Sunday October 9, 2016 “God Delivers Salvation in Darkness” Mark 15: 16-40

(Mark 15: 16-40)

• A Battalion Batters and Mocks Christ – The Self-Assured Savior Who Is Silent Before Mockers Like A Sheep Before Shearers
• The array of people who deride and mock Christ include priests, politicians, soldiers, and the crowd (organized and spurred on by the priests).
• Is 53: 7 prophesies Jesus would be silent like a lamb
• Simon The Cyrenian Bears Christ’s Cross Mark 15:21, Acts 11:20 & Romans 16:13
• Simon’s The Cyrenian’s Devote Family of Faith Rom 16: 13
• God Delivers Us from Sin During The Crucifixion’s 3 Hours of Darkness
• God Covered Sin & Shame So We Can Be Restored & Walk In His Light
• The Women Who Witness from Afar – Actually Were Among The First To Draw Near
• These women should be an example of faithfulness for all to follow.

Jesus is Manhandled & Mocked … 16And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters),^b and they called together the whole battalion. 

• 17-19 The soldiers mocked Christ’s Inherited Title as “King of the Jews”, which Pilate inscribed as His charge or crime. Mocked = empaizo, “to play like a child”, “to sport, jest  Jesus used prophetically of His impending sufferings, Matt. 20:19; Mark 10:34; Luke 18:32;
• The 4 Activities of Mocking, include they 1) clothed him in a purple cloak; 2) crowned Him with thorns, and struck his head with a reed – to drive them into His skull; 3) saluted and “Hailed, King of the Jews!”; 4) spit on him and knelt before Him in mock homage to him.

• 20 The most powerful people of the community mocked Jesus including 1) the men who had taken Him from Gethsemane, Luke 22:63; 2) Herod and his soldiers, Luke 23:11; 3) the soldiers of the governor, Matt. 27:29,31; Mark 15:20; Luke 23:36; 4) the chief priests, Matt. 27:41; Mark 15:31.they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him.

A Battalion Batters Manhandles & Mocks christ Mk 15:16-20

The Self-Assured Savior Is Silent Before Mockers Like A Sheep Before Shearers

When we are mocked we feel badly, scorned, worthless, Messes with our self-image.  Mocking is designed to make us feel like we are foolish, stupid and unworthy.  Suppose the most powerful people in your community are doing this to you?

As a HS English teacher, there were a certain combination of 6 women present, they’d all stop talking when I would enter the English Dept, office where all our desks were located.  Students would tell me that 2 of those teachers in particular would make negative comments about me during their classes.

I so disliked the persecution as a young teacher that I promised myself that when I got to my next job, I was not even going to let anyone know I was a Christian.    

Is 53:7  prophesies Jesus would be like a lamb silent I”He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.”

• We must be secure in Christ (confident of our position in salvation, Eph. 2:6) to withstand, endure to be unperturbed by mocking, slander and lies.
• 2:6 says we enjoy an eternal position as God has raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

Simon The Cyrenian bears Christ’s cross Mark 15:21, Acts 11:20 & Romans 16:13

Mk 15: 21 21And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, (an area of Trioi in Lybia on the north African coast) who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.

This may have been done for which of the following reasons:

1. Jesus may be too weak from the loss of blood to carry the cross effectively.
2. God’s plan is for Jesus to be on the Cross at 3PM, the time of the slaying of the passover lambs, and Simon can help Christ move more quickly.
3. Simon a Cyrenian Jew, was in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover and now has the opportunity to experience Christ up close and personal, so he gets his first exposure to the real spirituality of Christianity.
4. Per Romans 16:13 we surmise Simon got saved, and his sons Alexander and Rufus are well-known also as disciples within the church, as wells as his mother, who presumably is Simon, the Cross Bearer’s wife.

• Romans 16:13 Greet/Salute Rufus, Chosen of the Lord and his mother (who likely was Simon’s wife!) The scenario is that Simon of Cyrene carries the Cross with Christ and gets saved. His sons, Alexander and Rufus receive Christ, and Rufus becomes a church leader, and his mom, Simon’s wife, also is renowned and prominent as a mother of encouragement to believers. 

The Eclipse of Darkness – Mark 15:33 

Mk 15: 33 And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

The 3 hours of Darkness on the cross resulted from

A.) A solar eclipse caused by the moon coming between the earth and the sun.

B.) The eclipse of the darkness of sin, coming between God The Father and Jesus His Son – as the sins of the world were laid upon Christ.

Ans.  a) is unlikely, though plausible  b) seems reasonable, and is theologically correct

The Day of the Lord Is Delivered in Darkness Mark 15:33 

Mk 15: 33 And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

Darkness in Scripture is associated a) righteousness b) justice c) judgement d) salvation.

C.) JUDGEMENT

• Exodus 10: 21-23 God delivers His 9th Plague of Darkness on Egypt
• Amos 5;20 Will not the day of the LORD be darkness instead of light, Even gloom with no brightness in it?
• Zeph 1;14 “Listen, the day of the LORD! In it the warrior cries out bitterly” – as Christ did on the Cross.

The Day of the Lord & The Day of Crucifixion Mark 15:33, Matt 27:45-52 & Joel 2: 2-33  

Joel 2;2, 10-11 & 30-31 ²The dark and dreadful “Day of the Lord” ¹⁰Before them the earth quakes, The heavens tremble, The sun and the moon grow dark And the stars lose their brightness. ¹¹“The day of the LORD is indeed great and very awesome, And who can endure it?”  ³⁰“I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, Blood, fire and columns of smoke. ³¹“The sun will be turned into darkness & the moon into blood Before the great & awesome day of the LORD.

The parallels between what the Bible calls the Day of the Lord in Joel 2 and Christ’s Crucifixion in Matt 27: 45-52 are that both are associated with

Earthquake Matt 27: 51And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.

Recognition of God 4Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

Salvation/Atonement Many dead are resurrected –  Matt 27: 52 The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.

More about this at the end of today’s message.

Christ’s Loud Cry of Human agony & Divine Justice Mark 15:34-35

Mk 15: 34-35 Mk 15: 34 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a louc voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 35And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.”

Christ loudly proclaims this short statement because … 

1. His weakened humanity, asphyxiated and drained of blood, did not have the strength to utter more.
2. Loaded with the world’s sin, Christ feels separated from and forsaken by God, since we never are further from God than when we willfully are sinning, and He willfully took on the world’s sin.
3. Hab 1: 13 Since God cannot look upon sin, He turns away from Christ, so the Father & Son are separated, causing Christ to cry out from the spiritual darkness, desertion, and loneliness from God, expressed in the wailing cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!”
4. He is completing the work of Salvation and (“ekpneo”) expressed the action of voluntarily yielding up His spirit (pneuma); = “He gave up His spirit” – which was like pulling a switch to activate, initiate and effect His official death on the Cross.    

Ans:  a) possibly true, but we can’t know for sure.  b) seems reasonable, c) Theologically correct d) also theological correct as sin separates us from God

Elijah Precedes the Messiah & The Dreadful Day of the Lord

Mark 15:34 & Malachi 4: 5

Mk 15: 35 And some of the bystanders hearing it (Christ cry out) said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.”   Observers made reference to Elijah because … 

• In Mark 9: 11 & Matt 17: 9-13 And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” In Matt 17 the disciples understand that John the Baptist was a type of Elijah.
• Mal 4:5 says “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.” In their minds, if Christ was the Messiah, then Elijah would’ve had to come in conjunction with His coming.
• And Elijah had come in Mark 9, Matt 17 and in Luke 9 during Christ’s ministry during the Transfiguration.

God Delivers Us Through Darkness Mark 15:33& Joel 2: 32

Mk 15: 33 And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the 9th hour.

I’ve always felt that laying the sins of the world on Christ probably was such a Divinely Momentous Activity DMA that God enshrouded it from the world in a supernatural darkness when He came down and sacrificed His Son for us.

• Is 53: 5 “upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.”
• Is 53: 6 the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him
• Is 53: 10 (NAS & KJV) But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

It appears God did the work of laying sin on Christ on the Cross, which occurred during these 3 hours of supernatural darkness, just as God also acted in darkness to make His covenant with Abraham in Gen 15:17.

God Delivers Us Through the Darkness of Divinely Momentous Activity (DMA) Mark 15:33 & Joel 2: 32

 Just as God did the work of laying sin on Christ on the Cross occurred during the 3 hours of supernatural darkness, God also made His covenant with Abraham in Gen 15: 17 “It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces” – meaning God alone passed between the halves of the sacrifices Abraham had laid out.

1. God’s Abrahamic Covenant was ratified in Darkness, when in Gen 15: 12-19 God impressed upon Abraham a deep sleep of dreadful and great darkness and explained Israel’s 430 years of slavery and then covenanted with Abe.
2. In The Luke 9:28-32 version of The Transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah, appear with Jesus, Peter and John and James were overcome with a heavy sleep,

There appears to be a heavy drowsiness associated with a heavy anointing of being in God’s presence.

The Women Witnessed the Darkness of Crucifixion and Soon Will See the Light of Resurrection Mark 15:40-41 

Isaiah 60:2 (ESV) “For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the people’s; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.

Joel 2: 32 “And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the LORD Will be delivered; For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem There will be those who escape, As the LORD has said, Even among the survivors whom the LORD calls.

Mk 15: 40-41 40There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome; 41(Who also, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered unto him;) and many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem.

Undoubtedly these faithful women were honored by God for their love, courage, and faithful perseverance and devotion to Christ.  They will be the first

1. to visit the tomb
2. be informed of the Resurrection
3. And undoubtedly are among the first fruits to be saved, as their service anchored the early church as we saw with the Rom 16:15 acknowledgment of Rufus’s mother, the wife of Simon, who helped Christ bear His Cross that would be the instrument of the world’s salvation.

THE Mark 16: 9-20 FOOTNOTE ADDED BY WESTCOTT & HORT  (Commentary by Chuck Missler)                

 In many of our Bible’s there’s a note designating that the text after verse 8 does to appear in many manuscripts.  The Footnote reads: to the effect that manuscripts put verses 9–20 in question. 

• For starters – do you think a Gospel message of the good news of Christ would end that the disciples were in fear and confusion? Y/N
• Does anyone really believe the all-powerful Holy Spirit of God would end the account of Mark’s version of His Good News, of the greatest triumph of human history at Mark 16:8 “And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”?
• The verses were omitted from the Alexandrian codices written in the 4th century and later held up by two heretical Greek scholars Westcott and Hort, et al. as the authentic best reference of the Gospel of Mark.

Only the enemies of the Gospel who are posing as Biblical scholars would put forward such an absurdity! 

Here’s what’s lacking in Westcott and Hort’s analysis, however:

• Irenaeus a reliable church father who succeeded Polykarp, who succeeded the Apostle John, wrote in the 150 A.D. and quotes Mark 16: 9 – 20 in his commentary
• Hippolytus another reliable church father quotes Mark 16: 9-20 in the 2nd century in a Commentary he writes.
• Syriac: The Peshito in the 2nd century and the Curetonian Syria in the 3rd century both contain these 12 verses.

All the above pre-date the Johnny-come-lately hackneyed Alexandrian codices.

• Jerome in 382 A.D. had access to Latin versions of the Bible, which we no longer have access to, but which he quotes from them containing those 12 verses.
• The Latin Vulgate Bible, which is a revision of the 2nd century Vetus Itala translation also contains these 12 verses.
• The Gothic Version of 350 A.D. contains these 12 verses
• These Egyptian Versions contains them: 1) the Memphitic (or lower Egyptian) and 2) the Coptic both translated in the 4th or 5th centuries 3) the Thebaic – Upper Egyptian translation and 4) the Sahidic of the 3rd Century.
• The Armenian in the 5th Century and the Ethiopic of the 4th – 7th centuries and the Gerogian o the 6th century all continua those 12 verses.

Here’s a list of church fathers who quoted from Mark 16: 9-20, which debunks Westcott and Hort:

• Papias AD 100 quotes Mk 16: 18m Eusebius. Hist. Ecc. iii.39.
• Justin Martyr in AD 151 quotes verse 20, Apol. I.c.45.
• Irenaeus in A.D. 180 quotes Mark 16: 19 (Adv. Hoer. Lib. iii.c.x
• Hippolytus AD 190-227 quotes Mark 16: 17-18 Lagarde’s ed. 1858. p. 74.
• Vincentius AD 256. at the Seventh Council of Carthage, held under Cyprian, quotes the 12 verses.
• Acta Pilati 2nd century quotes Mark 16: 15-18, Tischendorf’s ed.. 1853, pp. 242 & 351
• Apostolical Constitution 3rd / 4th century quotes Mark 16: 16-18.

All the above pre-date the Johnny-come-lately hackneyed Alexandrian codices.

God’s Heptadic Structure Is The Security System Code of The Scriptures

by Chuck Missler

http://www.khouse.org/articles/2000/201/print/

But there is even more astonishing evidence for their original inclusion that is also profoundly instructive for broader reasons.

The Fingerprints of the Author

Let’s examine these verses and explore their underlying design. Just as we encounter fingerprint or retinal scanners to verify an identity in today’s technological environment, it seems that there is an astonishingly equivalent “fingerprint” hidden beneath the Biblical text that is still visible despite the veil of the centuries.

(Fasten your seat belts!)

The Heptadic Structure of Scripture (part 1)

Everyone who explores their Bible quickly discovers the pervasiveness of Seven: there are over 600 explicit occurrences of “sevens” throughout both the Old and New Testaments. As many of our readers are aware, there are also prevalent evidences of design hidden behind the text.⁴

The “Heptadic” (sevenfold) structure of Biblical text is one of the remarkable characteristics of its authenticity. Let’s apply the structure of 7’s these disputed 12 verses.

There are 175 (7 x 25) words in the Greek text of Mark 16:9-20. Curious. These words use a total vocabulary of 98 different words (7 x 14), also an exact multiple of seven. That’s also rather striking.

Try constructing a passage in which both the number of words and the number of letters are precisely divisible by seven (with no remainder)! The random chance of a number being precisely divisible by 7 is one chance in seven. In seven tries, there will be an average of six failures.

The Heptadic Structure of Scripture (part 2)

The chance of two numbers both being divisible by 7 exactly is one in 7², or one in 49. (This is a convenient simplification; some mathematical statisticians would argue the chance is one in 91.⁵ ) This still might be viewed as an accidental occurrence, or the casual contrivance of a clever scribe. But let’s look further. The number of letters in this passage is 553, also a precise multiple of seven (7 x 79). This is getting a bit more tricky. The chance of three numbers accidentally being precisely divisible by seven is one in 7³, or one in 343. This increasingly appears to be suspiciously deliberate.

In fact, the number of vowels is 294 (7 x 42); and the number of consonants is 259 (7 x 37). Do you sense that someone has gone through a lot of trouble to hide a design or signature behind this text?

The Heptadic Structure of Scripture (part 3)

As we examine the vocabulary of those 98 (7 x 14) words: 84 (7 x 12) are found before in Mark; 14 (7 x 2) are found only here. 42 (7 x 6) are found in the Lord’s address (vv.15-18); 56 (7 x 8) are not part of His vocabulary here.

This is, conspicuously, not random chance at work, but highly skillful design. But just how skillful?

With 10 such heptadic features, it would take 7¹⁰, or 282,475,249 attempts for these to occur by chance alone. How long would it take the composer to redraft an alternative attempt to obtain the result he was looking for? If he could accomplish an attempt in only 10 minutes, working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, these would take him over 23,540 years!

The Heptadic Structure of Scripture (part 4)

But there’s more. The total word forms in the passage are 133 (7 x 19). 112 of them (7 x 16) occur only once, leaving 21 (7 x 3) of them occurring more than once; in fact, these occur 63 (7 x 9) times.

If we examine more closely the 175 words (7x 25), we discover that 56 (7 x 8) words appear in the address of the Lord and 119 (7 x 17) appear in the rest of the passage.

The natural divisions of the passage would be the appearance to Mary, verses 9-11; His subsequent appearances, verses 12-14; Christ’s discourse, verses 15-18; and the conclusion in verses 19-20. We discover that verses 9-11 involve 35 words (7 x 5). Verses 12-18, 105 (7 x 15) words; verse 12, 14 (7 x 2) words; verses 13-15, 35 (7 x 5) words; verses 16-18, 56 (7 x 8) words. The conclusion, verses 19-20, contains 35 (7 x 5) words.

The Heptadic Structure of Scripture (part 5)

It gets worse. Greek, like Hebrew, has assigned numerical values to each letter of its alphabet. Thus, each word also has a numerical (“gematrical”) value.

The total numerical value of the passage is 103,656 (7 x 14,808). The value of v.9 is 11,795 (7 x 1,685); v.10 is 5,418 (7 x 774); v.11 is 11,795 (7 x 1,685); vv.12-20, 86,450 (7 x 12,350). In verse 10, the first word is 98 (7 x 14), the middle word is 4,529 (7 x 647), and the last word is 791 (7 x 113). The value of the total word forms is 89,663 (7 x 12,809). And so on.

Individual words also tell a tale. (click for Greek), deadly (v.18) is not found elsewhere in the New Testament. It has a numeric value of 581 (7 x 83), and is preceded in the vocabulary list by 42 (6 x 7) words, and in the passage itself by 126 (7 x 18) words.

This all is among the legendary results of the work by Dr. Ivan Panin. (See inset below). In fact, he identified 75 heptadic features of the last 12 verses of Mark.⁷ We have highlighted only 34 heptadic features. If a supercomputer could be programmed to attempt 400 million attempts/second, working day and night, it would take one million of them over four million years to identify a combination of 7³⁴ heptadic features by unaided chance alone.⁷

The Heptadic Structure of Scripture (part 6)  

1. Codex Alexandrinus: a 5^th century manuscript containing the entire New Testament, brought to England about 1630. Codex Siniaticus, discovered in St. Catherine’s Monastery at (the traditional) Mt. Sinai, has been dated around 350 A.D. Codex Vaticanus, dated about 325 A.D., had been in the Vatican Library since at least 1481, but was not made available to scholars until the middle of the 19^th
2. 1 John 1:1, 4:2,3; et al.
3. For a sampling of their correspondence, etc., see our Briefing Package, How We Got Our Bible, from which this article was excerpted.
4. Previous articles on Matt 1:1-11in this News Journal, as well as our recent book, Cosmic Codes: Hidden Messages From the Edge of Eternity, etc.
5. Actually, it can be mathematically argued that it is 91. p = 1/7*[(n-1)/(7n-1)]*[(n-2)/(7n- 2)]* . . . *[1/(7n-(n-1))] is far more restrictive than the assumptions here.

6. Ivan Panin, The Last Twelve Verses of Mark, B-761, Bible Numerics, Suite 206, 121 Willowdale Ave., Willowdale, Ontario, M2N 6A3, (406) 221-7424.
7. 7³⁴ = ~5.4 x 10²⁸ tries needed. There are 3.15 x 10⁷ sec/year; at 4 x 10⁸ tries/sec, it would take about 4.3 x 10¹² computer-years.
8. Psalm 138:2.

Suppose you were to handwrite, as people did back in the days when scripture was hand copied, and beat the odds to draft The Heptadic Structure of Scripture.  How long would it take to meet the conditions by going through the number of tries we explained in the last slide. 

• So to achieve the Hepatic structure once in 7⁹ chances / 1 in 40,353,607 attempts of writing 12 verses of a narrative, since what is at issues are 12 verses of scripture
• And, let’s say it would take you 10 minutes to write the 12 verses, and you were going to meet all nine conditions, so that each of the 9 of them were divisible by 7 – meaning the total number of 1) words, 2) letters, 3) vowels, 4) consonants, 5) distinct words used, 6) words found prior to these verses, 7) words used only in this text, 8) words used by the Lord, 9) the rest of the words not spoken by Jesus,
• And you worked 8 hours per day, for 40 hours each week, which is 2000 hours a year, which is 120,000 minutes a year (and every 10 minutes you can make a draft)
• You would meet all nine conditions if you worked 403,536,070 minutes which =’s 3,362 years!

It would take someone writing by hand 3,362 years to by chance achieve a 12 verse draft that meets 9 conditions that fulfill The Heptadic Structure of Scripture.  But God meets far more than those 9. 

• Total Words in the passage are 175, which = 7 x 25
• Words in the Address of the Lord has 56 words, which is 7 x 8
• Words in the rest of the passage = 119, which is 7 x 17
• The division of Jesus Appearing to Mary Magdalene, vs 9 – 11 = 35 words = 7 x 5
• The division of Jesus Appearing to 2 Disciples, vs 12-18 = 105 words = 7 x 15
• The division of Jesus Appearing to The All Disciples, vs 12 = 14 words = 7 x 2
• The division of Jesus Appearing to The All Disciples, vs 13 = 35 words = 7 x 5
• The division of Jesus Appearing to The All Disciples, vs 16-18 = 56 words = 7 x 8
• The concluding last 2 verses of Jesus Appearing to The All Disciples, vs 19-20 = 35 words = 7 x 5
• Let’s also consider that in Hebrew & Greek each letter contains a distinct numerical value. This means every word has a numerical value.  The total numerical value of the words in Mk 16: 9 -12 = 106,663 or 7 x 14,809, if include meeting the demands of those numerical values we increase the probability to 9 x7 

To view the recorded service on YouTube, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-TRA-if1X0