The Housetops
In the East, all the houses have flat roofs. This is where people go to sleep at night, where they pray (because they want to get as close to God as they can) and where they go to watch any parades or see important people going by. The Housetops There is a verse from Isaiah which has great significance for me [Isaiah 22:1]: "What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to thou housetops?" In the East, all the houses have flat roofs. This is where people go to sleep at night, where they pray (because they want to get as close to God as they can) and where they go to watch any parades or see important people going by. Housetops are like public property in a way, because there is a way to go up from the garden. The custom is that others may go on the house tops to look down at the street without asking the permission of the house owner. Also, the family will sleep on the roof during most seasons, and there may be a little room built to hold the bedding. This is also used as a prophet's chamber. In II Kings 4:10 we read of the Shunamite woman who made a little chamber on the wall for Elisha to stay in when he passed that way. He could go up there and not disturb the rest of the family. You remember the story about the man sick of the palsy, whose companions let him down through the roof so he could see Jesus and be healed by him. Mark 2:4 says, "And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay." People read this Scripture and think that these people broke something to get through the roof, but it is not so. This place in the roof is made so that it can be taken apart and then placed back together again for people to go from the roof-top down into the house. "Broken up" in this case is like when someone says that they are going to knock down a tent or some other equipment which comes apart and then is put back together. The houses a
From this work
Topic: Flat Roof - Prophet - Sick - Public Property Format: Verified Digitized Pages: 3 As a convert to Christianity from Hinduism, Bishop K.C. Pillai came to the Western world on a singular mission: to teach the Eastern culture of the Bible. Although Christianity is generally considered a western religion, the Bible itself was written and set in the Orient, and it must be viewed through the light of that eastern window. The Bible is filled with passages that perplex the Western mind, and yet they were readily understood by the Easterner. When the reader becomes knowledgeable of the oriental idioms, customs, and traditions of the Biblical setting, these Scriptures become clear. God called Bishop K.C. Pillai to reveal these Biblical truths he called Orientalisms. At the time of the Bishop’s early life, his native India had remained an isolated country for thousands of years. Therefore, th