THE BOOK OF HABAKKUK

Lesson 8, Chapter 3 Continued

We closed our last session of Habakkuk at chapter 3 verse 4. One of the most compelling and important take-aways from Habakkuk… and especially this psalm or prayer of chapter 3… is that the great and small things God did in the past not only proclaim what the future holds, but whatever happens in the future will be patterned very closely to the past because that is God’s inherent nature.

Early Christian writers and leaders, or at least the greatly gentile-ized and Hellenized ones like Augustine, could not bring themselves to look at much of anything in the Bible prior to the coming of Yeshua for what the present or future portends. These writers and leaders (some of them classified as Early Church Fathers) went so far as to heavily imply or outright declare that God’s nature and character did change after the resurrection of Christ, to more resemble Our Savior’s nature and character that we read about in the Gospel accounts, when He came as the Sacrificial Lamb to save people from their sins.

The result was to “spiritualize” these prophecies (such as Habakkuk’s) into a picture of Yeshua’s first or second advent. Later, Calvin looked upon those prophecies as pertinent only to a specified period of time from the days of Israel’s time in Egypt, until Moses died and then Joshua took over from him. This was a precursor, and no doubt the premise, for Darby’s later and now famous (or infamous in my view) invention of the concept and doctrine of Dispensations that divided eras of Bible history into progressing and changing administrations of justice. Much of the Church adopted this view and has double-downed on it ever since.

As with so many new Church doctrines arose, like those of Augustine’s, Calvin’s, and Darby’s, there were some elements of truth to them; but the biblical passages they spoke of were made so spiritualized and obscured, and these men so intent on removing any hint Old Testament and/or Jewish influence, that the bulk of those doctrines quickly went off the rails into great fits of imagination and, in some cases, clear intellectual dishonesty. Thus, they viewed biblical history as with secular history as a straight line from the past to the indefinite future, which contains neither cycles nor patterns. Every act of God, every event, is unique and has no dependence on the past. Therefore, except in certain cases that can be used to uphold their doctrines, we are told not to look to the past (and for them, that means before Yeshua’s death and resurrection) to understand our present or future.

Yet, as I stated, clearly the Prophets (and here in Habakkuk) state forcefully that the past portends the future; in fact, the past has everything to do with the future. This is why the Church declares the Torah and the Prophets dead and gone. What the Prophets said has to be destroyed or encapsulated within an era that is now past and thus irrelevant, or Church doctrine will be greatly harmed. Both doctrines cannot exist simultaneously.

In Habakkuk 3:4, we read that in God’s theophany, rays (or horns) proceeded from Yehoveh’s hands. What a strange illustration that is. However, it is only strange if we don’t look to the Torah. In Exodus we read that when Moses came down from atop Mt. Sinai, after meeting face to face with God and receiving the 10 Commandments (and much, much more), his face had light rays emitting from it. Literally the Exodus passage speaks of rays or horns, just as does the Habakkuk passage. The future repeats the past.

Habakkuk is one of, if not perhaps the chief of, the Prophets that I personally enjoy reading (the same way so many Believers just love Peter in the New Testament). I enjoy him because he wears his heart and emotions on his sleeve, so to speak. He as a person, and his prophetic oracle, are not 2 separate things. He has been living out some of it, and will live out more, and is moved to great emotion for his peoples’ sake. Therefore, the words he chooses for his unique style of Hebrew poetry exude his deepest feelings. This is no sterile, step-by-step, instruction book about the nations and Israel and the judgment that both face. I have stated before that I am appalled at how the Evangelical branches of the Constantinian Church only look forward to the End Times with joy and happiness; but this is because they don’t include themselves as suffering any part of it. The suffering aspect of the End Times is only meant for others. This aloof attitude is going to play very badly as the devastating effects of it begin, and Yeshua constantly reminds us His followers will suffer it, and that only a remnant will ever endure what is going to happen.

CJB Matthew 24:4-13 4 Yeshua replied: "Watch out! Don't let anyone fool you! 5 For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Messiah!' and they will lead many astray. 6 You will hear the noise of wars nearby and the news of wars far off; see to it that you don't become frightened. Such things must happen, but the end is yet to come. 7 For peoples will fight each other, nations will fight each other, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various parts of the world; 8 all this is but the beginning of the 'birth-pains.' 9 At that time you will be arrested and handed over to be punished and put to death, and all peoples will hate you because of me. 10 At that time many will be trapped into betraying and hating each other, 11 many false prophets will appear and fool many people; 12 and many people's love will grow cold because of increased distance from Torah. 13 But whoever holds out till the end will be delivered.

Why will so many of His followers NOT endure? As Yeshua said: “because of increased distance from the Torah”. This is the same Torah that the Church says Yeshua abolished and thus is to be abandoned by all Christians. Even more, that any Believer who determines to stay close to the Torah is a sinner and legalist and has no place in the Church or in Heaven.

Let’s pick back up with Habakkuk 3:4.

READ HABAKKUK CHAPTER 3:4 – end

We find in this verse the imagery of a sunrise, and yet we should never understand this as referring to a Sun God as is the more contemporary Bible commentators approach. They take way too many liberties and try to make the Israelites at this point in their history still very much wedded to their days in Egypt. We could use a few different English grammar terms to explain why the verse is written as it is, beginning with the term “parable”. In verse 4 we read: “His brightness is like the sun”. In several of Yeshua’s parables we read the same type of protocol. That is, He will say, “the kingdom of God is like”, and then follow it with a certain physical, earthly imagery to help us understand it. The kingdom of God is NOT that thing He is comparing it to, nor is it a parallel, nor does it operate exactly the same way. There are, for the purposes of explanation, certainly similarities that can (narrowly) be drawn on to help us get the point. So, here in Habakkuk, God is NOT the sunrise, nor is He the Sun God. Rather, He has certain narrow similarities to a sunrise when He comes in a theophany. It’s only that sunrise terms are used for illustration because everyone was familiar with them. Thus, we find reference to rays or horns. In more modern terms, these are “beams” of light. Ray and horn essentially translate the same Hebrew word (qeren) that is used to mean something a bit different depending on its context.

Because there is a dual meaning to the kind of light and brightness this passage speaks about, the Hebrew word is owr. And owr includes the idea of illumination in the sense of the passing along of divine wisdom but can also legitimately be used to mean light beams. Since this is speaking of an attribute of God, we know from the past that when God comes to earth in a theophany, He comes with quite visible bright light, but also with a powerful aura of wisdom, power, and truth that can cause great fear and trembling in those who witness it. This is why we read the following words to conclude this verse: “and that is where His power is concealed”. I think the best translation of this part of verse 4 comes from the RSV. It says, “and there he veiled his power”. This not only contains the idea that His power is so heavily felt in His mere presence, but it also brings to memory Moses’s face that shone so bright that he had to wear a veil over it. The theophany itself is so bright in actual light that it can blind a person’s eyes like looking directly into the sun; and also, it can buckle a person’s knees at the sheer weight of God’s glory.

CJB Habakkuk 3:5 Before him goes pestilence, and close behind, the plague.

This verse continues to bring back memories of Egypt in how, in the past, God manifested His power over the Egyptians. I want to keep our focus on the Torah as the central referent that Habakkuk continues to bring forward. Why? Because there is little more powerful in the Hebrews’ memory of their history than what happened in Egypt, and then what happened in their exodus and wilderness journey.

Just as we saw with Habakkuk 3:3 in how it related directly to Deuteronomy 33:2, so this same understanding is at work with Habakkuk 3:5. In both cases, we find a powerful warrior God (Yehoveh) coming to earth along with some of His Heavenly beings, that essentially begins a Holy War.

CJB Deuteronomy 33:2 "Yehoveh came from Sinai; from Se'ir he dawned on his people, shone forth from Mount Pa'ran; and with him were myriads of holy ones; at his right hand was a fiery law for them.

Similar vocabulary and illustration terms are used, and they both use attributes of the sunrise. Notice in Deuteronomy how “dawned” and “shone” and “fiery” are used. This was not a convenient set of metaphors; using these terms was meant to connect the Torah to what Habakkuk is saying about the future because it illustrates the repeated pattern of the past that God always uses for future actions. Two Hebrew words used here need to be understood in the way Hebrew society in Habakkuk’s era understood them. In Hebrew, we read that before God goes reshep, and behind Him deber. Quite properly these words are translated as pestilence and plague. However: in Habakkuk’s day and for centuries before, these were names used for 2 Canaanite gods that personified the qualities of pestilence and plague. These were 2 of the many gods the Canaanites worshipped. And so here we have Yehoveh holding that same power as a rival to those 2 Canaanite gods. Of course, those gods were non-existent. But the Hebrews believed they existed just as most… pagans believed they did. So, God is demonstrating His power that is over and above the power that these 2 “specialist” gods supposedly held. In the end, verses 4 and 5 work together to display the awesome, unmatchable power and glory of the Creator of the Universe. Just as He did it in the past, God will bring that same power forward into every era, and finally into the End Times.

Let’s jump forward to the New Testament, to the Book of Revelation. Watch as what we have been learning from Habakkuk and the other ancient Prophets simply is repeated by John the Revelator.

CJB Revelation 6:9-17 9 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been put to death for proclaiming the Word of God, that is, for bearing witness. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, "Sovereign Ruler, HaKadosh, the True One, how long will it be before you judge the people living on earth and avenge our blood?" 11 Each of them was given a white robe; and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow-servants should be reached, of their brothers who would be killed, just as they had been. 12 Then I watched as he broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake, the sun turned black as sackcloth worn in mourning, and the full moon became blood-red. 13 The stars fell from heaven to earth just as a fig tree drops its figs when shaken by a strong wind. 14 The sky receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place. 15 Then the earth's kings, the rulers, the generals, the rich and the mighty- indeed, everyone, slave and free- hid himself in caves and among the rocks in the mountains, 16 and said to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us, and hide us from the face of the One sitting on the throne and from the fury of the Lamb! 17 For the Great Day of their fury has come, and who can stand?"

Other than the addition of “the Lamb broke the 5th seal”, every single act of God we read about in Revelation 6, we have read about in the OT Prophets; everyone. Notice that Habakkuk’s opening question of “how long” before God finally acts, is also asked in Revelation 6:10: “how long will it be before you judge the people living on earth and avenge our blood?” Just as with Egypt, so God will visit pestilence and plagues of similar kinds on the inhabitants of earth in the coming Apocalypse. The only things new will be that it will be universal in scope and the final time it happens and thus entry into the Kingdom of God will be completed.

CJB Habakkuk 3:6 When he stands up, the earth shakes; when he looks, the nations tremble, the eternal mountains are smashed to pieces, the ancient hills sink down; the ancient paths are his.

God is moving (having been depicted earlier as marching from the east and south), but now He pauses and brings down great upheavals upon the earth. In simple terms, we are witnessing a process. It’s like seeing a violent storm approaching from the horizon. It is causing its destruction where it is and also as it moves along in the atmosphere, but it is coming from a discernable and announced direction to where we are.

Like that storm that is moving in, God that has been far away is now near. He has taken His stand and will pummel the nations as a warrior God and Judge. When the nations see Him, they will tremble. The God so relatively few believed in, or even believed existed, has now shown Himself, and the people of the nations are scared out of their minds. Whatever power God was said to have, the nations felt they had the ability to counter Him… even to defeat Him. Think of today; we actually have much of the world, and especially world leaders and scientists, believing that they can control the climate and weather on our entire planet. We have other nations that think we can go live on Mars and create a livable atmosphere where none exists, and therefore create … not just control… weather, as an engineering feat. Long ago, Nimrod built a ziggurat, climbed to the top, and challenged God to do anything about it. Such delusions of grandeur have always existed among mankind. Looking to the Torah (which Habakkuk was constantly doing in his prophecy), the Pharoah and his sorcerers believed their black magic could defeat God’s miracles. It was that way then, it is that way now, and it will be even when the coming Apocalypse begins in earnest.

CJB Revelation 9:17-21 17 Here is how the horses looked in the vision: the riders had breastplates that were fire-red, iris-blue and sulfur-yellow; the horses' heads were like lions' heads; and from their mouths issued fire, smoke and sulfur. 18 It was these three plagues that killed a third of mankind- the fire, smoke and sulfur issuing from the horses' mouths. 19 For the power of the horses was in their mouths- and also in their tails, for their tails were like snakes with heads, and with them they could cause injury. 20 The rest of mankind, those who were not killed by these plagues, even then did not turn from what they had made with their own hands- they did not stop worshipping demons and idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. 21 Nor did they turn from their murdering, their involvement with the occult and with drugs, their sexual immorality or their stealing.

While humanity will be shattered when the entire cosmos goes into chaos and convulsions as the Lord appears in theophany, a large portion of earth’s population will still defy Him in stubborn but suicidal disbelief. Others will see that they have been horribly wrong… but it is too late for them. Their fate had already been sealed, which makes what they are witnessing even more terrifying for now they do understand that there is an eternity and what God promised to those who refused to acknowledge and to obey Him is going to happen, without mercy and without hope. Until Yeshua takes full control and completely wipes out such wickedness… which resides only in the minds of human beings… it will go on and on. The foolish mantra of the last 100 years that we are all inherently good and with proper nourishing we can make a good worldwide society for ourselves… perhaps the core tenant of Marxism… will prove what any studied God Worshipper knows: this is pure folly.

Even the non-living products of God’s creation on earth are affected and cannot stand strong enough to survive. Mountains and hills melt and are wrenched apart. The entire earth is in a state of spasm and cannot stop its uncontrollable shaking and trembling. God has not gotten old and weak. He is the same powerful Creator and administrator of the Universe that He brought to life eons and eons ago. And the same Divine Power will destroy what He has made if it suites Him. His goal? A re-creation that will come a thousand years after the earth has been subdued by His Son, Yeshua.

One more thing and we will move on to verse 7. We find in most Bibles the words of this verse saying: “The eternal mountains are smashed to pieces, the ancient hills sink down…” This is a poetic couplet. The eternal (or everlasting) mountains mean the same thing as “the ancient hills”. Although 2 different Hebrew words are used, the first being ‘ad (usually said to mean perpetuity in the sense of eternal), this is an incorrect perception. The idea of a timeless eternity did not exist in the world of the nations nor in the world of the Hebrews. Whether on earth or in Heaven, time played its permanent role. So, “forever” meant “no end to time”. The Judeo-Christian idea of a timeless eternity was centuries away from becoming even a thought to be contemplated and debated. To repeat something I said in an earlier lesson, I am not saying that a timeless eternity isn’t real. I’m saying that such a concept had yet to arise within the minds of humans, including Hebrews.

CJB Habakkuk 3:7 I saw trouble in the tents of Kushan and the tent hangings shaking in the land of Midyan.

This verse is quite troublesome on more than one layer. How important the information that it might be giving to us is hard to say. On the surface it would not seem to be terribly critical if we just (quite literally) threw this entire frustrating verse out (not that I intend to do so or think we should). On the other hand, as prophecy tends to show us, sometimes as a prophesied event plays out in history (or even becomes imminent) words that seemed trivial or at times nonsensical in the past, play a larger role in its fulfillment than it might otherwise appear at a casual reading.

The trouble with verse 7 begins with the first 2 words of the verse: other than for rare Bible versions, those words are invariably simply skipped. They are left untranslated and go unused. Most of the time scholars will say they are nonsensical, and thus it means some later editor added the words… probably a mistake. Yet, literal meaning can be extracted when left intact, although the resulting English can be a bit ambiguous. The 2 Hebrew words are real and are words found in other places in the Tanakh. Those 2 words to begin the verse are tahat aven.

Because Bible scholars tend to think in terms of how much academic agreement there is on any treatment or translation of words in Scripture that the majority of them agree on, then for them such consensus becomes fact. Probably a great deal of the time they are correct; but here, much doubt has to be cast. So, the greater lesson to be taken with what I’m about to share with you is not so much technical but rather it exposes just what Bible translations can suffer at the hands of people who want there to be a certain outcome for one reason or another, and so they shape their translation and interpretation decisions based on that.

Tahat aven means something like “because of iniquity” or “under iniquity”. Therefore, if that is the case, then the dynamic meaning is approximately “on account of iniquity”. Then because of this iniquity the following will happen, and then the rest of the verse is cited. Is it Israel’s iniquity or the nation’s iniquity that is being pointed at? That’s a different question. But here’s the really tough issue that makes it impossible for me to go along with nearly all Bible versions: the beginning words that most translators want to discard, tahat aven (or their Greek equivalent), are found in both the Septuagint and in the Masoretic Text. The Greek Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) was created in the mid-3rd century B.C. and the Masoretic Hebrew Text was created in the 10 or 11th century A.D. That’s just too much ancient evidence to dismiss it. So, I’m going to take this to mean that on account of sins what is next spoken is going to happen. And I think it is more likely than not that it is referring to the sins of the nations rather than to the sins of Israel, due to the context. We’ll go with that interpretation as our understanding but hold it very lightly.

Here’s the next issue. For reasons of no more than opinion, the consensus of influential scholars has added the word aven, or in some cases moved it, in order for it to work with the phrase “the tents of Kushan”. That is, whereas aven can also be taken to mean troubles (although even that is quite suspect), then the meaning of the tents of Kushan suffering troubles or afflictions is arrived at in nearly all Bible versions. Again, that word aven does NOT appear at this point in the verse unless one just arbitrarily moves it from the 2nd word of the verse to much later. If we take the Hebrew as is and in the order, we find it, then we get something like “on account of the nation’s iniquities, the tents of Kushan and the curtains of the land of Midian trembled” (curtains is but another word use to refer to tents). Not only that, but when the Hebrew words are left alone, they are grammatically correct, form a perfect poetic tricolon, and give us a typical poetic couplet of speaking of the tents of Kushan and the tents of Midian.

The final detail I want to speak of is… who or what is Kushan? Kush is a well-known archaic biblical name of a people and place that were regularly enemies of Israel. Midian is also well-known that, off and on, caused Israel much trouble. That said, Kushan is an otherwise unknown form of the word EXCEPT when we read of a man called Kushan-rishathaim, a king of Mesopotamia, found in Judges chapter 3. That could be a reasonable solution. However, it could well be that Kushan was but another form of the word Kush that then distinguishes between Kush the person and Kush the name of a people and/or place. Kush is regularly used in the Bible as an alternative name for Ethiopia. However, it just as often refers to a general region than a specific nation because various segments of the people of Kush indeed settled territory in Mesopotamia, in the southern Arabian Peninsula, as well as in North Africa. I’ll leave it right there because certainty is not to be found. Nothing I’ve said can be held up as proof. My main point for even tackling this is to demonstrate how and why different translators and interpreters will choose as they do; some of it is denominational agenda, some of it is truly difficult passages that are tough to extract meaning from. We won’t be doing this little exercise again even if some other Habakkuk passages in chapter 3 might rightfully warrant it.

Verses 8 – 15 together as a unit reveal Habakkuk’s stance that God’s future actions are indicative of God’s future coming in a theophany. Some Bible scholars think this section may well be an already existing poem or prayer that Habakkuk inserted or slightly modified because it’s style and structure change. That sort of thing is not at all unprecedented in the Bible or in other ancient Hebrew literature. We’ll of course start with verse 8 and I’ll give you 2 different translations from 2 different Bible versions. These verses don’t necessarily conflict with one another, but the way they are each presented can alter what best is to be taken from their meaning.

First, the Complete Jewish Bible.

CJB Habakkuk 3:8 Yehoveh, is it against the rivers, against the rivers that your anger is inflamed? Is your fury directed at the sea? Is that why you ride on your horses, and drive your chariots to victory?

Now, the Young’s Literal Translation.

YLT Habakkuk 3:8 Against rivers hath Jehovah been wroth? Against rivers is Thine anger? Against the sea is Thy wrath? For Thou dost ride on Thy horses — Thy chariots of salvation?

What makes this verse sound so strange, and is complex to translate, is that it revolves around an ancient idiom. Since discovering and even accepting the vast use of expressions and idioms in the Bible (especially in the Old Testament) is only rather recent, translators from the later 20th and on backward in time attempted to translate the Hebrew word for word, and to take each word in its fully literal sense. As an example: imagine if the common American idiom of “every cloud has a silver lining” was found in the Bible. If we sought to translate this according to the fully literal meaning of each word separately, then we would think that clouds and the precious metal silver were the subjects. But, because it is an idiom, the meaning has nothing to do with clouds or silver.

When we look closely at the Hebrew, we find that the words hara leka appeka ve form an idiom. Literally this says: “it was angry for you your wrath against”. Basically, this means “are you angry?” or possibly “you were angry”. So, this is not a question asking Yehoveh IF He was angry at something, but rather what thing or person was His anger being directed at?

For Habakkuk, God is again depicting Himself as the Judge of the earth and the universe. At the same time, this Judge has the ability to be the one who carries out the sentence for the guilty. So, Habakkuk wants to know who or what is the object of God’s wrath that is greatly affecting the entire planet and thus all peoples. In truth, the Prophet isn’t expecting an answer; this is somewhat of a rhetorical question that is there as a poetic device to set the stage for what comes next.

The valid reason that so many Bible scholars believe that verses 8 – 15 are an inserted prayer or poem (by Habakkuk) from a much earlier time is as Walter Kaiser Jr. says best.

Verse 8 is filled with ancient Canaanite phraseology, used for its poetry, metaphors and allusions, without giving tacet approval to the pagan theology contained in the Ugaritic texts.

Here’s the thing: In that Canaanite culture that thrived in 1200 B.C., certain terms were used that were quite suitable for what God and Habakkuk were trying to communicate. In reality, by Habakkuk’s day, those terms had become largely expired. But nonetheless, they were most useful in a poem and expressed a vision and emotion that people could identify with. In those ancient Ugaritic texts, we find Ba’al fighting against “the Judge River”, and the “Prince Sea”. Ba’al himself is even often depicted as the “Rider of the Clouds”. So, Habakkuk used these same or similar terms for reminding Israel of those times of God’s great interventions when He struck the Nile and forced the Red Sea and the Jordan River to open up.

The point is to find more ways to highlight God’s power not just over the human race, but over everything in His creation including mountains, seas, and rivers. What He can do to one… what He did in the past… can be used universally and in any era, at any time of His choosing. So, we are not meant to take any particular river or sea as the ones being depicted in verse 8. This is a general, all-inclusive kind of statement.

I want to point out something else that is, I think, controversial and nothing that I will hang my hat on as certain. But it is something I see and can’t help but see a connection. It is that in God’s future theophany, there is a definite hostility present between God and the non-human or non-living parts of Creation such as mountains and rivers, just as there is a hostility against humans who are in rebellion against Him (which is almost all). Why? Because they are decaying and dying. They, too, have been polluted and corrupted right along with the human descendants of Adam and Eve. All the earth, and I would say all the Universe, was changed when Adam and Eve sinned. Decay and death entered the picture. God is always depicted as an enemy of death. He is the alternative to death. Therefore, in that sense, rivers and mountains and seas are corrupted and dying, and so God’s wrath will be poured out on them as it will on humanity. There is little to deny this, in my opinion, because we constantly see this same scenario in the prophetic parts of the Bible.

There is no doubting that the heavens and earth are going to pass away, to be replaced by a re-creation that will have no capacity to sin, to decay, or to die. This will not happen until after Yeshua reigns physically from His throne in Jerusalem for a period of 1000 years. But it will happen. This was foretold from the days of old.

CJB Psalm 102:25-28 25 I plead, "God, your years last through all generations; so don't take me away when my life is half over! 26 In the beginning, you laid the foundations of the earth; heaven is the work of your hands. 27 They will vanish, but you will remain; like clothing, they will all grow old; yes, you will change them like clothing, and they will pass away. 28 But you remain the same, and your years will never end.

CJB Isaiah 51:6 "Raise your eyes toward the skies, look at the earth below. The skies will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like clothing. Those living on it will die like flies; but my salvation will be forever, and my justice will never end.

Of course, Christians and other Believers are more familiar with these same thoughts brought forward into the Book of Revelation.

CJB Revelation 21:1–5 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had passed away, and the sea was no longer there. 2 Also I saw the holy city, New Yerushalayim, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 I heard a loud voice from the throne say, "See! God's Sh'khinah is with mankind, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and he himself, God-with-them, will be their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will no longer be any death; and there will no longer be any mourning, crying or pain; because the old order has passed away." 5 Then the One sitting on the throne said, "Look! I am making everything new!" Also he said, "Write, 'These words are true and trustworthy!'"

We’ll pause here for today and continue with verse 8 next time.