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Matthew 17: 10-13 | King James Audio Bible KJV | Daily Bible Verses Advent, Saturday Week 2
10 And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?
11 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.
12 But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.
13 Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.
The disciples Peter, James and John have just witnessed the Transfiguration on the mountain. They have seen the glorified Christ, and now they are puzzled, because they have been taught that Elijah would come before the Messiah. These are the verses from the prophet Malachi, which are the last words of the Old Testament:
5 ¶ Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:
6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
The scribes have taught, and the disciples have understood, that the text has referred only to the coming of the Messiah. Now they understand that Elijah has come again as John the Baptist, who has himself prepared the way for Jesus.
John the Baptist, like Jesus, came to reconstruct society, to bring people back to a true relationship with each other and with God. This was a reflection on the Roman occupation, whereby the occupying power corrupted natural community and family relations. John has been punished, and put to death, for his teachings. Jesus will suffer the same fate.
For many, the Christian mission remains to fulfil Christ’s purpose in reconstructing society. In doing so, they may find themselves ranged against the ‘occupying power’ of modern social and economic ideologies. We may think of contemporary beliefs and practices which fracture families and so which lead to neglect, poverty, violence, addiction, loneliness, despair, loss of faith… As Christians, we are called to try to do what we can, while to overhaul the system entirely might seem near-impossible. Still with faith we stand witness to Christ’s core teachings. We pray that the world may follow.
14 Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine;
15 And the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.
16 It is burned with fire, it is cut down: they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.
17 Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself.
18 So will not we go back from thee: quicken us, and we will call upon thy name.
19 Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. (Psalm 80/79)
In Christian tradition, the Millennium refers to a thousand-year period of peace and prosperity that is believed to follow the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. This belief is based on a passage from the book of Revelation in the New Testament: ‘And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years’ (Revelation 20:4) [ … ]
The poem reflects on the numerous protective measures placed around individuals to guide them toward moral and spiritual growth, only to suggest that a single powerful sin can undo all these efforts. The poem opens by marvelling at the care with which human life is surrounded by formative influences, beginning with parents who ‘season’ or shape their children. This is followed by teachers, who hand them over to the ‘laws’ and ‘rules of reason’. These influences represent a rational, structured upbringing designed to lead a person towards a virtuous and ordered life [ … ]
In these Bible verses, Jesus teaches that the Pharisees have got it all wrong in relation to the Sabbath. While God gave the Sabbath to man as an opportunity to rest and to devote himself to divine worship, the Pharisees have choked the meaning of the Sabbath in a mass of legalese, turning it from being a time of joy into a time of anxiety and empty observance [ … ]
