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kjv@Romans:6 @ @ RandyP comments: Baptized into His death. How many of us realize that? That we may be free of sin... Let not sin therefore reign. There was a time when we had no choice, we were servants of the flesh. Being crucified with Christ now there is a second choice; and it does not appear that it is automatic that we will make the right choice in this new freedom. There are only two choices presented however. The other choice is to be servants of righteousness. We may think that that there is a third choice to do whatever we determine ourselves but that is the same as serving the flesh. This is the test of our faith, whether is strong enough to serve righteousness single mindedly and whether it is real enough to know that it is not automatic.

kjv@Isaiah:13 @ @ RandyP comments: The Lord intends to use Babylon to accomplish His will on the one hand but, will punish them for their evil on the other. All of their strength and glory will come to nothing. He does not give up on Israel but, drives them hard to purge them. That He must drive them this hard says so much about the sin nature we are under; it is no little thing.

kjv@Isaiah:14 @ @ RandyP comments: Removed from the context of the passage the section on Lucifer can be looked at as a description of the Devil; which may or may not be the author's intent. In context, we might think of it as a description of the king of Babylon who had similarities to the Devil and may have been heavily under his influence. The remainder of the prophecy in context namely the desolation of the city of Babylon has for a long time been fulfilled; the city ruin only recently haven been located by aerial satellite in Iraq. Plans are being made by some to rebuild it. It is mentioned again in latter day prophecy.

kjv@Isaiah:17 @ @ RandyP comments: The judgement continues throughout the region; Israel, Moab, and now Syria and beyond. The impact was devastating to all. History confirms that the Babylonian Empire was brutal and massive. It was not by accident nor their own doing however, but God's used their violent possessive treacherous nature to achieve His righteous purposes. Everyone had to take notice and the prophecies of Isaiah had to have been known/searched by many I would think.

kjv@Isaiah:48-49 @ @ RandyP comments: Babylon did not gain it's strength by it's own greatness or doings. Their surge was as unpredicted and irrational as any other peaceable nation of that time. The fact that the Lord made it happen testifies to His power, not theirs. They were the 'Grand Lady' of the region. He made them into a war like empire perhaps like no other in history not for their own glory (He would quickly take that away) but to reproof Judah and alert the known world His displeasure with sin/the inability of man fulfilling the Law/the coming of His Messiah/His unmovable commitment His covenant to Jacob.

kjv@Jeremiah:1:16 @ @ RandyP comments: Idolatry and worshiping works of ones own hands seem to go together. Now days, it can be said that we no longer have other gods by name, that we don't see idolatry like this anymore. Rather, where there is the worship of the work of ones own hands there is likely idolatry. Logic today has been twisted, that we all could worship the same God just in different ways. We know however how Jehovah looks upon this twisted belief, it being another god just as vile as Baal or Malack. This is part of what makes Jehovah so despised amongst these so called worshipers. These are not the worshipers of Jehovah. How can they be the worshipers of the one true God?

kjv@Jeremiah:7 @ @ RandyP comments: If one could imagine taking the temple called by Yahweh's name with all of it's history and using it to worship Baal, sending prophets and no one listening; how angered the Lord must be. When a religion becomes a place and not a person, worship a happening and not a lifestyle, judgment for everything except what is to be judged, this is what you have. Where are the priests? Where are the great orators of truth? Where is the resistance or reactionaries? Does a religion that sacrifices it's live children really have that much to offer other than in your face God rebellion?

kjv@Jeremiah:19 @ @ RandyP comments: The sight of Jeremiah breaking the ancient potters vessel at the east gate should burn in the hearts of Judah even to this day. The words he then proclaimed echoed true. Unfortunately, they still did not listen, whatever they had thought to gain from worshiping Baal was more convincing than loosing it all, being captive, and becoming so desperate as to eat their own children. Was it really?

kjv@Jeremiah:25 @ @ RandyP comments: Many would place the first world war in the early nineteenth century A.D., a major reshuffling of the power structures of the world. What is described here is perhaps the first world shift in the fifth B.C.. What had begun in a smaller scale in the 6th included Israel but, not Judah nor Eygypt etc... No nation now was allowed by the Lord not to drink from this cup. It was not a war of powerful alliances but of fracturing splits and singular domination. We see here God's greater vision, we have been focused too narrowly on Israel/Judah (false prophets, kings,etc..) and not on the entirety of mankind. The cup is prepared and filled in Jerusalem, but, is shared on all the nations. Babylon is used to begin the drunken slug-fest but, it too fractures soon after and is forced to drink as well by the much inferior Medes. The void is later filled by the Persians and then the Greeks.

kjv@Jeremiah:36 @ @ RandyP comments: One might ask "why does the Word of God need to be written"? "Can't He just speak it into our hearts"? Jehoiakim knew the things written in Baruch's scroll. It testified against him recording a long history of the king's rebellion and transgression. The king's advisers knew well how he would react for they had the scribe and prophet to hide away. The Lord undoubtedly knew as well, just as He knows today. The heart hears what the heart wants to hear, it reasons as would serve it's own desires the best. Nothing is beyond the scope of the deceitful heart. The written word is as much to testify against the fleshly heart as it is to convince it. Today we have the testimony of several thousands of years and several other Jeremiahs in written form. Is the heart then any different today?

kjv@Jeremiah:51 @ @ RandyP comments: The righteousness of Judah had nothing to do with their own righteousness but, of the Lord's choice, His covenant with them. His righteousness made their righteousness and this form of righteousness is much much different. In the same fashion, Judah's escape from their captivity to Babylon was not in their own hands, their Lord was going to use the Medes to break their bonds. It cannot then be said that it was the hand of Judah, nor even the hands of the Medes (not with the impossible impenetrable odds that the Medes were up against); only by the hand of God. The Lord has used Judah in this same fashion to break many a nation since and continues to use them today; a nation the rarely was a nation with an army the rarely was an army.

kjv@Lamentations:4 @ @ RandyP comments: From this distance we may loose the scope of context a contemporary of Jeremiah may have sensed. One thing we now we might miss is just how impossible this all may have seemed. All of the eyes of the other nations looking on this would have known how unbreachable the defenses of Jerusalem would have been and yet they were utterly destroyed; and if Jerusalem then surely theirs. It was known to them as well that Jerusalem was the Lord's and that the Lord had not let iniquity go unpunished even/especially amongst His own. Predicted now is the fall of great Babylon, an even greater impossibility. Surely there would be the sense that if this is to happen that all of this can only be of the Lord.

kjv@Ezekiel:17 @ @ RandyP comments: When the Lord says that the other trees of the field should know, we then should fully know that the Lord expects that by this action against the nation of Israel that the other nations involved will know what is occurring by His hand. They would know of the covenant between the king of Judah and Babylon that God was for, the breaking of the covenant by the making of a covenant with Egypt which God was firmly against, and the confirmation of God's wrath by the resultant slaughter of the kings and princes of the house of Judah captive in Babylon. When the Lord speaks/acts it is not for Judah's ears/eyes alone.

kjv@Ezekiel:32 @ @ RandyP comments: What we are seeing here is an end of a world age. All of these nations are either no more or radically changed into a mere shadows of their former selfs. The world that follows is of much larger more empirical momentums and shifts. It is the beginning of the very ages revealed as a statue in a dream to the king of Babylon interpreted by Daniel, a time of major world players.

kjv@Ezekiel:38:2 @ @ RandyP comments: We see some of these names appear again in Revelations. Here they often interpreted to be a confederacy of mid Asian Baltic and Caspian tribes/states Rosh (Russia) and Meshech (Moscow) Gog and Magog (northern). I do not know of a particular king in Ezekiel's time that this would be addressed to, many believe this to be addressed to a pre-tribulation president. It is not completely agreed upon however.

kjv@Hosea:2:16 @ @ RandyP comments: The symbolism of husband and wife has been used to depict our spiritual nature by several authors in many places in the bible. Here, if I read this right is an interesting insight of a wife that sees her God as Baali or master when she should see him as Ishi husband. His love then is the key difference. A master can master with or without love, impose his rule over her. A husband loves and gives himself for her, he builds her up and protects her. Her perception and response is much different given the two.

kjv@Hosea:11 @ @ RandyP comments: Hosea has spoken almost exclusively about judgments on Israel as a whole and namely the component areas of Ephraim/Samaria with little mention of Judah which for now remains mostly faithful. He is a prophet for this region. Comprised of 10 of the tribes, Ephraim itself being 3, their first and foremost transgression is that their worship of Jehovah was moved to two unsanctioned high towers in their own land so that they wouldn't have to cross into Judah to get to Jerusalem. Worship of Jehovah quickly morphed into worship of Baalim. Their jealousy toward the seat of David (corrupt as many descendant kings were) and resultant hatred was the beginning of the end for themselves.

kjv@Amos:4 @ @ RandyP comments: All of this and yet 'ye have not returned to me'. Sure there is the attempt at worship, the attempt at sacrifice, but, this religion is hollow and puffed and idolatrous. Bethel was one of the two temples of the golden calf. Gilgal (there were a couple) was either a religious landmark of the 12 stones by the Jordan or a school of prophets. They are called kine of Bashan (cows from east of the Jordan) and the calf that they worship at supposedly symbolic of Jehovah as a replacement for having to go into Jerusalem. Nothing God has done to this point has worked. They are told to prepare to meet their God.

kjv@Haggai:2 @ @ RandyP comments: Every generation seems to have it's spiritual project; much larger than any one person. They must learn to rely on the Lord and clarify the will and resolve towards spiritual matters. It is never a side project, something to work on when other successes have left you the time. Things are constantly needing to be rebuilt or repaired or restored or re-established. Battles are to be fought and won and obstacles spiritually overcome. Often specific men are called upon to lead such efforts, but surely it is a group process. God is willing to shake the heavens to make such projects work.

kjv@Zechariah:2:7 @ @ RandyP comments: kjv@STRING:daughter+of+Babylon kjv@STRING:daughter+of+Zion some interesting contrasts and detail.

kjv@Revelation:17:18 @ @ RandyP comments: This is very revealing, a power/principality that rules over the kings of earth. It is put into their hearts, it is God's will (just as He has given them over kjv@Romans:1 ) to follow. They will follow wholly to make war against the Lamb. She is identified as a city with seven hills (often thought of as Rome). The seventh and eight king of which are the beast. She is presented in continuous present tense as old as Babylon and young as the martyrs of the Lamb.

kjv@Zechariah:5 @ @ RandyP comments: A two sided curse flies over the entire earth, one side curses all theft, the other curses all swearing. Theft and swearing comes in big and small ways, ways each of us try to justify and reduce, but, assuredly spring from the same heart. Think of it for now though as one whole. The collective heart can be measured out like a ephad of wheat, often Jesus described the Kingdom as wheat. Yet in the middle a woman is found sitting in the wheat adding to the weight thereof as a weight heavy as lead. This complete measure of wickedness is transported to be housed in Babylon. A woman of similar geographic description is described in Revelation as 'MYSTERY, THE GREAT HARLOT OF BABYLON' who reigns over the kings of earth. Could she be tied to the theft and swearing as well?

kjv@Revelation:18 @ @ RandyP comments: It might be easy to think of this Babylon as a terrible foe or enemy and nothing more. Why would God allow such a thing? Well, think of it then as a magnet to which all wickedness is eventually drawn. As all nations have been deceived, to see all it's power pinpointed to one point, to see that point become the hold of every devil and foul spirit and unclean bird, to see all this drawn together and put down in one hour would be indeed be shocking to the deceived but now enlightened merchants and kings of these nations. So, if one asks what purpose, what purpose does this all serve, one can reply every good and righteous purpose of God. The nations are freed from it's wicked pull.

kjv@Revelation:18 @ @ RandyP comments: It is interesting to see the draw of this Babylon over men tied to trade and commerce. Many are made rich in the supply chain of her delicacies. The power that she has over them in great part is the power of them trying to make a living under her economic systems. That and their sheer reprobacy toward God. Heaven, the apostles, the prophets should well rejoice for her destruction for they are avenged on her sudden fall.

kjv@Zechariah:11 @ @ RandyP comments: Idle shepherds, shepherds that hear the howling near by, shepherds whose flocks are now possessed by the wolves and they not hold themselves responsible, shepherds who have gain and safety yet pity not the state of their flock, shepherds that leave their flock; is it any wonder that the Lord does not cut them off? Using two staffs Beauty and Bands He cuts them off so that the poor of the flock would know it was from the Lord.

kjv@Genesis:11:2 @ @ RandyP comments: They, the race at that time (either majority or all) journeyed in an attempt to remain one people to a place in the valley of Babylon where they could make one large city. It does not seem to be opposed at first by God until He saw what they were trying to build in it's midst.

kjv@Matthew:14:1-12 @ @ RandyP comments: This passage almost reads backwards. At some point earlier the disciples of the Baptist told Jesus and His disciples the outcome of John's imprisonment - beheading. The crew is aware of the circumstances therein. What is happening now that Herod Antipas is associating Jesus with as a haunting of John. We do not know how this becomes known (perhaps one of Herod's servants) but, it does.

kjv@Psalms:60 @ Psalms:60 @ RandyP comments: By the time of son Solomon's reign, God had used David as an instrument of bringing Israel from the pits of "hard things" to a nation with all enemies subjected to it. It was a time like never before and never again for Israel. David from the start believed in God's promise and God's ability. These neighboring nations were to be overcome by God's hand if only there be a leader such as David faithful and fully expectant. It is a hard lesson to learn when we go about electing our own way and our own man, going about by our own resource as they had done in the reign of Saul. Israel was taught in hardship that it really didn't have it's own resource and had little ability to stand against such hardened external/internal foes. It is also taught by prosperous times that God can bring about a great many essentials outside of their normal resource to surround faithful leaders such as David. Battles begun being won for the cherished nation that by their own strength would have undoubtedly been lost (or not even pursued) largely by the faith and petition of a God fearing/seeking man. God surely teaches by the hard times and by the prosperous times; the message either way is much the same. This lesson unfortunitely would have to be relearned every few short generations.