Preparing for Sunday: December 3, 2017

Preparing for Sunday: December 3, 2017

The King of History

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
– Mark Twain

Sermon Text: Daniel 11:2-45

Second Scripture Reading: Mark 3:7-12

A Prayer for Today: “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility; that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” (The First Sunday of Advent– BCP 1662)

Reflect: “The visions of Daniel 2, 7, 8, and 10-12 are to be understood as complementary presentations of the same realities. They pattern the activities of the wicked powers that have exercised beastly dominion ever since God’s vicegerent [Adam] surrendered that dominion through rebellious sin against the Sovereign. These patterns are consistent – Nebuchadnezzar plunders the temple, Belshazzar uses its implements for debauched dissipation, Antiochus Epiphanes sets up the abomination of desolation, and the little horn from the fourth kingdom, who will be the final realization of this antichrist pattern, will also seek to cut off the true worship of God, replacing that with the worship of himself and the celebration of his kingdom.”
– James M. Hamilton, Jr., With the Clouds of Heaven: the book of Daniel in biblical theology