Read Luke 24:13-48
Watch the video below and follow its instructions.
Well, how did you do? I noticed the gorilla, but I admit I did so only because I expected a gorilla to make an appearance. However, I did not see the player leaving the video nor that the curtain changed colors.
In 1999, a gorilla demonstrated that people miss the obvious things right in front of us if our attention is focused somewhere else. In 1999 the original video became world-famous, though again, to be transparent, I’m initially becoming aware of it 22 years later. Two psychologists tested the idea of “inattentional blindness,” where people miss objects in plain sight because they have been told to or are paying attention to something else. About 50% of people in the original study missed the gorilla’s appearance amid the people playing the game. These results led these two psychologists to conclude that attention plays a much more significant role in perception than previously thought.
If you were like me, you missed some apparent things taking place within the video. As it relates to me, the missing of clear things aren’t just limited to this video. The other week, I noticed a house sitting back from a road that I have traveled almost every day for about two decades! In today’s Scripture, we see the resurrected Jesus walking with two of his followers on the road leading to Emmaus. They were so focused on the most recent events that had taken place surrounding Jesus’ death (24:17-21) and now his missing body (24:22-24) that they missed the 800-pound prophetic gorilla!
Reread Luke 24:25-27 and 44-46.
If we are not careful, we can overlook an essential teaching of Scripture in these verses, especially verse 44. This teaching is that all prophecy is about Jesus and is meant to reveal Jesus to us more fully. The Hebrew Scriptures contain the same material as our Old Testament, though organized differently. For the Jews, their Scriptures, our Old Testament is broken up into three main sections. These sections are the Law, the Writings, and the Prophets. Jesus tells the disciples in Luke 24 that all of their Scriptures pointed to him. The prophecies in the Old Testament that essentially gave the Jews a fingerprint of the Messiah are called Messianic prophecies. God gave the Jews these prophecies to describe what the Messiah would be like, what he would do, how he would die, and even how he would raise from the dead! Yet, they missed the goal of these prophecies because they were so focused on their current events and situation.
This passage gives us an error we must take great care in avoiding as we journey through our study of the last things or last days. We study prophecy because prophecy’s ultimate purpose is to understand Jesus better so that we can better worship Jesus. May we go ahead and pray and ask God to help us in our study of the end times. That he would help us not become so focused on the details or looking for signs of the end in current events that we miss the opportunity to have our knowledge of and love for Jesus deepened (Luke 24:45)!
May we listen to the words that the angel spoke to John in Revelation 19:10,
“Then I (John) fell down at his (the angel’s) feet to worship him, but he said, “No, don’t worship me. I am a servant of God, just like you and your brothers and sisters who testify about their faith in Jesus. Worship only God. For the essence of prophecy is to give a clear witness for Jesus.”
Our Ministry Life 
Leave a comment