Some of my teens in Sunday school are juniors and are reading Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. We got off onto the topic of biblical literacy and they all knew that the title of the book referred to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, but nobody, including myself, knew the biblical reference to the grapes of wrath.
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Well, it turns out it is Revelations 14:19-20:
And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs. (NIV)
Although I don't really like paraphrases, this passage really stands out in The Message:
The Angel swung his sickle, harvested earth's vintage, and heaved it into the winepress, the giant winepress of God's wrath. The winepress was outside the City. As the vintage was trodden, blood poured from the winepress as high as a horse's bridle, a river of blood for two hundred miles.
There's a joke about Presbyterians not liking to study Revelations. A preacher was asked, "When are we going to get into the Book of Revelations?" to which he replied, "In the new millenium." I'm proud that our current minister has delved into Revelations a lot, particularly the messages to the churches of Asia.
1 comments:
This is a nice blog.
I tend to get on well with Presbyterians, as I am a Southern Baptist of the Reformed stripe. Once upon a time, most Southern Baptists were Reformed Baptists. Tom Nettles wrote an interesting book on the subject, my review of which you can find here, if you are interested.
These days, not very many Southern Baptists would call themselves Reformed, but our numbers are growing, and I look forward to the day when the doctrines of grace are preached as regularly from our pulpits as they once were. In the meantime, there are not a few Baptists that are like a blogospheric acquaintance of mine, a self-described "Reformed Baptist currently worshiping at a PCA church."
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