Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.
We’ve spent 21 episodes on the Book of Revelation. Let’s review and ask, “What have we learned?”
I suggest four lessons.
The first lesson: Revelation tells us what to expect of the church and the world.
When Jesus sent messages to the seven churches in Asia, five were rebuked for being spiritually dead, or for losing their first love, or for tolerating evil teachers. Only two were praised.
I wonder what Jesus’ message would be for the churches you and I attend? I don’t have prophetic gifts to discern his rebuke or praise for us. But Revelation warns me: my church might get some important things wrong, and my comfortable middle class denomination might be in line for Christ’s criticism.
Jesus warned the churches of persecution and martyrdom. Revelation develops these themes as God-hating rulers and false prophets and antichrists lead the world astray, attempt to abolish Christianity, and tempt the faithful to despair.
What is Jesus’ message for today? I think Revelation says my brief life of peace and freedom in western civilization is an exception to the historical norm. The norm is that Christians everywhere should expect to be hated, rejected, persecuted, and martyred.
My second takeaway from the Book of Revelation? Apart from God’s direct intervention, the world is broken beyond repair. Unfixable.
History records many efforts to fix the unfixable. Communism fixes the economic system. Democracy fixes the politics. Strong-man dictatorships create security by suppressing freedoms and throwing dissenters into prison. Philosophers from Plato to Thomas More created recipes for utopia. But in Revelation, all the politics and economics and religions and utopian visions end in human violence and the judgment of God.
Should we despair? No! Jesus said of a woman, “She did what she could” (Mark 14:8). That is the motivation for Christian effort. We do what we can, as Christ did when he was a carpenter and itinerant preacher. He loved those he interacted with, and he suffered religious and political persecution. At the end, he left it all with God. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
My third take on the Book of Revelation is the huge disconnect between what is happening on earth and what is happening in heaven. On earth, churches are in a mess, angels deliver plagues and disasters, the devil installs his rulers and religions, and believers are martyred.
Meanwhile, heaven is a concert of praise to God. There the lamb is planning a revolution to tear down the world systems and build a new system that works.
And my last take away from the Book of Revelation? The story has a happy ending. We look forward to the great wedding feast of the lamb . . . to a world at peace . . . to a tree of life that gives healing to the nations
Let’s pray.
Our father, we come to you in the joys and sorrows of life on earth, in the pain and promise of our life in church, in despair and hope of what tomorrow may bring.
Christ is our example. With him we celebrate you, our father in heaven. With him we sometimes cry, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Now, as the Book of Revelation ends, we hear the spirit and the bride say, “Come”. We hear your invitation, “Let the one who is thirsty drink freely of the water of life.”
Yes, Lord, we drink. May your river quench our thirst and give us life, both now and forever.
Amen.
I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.
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