Hang Onto the Keys

Last time we discussed the fact that we all bring our preconceived bias to whatever we hear or read or learn. So in preparing to launch on an epic adventure exploring the vast mysteries of possibly the most important document in the world, the book of Revelation, it is vital that we first be willing to challenge our personal paradigms and presumptions to allow the true Author of this book to correct our thinking so we can find better understanding. There is no end to speculations about why this book was written, who is was intended for or what it might mean. I have my own speculations and beliefs, and like many I tend to think mine are a bit closer to being right than most others. So why should we seek to explore something that from a distance seems impenetrable if it merely involves another round of speculation, especially from an untrained expert with little formal education? Good question.

In reading this book we will discover that nearly everywhere we look there appears to be locks or coded messages inhibiting our ability to understand clearly. Last time I mentioned the fact that when we begin to read this book we are offered at the very beginning at least two keys that have potential to give us a huge advantage over those who ignore these keys. I want to examine the first of these keys and I invite you to join me on possibly the greatest adventure possible. We may discover that this is far more than merely a fascinating thriller novel and in fact may be the most radical discovery of reality that just might jolt us into seeing things around us in new ways never before possible.

During this study it is urgent that we pray earnestly and often for the same Jesus introduced in the first chapter of this book, to apply the eye salve He says we need in order to begin to see our own condition mentioned in the last message in chapter 3. What He says about the condition of the last group of people living on earth is all too true. For just as He says, we imagine we are smarter than anyone else who came before us, better off, more highly educated, wealthy in knowledge and wisdom and think we pretty much have all the truth compiled from all the history that we have behind us.

But Jesus sees us differently, insisting that from heaven's perspective we are a pitiful mess, that in reality we are wretched and can't see past our own nose. He even insists that we are naked and poor, something so shocking we tend to glaze over when we hear it. We acknowledge we hear the words, yet our heart disbelieves it is actually true about ourselves. So long as we fail to believe His words over our perceptions, we will remain in the very condition He describes which could best be described as double-minded. James writes that so long as we are in this condition, holding opposite opinions about God in our mind and heart at the same time, it is impossible to receive anything from God. That is a very desperate situation that I don't want to remain in longer, and I have been praying for some time to be fully cured of double-mindedness, and God has been faithfully at work healing me of this. I am very grateful for that, yet at the same time I realize there is much more to heal before I can be confident that I no longer have double vision from the intoxication produced by pride, arrogance or false confidence that I have all the truth and simply need to compel others to agree with me.

With the healing eye salve of heaven comes clarity, both about my own wretched condition but more so about how God sees me and values me as precious, beautiful (I guess the correct term is handsome for a man), and extremely cherished in His heart. I confess that when it comes to seeing myself the way God sees me, I am just beginning to have capacity to even believe the words. Yet this is why my condition is so wretched and why my life feels so naked and full of shame. There is a huge difference between the truth about my identity and the truth about my condition. I had no clue about this until a few years ago when God made me aware of this. Condition and identity are entirely separate and yet related things, for what I choose to believe about my identity in turn affects how my character forms.

What does this have to do with Revelation? Well, the very word Revelation itself means to expose what is hidden. Curiously this ties into the express definition of the word Judgment given by Jesus in his dialog with Nicodemus in John 3. There Jesus says that His definition of Judgment is simply what happens when the Light of truth shows up. We either choose to resist it, deny it, try to suppress it because it threatens everything we have invested in to prop up our sense of worth and identity, or we choose to face it directly and move toward it no matter how uncomfortable or exposing it is for us. Jesus says that those who come toward the light in spite of how it makes them feel initially, are those who do the truth. I find that compelling and highly relevant when examining a book named Revelation that is full of light and truth about Jesus Christ who says He is the light of the world.

That brings me to the first key that is crucial to keep constantly on us in order to navigate the labyrinth of Revelation and not get hopelessly lost in a maze of confusion, fear and wild speculation. The very first words of this book alert us that Jesus as the sole standard of what is true about God and we must not allow anyone's ideas or speculations interfere with that reality. For me this means that any notion, speculation, assertion, interpretation, doctrine or whatever we might imagine while reading anything in the rest of this book, cannot contradict the clear light of truth as portrayed in the 4 gospels that show us what Jesus thought, taught, shared and how He related to others.

In other words, if anyone tries to convince me that something in Revelation is a truth about God that does not correspond to what I learn about Him from the Jesus found in the gospels, I need to instantly step back and question it seriously. If this book is what it claims to be, a revelation of Jesus Christ, then it must only and always square perfectly to the revelation Jesus brought that challenges the paradigms of what people have imagined God to be like throughout all history.

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

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... (Hebrews 1:1-3)

The first and most important key to use constantly in our exploration of this map is that the only safe truth to embrace at any time is truth that corresponds to the truth as is found in Jesus alone.

There is salvation in none other, for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, by which we must be saved! (Acts 4:12)

In Scripture the term name strongly infers character. It is not like we tend to do today, randomly picking a name for a baby based on whatever appeals to our fancy at the moment. Words have become so cheapened in our day that it is hard to know what anyone really means because everyone is so adept at manipulating words to suck us into believing things to manipulate us for their advantage. God is not that way, and when He uses words He always means something and is never deceptive. The problem now is that we are so accustomed to reading into what people say what we think their motives might be to manipulate or exploit us, that it has become difficult to communicate at all. More on this next time.

When the gospel insists there is no other name but Jesus by which we are saved, we must not distort that by shallow religious logic. Name is not referring to literal syllables of some language comprising a label some language uses to identity the Son of God who lived among us on earth 2,000 years ago. No, this is talking about how we choose to perceive God and what we will believe about how He feels about and relates to us. That is the primary reason Jesus came to this earth. The core problem caused by sin is that complete trust in God on the part of most of the created beings in the universe was seriously affected by super subtle insinuations of the most brilliantly smart being every created.

Lucifer claimed that he had advance and secret knowledge about God that no one else could know because no one was as smart as he and didn't have access to what he had direct access to – the hidden secrets of God. It was true that God had created Lucifer for the purpose of taking the hidden things of God that were far beyond what others could discern and translate them in order that others might have deeper appreciation and affection for God. Yet this very honor and privilege that involved God's trust in Lucifer became the very thing Lucifer exploited to promote his own agenda to discredit Christ as a competing revelation of God. This created tension in heaven as contradictory views of God began to cause division, confusion and at last open rebellion. This is the same war we now all find ourselves born into and is summarized in chapter 12 of Revelation. Chapters 12 and 13 are located as the center hub of this book around which everything else revolves and derives its meaning.

It is with this as the back story that we begin to see why the first words of the book are the very first thing God wants us to know. Just as the first chapter of Hebrews emphasizes the conflict between two competing entities claiming to represent God, one by an angel and the other from Jesus the Son, so too the book of Revelation exposes the competing versions of what we are urged to believe about God.

Revelation is all about the supernatural war we are unavoidably caught up in.

Revelation presents the two contenders vying for our allegiance and trust and our very soul.

Revelation is all about motives and methods and which ones we will believe and rely on to overcome.

Revelation is about the stark contrast between the methods God uses and the methods of His enemies.

Revelation exposes the subtle lies of the enemy that infects all of our thinking and paradigms.

The first key we must pick up and hold tenaciously if we wish to unlock the mysteries in this amazing drama is that whatever we think, feel or choose to believe from this book must align harmoniously with the life, teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth. The Jesus introduced at the very beginning of Revelation is the very same Jesus that John knew personally as a disciple. It is this Jesus that radically affected John's heart so deeply that he was transformed from being known as a son of thunder to the most humble, caring, compassionate and loyal friend and became known as John the Beloved.

In John's 3 letters we find this same man unleashing such concentrated truth about God's love for us that most people can hardly begin to ingest it effectively. John obsesses over the reality that God is love and that all who allow God to align them with Himself will reflect that love unavoidably. Keeping those letters as our context for reading Revelation is a very wise choice for any of us serious about wanting to see the glory hidden in this book. Let us pick up this key and use it consistently and we will be able to rejoice with those who rejoice throughout this treasure stash of prophecy.

This is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)

Threads and Themes in Revelation - Rumor notes 2

 

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, who testified to God's word, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, about everything that he saw. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things that are written in it, for the time is at hand. (Revelation 1:1-3)

After these things I looked, and the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened. (Revelation 15:5)

Threads/themes – revelation/judgment, must, testimony, receive and keep/practice.

3M's: Message, Motives and Methods

We have the message in the words used by John to convey things of extreme importance to us. But if we come to the message with misperceptions about the context or the motives involved, the message will fail to be delivered as intended and may prove to do more harm than good. So it is not enough to simply know the facts or the words of Scripture or prophecy. We must go deeper to know the truth found in both the testimony of God's word and of Jesus and even more importantly, the motives.

Discerning the motives behind the message is vital to understanding the message. We discover the motives of God by coming to understand Him through the lens of the only accurate revelation of God and His heart that is only and always good – Jesus Christ. This is the point of Hebrews 1:1-3 and in fact the entire book of Hebrews. Coming to see that God's motives are always good and never for evil is key to transforming our thinking about what the messages mean. Then we can begin to properly learn how to determine what methods are relied on to overcome the enemy and what methods are disallowed.

Distinguishing between the methods of the enemy and the methods used by God is vital if we want to cooperate with the hero of Revelation. This book is all about motives and methods, both of God and those with Him, as well as of the enemy that masquerades as representing God. This is why a war is going on, because there are challenges and accusations over who is right and how things should be managed and how order should be maintained. (See more below.)

Testimony

Every person has a testimony. It don't know if it is even impossible to be alive as a person and not have a testimony. God repeatedly calls on us as His witnesses. That is because His reputation as ruler over all the universe has been called into question and based on His methods and motives He refuses to simply impose His will to override the will of those He has created for His pleasure. To force one's will on others is to destroy the very meaning of freedom, joy and the pleasure we are designed to experience. God will not mar His beautiful creation designed to function in complete freedom and motivated by love alone for the sake of law and order. But neither will He settle for disorder, rebellion and death resulting from disobedience to the law of love. The core issue however is key to understand. How is God resolving the sin problem? That is the point of contention addressed in this book of revelations about both sides. We might say, the underlying issue is how to best maintain order while granting complete freedom so that love may prevail without reliance on fear.

This book is a revelation of the strategy of God and how He will win over evil without resorting to force like we imagine He must do to overcome evil. This book reveals the back story and God's strategies possibly more than any writings anywhere. Yet because we have been so conditioned to imagine that God must use the methods of the enemy to overcome the enemy, we have failed to connect the testimony of Jesus about His Father to what we find in this book that seems to contradict it. (See more on testimony at the end.)

The Must Factor

The word 'must' that shows up in the second verse is key to coming to a better appreciation of how God intends to win over evil and still maintain complete freedom for everyone. Satan insists that freedom is too risky, that law and order have higher priority over freedom, and that love is too weak to accomplish what it claims it can do. Thus the battle is over whether or not fear should be a primary motivation for obedience or whether love alone can maintain order and regulate the universe effectively. What God insists is that it is necessary that evil be given opportunity to mature sufficiently so that it will eventually be fully seen that it is not a viable option for governing the universe.

At first this may seem like something that should be obvious by now. But the subtle suggestions and insinuations of the enemy run far deeper than any of us can imagine. If even the most brilliant created beings in the universe, the angels of God who live in God's presence and see things far more clearly than we can presently, could be deceived by the suggestions of Lucifer, we cannot imagine that we can know how God should end the war. Even angels who maintained allegiance to God during the initial rebellion in heaven remained affected by some of the ideas of Lucifer and questioned God's motives and methods all the way up to the death of Christ. This should tell us something about the intensity of the power of the mystery of iniquity and its capacity to confuse and mislead.

It is for this reason that we find this thread we might call 'the must factor' that is found both at the beginning and near the end of this book. It is a must because without this key factor in place it will be impossible to defeat evil. Yet this must factor is one of the most contested and denigrated ideas in religion because it doesn't fit how we imagine God to be. So God alerts us from the very beginning of the book that these things must be allowed to play out in order that God's true good (not the good found in the Tree of Good and Evil, but an entirely different kind of goodness that defines God alone) may at last be the only thing left in the universe. And that will be achieved without any compromise with evil.

The Blessing

If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. (John 13:17)

Blessed are those who read, who hear and who keep.

Happiness. The Greek emphasizes perceiving, being aware of, knowing, understanding more than simply reading. The blessing/happiness is inherent within the writing and released into those who choose to embrace the revelation of the true message in this book.

This is the first of 7 blessings throughout Revelation. This also harkens back to the blessings revealed in the sermon on the mount that Jesus gave relating to how things work in His kingdom.

Therefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with humility the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror; for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of freedom, and continues, not being a hearer who forgets, but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does. (James 1:21-25)

This ties directly back into Jesus' definition of judgment.

But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God. (John 3:21)

Testimony Supplement

After these things I looked, and the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened. (Revelation 15:5)

Chapters 15 and 16 unveil a testimony so potent that it has been overlooked by most scholars because it is so scandalous. Yet what this reveals is that there will be a people on earth who so closely align their hearts with Jesus that their lives will reflect the heart of God just like Jesus reflected it where living here on earth. Their testimony will be so potent that it will work to break the very foundation upon which Satan has built his entire evil empire and will bring about the collapse of all the institutions that compose that empire.

This group of people are glimpsed over and over throughout this book. I like to call them the accomplices of the Lamb. They are given certain identifiers in various places in the book so that we may track them and watch their development so we may see more clearly the real issues involved.

The issue of testimony is central throughout Revelation because it is key to how God overcomes the power of evil without using force. When we come to see that the real issue in this war is God's reputation and authority to govern the universe with love alone, it starts to become more clear why testimony is so vital and why all throughout Scripture God calls on His people to be His witnesses. God is on trial, and the hour of His judgment has come. Rather than live in terror that He is going to judge us based on our way of doing justice, we need to see that He is calling on us to testify on His behalf because He is the one being judged and our testimony has impact in how others choose to view Him.

God's star witness is Jesus Christ, the Son of God who became the Son of Man for many reasons. Because the war began over whose testimony in heaven could be trusted, that war has now shifted to play out here on this planet until its final resolution on the final day of full revelation of all things, all motives, all truth and the exposure of all lies. God must be vindicated, but only in ways consistent with kingdom principles, not by relying on intimidation or fear, for to rely on fear to gain security for eternity is a false hope. The presence of fear means that love has not yet won, and God will never settle for anything less that love alone. That is why Jesus came to live and die, not to pay off an imaginary debt created by sin, but to expose the real truth about God's design for creation and to win the respect and restore as many as are willing to their original place in His family.

Methods

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20)

Jesus settles for no less than intimacy. He respectfully stands alone outside and refuses to force His way on us. He waits patiently, never using His superior power to force us, for to force one's will is a violation – violence. Intimacy and violence are in total opposition to each other. Violence or even the threat of violence makes it impossible to trust, love or experience intimacy. Yet when we refuse to respond to His patient appeals to our heart, it remains impossible for us to enter the experience for which we were created – exquisite pleasure that can only be experienced through intimacy with God.

The entire book of Revelation highlights the contrast between the methods of God's kingdom and the kingdoms of this world, all modeled after Satan's design. Earthly powers rely on artificial rules, artificial enforcements, systems of rewards and threatened punishments to manipulate and control the masses. Economic measures saturate everything are are exploited to direct social affairs according to the desires of those in power. Fear, violence, shame, deception and threats are all standard fare for the kingdoms of this world to maintain control over the masses. But all of this is foreign to God's kingdom and He invites us to disconnect spiritually from all these counterfeits.

Revelation is a reality check for those willing to listen and realize that things are not as they appear. Revelation lets us know that power is not what we imagine it to be, and our use of power does not accomplish what God needs done to win over evil. Revelation is a radical call to radical discipleship, following a hero who chooses the symbol of an innocent, defenseless Lamb to convey the key attributes of how God overcomes. Clearly this is foolishness to most people, which is why for most it is nearly impossible to relate to this book in any coherent fashion.

But for those with ears to hear and a heart to listen, it is like the coded radio messages sent to sympathetic underground agents behind enemy lines, alerting them to what is about to come down against the enemy. And all who are humble enough to trust a Lamb to lead them to victory will be an undecipherable enigma to all who prefer the versions of God promoted by mainstream religion.

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.

Revelation Rumors - Take 1

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)

I have spent many months immersing myself in close study of the book of Revelation and as a result it has both been transformed in my thinking and has become very vibrant, exciting and alive to me.

After being invited to present what I am discovering at various venues recently, I feel that it would be beneficial to share more in writing what is coming to light for me. Far too long this book has languished under harsh views of interpreters and prognosticators who rely on its symbols and frightening language to distort the beautiful revelation of God's heart through His Son Jesus Christ. Yet if we took seriously the very first verse of this book and allowed it to be the primary criteria by which we read the rest of the book, this would not have to be the case.

This has been what has made the most difference in my recent study. A few years ago God challenged me to reexamine this book from a new perspective, from the perspective of heaven and of Jesus. The very first line here declares that this book is a revealing of Jesus, so it only makes sense that whatever I conclude in my reading of this book should in no way conflict with what Jesus reveals to us about God. To do so is to violate the premise set out in the very first phrase of the book.

When I went through this book for myself with new eyesight using this paradigm, I was and continue to be amazed at how incredibly beautiful and powerful this book is when shed of the dark views of God that permeates nearly all of religion. Rather than having to twist and force passages to fit together based on conflicting ideas, I now find a beautiful harmony and stunning insights all through this book. This has so energized my thinking and aroused my passion that at times I feel like I might explode if I cannot find someone with which to share what is pouring out of its pages.

I have hundreds of pages of notes I have accumulated over recent years from my studies, yet each time I come to look at any part of it again, it seems so fresh and new and I seldom take time to review what I have written in the past. Yet it is important to not lose sight of what has been discovered earlier, so I will make an attempt to collate things old and new (for me at least) to condense what I have found so far as well as to share the never-ceasing new revelations that keep pouring out nearly every day.

Two Keys

Full disclosure alert here. I am not a unbiased reader of Scripture. That is true for everyone, so maybe it would be more accurate to simply relate what my bias is presently. The last half of my life has been marked by radical changes in my perspective of what God is like and how He feels about sinners in particular. Having been raised in a very fundamentalist home and 'disciplined in the fear of the Lord' as some put it, my view of God was of a powerful deity up in the sky ever looking critically at my every move, thought and feeling with the sole purpose of finding any fault whereby I could be excluded from going to heaven. I know this sounds harsh, and my parents would have recoiled in horror if they had heard this was how I felt. Yet I have to be honest about this, even though at the time I would have been surprised had someone told this to me directly. Nevertheless, this view of a hyper-critical God constantly threatening to punish me for the slightest infraction of His laws, shaped my personality and character and made it impossible to love Him, even though that too was part of His demands.

It took many years and great persistence on the part of the Holy Spirit to begin to soften and challenge these rigid views of a terrifying God, keen to put me in flames of hell while I was desperate to be good enough to qualify for heaven. The real truth is that God is not at all like how I imagined Him to be growing up, and over many years through various events He began to make inroads into my thinking, challenging me to give Him permission to define Himself directly to me instead of clinging to what I had imagined growing up. The truth I later came to see in Romans 2 is truly the power that alone is effective to dismantle fear and dark views of God, contrary to what I thought for much of my life.

Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that the goodness [kindness] of God leads you to repentance? (Romans 2:4)

Let me disclose something else that may become obvious along the way. What I discovered to my amazement as God began unraveling years of distortions about Him that kept me afraid of Him and unable to believe in His love, was that nearly every religious word has been hijacked by religion and its definition supplanted with counterfeit ones. This shocked me at first, yet the more I saw how this was true the more determined I became to seek out the original definitions and replace the false ones in my head with the right ones. This has resulted in untold positive effects on every part of my life as I slowly have come to see light where before there had only been fear, threatenings and hopelessness.

Over time as I increased my awareness of the true meanings of words I was reading, I discovered that the Bible was coming alive for me and that passages I dreaded reading now conveyed entirely new and fresh insights that were often opposite to how I had heard them used all my life. So if I sound like a broken record (that's a dated term isn't it), constantly rehashing what words actually mean, you can know why. For if we don't understand the real meaning of the words we are using, it will be impossible to know the truth that can set us free from fear, which is one major reason Jesus came to save us.

So I start with a fresh definition of the word repentance. I used to imagine it was something like groveling in guilt or something along that line. Then I learned it simply means to change the way I think. That's it. To repent simply means to perceive reality very differently than how I used to see it. But the kicker here is very opposite to what I long assumed growing up, for the primary motivations used to try to get me to conform to the law, keep the rules, be a good boy, etc., were threats of punishment, fear or inflicted suffering. So imagine my surprise when the true message of this verse finally struck me as odd because it was so opposite of what I had always assumed.

It is God's kindness, not threats of punishment or enticements of rewards, that alone is effective to get anyone to change the way they think, especially about God and His disposition towards them. This is key when coming to a study of the book of Revelation. For if we cling to views that this book is about an angry God running out of patience and unleashing angry outbursts and harsh punishments against recalcitrant sinners, it will be impossible to glimpse the truth that this is in fact a revelation of Jesus Christ. Anything that deviates from this violates the very first line of the book and cannot be trusted.

What I have come to see is that when a person begins to read this book, they must not overlook the two keys waiting at the entrance that empowers one to unlock everything else in the book. If we don't pick up the keys and keep them close, we can't expect to make sense of anything else here. So next time we will look more closely at what constitutes these two keys.