Forsyth United Methodist Church
October 2010

This Months Scripture:

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

A Letter to the Exiles

 ¹ This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

 ⁴ This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. ⁷ Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

This Months Lesson:

Living in Babylon

They say that we’re experiencing something called “economic dislocation,” a good term to describe the way so many of us feel “dis-placed” – whether we’re no longer in our homes, or in our jobs, or perhaps no longer in a place of confidence about the future. We're like the Old Testament Jewish people, who must have struggled with many questions. We read from a letter Jeremiah wrote to the first wave of exiles who were taken into captivity, along with their king, far away to Babylon.

The experience of being carried off to a foreign land, with people who speak another language and have a different worldview, whose religion and gods are strange and whose aspirations are not shared by the Jewish people themselves, was a huge learning experience. Not having the temple or their established synagogues for worship and learning meant that, in a way, they had to start over again, but only after adjusting their assumptions. Praying for Babylon, W. Hulitt Gloer writes, necessitated a “shift from understanding Israel’s God as a localized, territorial deity to understanding YHWH as a universal God who rules over all the earth and all the people of the earth,” and this God, today as well as in ancient times, is “with you just as much in Babylon as in Jerusalem, in Baghdad as in Boston.” Like the people of ancient Judah, we can trust that God is in charge, present and active in our lives and the life of the world. And we can trust that that God will never leave us to face such challenges alone.  

Word of the Month:

Captivity

God often punished the sins of the Jews by captivities or servitudes, according to his threatenings in Deuteronomy 28:1-68. Their first captivity, however, from which Moses delivered them, should be considered rather as a permission of Providence, than as a punishment for sin. To Judah are generally reckoned three captivities:

1. Under Jehoiakim, in his third year, B. C. 606, when Daniel and others were carried to Babylon, 2 Kings 24:1,2 Daniel 1:1
2. In the last year of Jehoiakim, when Nebuchadnezzar carried 3,023 Jews to Babylon; or rather, under Jehoiachin, when this prince also was sent to Babylon, that is, in the seventh and eighth years of Nebuchadnezzar, B. C. 598, 2 Kings 24:2,12 2 Chronicles 36:8,10 Jeremiah 52:34
3. Under Zedekiah, B. C. 588, when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, and most that was valuable among the people and their treasures was carried to Babylon, 2 Kings 25:1-30 2 Chronicles 36:1-23.

The seventy years during which they were to remain in captivity, Jeremiah 25:11 29:10, are reckoned probably from the date of the first captivity, B. C. 606. While at Babylon the Jews had judges and elders who governed them, and decided matters in dispute juridically according to their laws. The book of Daniel shows us a Jew in a high position at court, and the book of Esther celebrates their numbers and power in the Persian empire. The prophets labored, not in vain, to keep alive the flame of the true religion. The great mass of the people remained still in the land to which they had been carried, and became a portion of the Jews of the "dispersion" (John 7:35; 1 Peter 1:1). The whole number of the exiles that chose to remain was probably about six times the number of those who returned.

Prayer of the Month:

Heavenly Father, 

We thank and praise you for the great salvation granted to us through thy Son Jesus Christ, and for the gift of the Holy Spirit granted to us.  We thank you for the vision of the present day church and it’s ministries given to us and for the burden on our hearts for reviving the church to their original glory and power. Give us the anointing so as we go out to the community, they will know we are coming in the name of the Lord.

We pray that the anointing of your spirit, which was upon the Prophet Elijah and the early apostles and our forefathers, the same may be upon us so that we can minister to your people with your power and wisdom but with all humility. Giving all the Honor, Glory and Praise. This is our prayer in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

Question of the Month:

Are there different levels of Heaven?

 

The closest thing Scripture says to there being different levels of heaven is found in 2 Corinthians 12:2, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows.” Some interpret this as indicating that there are three different levels of heaven, a level for “super-committed Christians” or Christians who have obtained a high level of spirituality, a level for “ordinary” Christians, and a level for Christians who did not serve God faithfully. This view has no basis in Scripture. Paul is not saying that there are three heavens or even three levels of heaven. In many ancient cultures, people used the term “heaven” to describe three different “realms”—the sky, outer space, and then a spiritual heaven. Although the terms are not specifically biblical, these are commonly known as the terrestrial, telestial, and celestial heavens. Paul was saying that God took him to the “celestial” heavens, as in the realm in which God dwells. The concept of different levels of heaven may have come in part from Dante’s Divine Comedy in which the poet describes both heaven and hell as having nine different levels. The Divine Comedy, however, is a fictional work.