Let me give you one: Blessed is he who obeys the Words of the Book and when I come, you know He, I find him doing lest I see him and he be, he walk naked. What’s it mean when Jesus is warning us to be careful that you don’t walk naked when He has returned? That does not mean “Oh I’d better watch these Christians, they’re going to have all their clothes off before I get back. You’d better tell them to keep their clothes on.”
Now you know that in the West you’re thinking what does it mean? Here’s what He meant. In the time of, of, uh, the Temple, in the time that John wrote this, or in the time of Christ, let’s go back to that, they had what was called “Temple Watchmen” and the hardest watch was the fourth watch, it was from 3 to 6 in the morning. It was hard to stay awake.
And what would happen is this, and there are historical references, references about this from, from even secular writers. But what would happen is if the Captain of the House, who was like, he wasn’t the High Priest but he was over the guards, he would come walking with the stick and if saw a guy getting a little bit slumbery, he’d pop him in, in, with, in the behind with that stick, “psssh,” pop him. You know that’d wake the guy up.
Okay? That in the New Testament, would be called “chastisement.” Seriously. To chastisement doesn’t mean to beat somebody down. To chastise it means to give him a quick spanking, or, or you know to slap him a little bit to get him, to get him awake to where they won’t go the way they’re going. So he chastised him by hitting him with the stick.
Now here’s the thing that’s interesting. If he caught, if the Captain of the House caught a priest sleeping, do you know what they did? They had him stand up, wake up, and they called the other Temple guards together. They stripped him of his clothes, and burned his clothes and made him walk back to the room naked. And it was the biggest shame for a priest to be caught sleeping.
