Monday Miscellany
Greetings!
Peace, mercy, and grace be with you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
May God continue to watch over all of us and provide us wisdom and peace in the midst of all which we must endure.
Sunday, October 13, 2024
The Voice 14.41: The Seven Bowls | Revelation 15:1-16:21
We continue exploring Revelation and the seven bowl judgments, all demonstrating how the beast and the false prophet are not as strong as they might imagine. Experiences of the second and third centuries would provide ample opportunity for the Romans to come to grips with this lesson. And yet most of the people would double down on their resistance to God and His purposes. So it seems to go in times of distress.
Lesson: Proclaim to the Mountains | Ezekiel 35:1-36:15 | Ezekiel’s Hope
Outline | Podcast | Conversation
We continue exploring Ezekiel’s hope. A couple of these sections will feature far more exploration into the historical context and how everything played out as an opportunity to encourage us in our confidence in the providential hand of God more than provide a whole lot of direct application, and so it goes with Ezekiel 35:1-36:15. Sure, Ezekiel’s hope is made fully manifest in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and imminent return; this is all the more evident in terms of the land bereaving its nation of its children in light of how the Second Temple Period would end.
But there would have to be a Second Temple Period for that fulfillment to find its ultimate satisfaction, a prospect not immediately obvious to the exiled Judahites immediately in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem. Edomite encroachment could become more expansive and permanent. Most other nations never did return to its land. To this end, yes, we do well to consider how Ezekiel’s proclamation to the mountains of Seir and Israel found fulfillment in what would happen throughout the Second Temple Period, and be thankful at least some Israelites persevered in their faith despite what must have seemed like long odds.
Another Assyrian statue from the British Museum. Did I not tell you? So many Assyrian statues.
This statue does a remarkable job of displaying the ideal Mesopotamian beard of the age. This kind of look would also have been prevalent in the Levant, and thus also in Israel and Judah. Consider how Hanun of Ammon disgraced David’s ambassadors by shaving off half of their beards, and David told them to stay in Jericho until their beards grew back (2 Samuel 10:4-5). They probably were in Jericho for some time.
Book Reviews
How is your prayer life going?
Have you found it challenging to develop a good, consistent, and healthy prayer life?
How much of your prayer life involves you talking at God versus how much of your prayer life involves being with God?
If the answer to the last question is more bafflement than anything else, A.J. Sherrill would not be surprised.
And all Christians would do well to consider his Being With God: The Absurdity, Necessity, and Neurology of Contemplative Prayer (affiliate link; galley received as part of early review program, but full edition read).
The author presents a well argued and reasoned introductory encouragement into the world of contemplative prayer. He began by considering its absurdity: the oddity, especially in modern culture, of sitting just to be in God’s presence; how our technology hijacks our attention and continually distracts us; and our challenges in actually hearing with all the noise all around us. For most of the book he explored the necessity of contemplative prayer: a lot of practical hints about creating the space and time of silence with God; how to cultivate stillness; aligning with and heeding the Spirit in His groaning; and diving and gazing into the Presence of God in contemplation. In the final part of the book the author explored the scientific basis for contemplation: the way our breathing works and how we do not take time to breathe deeply and well; how stressed out we are and how we do not sufficiently relax; and the importance of a quality sleep regimen for a healthy spirituality.
Every chapter ends with a guided experience for practice to be able to better cultivate and develop in one’s contemplative prayer life.
This is definitely an introductory level guide to contemplative prayer, aware of and connected to the deeper tradition without explicating much of it. Yet it represents an excellent introduction; in many respects, I wish I would have had access to it and read it at the beginning of my (more intellectual than experiential, I confess) explorations into contemplative prayer.
Thus I highly recommend this work for all Christians in order to develop a healthier, more well-rounded prayer life than just spending certain times talking at God.
Any consideration or exploration of contemplative spirituality, mystical spirituality, or spirituality in general in Christianity will eventually point back to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. His writings have proven incredibly influential.
In The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite (affiliate link), you can consider his writings for yourself.
The historical Dionysius the Areopagite was the man mentioned in Acts 17:34 as having been converted in Athens by Paul’s preaching around 51. While there are many who wish to believe the historical Dionysius the Areopagite was responsible for the works preserved under his name, they all betray a far more developed Christology and comfort with Neoplatonic philosophy than would be expected from such a first century convert.
Instead, by common confession, the works preserved in this compilation - On Divine Names, Mystical Theology, Liturgy, On the Heavenly Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and the Letters - come from likely a Syrian monk in the fifth (or perhaps early sixth) century well versed in the theology and Christology of the time and the Neoplatonic philosophy of Plotinus and Proclus. Thus we speak of him as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.
In Mystical Theology, the author would come to emphasize what is known as apophatic theology, approaching God more by negation of what is not God rather than affirmation of what God is. In this way the author becomes the first to really lay out a mystical approach to theology. Moderns find his books on hierarchies taxing, but they provided comfort and assurance to previous generations in understanding where everyone fit and how one might draw near to God. He was no doubt a major synthesizer of the Christian and Hellenistic traditions, giving a Neoplatonic voice and framework to Christian theology.
So much of Pseudo-Dionysius’ thought would become incorporated into Christian theology, East and West, that it can be hard to appreciate him fully. What he has said you can find explicated in greater detail elsewhere. Even though he claimed to be honoring and popularizing the instruction of “Hierotheus” his master, it is he and his works which have become most popular and continually quoted and referenced ever since the middle of the sixth century. He is worth considering on account of that heritage of popularity alone.
Odds are your ancient or world history class began with a study of the Sumerians and thus in Mesopotamia. You may have spent a day or two learning about the Assyrians and Babylonians. But then your study of history would have been directed elsewhere. Yet the land of Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, would continue, and often would prove of great importance to world affairs and events.
In Land Between the Rivers: A 5,000 Year History of Iraq (affiliate link; galley received as part of an early review program), Bartle Bull attempted to tell the long story of the history and heritage of Mesopotamia and Iraq by means of major characters in its history.
Thus he would begin with Gilgamesh and the early days of Sumerian civilization in the southern marshes of the land, and yet so much of Gilgamesh and his epic would redound through the ages. Abraham and his journey to Canaan are described, with the long-term influence of his descendants on Mesopotamia noted. Ashurbanipal and Nebuchadnezzar feature prominently as the greatest kings of the last great native Mesopotamian empires. Persian kings, Greek soldiers, and Jewish exiles are then described.
With Alexander the Great we begin a long period during which we learn comparatively little about Mesopotamia/Iraq itself, and more about the imperial powers, centered in Syria and Rome to the west or in Persia to the east, which would dominate from 333 BCE to 630s CE: Alexander, the Seleucids, the Romans, the Parthians, the Byzantines, and the Sassanids. Then there was Khalid ibn al Walid, the “Sword of Allah,” who would bring down the great empires; the author’s description of the Umayyad state along with Ali and his son Hussein in the latter part of the seventh century is the best description of the Sunni/Shiite division and differences between the Sunni and Shiite ideologies I have yet come across. And for good reason: the story of Iraq would strongly feature the divisions between the Sunni and the Shiite.
Much is then made of the Abbasid period from 750 to 1258 since it was centered at Baghdad. With the destruction by the Mongols there is the recognition of the devastation of Mesopotamian irrigation and thus its population which would only really see reverses in the last century. The story again shifted away from Mesopotamia proper, and this time to the northwest, as the Ottomans ruled over the land from 1520 until 1918.
The author then dived in with rich detail regarding the elevation of Faisal I as King of Iraq and the development of the Kingdom of Iraq from the British Mandate. The work ends with a discussion of the period of independence from 1932 until the coup of 1958, with the aftereffects of the coup, and especially Saddam Hussein and all which came after him, reserved for the afterword.
Thus the history of Iraq over a 5,000 year period is covered, but rather unevenly. This is mostly a “big man” historical work: you learn much more about the major characters and players and far less about what life was like for the average person in Iraq at any point in its history. Nevertheless, this is a great work for anyone interested in the history of Mesopotamia and Iraq, especially if you would like to better understand why and how Iraq is as it is today.
May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirits.
Ethan