Tehillah Generation Chapel
Daily Manna | Saturday, March 17, 2018 | Reading: Exodus 33:1-11, Exodus 4, Gen 3:1-21
Topic: The Tabernacle of God 384
Scripture: But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say not of this building. (Heb 9:11)
Note: 2Cor 5:1, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Paul the destroyer transitioned from a man who was pursuing the lives of others to a man whose life was being pursued for destruction by the same death squad that he had put together. Evil doesn’t reward the perpetrators positively. It has an uncanny way of pursuing its adherents with all the viciousness that is deserving of the undeserving evil they had visited on others.
The evil of terror had suddenly turned its ugly head on one of its most faithful adherents. Paul the ex-terrorist was under siege from his own members of the most feared killing squad that terrorized the Christian community with all the hatred that they could muster. Their ultimate aim was to kill the faith of the believers and destroy the Church. Terrorism is no respecter of persons. Not even the faithful dedication of Paul in the past was enough to speak on his behalf. Paul had crossed the line of bigotry and moved from the irrational zone to the rational. The price he had to pay was death.
Being an integral part of the terror squad, Paul knew the modus operandi of the group and the usual punishment that could be meted out to defectors like him. Paul rightly anticipated his former colleagues who had laid ambush ready to pounce on him and kill him. Employing one of the main critical weapons used in the fight against terror, Paul’s resort to counter intelligence that was effectively deployed against the terror squad, succeeded in ensuring his escape from being ambushed to death.
Using the covering of the night to his advantage, himself being a terror expert, Paul, with the help of the disciples at Damascus, used a decoy of a basket that was traditionally used as a hamper for carrying lunch, to lower him down beyond the view or suspicion of the terror squad. They were running day and night shifts in wait for Paul’s capture and destruction. Grace spared Paul’s life, yet it took the sacrificial death of Jesus at the hands of a Jewish cabal operating as a Sanhedrin, who deployed the dirty tactics of terror to cause the arrest, trials, torture and His death on the cross by crucifixion.
Food for thought: The joy of terror is death. Instead, Jesus came to give life and to give it more abundantly.
Declaration: But their laying await was known of Saul. And they watched the gates day and night to kill him. Acts 9:24
©Author: Rev Fred Aboe
