Backdrop for Study of Revelation - Rumor notes 1

 

Revelation – the exposing of something that used to be obvious but has been largely obscured.

The very need for this book of Revelations is to bring back into the open what has been obscured by the smoke and mirrors of the enemy of truth who thrives on darkening, distorting and twisting. This is called sin and iniquity. Jesus Christ was sent to counter all that and re-reveal the truth about God by becoming a human for a number of very key reasons.

There are a number of key themes that run like colorful threads through the fabric of this book that we need to pay attention to and learn from as much as possible. These concept constitute the vital issues that have been distorted and perverted and confused by Satan's sophistries, things like glory, salvation and especially the methods and motives of God.

Salvation – the means whereby both God's reputation along with humanity's original design may be restored and reconciliation may be accomplished between the two.

Humans were originally created to mirror God's glory like a mirror array amplifies the intensity of collectively reflected light. We are designed to thrive in joy, bonded community of diversity whereby the mystery of God's heart may be exposed into the visible realm for all the universe to enjoy and savor.

Through the continued choices of free will, humans have the power to shape their own characters until they become settled and solidified into the same likeness as what they have chosen to reflect. So long as they focused their attention and attentions on God's passionate love for them, their lives would be transformed into thinking, feeling and acting only in love and the beauty of God's core could become visible to influence and transform everyone everywhere. This is the essence of worship, one of the main issues in Revelation.

As soon as our first parents allowed lies about their Creator to infect their relationship of implicit, child-like trust in the source of all love, life and provision, sin and selfishness rabidly took over our psyche and plunged us into a condition of terror and desperation. Losing confidence in the Source of everything we needed for life, we instantly began operating with the motives and methods of the enemy to which we had given over our kingship and dominion. We became slaves internally to the counterfeit kingdom of darkness and lost all power to resist feeling and acting out Satan's principles of selfishness, for once we lose our sense of value and secure identity as reflectors of the very center of love, we instinctively begin floundering about grasping at anything that appears to have potential to fill the gaping void we feel inside. This is the condition of sin – living in distrust and fearful of God.

Because we cannot help but reflect what we imagine God to be like, humanity became defined by the first Adam by the reflection of the author of fear and death as the reflection inherited from Adam and passed on genetically to the rest of us caused everyone to distrust God and look for other means of finding satisfaction and fulfillment. With Satan insisting that he was now the god of this world that we reflected, he seized the right to represent us in the assembly of the sons of God in heaven.

This gives a little backdrop of why the book of Revelation is key to unraveling the mess caused both by Satan's rebellion in heaven along with the hijacking of God's created mirrors here on earth intended to restore God's reputation in the first round. Instead of saving God's reputation by demonstrating how humility, kindness, graciousness and love thriving in the atmosphere of vulnerability could defeat all the lies of the enemy that had infected the minds of living intelligences throughout the universe, the fall of humans only exacerbated the problem and amplified the slander and false allegations of Satan against God and His government. Thus in round two, a plan had to be implemented to not only salvage God's reputation but to salvage as many of His heart mirrors as possible along with it.

Salvation belongs to our God is a central and repeated theme in Revelation and Scripture.

Giving glory to God alone and focusing on His goodness and pure loveliness is also a major issue.

Jesus Christ is the hero of Revelation, for it is made clear throughout this amazing piece of literature that the attributes of God as revealed alone through the reflection seen in His Son become human is the only way God's reputation and government can be rescued from the coup d'etat launched by the first rebel who likewise had been created to reveal the truth about God to the universe.

Round 1 involved the betrayal of God by the chief representative created to convey truth and light to the rest of the universe in concert with Michael who was so humble that for a long time no one realized He was also part of the godhead. When Lucifer betrayed the sacred trust given him and launched a rebellion to displace Michael and exalt his own power and prestige to steal the affections and allegiance of created beings already populating heaven, the war was commenced. Michael had to counter the insidious lies of Lucifer who was leveraging his position as chief instructor of all the angels to undermine trust in God's methods and motives. And part of the strategy for defeating Lucifer's rebellion was to create an unbiased jury of sorts who could reveal what was hidden deep inside God that was being misrepresented by Lucifer's charges that carried so much logical weight.

Lucifer insisted at first that he was only wanting to make some small improvements to better secure God's government from any potential rebellion. He felt that the design of complete freedom and vulnerability that marked God's creation was a bit risky and that disaster might be avoided is God would institute a few safety precautions. This same mentality is still very compelling for many Christians today, because they agree with Satan's allegations that love cannot be trusted to be strong enough to prevent or counter what might happen should someone choose to turn away from love and live independently apart from God's authority and ways. Satan insisted that what was needed was a system of artificial rules with associated rewards as enticements for remaining faithful and loyal along with threats of imposed punishments for any who might dare to step out of line. He felt that with this added layer of security, the universe could be secured against any potential chaos that would surely result from someone choosing to live outside the parameters of God's design for social interaction.

When his suggestions to security improvements were denied and his ideas were not valued and embraced by Michael, feelings of resentment were allowed to grow inside Lucifer's heart until eventually they drove him to launch the very rebellion he had predicted might happen should his ideas not be employed. He decided to set up his own system of government based on rewards and punishments and prove that it would be superior to God wimpy ways that could be proven too weak.

By the time we get all the way down to when Revelation was written, a lot of water has gone under the bridge and the universe has witnessed the battle between light and darkness about God unfold in dramatic ways that no one expected. God's response to Lucifer's initial capture of the allegiance of one third of the work force of heaven seemed itself to at first be overwhelmingly successful as He demonstrated how His use of power would never resort to the use of threats or retaliation or punishment of His enemies. In the creation of this earth, power was only used for positive good, to bring beauty, order and glorious life out of chaos, a very chaos possibly resulting from Satan and his angels mucking around here attempting to create life through evolutionary means unsuccessfully.

When Satan's rebellion was not crushed by God forcefully after gaining the appreciation of the rest of the universe, it appeared that God's methods really were proven superior to Satan's. But when Satan then seduced our first parents to remove their trust from God and to trust in themselves and his lies about God, the glorious victory thought to have gone to God's side suddenly reversed and the horror flick began in earnest. Satan set up his throne on our planet and enforces his system of law and order in every culture and people group that populates this earth in an attempt to vindicate his claims. Yet all throughout history his methods of maintaining order through control, intimidation and violence has had mixed results at best. Yet in the midst of all this mess, God continued to work with a small contingent of people willing to cooperate with His methods and motives as far as they could. Yet with Satan as humanity's representative whose chief activity was to accuse us before God day an night relentlessly, it was impossible to salvage humans back to reflecting effectively the true image of God lost in Eden. Something far more dramatic had to take place or else Satan's experiment would continue to undermine God's credibility even threaten to spread in spite of all God's efforts to neutralize it.

The dramatic story revealed here in Revelation exposes that God's strategic move in sending His Son to become a human was the most potent mean to unmask the extremely subtle and convincing insinuations of the enemy that retained such a tenacious grip even among many loyal angels. Ideas that Satan had promoted in heaven seemed so logical and sensible that many who chose to remain loyal to God were still affected by Satan's insistence that unless punishment was imposed through a hierarchal system of control, it would be impossible to contain the spread of chaos and mayhem caused by law breaking. These notions were so tenacious that amazingly loyal angels could see no other possibility to halt Satan's rebellion than to forcefully exterminate him and all those loyal to him using his methods.

Before Christ's first advent, the sin of refusing to conform to God's law had become widespread. Apparently Satan's power was growing; his warfare against heaven was becoming more and more determined. A crisis had been reached. With an intense interest God's movements were watched by the heavenly angels. Would He come forth from His place to punish the inhabitants of the world for their iniquity? Would He send fire or flood to destroy them? All heaven waited the bidding of their Commander to pour out the vials of wrath upon a rebellious world. One word from Him, one sign, and the world would have been destroyed. The worlds unfallen would have said, "Amen. Thou art righteous, O God, because Thou hast exterminated rebellion."

But "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." God might have sent His Son to condemn, but He sent Him to save. Christ came as a Redeemer. No words can describe the effect of this movement on the heavenly angels. With wonder and admiration they could only exclaim, "Herein is love!" {RC 58}

The first verse in Revelation explains how and why this vision is so needed. God's motives and methods must be made clear, exposed, revealed. And the only one capable of doing this was His only begotten Son. That title distinguishes Him from the other angel who claims to represent the truth about God who has slandered and undermined God's reputation so effectively for so long. (see Hebrews 1-2)

Yet Jesus as God's effective human reflector includes His friend John to participate in bringing this revelation to the world of what is really transpiring and how it will all turn out in the end.

A mirror turned away from the sun cannot reflect its rays. And a human being turned away from God’s Son cannot reflect His love to others.As Christians, our responsibility is to share with others what God has shown to us. (from the introduction to Reflecting Christ)

This is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things which must happen soon, which he sent and made known [signified] by his angel to his servant, John, (Revelation 1:1)

What is the revelation of Jesus Christ? Jesus became a human mirror in order that the original reflection of God's heart that humans are designed to expose could finally happen.

He who has seen me has seen the Father. (John 14:9)

God gave Jesus the original light from His own heart that Jesus perfectly reflects. In growing up human Jesus fulfilled the original design for humans by perfecting a human character/likeness through continually mirroring God's heart and never anything else.

God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion...."

(Genesis 1:26)

The next verse details that only the image of God was created, not the likeness. That's because likeness equals character, and character is impossible to create in another. Character can only come about by personally making choices using a free will that over time develops habits and attitudes that in turn become so settled into the psyche they become forever permanent. Once character is set permanently, a person can always be trusted to act or react in any situation according to the nature of the character they have chosen to develop using their will.

By coming as a human to go through this process personally, and then taking upon Himself full responsibility and accountability for the lives of every human being who ever existed, Jesus was able to dislodge Satan's claim to represent humans in the assembly of the sons of God in heaven. After that everything took a dramatic turn in history. Yet the war was far from over, for salvation is more than simply proving that God is right and Satan is wrong; the universe can only be forever secured from a recurrence of this problem by giving evil sufficient time to perfect itself until its ugliness results in its own self-destruction. Allowing sin to destroy itself instead of God resorting to using Satan's methods is key to ending the war. This is a major main theme throughout the book of Revelation. Without this perspective one cannot grasp the main purpose for this symbolic book to achieve its intended effect.

In chapter 4 is revealed God's original design. God on His throne with everyone joyfully worshiping Him because He is good, not from any fear of punishment or hope of reward. This gives us a point of reference for the rest of the book, for until one knows what the original design looked like, it is impossible to measure anything else to see how it relates to the original.

In chapter 5 we are introduced to the hero of the book who figures prominently and is key to perceiving the issues under contention all through history. The war described in Revelation is not a war like we are familiar with, where force is pitted against force. Rather this war is between what methods and motives are effective for overcoming the opposition. This is vital to keep in mind while attempting to unpack the symbols in this book. Without this perspective we are extremely liable to arrive at faulty conclusions because of the extreme subtlety of the enemy's counterfeits.

Understanding and appreciation of the reasons behind how a violently slaughtered Lamb could be the hero cannot be overemphasized. This Lamb is the very embodiment of how God intends to win this war. Yet this Lamb's methods and motives are so foreign to how religion portrays God to be that we must concentrate consciously on the truth about God brought to light in this Lamb at all times if we are to keep proper perspective about everything else transpiring in this story.

From this point on through the bulk of this book, we encounter wave after wave of light assaulting the powers of darkness until on the third round the light becomes so intense and clear that it crashes the enemy's operating system and trips it into self-destruction mode. Yet how all this transpires involves another group who are key to helping all this come to light. These are what I call the Lamb's accomplices who we watch throughout the book learning how to reflect the same reflection of God's heart, motives and methods as does the Lamb. They are introduced in chapter 7 but keep showing up at various times all the way to the end.

Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

This practice is crucial to grasp and apply as we soak in the light pouring out of this book. In Revelation the Lamb's accomplices learn to increasingly focus their full attention on the ultimate human mirror who alone reflects perfectly the true glory of what constitutes the mystery hidden in God's heart. The Son of God became the Son of Man so He could mirror the glory of God fully.

God, having in the past spoken to the fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, has at the end of these days spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds. His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself made purification for our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Hebrews 1:1-3)

If we want to be on the winning side in all that is transpiring around us and is described in Revelation, we too must learn how to sing the new song that the Lamb's accomplices learn to sing and to reflect in our own lives the same glory that emanates from the glorious mirror reflection of God seen in the Lamb who became God in the flesh. That Lamb willingly became vulnerable and ever refused to indulge in the slightest hint of desire for revenge, punishment or take offense. This is what Revelation is all about.