Reminder: This is probably the last of Paul's writings chronologically. Again, Timothy is in Ephesus as the resident Apostle. Any day now a large number of folks from Jerusalem will come streaming into the area, fleeing a Jewish rebellion in Jerusalem against Rome. But Paul is back in Roman custody, and this time it's a far less privileged situation. Instead of house arrest, Paul is actually in prison. And this time it wasn't an imperial courtesy to the Sanhedrin, but a rising intolerance of Rome itself for Christian religion. If anything, Paul's first passage through the imperial courts marked him as the leading representative of Christian leadership; they didn't forget.

At first glance, it would not appear that the first chapter offers any doctrinal statement. However, Paul reaffirms divine election in a way that most people don't catch. Aside from the formulaic greeting in the first few verses, Paul appeals to his successor Timothy to remain faithful despite the dire news of Paul's situation.

Some ambitious souls in the Christian community there in Ephesus used news of Paul's second arrest as an excuse to discredit him and reassert their own agendas. We could guess that there was still a lot of pressure from Judaizers on one side, and pagans on the other, not to mention the nascent Gnostics. At any rate, there's no doubt the heat is on Timothy, so Paul encourages him to stand strong.

Then, in verse 9 Paul rests his appeal on the sheer trustworthiness of divine election. If God has called us, He will ensure we do not fail His mission. Most western minds approach the whole question of election from the wrong direction. They look for a discussion of individual salvation as the whole matter. While that concept is included, Paul is clearly influenced by the broader Hebrew concept of election, which emphasizes the whole question of human existence.

Paul repeatedly wrote about the Mystery of the Gospel. It's a complex teaching that assumes we exist to prove God is just in His discipline of Satan and various powers in the Spirit Realm. Humanity is not at all the center of Creation; we are at best accessories after the fact. The whole point of divine election is not us, but His reputation among a host of beings far above our level, and not just angels.

This is good news. He needs us to make His case, so He's determined not to let us fail. All we really need to do is hang on for the ride and we'll experience joy unspeakable in this life. His glory is always in our best interest. For Timothy, all it requires is the resolve to cling to what Paul has taught him and see the hand of God smash those who, knowingly or not, serve His enemy's purposes.

Of course, it also means eternal glory with Him, but there's an awful lot of glory going on in the here and now. On the one hand, Paul mentions two fellows embarrassing the Lord, but then praises Onesiphorus, who crawled through the Roman prison system to find Paul and do what he could for him. Should we imagine that Onesiphorus found it drudgery? No, this man was full of joy unspeakable, too.

Election is our confidence to fight and not surrender to the enemies of God.

Here are some more of my little ones that come to visit....

Here's Mom, distracted, while her little fawns stood off to the side:          

These are the first ones I've seen this year                                  

Does who are a year old will only have a single fawn; older ladies will have twins most likely, though triplets are not unheard of.

When I change out my hummingbird feeders, I let the ones I remove and rinse out to dry on my deck railing.
This little fellow made himself a home inside.  I felt bad when I had to encourage him to move out....             

This little one (of dozens who live in my yard and woods) LOVES to lay out on my deck as you can see.         

Last month, a goldfinch pair came to dine at one of my feeders.  Once the male regains his summer colors, he is stunning!

                                        

This feels so trite compared to other medical issues posted here, but I just pulled a muscle in my back. It happened during the most strenuous activity I can think of: opening a tuperware lid of leftovers.

It's in an area (kidney, left side) that I've never hurt before, so I am hoping it was a freak accident. Maybe an age thing? I haven't been doing anything different in the gym to invite a strain. If anything I've been more cautious during warm up sets, etc.

I usually go into the office on Fridays but I may wfh tomorrow because of this...another blessing I can count.

Hi!  In the last few weeks up through yesterday, I have been visited by quite a few critters and thought I would share with you!

Baby Bluebirds playing in my sprinkler      

Bumblebee flitting in a "Fan flower"      

Adult hawk looking pretty stern     

Hawk teenager getting some shade       

Box turtle heading for the pond:     

I got an error that I cannot add anymore, so I will later in another post.....

I know I have been mostly a lurker and not participating much since I signed up here. But, prayer for my mother would be appreciated. She is 85 and was very active, gardening, still driving and reasonably self sufficient. She fell twice in the last month, broken wrist and now has a fractured pelvis. The doctors are being optimistic but the reality is the reality. I'm reasonably confident she is a believer. The next week or two will be telling. It has really taken a toll on her mentally and emotionally also.

Having spent the last 8 years getting red pilled and doom scrolling every day I myself am having a hard time, everything really is a mess and there is little joy. Knowing and seeing is good, and I'm thankful for that, but wow ... "the whole world lieth in wickedness" was an understatement. Prayer that our Lord would give me a boost to equip me for the task would be appreciated as well.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Interesting.

Most of the article text is below. It's the Daily Mail, a notoriously bad site if you dislike ads or being tracked.

Proof of Bible story about angels killing 185,000 soldiers in a night is uncovered after 2,700 years

Quote:Researchers have discovered an ancient military base that may corroborate a Bible story about God's angels fending off an attack on Jerusalem.

The tale says that around 2,700 years ago, the Lord sent a messenger angel to fight an army of Assyrian soldiers who came to conquer the Holy Land.

The Angel of the Lord is then said to have descended on the invading military and killed 185,000 soldiers in a single night.

There has not been any archaeological evidence that the supernatural event - or even the battle - actually happened.

Now, using modern mapping techniques, archaeologist Stephen Compton claims he has found more evidence the epic battle took place.
The Assyrian Empire operated from 1365 to 609 BC, hundreds of years before the time of Christ.

The invasion of Jerusalem was driven by the empire's king Sennacherib who wanted to assert his political and economic dominance over all routes across the Syrian Desert that led to the Mediterranean Sea.

Researchers had previously discovered a scene carved into the stone walls of the King Sennacherib's palace, which celebrated his conquest of Lachish, a city 42 miles south of Jerusalem.

The carvings showed how the military base was laid out, allowing Compton to compare it to photos taken of the area in the 1910s.

He noticed an area that was the same size and shape as the drawings on the palace wall which led to ruins containing the remains of a perimeter wall and pottery shards.

After conducting an archaeological survey of the site, Compton determined that it was abandoned after Sennacherib's invasion and that humans hadn't inhabited the area for at least 2,600 years.

The finding has paved the way for researchers to locate other similar military sites in the area and they hope it will lead to uncovering ancient cities that were destroyed by the Assyrian Empire.

In 2021, Compton wrote in a post on X, then-Twitter, that he had discovered the location of Sennacherib's military camps.

'Each was a round site a little over a mile north of the respective old city walls and each bore the same Arabic name on at least one early map, 'Mudawwara,' he wrote.

The location also signified that it was the site where Sennacherib's forces planned their attack because it was called Khirbet al Mudawwara in Arabic, meaning 'The ruins of the camp of the invading ruler.'

Before Compton discovered the Assyrian site, researchers had only encountered one other ancient military campsite in the area.

The secondary site was occupied during the Roman siege of Jerusalem and its layout gave researchers a way to compare the layout of its military camp to the Assyrians.

'Roman military camps were always rectangular, whereas this was oval, the characteristic shape of Assyrian camps,' Compton wrote in a press release.

The methods Compton used to find Sennacherib's camp site has led to the discovery of other Assyrian military camps.

'In some cases, it has also been possible to use the newly discovered camps to locate the sites of ancient cities that were known to have been besieged by the Assyrians but whose locations were unknown or uncertain,' Compton wrote.
Three Bible stories in the book of 'Isaiah, 37:36-38' '2 Kings, 19:35' and '2 Chronicles, 32:21' detailed how the Assyrian soldiers were slain the night before they attacked Jerusalem.

In all stories, the Israelite deity Yahweh, sent an angel who passed through the camp while the soldiers slept, slaying them all for threatening his followers.

Bible passage 19:35 from the book '2 Kings' says: 'And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.'

The angel of the Lord - written in Hebrew as malak Yahweh - translates to messenger of the Lord and was sent to protect Jerusalem after its ruler, Hezekiah, prayed to God for safety.

In another retelling of the attack, a plague took the Assyrian soldier's lives, while a Greek version claimed the soldiers were left defenseless in battle after mice invaded their camp during the night and chewed through all their bowstrings and shield straps.

After the Assyrian army was vanquished, the hill sat undisturbed until the 1930s, when the British turned a portion into an ammunition storage depot for its defensibility and renamed Ammunition Hill.

In 1948, the Jordanian army captured the hill from the British and built defensive trenches around the perimeter.

The site changed hands again two decades later when when Israeli paratroopers fought to take possession of the hill during what later became known as the Six-Day War.

Today, the site is a memorial and museum dedicated to that bloody battle that killed 15,000 Arabs and roughly 1,000 Israelis.

Again, Paul wrote this letter to Timothy while the latter was serving in Ephesus, helping to establish the presence of Christian faith as no threat, contrary to false claims of Demetrius the silversmith some years before. The city would soon become the world center of Christian religion for that generation.

During Roman times, one quarter of the population in Ephesus was enslaved. It's hard to imagine the gospel message would not call to at least some of them. Christian religion was not a social reform movement. It was wholly otherworldly. This life is just a passing phase on our way to Eternity. Hidden in these few verses, Paul's teaching seeks to set men free from slavery to this world. If this world is all you have, then there is no hope, but if we eventually escape this world, then any condition is tolerable.

The point is to call attention to Eternity by how we are unconcerned about the sorrows of this life. It's the orientation of showing grace and mercy regardless of what binds our flesh. Thus, we still have all those fleshly obligations, and the boundaries of the Covenant do not demand that we provoke strife over being legally a slave. Whatever might be a cause for Christians to rise up against others, slavery isn't it. In our modern western lives, being in prison is just about the same thing, and often worse. Don't be a cause of grief but demonstrate the power of grace. No one can enslave your heart.

This and everything else Paul commanded in this letter is right out of the teaching of Jesus Christ. Faith in Christ does not promote human discord. While there's plenty of hostility to faith in this world, we don't go looking for trouble. People who are slaves to their fleshly natures will give themselves away by false teachings. They will delight in provoking human tensions, upholding a false piety of the flesh. Their efforts will be self-serving, seeking some personal advantage.

The only advantage we seek is piety in the heart. The real advantage is in humble and grateful contentment with what God provides. We will take nothing with us when we leave this world, so let it go before it traps your affections. The only material things we really need while we are here are food and clothing. Everything else is a matter of what God provides for the mission. Paul never forgot that the real complaint in the silversmith's riot was not their devotion to Diana; that was just a cynical cover for greed in selling highly inflated trinkets. Even the city government realized as much.

Instead, Christian teaching set people free to place a high value on piety and eternal moral goodness, not the junk of this world. Christ before Pilate affirmed that His Kingdom was not of this world. Jesus had no interest in overturning Roman authority; human government was not even on His radar. The Father is withholding political changes until the end of all human mortal existence. His focus and ours is on Eternity.

For this reason, Paul is rather stern in dealing with those who bring to Christ a substantial worldly wealth. It belongs to Christ now. Material wealth is just a means to blessing the covenant family of faith. The least the rich can do is drop the fleshly pretense of superiority. But instead of the church confiscating such wealth, it is the burden of these wealthy believers to do the work of using it for divine glory.

The last thing Paul says to his adopted son is to avoid the rising new religion called Gnosticism, using the key term gnosis and calling it absurd and profane chatter. It had become a Siren call to some in the church already.

My daughter-in-law's mother has been a lifelong smoker, so nobody is surprised that she's having health troubles at roughly the same age as me. Specifically, she had breast cancer and was treated for that, but it managed to metastasize into her smoker's lungs. No surprise there. She made her choices. There's no prognosis just yet on how long she has. My request is that everyone in their extended family can get their minds ready to face this. So far as I know, the woman is not a believer.

    Tiny lavender flowers near one of my natural prayer chapels.
    Close to that was a spray of tiny daisies.
    A couple of miles from there I found these taller lavender colored blossoms.
    These are some purple staff looking flowers.
    Just for fun, this is the trailing edge of a cloud front moving north.