapter 12.

 

Jeremiah 30:6  Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? 7  Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.

 

Revelation 12:14  And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time (3 and a half years), from the face of the serpent. 15  And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. 16  And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. 17  And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

 

Don’t believe any man who says he is Christ even if they seem to perform signs and wonders possibly deceiving the very elect, He tells these believing Jews and then explains how He will appear as lightning flashing from the east to the west. He then describes conditions that remind one of the Book of the Revelation.

 

Revelation 6:12  And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; 13  And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. 14  And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 15  And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; 16  And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: 17  For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

 

The people of the earth will mourn and wail when they see Him.

 

Revelation 1:7  Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.

 

The Rapture or Translation of the Church could be described as this passage ends although the use of And doesn’t always mean something that directly follows another. And can just add additional information without indicating a time or demanding that the event after and must be the next event. This verse got me wondering about whether this placed the translation or rapture of the Church at the end of the Tribulation as some people say until, as I read other things in Genesis and outside of the Bible how and can be used to insert information that was not spoken of previously not necessarily meaning that it followed after the last events described. So, I am not trying to identify the time of the Rapture, which is a great topic for a Bible Study.

 

I’ll give you an example. “Joe was a very successful engineer even up until his 70s. And he got his engineering degree from MIT.” This is more used in conversation than in formal writing. Just a thought.

Bible Study on Exodus 2, verses 16 to 25, the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage

 

Exodus 2:16 ¶  Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17  And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. 18  And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day? 19  And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock. 20  And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread. 21  And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter. 22  And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

The priest of Midian, we will come to know as Reuel and as Jethro. It is not uncommon for a person to have two names. For instance, my brother’s name is Douglas and also Brent as at different times of his life, for various reasons, he has preferred one over the other. In addition, we have seen that some names in the Bible that appear to be given names are actually titles. It is possible that either Jethro or Reuel is a title or it is likely that they are both names for the same person.

I suspect Reuel is a personal name, used only once here with the variant spelling of Raguel used in Numbers 10:29, and Jethro, which we will come to later, is a more formal name.

Moses, a bold man, probably skilled in the warrior arts of Egypt and wearing the garb of his former station in life, defended the daughters of the priest of Midian in their efforts to feed their own flock of sheep against shepherds who apparently bullied them.  He was given sanctuary by the priest of Midian and eventually a daughter to take as a wife, named Zipporah. She bare him a son named Gershom, which in the context means a stranger in a strange land to be understood as a foreigner. Moses suffers the worse kind of alienation. He did not belong anywhere. As the adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter he was always a Hebrew yet his own people regarded him as a member of the oppressing Egyptians and now he has fled as a fugitive to seek refuge in a desert place with people who were not his people. Sometimes, we know that God has to bring us to a desert place in our lives to prepare us for His use, a state of mind where we feel as if we have no place where we belong.

The stage is being set by God for some great events in God’s plan of reconciling man to Himself, nothing like of which has been seen since the Flood of Noah’s time or the dispersal at Babel.

Exodus 2:23 ¶  And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. 24  And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25  And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them.

The Pharaoh that sought to kill Moses has died. But, the descendants of Jacob are still struggling as slaves under hard work. They prayed to God for deliverance. It must have been pretty painful. We have only to look at our own experience with racial slavery in America to see how awful it can be to live under those conditions; a despised, hated race serving in hard bondage to masters and mistresses who can have you killed and do whatever they wish to your person. But, God’s plan is unfolding in His own time.

We do not know who these Pharaohs were although many have tried to guess. One problem is that kings were not liable to make monuments to their defeats only their victories. In fact, like the communist North Vietnamese in the war with America and South Vietnam who declared every defeat a victory, it is more likely that the ancient kings would twist the truth to glorify themselves. Be careful about accepting scholarly opinions which are based on limited and tainted evidence as most of the truth of history is buried in the dust and no amount of archaeologists’ spades and shovels will ever dig it up. Trust the Bible only, God’s preserved words given to us for our learning and understanding. As Paul explained the purpose of these histories of God’s ministry of reconciliation of man to Himself;

Romans 15:4  For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

Bible Study on Matthew 24, verses 4 to 31, Christ preaches on the end times, part 1

 

Matthew 24:4 ¶  And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. 5  For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. 6  And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7  For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. 8  All these are the beginning of sorrows. 9  Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. 10  And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. 11  And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. 12  And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. 13  But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. 14  And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. 15  When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) 16  Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains: 17  Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: 18  Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. 19  And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! 20  But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: 21  For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22  And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened. 23  Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. 24  For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. 25  Behold, I have told you before. 26  Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. 27  For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 28  For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. 29  Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: 30  And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31  And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

 

There will be many in history who will claim to be the Messiah or Christ. A book by a Rabbi Hillel Silver, written, if I am not mistaken, as a doctoral dissertation in the 1920s was entitled Messianic Speculation in Israel. Silver outlined how, in the last 2,000 years, many have come forward claiming to be the Messiah for the Jews or declaring that they knew when the Messiah would arrive, and then to declare that they knew when the end of the world would be. A list of Messiah claimants can be found on the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

 

As a modern example in the 20^th century a rabbi named Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who lived from 1902 to 1994, was claimed by many of his adherents to be the Messiah-to-come for the Jews.

 

Verses 6 and 7 have been expressed throughout history. Don’t focus on a single event as there will be constantly wars and rumors of wars. These things will happen but the end is not here yet. They will, though, at the end come to a crescendo like the climax of a symphony in our minds, threatening the destruction of all there is. Followers of Christ will be persecuted around the world. It has been said that today there are more Christians martyred for their faith each week than when pagan Rome was at its full power. Others have said that more Christians have been martyred in the last century than in all previous centuries combined as Satan’s wrath builds to a fury.

 

Followers of Christ will be caused to stumble, will betray each other, and even turn each other into their persecutors to save themselves. Because of iniquity many will be cold to the gospel truth who may have even been somewhat zealous in previous times. This is no more apparent than in the last century of Christianity in the industrialized countries of the West where religion is often nothing but a sham or an excuse to do wickedly to others in God’s name.

 

John 16:2  They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

 

False prophets, false Christs, false teachers will deceive multitudes at this time. While these things mentioned have always happened they will be very prominent toward the end.

 

Luke 18:8  I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

 

Holding fast to the end is of the utmost importance no matter how bad things get.

 

Revelation 2:10  Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

 

1John 5:4  For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. 5  Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?

 

Revelation 2:7  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God,,,11  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death…17  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it…26  And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:

 

Revelation 3:5  He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels…12  Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name…21  To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

 

Revelation 21:7  He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

 

The entire world will hear the gospel of Christ before the end comes and is that not a possibility today?

 

Bible Study on Exodus 2, verses 11 to 15, Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh

 

Exodus 2:11 ¶  And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. 12  And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. 13  And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? 14  And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known. 15  Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well.

Now, we have evidence that Moses’ past and ethnicity were not kept from him. He went out to see the burdens placed on his brethren. He had not grown up ignorant of who he was and where he came from. We don’t know how this played out in his life, if he was mocked or derided because of who he was or if the protection of his adopted mother, Pharaoh’s daughter, prevented that.

He saw an Egyptian hitting a Hebrew, one of his brethren, and thinking no one saw him, killed the Egyptian and buried his body. Clearly, Moses’ upbringing did not keep him from rage at the injustice being done to his brethren. Like one of the slave rebels in the Southern United States before the Civil War such as Nat Turner or Denmark Vesey, to a lesser extent, his rage manifested itself in violence. Moses’ act did not seem to involve premeditation, though, except that he looked first to see if he was being observed and mistakenly thought he was not.

A lesson is learned here for us that even when a member of a despised race is given privilege in the oppressor culture it does not necessarily prevent them from empathizing with their own people in their suffering. It’s a blood thing.

Moses, the next day, cannot understand, as many African-American activists like Malcolm X have commented on, why the Hebrews who are beaten down resort to beating each other. But, instead of understanding he gets the accusation thrown in his face, the acknowledgement that he is guilty of murder. There were witnesses.

Here in verse 14 we have a way the Bible defines itself presented to us as well as evidence of the authority of an ancient ruler to lead and to judge. See in this verse that a prince and a judge are synonyms. Note the cross-reference here as the martyr, Stephen, inserts ruler for prince in this allusion to verse 14;

Acts 7:27  But he that did his neighbour wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?

This combined the roles of political leader and judge of civil matters is something we have separated in our form of government. The Founders of America, basing the idea of separation of powers on the writings of the French political writer and Enlightenment philosopher Baron de Montesquieu in his book The Spirit of Laws, fell upon this idea as essential to good governing. But, in the ancient world the absolute ruler was not only a leader but he made laws and judged cases. See this reference to God Himself in Isaiah.

Isaiah 33:22  For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.

The God of creation is the absolute ruler of the universe from whom flows all the laws of physics and, indeed, all reality, and from whom there is no appeal. We can only seek His favor, His blessing, His kindness, and His mercy.

It probably did not take much to give the Pharaoh a justification to kill this Hebrew upstart whom his daughter saved against his will and command years before. But, Moses fled to the desert, to the land of Midian.

Midian was the son of Abraham and Keturah, his wife after Sarah died. Strong, in his dictionary, calls them Arabs. Some authorities say they dwelt in the northwestern Arabian peninsula on the east coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, on the northeastern tip of the Red Sea. This will be important later for the exodus from Egypt. As the earth continued and continues even today to dry out from the disaster of the Great Flood this desert region may have had more vegetation then than it does today. Paleoclimatologists who study evidence of ancient weather suggest that it was greener and wetter in years past than it is now. Some of what are thought of as the oldest human remains have been found there.

In the Bible, a desert is a wilderness, with sparse populations of humans or none at all. See the synonymous relationship between desert and wilderness with solitary and dry and desolate.

Exodus 19:2  For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount.

Deuteronomy 32:10  He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

Isaiah 35:1  The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.

Jeremiah 50:12  Your mother shall be sore confounded; she that bare you shall be ashamed: behold, the hindermost of the nations shall be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert.

And here, in this passage of prophecy against Israel that defines what without form, and void from Genesis 1:2 means, the unstable and empty earth, a wilderness, we see;

Jeremiah 4:23  I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. 24  I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. 25  I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. 26  I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger. 27  For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.

Today, this area is called the Tabuk province or region, one of the 13 provinces of Saudi Arabia. 

Bible Study on Matthew 24, verses 1 to 3, the disciples ask Jesus some questions about the end

 

Matthew 24:1 ¶  And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. 2  And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. 3  And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

 

Some of you are pretty sure about when the events as described are going to happen so I’m not going to argue with you or imply that I am sure about when certain things will take place, most notably the Rapture of the Church. As Jesus leaves the temple with His disciples He lets them know that this magnificent temple, began by Zerubabel hundreds of years before, after the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Solomon’s Temple;

 

2Chronicles 36:19  And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof.

 

Ezra 5:2  Then rose up Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and began to build the house of God which is at Jerusalem: and with them were the prophets of God helping them.

 

…and finished by Herod the Great, history tells us, will be utterly destroyed and it was so in 70AD.

 

The Jews would rebel against their Roman overlords and fight among themselves as Jerusalem is besieged by Roman general and future emperor, Titus, son of the Emperor Vespasian. The temple will burn, something Titus insisted was accidental and against his specific orders. The Arch of Titus, which was built in Rome to commemorate Titus's victory in Judea, depicts a Roman victory procession with soldiers carrying spoils from the Temple, including the Menorah. According to an inscription on the Colosseum, Emperor Vespasian built the Colosseum with war spoils in 79 CE – possibly from the spoils of the Second Temple, Wikipedia tells us.

 

It is now only represented by the famous Wailing Wall, represented because the Wailing Wall may not have been part of the actual Herod’s temple.  

 

It is here that the disciples ask about Christ’s return to rule Israel and the end of the world which gives us a clear context of what is to come next. A type of Bible interpretation called Preterism, which originated in the Catholic church or at least was first fully expounded on by that Church at Rome, insists that all of these events took place when Jerusalem fell, that Christ is actually, if not physically, ruling over Israel and the events of Revelation have already taken place. There are full Preterists and partial Preterists, though.

Bible Study on Exodus 2, verses 1 to 10, Moses is adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh

 

Exodus 2:1 ¶  And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. 2  And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. 3  And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. 4  And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.

Here is described a marriage between a man and a woman from the tribe of Levi, the family of Levi, or, as it says here, the house of Levi. The son she bore was healthy and strong, a goodly child. To keep him from being murdered she hid him as long as she could and when it was impossible to hide him she built a small waterproof container and placed him in the river near the bank with his older sister watching from a safe distance. There is a reason for her actions and she is not just abandoning the child. Remember the Ark that carried Noah and his family through the worst natural catastrophe to hit the earth, the great Flood.

Exodus 2:5 ¶  And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. 6  And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children. 7  Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? 8  And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother. 9  And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. 10  And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

It doesn’t say that the Pharaoh’s daughter immersed herself or went swimming. It says that she came down to wash herself. As there were several gods associated with the Nile River, which allowed Egypt to exist as a great civilization in the desert, she may have been performing a ritual ablution. We can’t be sure, going by the literal text. It is not likely that the Pharaoh’s daughter would be swimming naked in the river especially considering the animals that lived in the river. We will learn later the religious significance of washing oneself in the Law given to Moses. In any event, she and her attendants were walking by the river’s side when they saw the little ark, like a small boat, sitting in the reeds.

The word flags refers to the reeds and rushes from which they derived papyrus, early paper for documents.

Job 8:11  Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow without water?

Isaiah 19:6  And they shall turn the rivers far away; and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags shall wither.7  The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and every thing sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.

Isaiah 35:7  And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

She easily identified the baby as a Hebrew child, perhaps because he was circumcised. Scholars say that circumcision existed in ancient Egypt but they are contradictory as to its practice. Some mummies are circumcised, and many are not. Even the mummies of pharaohs are often not circumcised at the earliest periods. Perhaps the practice became more common after the Hebrews left just as Amenhotep IV also known as Akhenaten tried to institute a sort of monotheism in response to the Egyptian disaster at the Red Sea Exodus of the Hebrews. The most logical answer here is the baby was circumcised, not a common Egyptian practice at the time, and the baby’s ethnicity was clear.

She had mercy on the child. The baby’s sister, who had been watching close by, offers to get a nurse for the child, seeing the Pharaoh’s daughter wanted to save the baby. So, in this way the baby’s mother was able to nurse him and care for him for the Pharaoh’s daughter until he was weaned. He became the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, who named him Moses because he was drawn out of the river and that’s what the name means, drawn out.

The son of Pharaoh’s daughter would have, in all likelihood, been raised and educated with all of the worldly learning of the Egyptian royalty. Some authorities say that Egyptian children stayed with their mothers until around the age of four. The Prince’s school in ancient Egypt, according to a source I read, taught history, writing, and math based on a ten point system. It taught arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, as well. Geography, science, and medicine rounded out the lessons. The hieroglyphic, picture style of writing was very important. You have seen this type of writing where the characters were, as in Chinese and Aztec, pictographs. In this writing there was a tremendous religious significance rather than just a utilitarian one of communication. While this is, perhaps, an oversimplification, this is a general way to understand the general concept of writing. This will become very important in a few chapters.

Moses was most likely raised in the arts of war and peace and in governing. The Egyptian leadership was a top-down organization with the Pharaoh the supreme authority and we have seen the tendency toward government control of everything by what happened in Joseph’s time. Keep these things in the back of your mind as we move forward in Exodus. While we don’t know for certain from the text what Moses was taught we can be sure he wasn’t raised in a box.

Here, in this passage we can see God's hand in moving His ministry of reconciling mankind to Himself forward in small steps, using mankind's choices whether good or bad to further His plan.

Bible Study on Matthew 23, verses 34 to 39, I send unto you prophets

 

Matthew 23:34 ¶  Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: 35  That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. 36  Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. 37  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! 38  Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. 39  For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

 

Stephen was the first Christian martyr.

 

Acts 7:59  And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

 

James will also be murdered.

 

Acts 12:2  And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.

 

Paul will be whipped repeatedly.

 

2Corinthians 11:24  Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.

 

Jesus, of course, will be crucified. There are many others whose circumstances we are told nothing about.

 

Revelation 2:13  I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.

 

You remember Abel’s murder from Genesis, the first religious murder. Zacharias from the Greek was spelled Zechariah from the Hebrew. Zechariah, the son of Barachias, is one of the minor prophets with Barachias from Greek being Berechiah from Hebrew.

 

Zechariah 1:1 ¶  In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the LORD unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying,

 

We have the murder of Zechariah, called here the son of Jehoida as a reference to his lineage and connection to the priesthood according to some Jewish sources, here.

 

2Chronicles 24:20  And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the LORD, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken the LORD, he hath also forsaken you. 21  And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the LORD.

 

So, it can also be considered logical that Jesus is speaking of Zechariah the son of Jehoiada as Jehoiada, as other Jewish personalities I’ve talked about, could have had two names. This would not disturb the text at all. But, there are several different Jewish opinions on the identity of the Zacharias Jesus mentions including some later murders that occurred in the time between the Testaments, as John Gill explains.

 

God, whom Jesus Christ represents in the flesh as God Himself, talks of how patiently and lovingly God would have restored the Jews to fellowship with Him but they would have none of it. By rejecting their Messiah they would not see Him again until the end of history.

 

Matthew 24:30  And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

 

Perhaps, at some point in the Tribulation to come Christ will reveal Himself to the suffering Jews like Joseph revealed himself to his brothers in Genesis, and they will accept Christ then and likely martyrdom.