2 Maccabees 9 – Antiochus
is outraged when he hears of the defeat of Nicanor and Timotheus. He races out
to take revenge, but God strikes him with a terrible pain in his bowels and
“excruciating internal torture” (9:5) that cause him to smell very bad. The
author uses this as a lesson in how God takes his revenge on those who
persecute even in this life, and no
matter how exalted a man may be in power, his power is not greater than the
power of God’s justice.
He actually seems to come to a realization of this on his
own. When “he could not even bear his own stench, he spoke in this way: ‘It is
just to be subject to God, and a mortal should not consider himself equal to
God.’” (9:12). He seems to want to reverse all the terrible things he had
planned – destruction of the city, massacre of the Jews and the plundering of
the Temple. He even promises to “become
a Jew himself, [so he could] travel through every place on earth and declare
the power of God” (9:17).
He writes to the people, begging them to respect him and the
son he has named to succeed him when he dies – a reality he sees as coming
soon. So “The murderer and blasphemer, having been struck very badly, just as
he himself had treated others, passed from this life in a miserable death”
(9:28).
Philip the Phrygian flees into Egypt to Ptolemy Philometor
because he is afraid of Antiochus’ son. Antiochus' son is supposed to have been nine years old at this time, so it is unlikely he was really afraid of him. His tutor and guardian is the man he is afraid of - Lysias.
“Friends’
Testimonies”
Part 7
The reduction of spiritual issues to political or social
ones was deeply bothersome to me, as I have said several times. It sapped the
faith of any real need for Christ and failed to recognize that the deepest barriers in us that kept us
from God were not societal but spiritual. I already lived my life wary of
the kind of materialism that capitalism promoted. Simplicity for me involved more things like avoiding political or
philosophical fads, trying not to be
overly cerebral about what I believed, speaking what was on my mind and heart
simply and directly and trying not to be manipulative or devious in my dealings
with others. These were the parts of the simplicity testimony that came to
mean most to me, maybe because talking and arguing about ideologies was
something I had done a lot.
If you believe that God dwells in you and works in and
through you, then it is your responsibility to treat your words and acts with
respect by making sure that what you say
and do comes as much as is possible from a spirit of love, that it is
sincere, and that it comes from a deeper place in you than off the top of your
head. How what you say or do is received or whether it changes anything is not
for you to worry about.
Examples of the kind of speech I am talking about are very
common, such as words of apology or repentance for things you have said or done
in anger or impatience. If, like me, you lose your temper with people in
frustrating circumstances—you are forced to stand in line endlessly or have to
deal with people who cannot understand some important, complex issue you need
to work out with them—if the Lord puts a word of repentance in you to offer to
that offended party, you have an obligation to act on it. It doesn’t matter
that it was a week or two weeks ago. It doesn’t matter that you might go
through the rest of your life without every having to cross paths with that
person again, you have an obligation to go back and try to apologize.
Or perhaps you have a family member or friend with whom you
have long-standing and intractable “issues”. In these situations too, you have
a duty to speak thoughtfully, lovingly, and with integrity what the Lord gives
you to say. I know I did. There were family members who had hurt me many times
over the years, relationships that were tortured and difficult because my need
for them had always been so great. People who come from broken, dysfunctional
families like mine will easily be able to understand what I am talking about
even without the boring details. There was a need and a call in me to “speak
truth” in love to members of my family and also, for the first time, an ability to accept the broken reality I
had always previously hoped would be healed by my silence or endurance. I
could not cure things in my own will. Perhaps it would not be God’s will either
that everything be cured the way I had in mind. But my job was not the end
result. My job was only to be faithful to the little truths I believed God had
given me to speak.
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