{"id":4964,"date":"2025-10-15T09:07:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T13:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=4964"},"modified":"2025-10-15T09:07:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T13:07:02","slug":"gods-rosetta-stone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/15\/gods-rosetta-stone\/","title":{"rendered":"God’s Rosetta Stone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

When French general\u00a0Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798, he brought along with his troops\u00a0a crack\u00a0team of 167 scientists and scholars.

Napoleon was determined to plunder Egypt of its artistic treasures.\u00a0Quite by accident, his team helped solve one of the enduring mysteries of the ancient world.

A French soldier came upon\u00a0a large black granite-like stone.\u00a0Its surface had been chiseled with words in three different languages.\u00a0The stone had been lugged over to a construction site near the town of Rosetta, where it was about\u00a0to become part of the wall of a French fort.

The French scholars\u00a0immediately recognized the potential significance of this discovery.\u00a0It turned out that the\u00a0engraving, which dated to about 200 years before Christ, didn’t yield any astonishing new historical insights.\u00a0The carved news flash was\u00a0that Egyptian King Ptolemy V was divine.\u00a0Ho-hum.<\/em>

But the language at the top of the stone was ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. And no living person\u00a0on earth, inside or outside Egypt, knew how to read\u00a0hieroglyphics.

The bottom language was Greek.\u00a0Thousands\u00a0of scholars could read Greek in their sleep.\u00a0The middle language was Demotic, an ancient tongue favored by the common people (Demotic is from the same root as “democracy”).\u00a0

If the three parts of the stone\u00a0were all reporting the same message, would it be possible for\u00a0linguistic scholars to crack the code of the hieroglyphics by comparing it with the Greek and Demotic?

That’s exactly what happened.\u00a0

It wasn’t easy.\u00a0Greek reads from left to right, like English.\u00a0Demotic reads from right to left, like Arabic and Hebrew.\u00a0It turns out that hieroglyphics could be written in any direction at all, including up and down like Asian scripts.\u00a0The French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion announced in 1822 that he had at last cracked the code.

Archaeologists could now go to Egyptian sites\u00a0and literally read the writing on the wall.

Two years after the Rosetta Stone’s discovery, the British defeated Napoleon in Egypt.\u00a0They promptly grabbed the priceless black rock.\u00a0That’s why it sits in London today, where it is hands down the number one\u00a0attraction at the British Museum.\u00a0The French want it back.\u00a0The Egyptian government, meanwhile, has made it quite clear that the stone belongs in Cairo.

Historians would agree that the Rosetta Stone is a gift that belongs to the whole world. It represents the Big Breakthrough \u2013 the essential key to seeing with new eyes something that used to be shrouded in fog.

When it came to figuring out who would be God’s Chosen One, the Messiah, the people of Judea were completely fogged in.

That’s because there\u00a0were a variety of\u00a0ways to read the Law\u00a0and the Prophets (what Christians today call the Old Testament). Was the Messiah supposed to be human or divine?\u00a0Would he bring war or peace?\u00a0Would he save the whole world\u00a0or just Israel?

Over the years, plenty\u00a0of messianic candidates emerged.\u00a0We know of at least 18\u00a0wannabes who lived during Jesus’ lifetime alone.\u00a0One was a fellow named Theudas.\u00a0Brimming with confidence, he announced he could part the Jordan River and bring down the walls of Jerusalem with a single word.\u00a0Instead, the Romans captured him and put him to death.

When Jesus was a boy, Judas the Galilean rallied would-be revolutionaries to his side.\u00a0Once again, Rome won.\u00a0Judas and 2,000 of his companions were crucified simultaneously along Galilean roadsides.\u00a0The crosses were left standing for months as a kind of public service announcement:\u00a0Don’t end up\u00a0on the wrong side of Rome, or this will happen to you, too.\u00a0

There was a predictable sameness to being a failed Messiah: You always ended up dead.\u00a0If you saw your favorite candidate for Messiah hanging on a cross, it meant you had backed the wrong horse.

That’s why the people\u00a0in Jerusalem who were hoping against hope that Jesus\u00a0would turn out to be the real<\/em> Messiah\u00a0were so stunned by something he said.

“I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”\u00a0(John 12:32).

Jesus was predicting his own death.\u00a0He was announcing, flat out, that he was going to be crucified, just like all the other failed Messiahs.\u00a0

The crowd responded, “Wait a minute.\u00a0You’re calling yourself the Son of Man [that’s how\u00a0God’s Chosen One was identified\u00a0by the prophet Daniel], yet you’re saying you’re going to be lifted up on a cross.\u00a0How can that be?”\u00a0Who is this Son of Man?\u00a0

He is God’s Rosetta Stone.\u00a0<\/em>

Jesus the Messiah will make sense of all the competing storylines.\u00a0He will clear away the fog and crack the code, the one that no one had ever been able to figure out.\u00a0Only when Jesus’ followers looked back on his life\u00a0— and especially his\u00a0final Weekend — would they grasp that he was fulfilling all the messianic expectations in a way no one could have guessed.

Jesus is still the Rosetta Stone for you and me.\u00a0

Let’s face it: Life is frequently a mess.\u00a0You’ve done everything possible to make things right in your family, yet parents or siblings or children still seem to resent you.\u00a0How can that be fair?\u00a0God says he’s in charge of the universe, yet human suffering goes on and on.\u00a0Why does he let it happen?\u00a0You’ve been diligently praying for guidance.\u00a0Why, then, is God so maddeningly silent?

At the Last Supper, when Jesus’ disciples were burdened by\u00a0the same kinds of questions, he said, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled.\u00a0You trust in God.\u00a0Trust in me, too” (John 14:1).

He is God’s Rosetta Stone.\u00a0

And if we’re willing to hang on to him, he will eventually clear away the fog and make sense of things in a way we never could\u00a0have guessed.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here When French general\u00a0Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798, he brought along with his troops\u00a0a crack\u00a0team of 167 scientists and scholars. Napoleon was determined to plunder Egypt of its artistic treasures.\u00a0Quite by accident, his team helped solve one of the enduring mysteries of the ancient world. A French soldier came upon\u00a0a large… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4965,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[583,424],"class_list":["post-4964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crucifixion","tag-messiah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4966,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4964\/revisions\/4966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}