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JOHN'S REVELATION

by Gordon L. Schnee



FOREWORD





REVELATION: THE SKELETON IN OUR CLOSET



A Look at the Face of John







For nearly two thousand years the Christian church has been stuck with a

skeleton in its closet. The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John, known as

Revelation, is the last book in the Christian Bible and over the years many

would just as soon it had been chopped off.



Skeletons can be embarrassing, especially if one is not certain who it used to

be or how it got in your closet. We want to know what the story might be

behind that skeleton. What can it tell us?



Ordinarily, when a skull is found with no identifying marks such as dental

records, and when there is enough reason to find out whom the person used to

be, a very skilled person may go about reconstructing what the person may have

looked like. Sinew and muscle, and finally skin are added to the bones of the

skull. Then pictures of the reconstructed features can be circulated and we

can begin to get some answers.



We don't know whom John was. We know only that someone who signed his name

"John" wrote Revelation. The book itself is his skeleton, and by itself, has

told us very little. Lacking the face of John to look upon, we and the others

who live in our neighborhood have guessed much of the story surrounding his

remains and have imagined a great deal more.



And it is our vivid imaginings about this skeleton which have caused many

church leaders since the early days of the church to want to dispose of

Revelation, quietly bury it in the back yard.



The kids are running around the neighborhood circulating the story that it is

the skeleton of a famous pirate, or that it died of plague, and may still

carry the disease. We have heard a rumbling from the Joneses that perhaps our

house should be burned down, or at least fumigated, just in case.



Get the shovel!



It is now too late, of course, to bury the thing. The press has got hold of

the story and we are stuck with trying to make sense of it. Get the bones to

the proper scientists and see what they can make of it.



The surprising fact is that the scientists have had the skeleton for almost a

century now, and have done some very amazing work. But the neighborhood has

heard very little about it. It is announced from time to time that work is in

progress and that we are learning some intersting things.



Every so often, a scientist will publish his or her findings, all carefully

documented and annotated so that the other scientists will be impressed with

the validity of their work. Certain of them will review it and find one or two

points to pick apart, and a great debate will have begun.



The neighbor who tries to read the reports about the skeleton can't make heads

or tails of it because of its scientific terminology and its careful, precise

wording. He lays it down very gently on the shelf and goes back home to enjoy

more of the fiction about the skeleton. That is something he can understand.

That is INTERESTING.



How effective it would be, now that so much work has been done, if they would

just circulate a picture of John's face, along with some of the findings. Then

all of us neighbors might begin to know some of the true story.



It is a human skeleton. It was a person once with loves and dramas, a life and

a purpose. If we could see his face, we could stop focusing on the Halloween

and find the hallowed.



But do you know? Even the scientists haven't seen a picture of John's face.

Oh, they have done the work, taken all together. But that is the trouble. It

isn't all together. In this report is a great nose. In that book is a

wonderful chin. And the eyes! Over there.



That is the task of this book. Piece by piece we will find the face of John.

Once we have it, we'll gaze at those features as we hear the other parts of

the story that the scientists have unearthed. But we will not do so with

scientific detachment.



For this was a brother in Christ who suffered for his faithfulness. We will

never know what his sacrifices were, but we can come closer to an

understanding and feel love and gratitude once he is something more than a

pile of bones to be catalogued and studied.



As John becomes more real to us as a person we can begin to understand his

message in a new light, the light of his life and times.



In the process we will begin to know some of what John meant for us to

understand from the clues he left behind. As understanding of the man and the

message increase together, for the first time we begin to see a framework for

the work he produced. From the first word of Revelation to the last, every

thought and idea was purposely planned and skillfully presented.



As we can know it at this point, the true story of John and what was revealed

to him has very little resemblance to any of the frenzied imaginings of the

neighborhood.



It's much more fascinating than that, and the neighborhood deserves to know.









INTRODUCTION



The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John is widely read, for a wide range

of reasons. But books about the Revelation, although numberless, have limited

readership, with the exception of one type. 



If you have credibility with a certain group of Christians, and claim to have

discovered the hidden true meaning of Revelation, and have deciphered the

calendar of events, and most important, if that calendar refers to the present

day and conclusively shows we are SOON going to experience the Final Reckoning

- why, then you have readers. You have millions of them.



You just don't have the truth.



The time and energy of millions of well-meaning Christians is wasted by trying

to find out who the false prophet is, and where the beast is. A favorite

activity of this beast is setting up problems for us to try to solve for which

there is no answer. Trying to figure out which prominent world figure is the

beast and who "out there" might be the false prophet is a perfect example of

playing a game with no end.



Another kind of book about Revelation that gets published is the scholarly

work which has a limited readership of scholars and hobbyists. This is a much

smaller group than the first, but is large enough for certain kinds of

publishers. These books usually have found a certain piece of the truth. Taken

together, they shed a lot of light and are, in my opinion, tremendously

important.



They are also really boring to most people.



As a Revelation hobbyist, I have read many of each type of book about

Revelation over the last thirty years, and have received something from each

of them. But, as I mentioned in the forword, the two types of books have

little or nothing to do with one another.



The popular books deal with fantastic theories and sensational

interpretations. The authors typically know little of what scholastic Biblical

study has produced, and care less. These Revelation interpreters generally

view scientific work as anti-faith.



The scholars, on their part, disdain the fervor of the interpreters. This

seriously limits those who will read their work. Indeed, I see little

indication that they care much about wide readership. They address their

colleagues mainly.



But much more serious than limiting their readership, by leaving the human

emotion and motivation out of their quest for truth, they seriously limit the

amount of truth they can find.



This is not a book about The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John. It is a book

about John, what we learn about him from his work and what we can learn about

his message from him once he becomes clearer to us.



As a salesman-turned-caseworker-turned United Methodist Minister, I have been

preoccupied all of my adult life with people and what motivates them. It's

natural, then, that my study of the Revelation has always included the

question, "What exactly is John saying, and why has he said it just this way?"



In the process of scoping out John, we will come to some pretty fresh insights

about what it was he was doing and why; what he was trying to communicate. 



Perhaps you will be surprised to know some of the things that get said in

Revelation, and almost always are missed. One fascinating example is that

eternal damnation is denied. Hell is thrown into the lake of fire.



There are also ideas, powerful elements of our cultural mass mind, which are

attributed to Revelation. Many of these ideas, if you look carefully, really

aren't there at all. The last battle, the final confrontation between good and

evil, is a good example of this. It just never takes place!



So, what have I found the Revelation to be after all these years of hobbyist

study? It is the most practical and inspiring manual I have seen on how to

survive in a world that appears to be overwhelmingly evil, with my faith not

only intact, but made stronger.



Most who have glimpsed Glory are faced with the choice of either denying the

reality of the world around them, or fortifying against it. There is a third

way, demonstrated by Jesus and many of our true saints. In Revelation, this

way is called "overcoming." This is a way which you can learn.



You can learn this way from a proper understanding of how to use the

Revelation. If you would care to gain such a manual for yourself, I invite you

to read the following summary of what had been "revealed" to me.



Let me underscore: this little book which you hold is not the manual for

overcoming. The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John is the manual. The

following can help you understand the manual and know how to use it.



If you wish.

CHAPTER ONE



A pastor got arrested.







In the earliest days of the Christian church, there lived a man named John.

This was not the one called John the Baptist. He died before Jesus was

crucified. Almost certainly he was not the Apostle named John, the youngest

apostle, the one Jesus loved most. That one left a different trail of ministry

which culminated in a very different book, The Gospel of John.



All that we know about "our" John is that sometime between twenty and fifty

years after Jesus was crucified, maybe even later, John was the pastor of

seven congregations of the early Christian church.



These congregations were begun through the ministry of Paul, a man who was a

Roman citizen. Paul was a Jew who spent his early adulthood searching out

Christians and dealing with them. Some of them were killed.



Jesus appeared to Paul one day, and after a few years of study and meditation,

Paul began preaching about Jesus. Very quickly, he took the message beyond the

Jewish people to the people of his wider world, bringing the message of the

good news of Christ to the world beyond Judaism.



Paul would go to an area, find a place to stay, usually with a friendly member

of the local synagogue, and then preach about the Risen Lord. He began a

church in Ephesus this way. Other churches around Ephesus quickly sprang up,

begun by Paul or through his ministry. If you look at chapters two and three

of Revelation, you will see that they consist of letters to seven churches;

the churches at Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and

Laodicea. In the back section of most Bibles is a set of maps. On one of those

maps you will find the places where those churches were. Starting with

Ephesus, they proceed in a loop, leading back to Ephesus.



We'd call this a circuit, today.



We know that John grew up in the Jewish faith, in a world governed temporally

by Rome. His mind was totally occupied by those words which comprised Jewish

scripture, the Law, the history, the prophets. His writing contains hundreds

of references to those works. No recent convert could have come by the

natural, automatic use of those scriptures that he evidences in the

Revelation. Those were ideas and images he grew up with.



But he grew up in a Roman world, where the culture was of Greece, what we call

Hellenistic. He wrote in Greek. He was fully familiar with the current

theories of his time about how creation was held together; what we would call

science today.



Nor could he have been a very young man. In addition to the kind of knowledge

all well educated Jewish boys got, he seems to have been to "graduate school."

In his portrayal of what had been revealed to him, he evidences the deep

knowledge and thought processes of the educated mystic and the scribe. These

things are not just learned by the brain. They must be absorbed by the whole

being, over time, to finally manifest as knowledge.



And we can know, if we but look, that this pastor was very much influenced by

the Apostle Paul. His ideas and messages in Revelation are restatement and

amplification of much of what Paul left us in a few surviving letters and in

his theological work, Romans.





Paul, as I said earlier, would start churches and then move on. At some point,

John became the pastor of one group of these early congregations of the

Christian church.



We don't know when he first came to know Christ, as we do with Paul. We don't

have tales of his trials and tribulations, except as they may be referred to

briefly in the letters in Revelation.



One or two of his congregations were under attack from members of nearby

synagogues. In another one or two congregations, he had to counter harmful

watering-down (adulterating) influences from within the groups. One

congregation was active, strong in mind and spirit, but losing its heart - the

love it had at the beginning. One was going through the motions, playing it

safe while acting the faithful congregation. It was accused of being luke -

warm, the worst possible thing to be. And one, the least of the groups,

seemingly, was standing fast; remaining faithful, and enduring patiently all

that the world was able to throw at them.



He seems to have had his hands full. I can't keep up with the problems and

blind-side blows of one! And he had seven churches.



But he wasn't without resource.



The earliest Christians, especially the leaders, seemed to have been in very

close touch with Christ. We get powerful glimpses in just casual comments made

be Paul and others in the New Testament; comments about being guided, taught,

stopped from doing certain things, and loved.



So John, an early Christian leader, received guidance from Christ in his day-

to-day ministry. This was a contact that was very tangible; there was nothing

tentative or doubtful about it. And it got him in trouble.



At the beginning of his book, he states that he was in prison for the word of

God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Perhaps I should mention now how 

serious the people of John's culture took testimony. Think of it in the court

room rather than the religious sense. The ancient but living tradition of the

Hebrews was that two witnesses testifying could condemn a person to death.

Testifying was serious. False testimony was equal to murder. And please

remember the significance of two witnesses.



When John testified that Jesus witnessed to him about something, it was just

as real as if he had witnessed an armed robbery. Only in this case, the

robber's uncle was the judge, and his cousins were the jury. But those details

didn't change what he saw!



So, John was arrested. We don't know for certain what the exact charge was,

but the most likely charge was that he spoke for a new religion. You see, at a

certain point in time, Rome drew a line in the sand of religious freedom.





Roman law declared that there was to be freedom of religion for all of the

religions that were already practiced in the Empire, but there could be no new

religions. After all, if new peoples being incorporated into the Empire

couldn't find something they liked in the hundreds of religions already

present...



How this affected John, and all early Christians, was that at first the

Christians were all Jews, and Christianity was legally a branch of Judaism. It

was protected. But very quickly, non-Jews were brought into the faith, and

eventually it was decided by the church leaders that new Christians didn't

have to become Jewish first.



You can begin to see the problem. But Rome wouldn't have ever noticed such

fine distinctions if certain members of the Jewish establishment hadn't blown

the whistle. The letters to two of the churches mention that they are having

trouble with nearby synagogues, and this was probably the issue.



So, this is all that we can say about John to this point. He was a pastor of

seven Christian churches that formed a circuit in Asia Minor. He was well

educated, brought up within the Jewish faith, and trained further in Jewish

occult disciplines; things that today we would call meditation, numerology,

and metaphysics.



Also, he was probably in prison for working to start a new religion.



Some of these "educated guesses" about John come from the history of the time,

but most are deduced from his own words in the Revelation. We have just begun

to get acquainted with this most important early Christian leader. Now, we

will look at what happened to him while he was in prison on the Island of

Patmos.





CHAPTER TWO



A prisoner saw a vision.





In the early church, Saturday was still the Sabbath, and Sunday was the Lord's

Day, the day Christ arose. It was on a Sunday that John, in prison, was

meditating. He was "in the spirit." 



Most people these days don't meditate, so we'll spend some time now trying to

help you understand some things about being in the spirit. Those of you who do

meditate can skip, but you may find that this explanation helps you be in

touch with the Revelation in a new kind of way.



To an observer, those who are meditating appear to be doing nothing. A few,

such as dervishes, use motion to be in the spirit, but most are simply sitting

or lying very still. Their eyes may be closed or open and staring. In either

case, they seem to be asleep or unconscious.



They are not asleep.



Well, speaking personally, sometimes when I am tired (shouldn't meditate when

you are tired) I fall asleep while meditating. If you were watching me, you

would know when that happens. My breathing changes from deep and silent to

heavy and (often) snoring.



What is the difference between sleep and ordinary wakefulness? Two or three

things come to mind. My experiences while asleep have little or nothing to do

with what is going on around me at the present moment, with the exception of

noises that get incorporated into a dream, and things like that. Wakefulness

is centered on what is happening in the here and now. If we dwell on the past

or daydream of a future or alternate reality, we are not said to be fully

awake.



Further, my waking experiences follow one another in time and space, with no

major breaks from one experience to a totally different one. Such major breaks

happen in dreams all the time. At least those which we can remember. That is

the second difference.



And our ability to remember is the third and most important difference between

waking and sleeping, when it comes to understanding Revelation. Even those who

remember dreams in great detail are only remembering a very small percentage

of their dreams. What we call wakefulness involves memory of most of what has

happened to us, on some level or another.



People in deep meditation, in the spirit, are neither asleep or what we call

normally awake. In one way of thinking, they are beyond awake, much more

conscious and aware than we are in our normal waking state. In another way of

considering, it can be said that a person who is in the spirit has combined

the states of sleep and wakefulness, but that doesn't mean "groggy." It means

that one can "know" as we do when asleep, but in a conscious, controlled and

remembered way.



How do we "know" while sleeping?





Here is a common experience. Perhaps you have had it. You wake up and remember

a dream in which one or more people in it were people you had never met. You

remember in the dream that you did know them - knew everything about them, as

though you had been lifelong friends. You were, depending upon the dream,

usually very comfortable around them, and felt at home with them. Sometimes

upon awaking, you may have felt a great sense of loss because you no longer

remembered all about them, you just remembered that in the dream, you did!



That sense of how completely we KNEW is what we are after here. From your own

experience, or at least from experience very common to many whom you know, we

can get a glimpse of prophetic knowing, or vision.



So, when a person, John for example, says that he saw a vision, it is much,

much more than a picture of something. It is a complete knowing of something.

And since this experience was not a dream, he did not have to "wake up." His

experience of the vision was continuous with his other surroundings, and in

sequence with his other waking experiences. In short, after the vision, HE DID

NOT FORGET IT.



Now that we know a little about John, who he was and what some of his

abilities and responsibilities were; and now that we know something of what it

meant that he "saw a vision," we can take a look at what the vision was, and

the information that came along with it.





CHAPTER THREE



What did he "see?"





If nothing else has come through to you from these words so far, I hope you

have at least begun to think of John as a real person. A man with a mind, with

eyes, and with a limited human viewpoint. Someone like you and me. I think

when a real person sees something, whether it is a physical object or person,

or a metaphysical vision, there are certain characteristics about us as

observers that determine what we are able to see.



When we describe what we have seen, there is a certain imprint which is left

upon our description which tells the careful listener, "Yes, this was really

seen." When, on the other hand, we describe something we have not actually

seen, whether we do it for purposes of deception or for illustration, what we

describe begins to lose that imprint of visual authenticity.



Here is an example. Sometimes in a court proceeding a witness will testify to

something that did not really happen. It is the attorney's job to cross

examine that testimony to see if it hangs together. If, upon close

questioning, it is found that what is described would have been too far away

for the observer to have seen certain details which were attested to, or if

certain details described couldn't have been seen at the same time, the

testimony is shown to be false.



What I would like you to accept as a temporary working hypothesis (the

redundancy here is for emphasis) is that most of the scenes and dramas    

described by John were not part of his vision. They lack the imprint of visual

authenticity which belongs to descriptions of those things which were actually

SEEN.



Am I saying that John was lying? Absolutely not. I am tendering the idea that

most of the scenes and dramas described by him were literary visions, devices

for communicating very difficult ideas and realities.



But not all of them. I think John most definitely did see a vision, and from

that powerful, knowledge-filled vision flowed the book of the Revelation. 



I am convinced from 20 years of fairly intensive and informed amateur study

that what John saw is totally described in a few verses of Revelation, chapter

one. Here it is, as translated in the New International Version of the Bible.

All scripture quotations in this book will be from that translation.





     And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the

     lampstands was someone "like a son of man," dressed in a robe

     reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest.

     His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and and

     his eyes were like a blazing fire. His feet were like bronze

     glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing

     waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his

     mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun

     shining in all its brilliance.







This is an image which will stand up against any amount of examination. We can

actually visualize every detail of the described being. In fact, the more

exacting we are in visualizing this person, the more real he becomes. Take a

detail like his feet or his voice, imagine how the reality must have been to

have been described in such a way. Do this with all of the details, and an

amazing picture begins to appear in our minds. The only detail which stretches

our imagination at all is the sword coming out of his mouth, but in this day

of Edward Scisorhands and other fantastic images, even this can be visualized,

incredible as the picture may be.



This quality of becoming visually clearer under close scrutiny is what I

earlier called visual authenticity.



As we proceed with our search into whom John was and what he was trying to

communicate to us, I will invite you to do this same exercise with subsequent

descriptions. You will find that the images which follow this first one,

instead of becoming visually clearer under your examination, will become

confused. But as this confusion of image is taking place, we will begin to

receive information. 



It is my contention that all subsequent "visions" in Revelation do not have

visual authenticity. They possess great authenticity of another kind.



And by their fruit we will know them. These images are devices through which

John can give us information that is almost impossible to communicate, or

dangerous in his day to talk about. The more closely we examine this book in

such a way, the more information we receive.



And what we receive is not disconnected, one insight from another, but totally

integrated. What on the surface appears to be a frightening hodge-podge of

fantastic visions and statements, slowly transforms into a beautiful,

consistent picture of how God intends us to respond to the challenges of

living in this world.



Almost incidentally, as we give the Revelation our most intense

scrutiny, we begin to develop a feel for recognizing writing which has been

inspired by the Holy Spirit. Once we have seen and known such here, you'll

find that it will be quite easy to see it (the mark of the Holy Spirit)

elsewhere. This ability alone justifies the time and effort which will be

required to finish this exercise of cross examining Revelation and becoming

acquainted with John and the message he passed on.



But I hope that you will also, as I have, find it to be a lot of fun.









CHAPTER FOUR



What did he hear?







There was only one piece of information denied us as we looked at the vision

through John's eyes. Who or what was he looking at? We are given a very

mysterious clue when he says that the one he saw was "like a son of man." "Son

of man" was what Jesus was called, and in this chapter we will find that part

of the vision's self description certainly sounds like it is referring to

Jesus. But why not "like THE son of man?" "A" son of man implies that there

are more than one. Perhaps John is being sloppy? Don't bet on it.



One of the things we will learn about John is that he was definitely not

sloppy. He never used a word randomly, and when he causes us to stop and

think, we can be certain he meant to do it. So, "Who was it?" should be on our

list of points to ponder as we continue on through the Revelation.



Before John saw anything of the vision, he heard a voice behind him. Here is

what it said.



     Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches:

     to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and

     Laodicea.



At this point John turned and saw what was described in the last chapter. Then

the voice continued.



     Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living

     One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I

     hold the keys of death and Hades.



     Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will

     take place later. The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in

     my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The

     seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven

     lampstands are the seven churches.



Following these words is the dictation of the seven letters to the seven

churches. These letters are chapters two and three of the Revelation. I will

not print them into the text of this book as I have the words above. At some

point, you are going to want to start checking me out with your own text of

Revelation, and this is a good time to find a Bible if you don't already have

one at hand.



I won't be dealing with the letters at this point of the study, except in a

very general way, but it will be good for you to know what is in them if you

don't already. So you may want to read chapters two and three of Revelation

now.



So, the words printed above plus the seven letters is, according to my

hypothesis, what John actually heard when he saw the vision on the Lord's day.

You may ask, "What about the rest of the book? Did he just make it up?"



Perhaps, but if he did, it was inspired by the One we call the Holy Spirit.



Remember I said in the previous chapter that things seen in a vision carry

with them certain knowledge. The same thing is true for the words of the

vision. All that is experienced - words and pictures - bring such a wealth of

information, that in order to communicate faithfully and completely what was

received, the same ground must be covered many times, each pass communicating a

different level of the information that was instantly understood by the one who

had the vision.



In three short chapters, what John saw and heard could be described. But to

share what he knew afterwards from the vision, took John eighteen more

chapters!



And that brings us back to John, whom we are trying to get to know. How can we

understand very well what he was trying to tell us if we don't keep "looking"

at him?



Have you ever tried to talk to someone who won't look at you? Pretty

frustrating, isn't it? And if you are trying to say something important, you

end up convinced that you aren't communicating at all. If you know the person

well, you might even take hold of their shoulders and say, "Listen to me!"



But John can't do that. And we do keep ignoring him. We are image-oriented

creatures, and the images John presents to us are so vivid, we center on them

and ignore his words. And before long, we entirely forget about John.



And we all do this; scholars, hobbyists and casual readers alike.



If this were a novel about John, we would be identifying with him, thinking

about his situation, wondering what was going to happen to him next. Yes, if

it were a well written novel, our minds would be filled with images, but John

would be in them.



That is what I am suggesting here, that we keep John in the picture. If we can

do so, we will be immensely more able to understand what he tried to tell us.

As a beginning step to that understanding, we will PAY MORE ATTENTION to what

his words are saying, instead of staring out the window, daydreaming about the

images he presents to us. But beyond that, as we look at John, we may just

begin to get a sense of the spirit behind his words and images. Then we might

begin to justifiably think we are beginning to understand his message.



Daydreaming? Well, perhaps you don't, but a lot of us do. That is why I put

the chapter on what John saw before the chapter on what John heard, even

though he heard the voice before he saw anything. Most of us center on the

image and have to force ourselves to pay attention to what is being said.

We'll have to force ourselves to attend very closely John's words if we are to

understand Revelation.



As you were reading the letters to the seven churches, you might have noticed

that there are similarities in each of them. Christ points out what they may have

been doing right and what they might have been doing wrong. Sometimes other

groups are mentioned - either internal or external to the church. And in each

letter, a reward is named for those who "overcome."





It will pay you to note carefully what behaviors have been praised. Patience

and endurance are noted in the letters as very praiseworthy. Remember this.

You may want to note down all of the transgressions. While you are at it, note

the suggestions given, what is being praised, and what is promised.



If you are paying attention, you may note the two most offensive things

mentioned. How do we tell which are most offensive? Two churches are

threatened with being "extinguished" for their transgressions. What are the

crimes? Ephesus has lost the love with which it began its ministry, and

Laodicia has become lukewarm.



Pay further attention to how things are said. The reward offered to those who

overcome in Smyrna is that they will not be hurt by the second death. Please

note that it does not say they will not experience it, just that it won't hurt

them. Most of us read that promise to say that those who overcome will escape

the second death experience, whatever it turns out to be. In making scores of

similar wrong assumptions we move away, a step at a time, from what John was

trying to tell us.



Be tough. Insist on seeing and hearing ONLY what is there to understand, and try

to see and hear ALL that is there. I will try to help.



Everything that needed to be communicated to us was included in the first

three chapters of Revelation. The letters contain all of the details.

All of these details from the seven letters are amplified, illustrated and

defined as Revelation unfolds, but we must approach the remainder of this

inspired writing with open minds, else we waste our time and the Lord's good

work.









CHAPTER FIVE



What did he Know?





This chapter is really the introduction to the rest of the book of Revelation.

Here I will recap some thoughts that have been presented in each chapter so

far, and will summarize that which is to come. But the validity of what I am

presenting as a new understanding of Revelation based upon a disciplined and

steady look at John, rests upon what is in this chapter.



Who was John? He was a pastor of a group of churches in the very early days of

the Christian movement. He was a person educated in both the Jewish and

Hellenistic disciplines, a gifted writer. And (here is a vital point) he was a

prophet in the traditional Jewish sense; but a prophet who did not use the

ancient formula, "Thus says The Lord!"



Rather, he used the style of the most recent form of written prophecy of his

time, apocryphal writing. You will find this style in the "between testament"

writings found in some Bibles, called the Apocrypha. You will find it also in

the Book of Daniel.



Apocryphal writings deal with the end of the world, and use a lot of "hidden"

language, the meaning of which is obvious to the group of readers to whom it

is addressed. It is a style of writing, just as the murder mystery and science

fiction are today. In fact, if you think of Revelation as a sort of

combination murder mystery and science fiction story, you'll be very close to 

understanding what literary form John chose to try to communicate what he was

wanting to say to us.



He had an immense task to undertake. He had to try to help you and me

understand what he knew as a result of having received the vision and message. 

He had to use the literary tools at his disposal two thousand years ago. What

he accomplished is a testimony to his skill, and is proof that the Holy Spirit

was with him as he worked.



Let me try to give you some sense of what he was up against.



You have just seen the best basketball game of your life. It wasn't televised,

so you know anyone who wasn't there will not have even seen clips of it. Your

friend asks you how the game was. How do you respond?



You can just say, "That was the best game I have ever seen!" But that doesn't

really tell your friend much. Some people say that after every game they see,

or movie, or whatever. At any rate, if you give such a short report, your

friend will have to fill in a lot of blanks in your report from her own

experience. Rather than communicating your experience, you wind up repeating

one of hers.



Or, you can give her a very long and detailed account of the game, the

theories behind the strategies, the gambles that paid off and the ones that

didn't. By the end of your report of the first quarter, she will be asleep or

off seeing someone else.



How can we effectively communicate the excitement and depth of such a thing?

It almost has to be dramatic.



Through gestures, animated narrative, and a liberal use of drama and creative

license, we can begin to personally recount the most exciting game in the

world with some accuracy. Of course, if we had the use of video film

highlights to help make our report, that would be even better.



John didn't have television or cinema, but he did have an inspired imagination

coupled with great writing skill. He had a "game" with generally accepted

rules, which was the literary genre of apocalypse. This genre was rich with

ideas and pictures which were ready to invoke and transform.



Let's get back to our greatest basketball game. In recounting the game, we get

to a point where during a slam dunk, something so different happened that it

totally redefined that aspect of the game. Now, in telling the story of the

game, we don't have to explain what a slam dunk is. That is known. And we don't

have to describe what a pass is. That is known too. But what happened when,

out of inspiration or design, the first two players in the game COMBINED a

pass an a slam dunk? We had to invent a new term.



Revelation is full of such things. Many of John's original readers were fully

aware of the meanings of the terms he used. When he combined two which had

formerly been unrelated, they knew instantly what he had accomplished by it. 



What did John know? What was the experience which he was challenged/charged

with passing along to us in a form that would do it justice?



There were three aspect to it. The first two are sequential and in time. They

will be easy to present to you. The third will be a little challenging.



First,the vision itself was a moment of transcendence for John. Remember that a

moment of transcendence is eternal. It passes all boundaries of time and

space. When John experienced the vision, the whole universe was rearranged for

him, and the center of the universe as now experienced, was the Creator.



How do I know this? I have read chapters four and five of Revelation.



The second aspect of what John "knew" that he had to communicate to us, was

what happened during the dictation of the seven letters. His awareness was

torn away from the perfection of God's creation, to the imperfections of what

humans have done with it. Those were HIS churches that were being addressed!



It is a little bit like what happens when you have just sent the kids off to

school, turned off your telephone, and begun your morning time of quiet

meditation. Just as your spirit has become peaceful, and you begin to

experience that inner calm which is so wonderful, the kids come bursting

through the door with a loud tale about the neighborhood bully.



That is a LITTLE BIT like what happened to John. John set out to have a time

of quiet devotion, and his experience was interrupted by prophetic vision. He

was not experiencing a moment of peace and unity. He was experiencing peace

and unity itself! When the seven letters "burst through the door," peace and

unity did not leave, even though his awareness was drawn to the problems of

the world.





This continued presence of the Holy in the worst of the world's experiences is

the third aspect of what John had to communicate. This was his challenge: to

let you and I know that in the midst of the worst that the world can dish out

to us, God's perfect creation is still present, real, and available to us.





That was what he knew.



He had heard such before. He had considered it. He had very much wanted to

believe it. Wouldn't you? Don't you?



But now he KNEW!



Come along. Let's see how John tried to communicate this new assurance to you

and to me. Let's see how successful he was.







CHAPTER SIX



The perfect creation he experienced.







As I mentioned in the previous chapter, when John saw the vision, creation was

rearranged for him. A common, almost universal experience among those who

meditate is the non-existence of polarity during deep meditation. I have

experienced this wonderful state, and if you read any of the literature about

it, you will see countless references to unity, universal love, and other

terms which fail to adequately describe this state to those who haven't yet

experienced it.



John experienced all of creation as a unified whole, with God at the center,

the forces, or agents of creation close by, and humans gathered around. He saw

that all human experience is centered upon God, as experienced through

creation. He experienced Christ as being present with God, commanding the

forces of creation, and being among humans simultaneously. This is how I read

what is written in chapters four and five of Revelation.



This is not the understanding of these chapters that is common to either

scholars or fundamentalist calendarizers. But I am asking you to see it this

way. Why? Because it does something that no other understanding I have seen

does. It helps Revelation make sense. It unifies ALL of Revelation.



On the outside chance that I might be correct in my interpretation, wouldn't

it be worth putting your current understanding of Revelation on the shelf for

just a while to try this one on? If it doesn't work for you after you have

gone through the exercise, you have lost nothing but a little time and effort.

But if, after spending some time with this concept, you find that this book,

this gift of the Holy Spirit, begins to speak to you in new ways which fill

you with hope and joy...What a return for that investment!



For those of you who find details boring, you could skip the rest of this

chapter. I have outlined above all that you need to understand about what begins

to happen in chapter seven of this study, and in chapter six of Revelation. For

the rest of you, here we go.



In chapters four and five, John describes a scene which right away is seen to

be much more complex than his vision in chapter one. What we will do here is

pay very close attention to what he is describing, and how. We will see, first

a picture of what right relationships are among all parts of God's creation.

We will also notice that some details, when looked at very carefully, cannot

be exactly located in the scene. We will begin to see that this scene is

essentially different from the vision in chapter one.



I mentioned earlier that John would have to turn to drama to try to depict

what he experienced. Think of this section as a scene. On the stage are actors

and props. Let's note them.



The actors are dominated by the one in the center of the scene, seated on a

throne. Immediately around the throne, one to each side are four "living

creatures." Then around this tight grouping are twenty-four "elders" each of

whom is seated on his/her own throne. These are all of the actors who are

presented in chapter four.



If we were to do a diagram of where the actors are, we could draw a square in

the center of a circle, and then put a mark next to the square on each of its

four sides. Next we would space evenly twenty-four marks around the

circumference of the circle.



All of our actors that have been introduced so far are now on the diagram. The

one in the middle, the twenty-four circling the one in the middle, and the

four who stand between. These are all in spacial relationship to one another.



And right now, it will be important to locate yourself in the scene, for you

are not an observer in creation, you are part of it. As an actor in the

perfect creation, you are, of course, one of the twenty-four elders encircling

the one in the center and the four living creatures. They are the humans.



A few props are mentioned. There are seven lamps burning...somewhere, and a

sea of glass. Why "...somewhere"? Because they are hard to locate on our

diagram. They are in front of the throne. That isn't too specific. We can

arbitrarily choose one side of the square as the front, and group seven lamps

on that side. But is it inside or outside the four living creatures?



Since the living creatures are talked of as "in the center," I would have to

say that the lamps are outside the creatures, but we can't be certain. Hold on

to that uncertainty and compare it to the specificity you find in the vision

described in chapter one of Revelation.



And what do these lamps represent? We are told that they are the seven spirits

of God. They are the only things defined within this scene. I think

that fact is significant. All of the other characters and props are thought by

John to be self-explanatory to the informed reader. The seven spirits of God

may well be a new understanding he was wishing to communicate.



Then there is the sea of glass. It must be huge, here, because it is not a

pond, not a moat, but a sea. Later on, it is mentioned as a lake; a lake of

fire. But much will have happened by that time. At this point it is a sea,

which to me means that it is very large. I picture it as a floor to the whole

scene, and it is perfectly smooth, reflecting all that is above it. But we

can't know for certain, the way it is described. 



And there are lighting effects which are reflected by this giant mirror.

Picture it from the viewpoint of one of the humans in the scene. You are

sitting on a throne, part of a circle of thrones. In the center of the circle

is a large throne with a mighty one seated on it. His general color is green,

and a green aura emanates from him, to be reflected by the mirror-like surface

which is between you and him. Lightening flashes are coming from him and are

being reflected as well. Also between you and him you can see four other

mighty beings. Each looks a little different, but they are the same sort of

being. They each have six wings and are covered with eyes ALL over, front and

back, and all over the wings.



What, you say you have a little trouble visualizing them? There is a reason.

The details of the four living creatures are not visual, but informational.

You largely have to take my word for it at this point, but if you will agree

to do so, as an exercise, you may come to be convinced by your own experience

as we go on.



For now, just note that the eyes indicate that these creatures are not dumb

beasts, but have wisdom and perception which goes in all directions. What do

the wings represent, and why six of them? Wings, to the ancient mind, were the

most efficient and the fastest way of getting from one place to another. The

four living creatures, whoever or whatever they are, represent beings who are

not only sentient and wise, but very mobile.



Why do they have six wings? I suspect the answer to that has something to do

with the reason that the Jewish star has six points. I won't go into detail

now, but there are many sources that fill books with the symbolism of the two

triangles which comprise the Star of David. This symbolism would have been

part of what John had at his disposal in trying to tell us what he knew.



It is also important to note that these creatures are between you, on the edge

of the circle, and the One in the center. Shall we call that One God? Let's

do, even though that label isn't quite applied in Revelation.



Who or what are the four living creatures? Here again, at this point I ask you

to take my suggestion as a working hypothesis, because many clues to who/what

they are follow later in Revelation, and I want to pretty much take the

material as we come to it. But we can know what the details of the description

meant to John, an educated and metaphysically aware person of Greek culture

two thousand years ago.



To the ancient mind, four is the number of creation. There were thought to be

four basic elements which comprised all creation, earth, air, fire and water.

Most ancient cultures are in striking agreement on this. The cross with tails

denoting motion (swastika) comes from ancient Europe. The square is often seen

in South America as the symbol of the world, or creation. The circle with four

lines radiating from the center is the North American version. All of the

different versions incorporate the number four.



OK, enough yet? Can we at this point agree that these living creatures might

represent powers of creation? If so, what are we being told about our

relationship with God, creation, and one another?



Wait. First we need to introduce another character into the scene. The Lamb

appears standing in the center of the throne. Now right away, if we insist

that this is John's description of something he actually saw, we are in

trouble.



Was the lamb standing on God's lap? Possible, I suppose. Or is God kind of

squinched over to the side to make room for the lamb to stand there. Some

translations make matters worse by recording that the lamb was also among the

elders. So, where do you put the lamb on our diagram of the scene?



Also, what does he look like? Well a lamb, and one that perhaps has had its

throat slit, since it looked as though it had been slain. Also, it had seven

horns, which were instruments of power, but not immobile power, such as a

throne, but power which goes with you. And the seven eyes, we are told, are

the seven spirits of God sent into the world. 



Quite a picture, huh?



Who/what is the lamb?



We are told that he is the Root of David, the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

These terms usually refer to Jesus, among Christians. Now we have a choice to

make. Did John see a vision in which Jesus looked like a lamb with a horrible

wound, a lamb with gross deformities such as seven horns and seven eyes? Or

did he see a vision such as he described in Chapter one of Revelation, and

employ the imagery here, in chapters four and five, to communicate what he

learned from his vision?



Let's proceed on this last assumption. It makes things so much easier to

diagram, and if we will take the above notion as an hypothesis, then, and only

then, can we begin to get some meaning from the scene.



There is one final prop we must look at. There is a scroll in the right hand

of God. It is rolled up and sealed shut with not one, but seven seals. SOMEHOW

we know, even though it is rolled and sealed, that the scroll is written on

both front and back. This is an indication of how information is received

during visions, and that the scroll is a symbol, and each detail of it has

meaning.



Later on in Revelation there are references to the book of life. It is almost

certain that this scroll is that book. I don't know of many who would disagree

with this identification.



What is the significance of the scroll being written on front and back? Will

the meaning of the front and back writing have any similarities to the

creatures having eyes front and back? Perhaps.



Remember, we are considering the eternal, whole view of creation. That will

soon be contrasted with our normal, linearized experience of life. Consider

that time is an important factor in our normal experience of life. We think in

terms of past, present, and future. The writing on the front of the scroll may

be what is before us in time, and the writing on the back may be what is

behind us in time.



I am not inventing this observance of the importance of temporal sequence to

John. In chapter 1, verse 4, John describes God as "him who is, and who was,

and who is to come." In chapter seventeen, the scarlet beast with seven heads

and ten horns is described as "once was, now is not, and will come up out of

the abyss and go to his destruction. The beast does not exist in the present.



This is typical of the commentaries hidden in the details of Revelation. But

here it is relevant as evidence of John's preoccupation with the past and the

future, the front and back of the scroll.



There are two more questions we must try to answer in this chapter. What is

the relationship of humans - creation - and creator? Looking at the

relationships that exist in the scene of Revelation four and five will require

us to look again at the actors in the scene. And what is the relationship of

this scene itself to the rest of Revelation? The key to the answer of this

question is the activity surrounding the scroll.



We will begin at the center of the scene. We call the one on the throne God.

That one is never named, but God, the creator is referred to countless times

in Revelation. The ancient Hebrews would not utter aloud their name for God,

but used a verbal code. It is very much in character for John to mention the

one on the throne in the center of heaven, and not name that one.



Let's go next to the humans in the picture. Are there only twenty-four people

in heaven? These who are around the throne of God represent all of us in two

ways. First, they are elders, meaning, I think, that when we are in this

correct relationship with God and creation, we have the qualities of elders;

having crown (title) and throne (power) of our own.



Please note where our power is. A throne which is not mobile. When we leave

it, we lose power. The title, or identity, we can take with us, but not the

power. At the beginning of chapter four please note, all twenty-five of the

thrones in the scene are mentioned and placed in location before the ones

occupying them are mentioned.



The elders represent us in another way. The number twenty-four is significant

(all numbers in Revelation are significant). They represent the twelve tribes

and the twelve Apostles, the people of God in the old understanding and the

people of God in the new understanding.



Are we talking about only Jews and Christians? Not at all. The self

understanding of the Israelites evolved over the centuries to the point where

they saw themselves as representing all humans in their relationship with God.

Scan Isaiah 40 onward for evidences of this.



And how about the twelve Apostles? When Jesus and the twelve gathered, were

they the first Christian gathering? No! Jesus was a Jew, and never saw himself

or his followers as anything other than disciples of a new way of being in

relationship with the Father.



In the Old Testament account of Judges, when one of the tribes was wiped out,

people were taken from other nearby tribes to re-establish the decimated one.

Why? When Judas killed himself, the remaining eleven chose a replacement by

lot, from two candidates. Why?



The number twelve is seen as the number of completeness for human

organizations which are in relationship with God. In the Old Testament times,

this had to do with the fact that the year was divided into twelve parts, and

each tribe had certain responsibilities for part of the year. That there were

twelve divisions is not a result of Jacob having twelve children from whom

twelve tribes evolved. Otherwise, when a tribe went out of existence, they

would have divided the year, and the responsibilities eleven ways. Add that to

your understanding of the story of Jacob, who became Israel.



Please note another significance of the fact that there are Twenty-four

thrones around the center, and not just twelve. The people of the old, pre-

Christ understanding are not excluded.





Additional meaning to this general subject is found in the closing chapters of

Revelation, in the description of the Holy City. We'll wait until later for

that.



So, we have the throne in the center - occupied. We have the thrones

encircling it - also occupied. Something stands between them - creation.



Is the physical creation a barrier between us and the creator? Not at all,

when we are facing the right direction and in our rightful place. Creation

itself sings, in Revelation 4:8.



             Holy, holy, holy

             is the Lord God Almighty,

             who was, and is, and is to come.



And in response, the humans fall down and worship the one on the throne. 



Rather than a barrier, creation points us to God and enables us to worship.

When we have the wisdom of elders.



You may be asking where Christ is, in all of this picture of relationships.

Christ, the Lamb, is in every aspect of the scene before us. He is on the

throne, and most translations put him in the midst of the four creatures and

also in the midst of the elders. This makes it kind of hard to know where to

place him on our "floor plan" of the scene, doesn't it?



Let's note some other things about the Lamb. He is first described as the Lion

of Judah, but is pictured as a lamb. This only makes sense if the scene is

symbolic, and as symbol, it is very powerful.



If this figure is symbolic, then what do the seven horns represent? Horns are

a symbol of power, much as the thrones are, but they are power that is mobile.

The Lamb can move about and retain his power. It's a good thing, too, because

we can't even place him in one location. But is this the right interpretation

of the horns? I thinks so, because it conforms to what the seven eyes

represent.



And we know what the seven eyes represent, don't we? You did catch the

explanation of them, didn't you? In verse six of chapter five we are told that

his seven eyes are the seven spirits (or sevenfold spirit) of God sent out

into all the earth. 



Please remember that this is the exact identification which was given to the

blazing lamps before the central throne, except the seven eyes of the Lamb are

the seven spirits with earthly destination. We are being told WHY the Lamb is

able to open the scroll. He takes the power and the spirit of God which exists

the the wholeness of being, and inserts them into our less-than-whole earthly

experience.





So the Lamb is also key to answering our question, "What does this scene have

to do with the rest of the book of Revelation?" For one thing, we never leave

this place, only our attention does.



From this point, and up until chapter 21, Revelation is comprised of three

series of seven events, interwoven with various scenes and dramas. After each

major action, we are returned to this same heavenly scene. Our attention is

returned to where we really are.



Yes, I know that it could also be argued that, as these things happen, we are

actually traveling back and forth between heaven and earth. But that is a

minor point. If you are willing to argue this point, you have accepted my

premise that this scene in chapters four and five is central to the

organization and purpose of the whole book.



But even if, for you, "the jury is still out" on my whole approach to what

Revelation is all about, the fact that you are still among us points to an

uncommon willingness to find out. I honor you for that, and encourage you, and

all the others, to hang on, for the ride from here on gets wild!









CHAPTER SEVEN



Seven seals and two scenes.





When I was young, we learned in Sunday School that the Hebrew view of history

and the Hellenistic view of history were very different. The Jews saw history

as a straight line, leading from creation to consummation, and the Hellenists

viewed history as circular, or cyclical. We were told that the Hebrews were

right, but I always thought the cyclical view had a lot to recommend it.



I don't know if John the pastor/teacher ever wrestled with this issue with any

of his flock, but I can tell you, he perfectly married the two views of

history by presenting it as a scroll, circular and linear both. Keep the view

of the scroll in mind as we work our way through what comes next.



The Lamb takes the scroll with the intention of opening it. No one else in the

heavenly scene is able to do so. We need to be clear with what is being done.

It is obvious that history, here from the middle of it, is not sealed shut. We

see it as moving onward. But the heavenly view of creation is beyond time,

transcendent. What is asked is, "Who in this realm can enter history and

interact with it?" The Lamb, as we saw in the last chapter, is specially

equipped to be in history and still retain power and wisdom during the

experience.



So he begins breaking open the seals. There are seven of them, one for each

major actor in the heavenly scene where we still are, if we take the elders as

a group.



John knew we might miss this point, so he started us out by mentioning the

first four seals by name, so to speak. As each of the first four seals are

opened, one of the four living creatures says, "Come!" Right away, as we

become involved in the linear experience of history, we notice a difference in

these powers of creation. In the heavenly scene, they pointed us to the

creator, and showed us how and when to worship that one. Now, they are

experienced as four very frightening and ominous aspects of earthly

experience, conquest, war, inflation and violent death. Whether we have read

Revelation or not, we have heard of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.



But hardly anyone has heard of the saints under the altar who are presented

when the fifth seal is broken.



Our last experience of humanity were the twenty-four elders. The fifth seal

moves us to a less than perfect group of souls who had been slain for their

testimony to the word of God. So far so good. 



But where are they? UNDER the altar. They are not fit for public viewing.



What are they doing under there? They are crying out for God to hurry up and

avenge their deaths. Do you remember in the letters, the churches are urged to

have patience and endure? Crying out for vengeance is not an example of

patience and endurance. And they have soiled themselves by behaving thus.



They are given fresh linen to wear, and told to be patient. Remember this

image of the martyrs being given white robes.





As the sixth seal is broken, we center upon the activity of the Lamb, who has

entered history.



The breaking of the seal is described in verses 12 to 17 of chapter six.

Creation seems to be breaking up, coming apart at the foundations. We are told

that this is the wrath of the Lamb.



What is wrath? Most of us think it means anger. But wrath is only perceived as

anger by its recipients, and not by all of us, either. Wrath is God and the

Lamb allowing the natural consequences to flow from what we have done. If

there is any point of agreement by all of the students of Revelation, I think

it will be this. Time and again, we are told in this book that what is

happening is because of what we have done - or failed to do in some instances.



But is wrath automatic and instant? Hardly. Throughout scripture we are told

that God holds off things that we deserve. Revelation is no different.



Here, at the breaking of the sixth seal, while our attention is turned to the

Lamb, who has taken history in grasp and opened it up, we are shown that the

wrath is held off. Two scenes are described here to let us know that there is

planning and purpose, even in the suffering of consequences. Sort of like a

good Montessori school. Chapter seven of Revelation contains these scenes.



First, in case we had not realized yet that the Lamb is Lord of creation, the

number four is thrown at us a couple of times. This will happen at the sixth

event of the next series, too. Four angels hold back the four winds. The winds

are told not to harm the earth until twelve thousand from each of the twelve

tribes are sealed. The seal here, harkening back to the Exodus story of the

Passover, is a protective device. So, 144,000 are sealed, and we are ready to

witness wrath, but it doesn't happen. Not yet.



The second part of chapter seven draws our attention back from history and

returns us to the eternal viewpoint. If this return isn't apparent to you,

look at verse eleven. We are shown a numberless multitude wearing white robes.



Are they the 144,000? Nope, that is a lot of people, but we can count them.

The throng we are seeing is so much larger than 144,000 that we can't even

begin to count them.



Are they the martyrs under the altar? Nope, because we are told in verse

fourteen who they are. They have come out of the great tribulation, and have

washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Recall that

the martyrs had to be given clean clothes.



What is the great tribulation? Weeelllllll, here you have to suspend disbelief

again to try on my interpretation. The tribulation is that wrath which was

about to begin. With the image of the great throng, John gives us a glimpse of

the point of the whole exercise, so we can bear to read what is coming next.



You don't think so? You don't think John would do that? I do.



One of my favorite stories is The Plague Dogs by Robert Adams. It is a

wonderful story, but few people finish it, because about half way though, it

seems that there is no way it can have any kind of good ending. Adams was too

good. He should have begun the book by saying, "Hey! Keep reading all the way

through, because it has a happy ending." He didn't, so I do. I encourage my

friends to finish the book, and the only way I can do so is to tell them that

it has a good ending.



Revelation makes The Plague Dogs look like a church picnic. Of course John

wanted us to know the end, so we would keep reading, and so we would know how

to read what was to come.



Come on, go along with it for a while, and see if it works. Who was going to

be experiencing the great tribulation? Everyone except the 144,000. That's you

and me, friend. I am personally very comforted to know that at the end I will

be among that numberless throng, no matter what kind of tribulation I go

through first. And there is no question of escaping it.



Read the last half of Revelation chapter seven. Dwell on it, and let the

image, the words sink in to your being. If you only were to study one piece of

scripture, this would serve you well as the Good News.



     15Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day

     and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread

     his tent over them.

     16Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The

     sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat.

     17For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd;

     he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe

     away every tear from their eyes.



I think John intended it thus. I find nothing in Revelation that John did by

accident. He was a genius, and he was inspired by the Holy Spirit.



But, we are not yet finished with the opening of the seven seals. We are going

slowly through them, so I am certain you noticed that we have seal number

seven yet to be opened. But it is interesting to note that when we are just

reading through Revelation, even reading carefully, how easy it is to miss the

opening of the seventh seal.



Chapter eight, verse one, describes the whole event. "When he opened the

seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour." It is

written as a prelude to what follows, and it is overlooked for three reasons I

can think of right away.



First, it is so brief when we have had long accounts of the other six seals.

Second, nothing happens, just silence. Third, I think John planned us to miss

it, and purposely placed it at the beginning of a whole new section. He tells

us much by doing so.



Whose position is this, this seventh place at the end of one series; and which

serves as the beginning of the next series? The only actor from the heavenly

scene who is left is God. In eternity, God is at the center, impossible to

miss. All attention is concentrated on the enthroned one in the center.



But in history, God is often last, and often detected only by silence. "Be

still and know that I am God," is what Elijah heard. Is this consistent with

what we are told in Revelation? Revelation, chapter one, verse eight, asserts

that God is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.



Is this conclusive proof of the validity of my interpretation? No, but

interesting enough to hold you, I hope.



It's time to hear some trumpets.





CHAPTER EIGHT



Seven trumpets and two scenes.





We are now at chapter eight of Revelation, the seventh seal has been broken,

and we are at the throne of God. Seven angels are given trumpets to blow while

another angel fiddles with stuff on the altar.



There is a nice fire on the altar, and the angel filled a censer with fire and

coals, and then hurled it down upon the earth. The blowing of the trumpets

gives us a detailed look at where the fire goes.



The pattern in this series of seven events, and in the one to follow, is the

same as the pattern introduced when the seven seals were broken. One through

four represent physical creation; five is the human position; six is the

Christ position; seven is the God position.



The first four trumpets show the effect of the fire upon the four elements of

creation, earth, sea, water, and air, in that order. This does not seem to be

the four elements of earth, air, fire and water that we spoke of earlier in

relation to the four living creatures, but don't be too hasty.



To the Hebrew mind, the sea is the symbol of chaos, very much the same agent

of creation as fire, as it was seen by the Greeks. And the heavenly bodies,

which you and I would think of as fire, were representations of things that

were in the air.



This is nothing more than my conjecture, but it seems to me that John was

continuing to combine what was the best "science" of his day, the product of

Greek philosophical inquiry, with the lessons of his own faith tradition.



At any rate, the first four events in this series apply to four aspects of

creation, as do the first four seals. And when the fifth trumpet blows, we are

shown how this fire from heaven affects humans. This is found in Revelation 9,

verses one to 12. 



Verses thirteen to twenty-one of chapter nine describe what happens when the

sixth trumpet blows. This is still the scene where creation is being torn

asunder, but this time, the four angels are told to release the four winds to

do their work. Humankind, in these verses, as a part of creation, is being

torn asunder.



But just as in the last series, John doesn't want us to become too gloomy

about what is going on. At just the same place as in the series of seals, he

turns our attention away from the really frightening things.



Do you see why it is so important to read Revelation in sequence, and pay just

as much attention to the interludes as to the "real action"? John is

establishing a very delicate and graceful balance for our proper understanding

of the message he was to pass on to us.



Chapter ten is the first scene John gives us in this series, and it is

autobiographical. How do I know that it is? For one thing, he tells us in the

scene. He is part of the action. Note that the mighty angel he sees is

straddling chaos and order, with one foot on earth and one in the sea. The

subject is prophecy, and his introduction to being a prophet. Notice how he

describes the process. Prophecy involves two main functions. Receiving the

message is sweet. Transmitting it sours the stomach. Chapters one through

three of Revelation are his receiving the message. Chapters four through

twenty-two are his gut wrenching transmittal of it.



The first fourteen verses of chapter eleven are the second scene by which John

wants to prepare us for what is to come. Now that we have his account of his

call to prophesy, we have his instruction of the way of the cross. Christ

showed us his way of dealing with the enemy. We face our opposition and

confront them with truth. Not even death will defeat us when we stick to the

pattern Christ showed us.



The rest of chapter eleven details the blowing of the seventh trumpet. A short

proclamation from heaven accompanies this trumpet blast, and a longer one from

the twenty-four elders. Read them over, because they are important. 



Now, let's remember where we are. We are in the eternal place, but in

following the movement of the lamb into history, our attention has been drawn

off to the extent that we forget where we really are. We get wound up in this

scroll of life. John, wise pastor and teacher that he is, stops every so often

and reminds us where we really are.



John, the prophet, must give us the wonderful answer he has been given. But he

must try to give it to people like us who haven't even asked the question yet.

So he presents the whole panorama of the creation. He presents it in sevens,

because earthly experience is all presented that way. It has been so since the

beginning...Genesis.



Remember too, that wrath is about to happen; wrath - the natural consequences

of what we have done, both individually and as a race of beings. He wants to

tell us that wrath is not fun. Wrath is real. We are accountable, even though

accountability may have been held off for a time. But he also wants us to know

that according to Gods plan, this process of wrath has a purpose, and as soon

as we align ourselves with that purpose, we will be among the numberless

multitude.



Seven bowls of wrath are waiting, but in the interest of maintaining that very

delicate balance between keeping the dramatic pressure strong enough to get

the message through, but not so strong that we just close the book, John takes

our attention to another realm.



Next, we look at two very entertaining dramas, but dramas which convey a lot

of information.







CHAPTER NINE



Details of the tribulation





This will be a really short chapter because I am going to let you do your own

work here. The real fun of studying Revelation is mining it for treasures such

as are found in chapters twelve, thirteen and fourteen. You have already

missed much in the scenes which have been inserted in the sixth place of each

series, because I walked us through them (superficially!). Perhaps you noticed

at the time that there was much that we skipped. You were right.



My task in this book is to give you a framework for understanding  how to mine

Revelation. I want to give just enough detail so that the framework is

complete and understandable, but not so much that my book of instructions

becomes too dry and boring.



We closed out chapter eight of this little book by reminding ourselves where we

are in the process that we call Revelation. Poised on the brink of a great

major "operation" which has been called pouring out wrath.



We also, at regular intervals, remind ourselves that John has written this for

us so that we can properly understand what Christ has told him.



Here, at this particular point, John is like the surgeon who comes in to see

you just before that operation. He wants to give you all the information that

you will need to understand the surgery before you go under - under anesthesia

and under the knife.



The first thing he does in order to help you manage some of your fear is to

objectify the procedure. If we can think about it objectively, our fear

decreases because our attention has been diverted and we have also gained some

faith and trust in those who are going to be operating.



So, he gives us the history of the development of the procedure, with the

current track record of successes and failures. Then he gives details of how

the procedure is performed, pointing out the obstacles and how the obstacles

will be overcome.



Finally, he becomes very personal and does his best to reassure us.



That is what these three chapters of Revelation are. Chapter twelve is the

background and development. Chapter thirteen details the obstacles. Chapter

fourteen details how the obstacles are to be overcome and begins to really

pile on the clues and hints to our understanding, so that by the time the

"operation" begins, we are almost impatient for it to get underway, so that we

can find out more.



Well, that is the case if you have been seeking out these clues as you have

been delving and digging. That is why I have to let you do your own work here.



Remember that John thinks primarily in numbers. They are never accidental. Get

your calculator out and figure out how many years 1,260 days represents, and

what that might mean. Compare the numerical details of the dragon with the

Lamb, and try to figure out what the differences might represent. Note the

mimicry of the lamb. This will be true of the two beasts as well.



And speaking of the two beasts, do you catch the symmetry between the two

beasts and the two witnesses? The two witnesses! Remember, back in chapter

eleven? Come on - get going. I'm not going to do this for you. Who are the two

witnesses, and who are the two beasts? And what is this 666 business at the

end of chapter thirteen? I am not going to tell you. at least not here. I

probably won't be able to resist sticking an appendix at the end of this

little book with some of my findings. But I don't want to.



I do want to draw your attention to chapter fourteen, verse seven, because it

pretty well establishes my point as to what the four living creatures

represent. In fact, if you dwell on this verse, you'll see that it supports my

whole premise of how Revelation is presented. In our every day existence we

tend to make idols of the powers and manifestations of creation. In this

verse, we are reminded to worship the one who created these powers, and whom

the powers themselves worship. This is an echo of the Psalm which asks, "Shall

I lift my eyes to the hills? Where does my help come from? (NOT FROM THE

HILLS, WHERE THE SHRINE IS) My help comes from the LORD who made the hills and

the heavens."



OK, I'm out of the pulpit. Here comes the wrath.







CHAPTER TEN



Seven bowls of wrath and some definitions.





We deal now with chapters fifteen, sixteen and seventeen of Revelation.

Chapter fifteen sets the stage and reminds us where we are. We are at the

eternal scene, but some changes have been made. The sea of glass has become

mixed with fire, and a crowd has gathered around the sea, ones who have

contended with the beast and his image. They sing a song of Moses.



Please note that it is one of the four living creatures who gives the seven

angels (remember the trumpet blowers?) their bowls filled with wrath.



Chapter sixteen is the pouring out of the bowls. Note that this is done

quickly, and that there are no long asides at the sixth place. The seventh

bowl is poured out right after the sixth. When the patient is opened up and at

risk, the surgical team works as quickly as possible.



Things to ask as the bowls are poured out:

     Is the pattern exactly the same?

     If it is not, do we learn anything from the differences?

     Are there any clues here that shed light on questions we have been

asking?



The first four bowls effect the same parts of creation as did the seven

trumpets. This should pretty well convince you that there is specific meaning

intended in these three series of numbered events, 777.



But if that is the case, the fifth bowl should be poured out on humans

directly. It is poured out instead on the throne of the beast.



Instead?



Dwell on the possibility that we humans are the throne of the beast. Remember

what kind of power is associated with thrones? You have to be occupying the

throne to have power.



What happens if we do not accommodate the beast? Where is his power then?



Oh sure, he had horns, ten of them. And horns represent power that goes with

you. TEN horns, not seven. But remember the letter to the church at Smyrna?

They were told they would be persecuted for ten days, but ten is very limited.

They were told not to worry about ten days. Ten is the human number, twice

five, you know. Seven is the eternal number. The Lamb has seven horns.



The power of the beast is solely dependent upon the willingness of humans to

let the beast use them.



Here is the sixth bowl. Is it about Christ, the Lord of Creation? It doesn't

seem to be, at first. But wait! The bowl is poured out on the river Euphrates,

the location of the Garden of Eden, the traditional source of the children of

God. Hmm.





And who do you suppose is speaking in verse 15? Oh yeah. All right, there he

is.



And look at what he is saying about keeping your clothes at hand. Remember the

martyrs under the altar who had to be given clothes? I'll tell you right now

that clothing in Revelation represents our righteous acts.



Start working on the frogs that come out of the mouths of the dragon, the

beast and the false prophet. I might check with you later on them.



The seventh bowl brings more questions than answers, but then I guess that is

appropriate for the place of silence and mystery.



At the pouring of the bowl into the air, God declares, "It is done!"



What is done? Well, the wrath, one would think. But bad stuff seems to keep

happening for a while. Hmmmm.



Chapter seventeen is a great exercise, and I'm going to let you do it. This

chapter contains a wonderful number of answers to the puzzles that we have

been wondering about. Remember what adulteration is - watering down. Remember

also that Rome, the most famous worldly city of the time, sat on seven hills.



Have fun here. You will get some new ideas, and some new questions to be

pondering as you begin your next reading/study of Revelation.



Now that wrath, the natural consequences of our action, has been loosed, we

will take a look at how judgement plays out afterward. Remember the seventh

bowl? Remember that things kept happening after the wrath was finished? The

next three chapters answer your question, "Hey! What's going on here?"







CHAPTER ELEVEN



Judgement: How it all plays out.





From chapters seventeen on, we could almost call John's book, The Tale of Two

Cities. The woman on the scarlet beast is Rome. It's not too hard to imagine

why John, in prison, would speak in a guarded manner about Rome. But we know,

and he knew we would, that he was not speaking of Rome literally, but as a

symbol. A symbol of what? Well, we can learn much about this "city" in

chapters eighteen to twenty.



And what is the other city? Well, that one you have heard of, and it comes

last.



John assumed that we will have been paying attention. When we have read and

understood all that is in chapter seventeen, we can understand pretty much all

that John tells us in these present chapters about the judgement.



If you have been just skimming, and not doing the work as you go, that is all

right. I know you will do it later. But not having done so makes you rely more

heavily upon me, and we don't want to make a habit of that.



So, for the meantime, let me point out a few items in this judgement section

that I feel are interesting and vital to our understanding of the whole

message of John.



The first thing that happens in chapter eighteen is the announcement that

Babylon the Great (Rome: The Unholy City) has fallen. Done. Past tense. The

city is still present, and there are many people in it, but no longer can she

say in her heart, "I sit as a queen." That issue is dead. She has fallen.



Who is in that city? Almost everyone, it seems. Verse eight of chapter

thirteen says that all the inhabitants of earth whose names are not in the

Lamb's book will worship the beast. I think that means everyone but the

144,000, but most disagree with me on that.



Then I say, "How about later in chapter thirteen where John says that no one

who doesn't have the mark of the beast can buy or sell? Have you ever sold or

bought anything? You must have the mark! You must be in Babylon!"



Then, as I am picking myself up off the floor, my scholar/opponent points out

that the "mark of the beast" business hasn't happened yet, and when it does, a

lot of good Christians are going to ready for it. And anyway, what about the

numberless multitudes in white robes? What about them?



Usually, at this point, I just limp away, thinking that I should have learned

by now not to argue with experts.



But there are times when I just don't learn, and I will point out that the

numberless multitude in white robes had COME OUT of the great tribulation.

They were the ones who answered the heavenly call in verse four of chapter

eighteen to "Come out of her, my people..."



But all of this friendly discussion is wasted time and effort until some basic

agreements are reached. 



Speaking as a pastor, I get very pragmatic when the subject of judgement comes

up. If we are going to stumble and fall spiritually, this is where we do it.

So any discussion of judgement must allow for the very real danger that

talking about judgement almost always causes us to start judging!



In Matthew's sermon on the mount, what was one of the main issues that Jesus

addressed? Judging others.



In Romans, Paul's theological statement, what subject did he begin with?

Judgement. In fact, let's look at how Paul dealt with the subject of

judgement, because it points out what dangerous ground we all enter when this

subject arises.



Also, let's remember John, the pastor of seven of "Paul's" churches, writing

from prison to his flock. These words from Paul must have been on his mind.



In chapter one of Romans, Paul begins his message at verse eighteen. He begins

by talking about wrath.



     The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the

     godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their

     wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them,

     because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of

     the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine

     nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has

     been made, so that men are without excuse.



And we are immediately back at the scene described to us in chapters four and

five of Revelation. Do you recall the elders perceiving God through the living

creatures? Do you remember the elders worshipping and praising God in response

to the worship and praise of the living creatures? This has always been God's

intention, that we know the Creator through the creation.



But why, when Paul began talking about wrath, did he immediately address the

subject of how humans are intended to know the Creator?



     21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God

     nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their

     foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise,

     they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God

     for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and

     reptiles.



As soon as the Lamb began opening the scroll, the powers of creation began to

be transformed in human perception. The parts of the creative force which they

represented were experienced by humans as conquest, war, extreme inflation,

and death.



Do the images listed by Paul remind you a little of the descriptions of the

living creatures in Revelation chapter four? They do me.



     24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their

     hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with

     one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and

     worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator - who

     is forever praised. Amen.



When the forces of creation begin to be experienced by humans as forces larger

than life, primary realities to be dealt with, we, in our pragmatic wisdom,

began to center our lives around meeting those forces, either by avoidance or

by joining.



Either way, they became idols for us.



Does the last phrase of Paul's in the paragraph above remind you just a little

of how such affirmations are woven throughout Revelation? Here is how chapter

five of Revelation ends:



     13Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the

     earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing:

     "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb

     be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!"

     14The four living creatures said, "Amen," and the elders fell down

     and worshiped.



We may seem to have traveled away from the purpose of this chapter, but I tell

you, the only way to safely approach the subject of judgement is with the most

stringent safeguards at hand. It is a deadly topic, because left unguarded,

the topic of judgement becomes transformed into judging on the part of the

investigator.



As a safeguard I have turned to the most effective backfire I have seen,

Romans chapter one plus 1.



We left off in  Romans chapter one with verse 25. Paul has just set a trap for

you and me. He has laid it out with great care, outlining the history of sin

in our world, beginning with creation which shows God's nature to us,

continuing with our lack of gratitude, which led to a fear of nature and

subsequent idolization of it. Beginning with verse 26, he baits the trap.



     Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their

     women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the

     same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and

     were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent

     acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty

     for their perversion.



Oh, this trap is baited well. It smells so sweet we can't resist it. We turn

to embrace this image of THOSE PEOPLE who have done wrong. How comforting to

look at others who have sinned. And now Paul sets the trap, he pulls back the

spring.



     29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil,

     greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit

     and malice. They are 20slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant

     and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their

     parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

     32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such

     things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very

     things but also approve of those who practice them.



Now here is the funny thing about this trap. Most people don't even read the

above section. Either they didn't intend to in the first place, having been

referred to Romans 1:21-27 as "proof" that homosexuality is sin; or they are

just reading along, waiting to get to the heart of Romans, and scan the above

all-inclusive list that NO ONE can survive without applying it to themselves.



99% of all who read these words don't recognize them as a trap. Of course, any

decent trap isn't going to be obvious. It isn't going to have the word "trap"

on it in large letters.



What I don't understand is how so many can read the first verse of chapter

two, and not realize that they have been had!



     You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone

     else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are

     condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same

     things.



POW! Ouch! The trap has been sprung and we are ALL IN IT. Who can read Romans

one and not either judge those whose behaviors resemble the list (always

excluding ourselves, of course)or judge those who hold the list up as proof of

the sinfulness of certain groups of people?



Romans 2:1 is an impossible standard which nobody can live up to. It is almost

certain that John was well acquainted with this trap. At the very least, the

same Spirit who guided Paul's composition of the above, guided John's hand in

crafting Revelation to the same impossible standard.



We are all in Babylon. As long as we refuse to apply the words of judgement to

ourselves, we are saying, "I am not a widow!" God calls to us, each and every

one, "Come out of her!" But we can't hear the call if we think God is calling

someone else.



There is only one person each of us should be applying the words of Revelation

to, if we are to understand them: ourselves. In chapter eighteen, verse three,



     For all nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries.

     The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the

     merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive

     luxuries.



Each of us is regent over our own decisions. Each of us buys and sells,

obtaining our needs and way beyond. We are kings and merchants. We have

watered down our lives in Babylon. But we insist that the wicked city is

filled with those others.



But at some point in our lives, we stand convicted even in our own

understanding. The remainder of chapter eighteen is spent voicing our lament

at what we have been doing, and at what we have lost.





In chapter nineteen, we witness the wedding preparations for the bride of the

Lamb. Who is the bride? Well, if it has taken our entire lives up until "now"

to realize that we were in Babylon, how long will it take us to realize that

having answered God's call to come out of Babylon, we are ready to join with

Christ? He popped the question a long time ago. It took us a while to say,

"Yes." Wedding preparations are being made for us. And look what it says in

verse eight.



     Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. (Fine linen

     stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)



Right after the wedding a white horse appears, bearing one who is called

Faithful and True. Read the description of this rider in verses eight to

sixteen.



Who is it? We have to answer this question before we can go on to see what

this rider does.



To most, this rider seems to be Christ. I say that identification is only

partly correct. What has just happened? You have just become united with

Christ, then a Christlike figure appears on the scene. I wonder who it is?

Hmmmm.



But we don't have to rely on the sequence of events to establish the identity

of the rider on the white horse. You have read the description of the rider.

Did any of it sound familiar? It should.



Remember way back to the letters to the seven churches. You might recall that

in each, a reward was promised to all who overcame. Review those promised

rewards and you will see that the rider named Faithful and True incorporates

all of the promises. The rider is you, after you have repented and submitted

yourself to judgement, and have allowed yourself to be united with Christ.



Before, you were a pathetic creature, without a center of gravity, powerless,

at the complete mercy of whatever wind blew, whatever any beastly force willed

upon you.



Now, you ride on a white horse at the head of legions of the army of heaven.

You hold authority and power to rule. Rule what? Don't backslide and think

about ruling others. What has been missing in your life so far is your ability

to rule over your own wild and unruly passions and desires.



I invite you to read the description of the confrontation between you, leading

the army of heaven, and the beast, leading the kings of the earth. The real

enemy is within. But see what happens when we but stand opposed to these

earthly powers. Immediately the beast is captured, along with the false

prophet, and thrown into the lake of fire.



Have you heard of the refiner's fire? If we contemplate another being thrown

into that refiner's fire, we are in danger of our very soul. But if we assume

responsibility for our own shortcomings, face up to our inner ugliness, they

will be burned away.



The only judgement that is real is the judgement by Christ. As soon as we put

ourselves under his authority, he says, "You are forgiven!" And immediately

the process of atonement and purification begins. The subject of judgement is

incomplete unless it means also forgiveness, atonement, refinement.



In Revelation, after judgement is rendered forgiveness is immediate, assumed.

Then the atonement is portrayed as the wedding with the Lamb, and

purification, sanctification, is the confrontation between the beast and you,

in authority, on the white horse.



But think of how long we endure the wrath which has been the result of our own

doing. Surely John had us in mind when the fourth bowl of wrath was poured out

on the sun, in chapter sixteen.



     9They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of

     God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to

     repent and glorify him.



Who is the beast? Where is the beast? The beast is a role we all assume. The

beast lives in us.



Are you beginning to get the feel of how these words can have a whole new

meaning, a whole fresh purpose, if we but apply them to ourselves? 



It is time for some practice. See how you do at reading chapter twenty of

Revelation with this new self-application in mind. See what happens.



Then, we'll get on to the Holy City







CHAPTER TWELVE



The Holy City: What eternal life looks like.





All that has gone before has been prelude. The vision of the New Jerusalem is

the message John wanted to start with. It is the eternal life of which Jesus

spoke to the hundreds who followed him about. While John saw the being in his

vision, one "like a son of man," he was instantly transported to this "place."



The Holy City is not a glimpse of heaven, or whatever you call the life that

awaits us after we experience bodily death. It is a description of that life

which exists for us right now, wherever we are, if we but want it and claim

it.



John was still in prison, but after the vision he was in the city of eternal

life.



Perhaps there is just the smallest amount of doubt in the minds of some of you

regarding my contention that all of the scenes in Revelation after the first

one are literary devices. If so, I think I can convince you that at least

John's description of the Holy City is very plainly a literary vision. It

couldn't possibly be an actually-seen vision.



And if you can eventually accept that even one of the subsequent "visions" of

John is a literary device, why not others? Why not all but the first?



And here is how you will proceed. We will take a very close and careful look

at the Holy City as described by John, and we will see very plainly how it

could not have been "seen," except in the mind's eye.



Then we will look at what the details of that vision tell us about eternal

life, if those details are indeed literary devices. By the fruit of the vision

we shall know its nature.



But first, now that we have stopped denying the reality of wrath, now that we

have repented of our reliance upon the world, let us hear the Good News, as

told by Pastor John. Revelation. Chapter twenty-one.



     Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and

     the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

     2I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven

     from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her

     husband.



Are you remembering to hear this PERSONALLY? Who was the last person we

discussed being prepared as a bride?



     5He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything

     new!" Then he said, "write this down, for these words are

     trustworthy and true."

     6He said to me, "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the

     Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink

     without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7He who

     overcomes will inherit all of this, and I will be his God and he

     will be my son.



Now, having read the earlier chapters in a certain way, we perhaps hear this

version of the Gospel a little differently than we had before.



If the young man comes up to Pastor John and asks, "Reverend, (people do call

pastors 'Reverend' for some reason) what must I do to have eternal life?" he

would have received this answer:



     "Why son, you simply have to be thirsty to have the water of life."



That's an earth-shattering response, but it is wasted on most of us. We simply

can't believe that there is no more requirement than to desire it deeply. Yes,

I'd say that "deep desire" accurately describes being thirsty. Have you ever

been really thirsty? I rest my case.



Most of us insist upon there being a guard at the pearly gate; St. Peter, we are

told. He must be there. Ten thousand jokes can't be wrong. You have to have been

good to get in. Don't you?



One thing is certain. If we are in a mood to argue the point, we aren't

thirsty yet. The next words are for us.



     8But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the

     sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and

     all liars - their place will be in the fiery lake of burning

     sulphur. This is the second death.



Until we get thirsty enough to want to escape the endless cycles of wrath, we

are thrown back into the lake of fire for another round of the great

tribulation.



But now we look closely at what John wants us to know about eternal life - the

Holy City. The description of it begins at verse nine. I'll summarize, you

follow along in your Bible.



As we see it coming down out of heaven from the vantage point of a great

mountain, we observe that it is a great, huge cube. It is as high as it is

square. This is important later.



We can see that it has twelve gates, three to a side. It also had twelve

foundations. On the twelve gates were written the names of the twelve tribes

of Israel, and the twelve foundations had written on them the names of the

twelve apostles.



So far so good, if we just leave it there. We can see it as it is now. But

John won't let it rest here. He ruins our nice neat picture by giving us the

scale of the thing.



It is 12,000 stadia in length. Well, that's a nice symbolic number, but you

must realize that in miles, it comes out to 1,400 miles to a side!



Do you know how far away we would have to be to see the whole thing if it were

that big? Let's put it this way. How far away would we have to be to see the

entire contiguous United States? It's about the same amount of area. Yep,

you'd have to see it from space. There is no mountain high enough on earth to

give us that kind of vantage.



John said he was taken to a mountain top to see the Holy City, so it was a

"heavenly" mountain top, we'll say. How high would it have to be? The Holy

City is a cube, remember? So it is 1,400 miles high. That's pretty high, but I

wonder if you realize just how high.



If this cube of a city consisted of a number of floors, or stories, it would

look like a big apartment building. Let's say that it had 1,400 stories, each

a mile high. Remember the space shuttle? When it is in orbit, it would crash

into the Holy City somewhere in the third floor.



Now are we getting an idea of the scale? If the Holy City were on earth, we

could get a good look at it from a mountain on the moon.



How about the gates? Looking at the city, from wherever we have to do so, we

can see the gates. From this distance, how huge would the gates have to be for

us to see them? They would have to be so large that when we approached them,

they would virtually disappear from our view. The top and sides would be so

far away we couldn't see them. No wonder they are never closed!



Are you beginning to get the idea that the description of the Holy City is not

intended to tell us what it looks like, but rather, what it is like?



So. Eternal Life. What is it like, according to what John portrays?



We already have an idea of its "shape." It is four sided, which reminds us of

the four living creatures around the throne. Physical creation encompasses our

existence with God. It no longer stands between us and God, either as

enlightener, as it was in the original scene, or as barrier, as it was in the

series of sevens.



Each of the twelve gates is a great pearl. Now, if we were still trying to

insist that this was a literal vision, we would have to ask, "Now, how can a

pearl, even a gigantic one, be made into a gate?" Luckily, we know that John

is telling us other things as he describes the City.



Jesus told a story to try to explain what the kingdom of heaven is like. He

said it is like a man who was searching for pearls. He found one of great

value, and sold all he had to be able to buy that one pearl.



No Christian who hears that each gate of the city is a single great pearl

could fail to connect the gate to this story of Jesus. Could they?



John tells us much about the value of these portals to the Holy City by such a

simple reference. If we will read the rest of his description this same way,

we might learn some things.



Twelve foundations are named after the twelve apostles. What is eternal life

built upon? The thinking of that day (and ours too, according to the horoscope

in the paper) is that there are twelve different types of humans, each with

their own birthstone. The apostles of the Lamb numbered twelve as a matter of

completeness, and the foundations of the city are the work that was begun by

the Lamb, and are broad enough to include all types of people.



We can draw the same type of conclusion from the twelve gates which are named

after the twelve tribes. The tribes represent all types of peoples, and there

is a gate for any type.



Taken together, the 24 represent the elders in the original scene of the

perfect creation.



The streets of gold kind of speak for themselves.



So far, we have been dealing with chapter twenty-one, from verses one through

twenty one. We have seen so far in the description, the four living creatures

and the elders, represented and present in our experience of eternal life.

Where are God and the lamb?



They are next. There are no places of worship in the city, because God and the

Lamb are the the temple. We can hear the prophet Joel here. Well, at least I

can. Decide for yourself, starting at Joel 2:28.



     And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons

     and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your

     young men will see visions. 29Even on my servants, both men and

     women, I will pour out my spirit in those days.



What do you think? We all have to choose for ourselves, but for me, when I

read the above, it says the same thing as when I hear that in the living of

life eternal, I will not need a temple.



But while we are looking at this passage from Joel, let's keep reading for

just a bit.



     30I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and

     fire and billows of smoke. 31The sun will be turned to darkness

     and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful

     day of the LORD. 32And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD

     will be saved;



Does this remind you a little of what John described at the blowing of

trumpets and pouring out wrath?



Yes, we interrupt this discussion of the Holy City to return once again to the

subject of wrath and judgement. Only in our minds and on paper can these

things be separated. The reality of eternal life can never be apart from those

very necessary realities which lead to it.



But when we are putting ideas on paper, it is very difficult to present them

as anything but separate. So, I have to keep interrupting like this.



Recently I saw a television "special" on the Revelation of John. As such

things go, it was fairly well done. I have one point of disagreement with it

which I mist deal with here.



John was portrayed as an extreme religionist of his day, who thirsted after

the blood of the dark forces; an itinerant preacher who produced graphic

scenes of torture and destruction to frighten Christians into keeping to his

idea of the pure faith.



You can see him that way if that is how you look.



I look to John as a pastor, and I see a pastor. He was one who painted his

canvases with brush and pigment from hundreds of places in his scripture - our

Old Testament.



But while he used the language of the old prophecies, he faithfully

transformed them to be fit mediums with which he could communicate the new

message he was given to pass on. He conformed to the standard that Jesus

established when he said that he came not to change, but to fulfill.



I will not take space here for an exhaustive list of examples of this

fulfilling use which John made of the old prophets' words. Look them up

yourself.



Go to a particularly graphic description and note the Old Testament source

that will be listed in the margin of many Bibles. Look up the reference and

compare. See what John did.



Even in the places that people point to as signs of the end of the earth, John

takes care to tell us that only one-third or one-fourth of the world will be

affected.



John doesn't foretell the end of the world. He foretells its salvation. It is

our experience of this new life which we are looking at now, painted for us

with the brush of Joel, Micah, Isaiah, and scores of others. Painted on the

canvas of the Holy City.



We are not speaking here of a cloistered existence apart from the rest of the

world. Still in chapter twenty-one, hear the Good News.



     23The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for

     the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24The

     nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will

     bring their splendor into it. 25On no day will its gates ever be

     shut, for there will be no night there.



The passage and the chapter end with the assertion that even though the gates

are always open, nothing impure will ever enter. What keeps them out? Their

own lack of thirst, which is the impurity. Life for us has been adulterated,

watered down by imitation water, and we have become satisfied with it. Only

when we thirst for something more do we recognize what we have been settling

for (wrath), and decide we have had enough of that (repentance) and come out

of Babylon, subject ourselves to the examination of the great physician Christ

(judgement), and gladly undergo the treatment (sanctification - the refining

fire).



Somewhere during this process, we discover that we have passed into eternal

life.



But where are we in John's picture of the Holy City? We are spoken of next, in

chapter twenty-two.



     Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear

     as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2down

     the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the

     river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit,

     yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for

     the healing of the nations. 3No longer will there be any curse.

     The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city and his

     servants will serve him.



There we are! Servants, right? But...I sort of thought we/I might rate a

little more of a mention than that.



The whole passage has been about us.



What was our only requirement to go in? Thirst for the water of life. What is

located right by the river of that water? The tree of life; that's you and me,

brother; you and me, sister. The tree of life.



Need convincing?



The tree of life bears twelve kinds of fruit, one for each month. The

association of twelve with the people of God has been spoken of in these

pages. In the drama about the two witnesses testifying in the streets of

Jerusalem, they are referred to as the two olive trees.



And when we are referred to as the bride of Christ by Paul, what adjective

does he apply to us? Fruitful.



When we are told that the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the

nations, I think of the healing hands of Jesus, and those of the early church.

The hallmarks of Jesus' ministry were healing and teaching. To me, the tree of

life is us, when we are living life itself, life eternal.



We began this study asking the question, and only half in jest, "Where's the

beast?" We found evidence that the beast is us, or in us when we allow it. We

might recall that Jesus identified Satan as being in Peter when he looked

right at Peter and said, "Get you behind me, Satan."



But that is only half of the point to that interaction. Jesus had also called

Peter blessed, and the cornerstone of all that was to follow.



We need to continually remind ourselves that we are at one and the same time,

the throne of the beast, and the tree of life. And we need to continually

remind ourselves that even though the foregoing might be true, the two

possibilities are not evenly balanced.



To think of ourselves as the fulcrum of two opposite and equally balanced

possibilities is to commit the error of dualism. Life is not a battle between

good and evil. Our battle is internal, and the evil is of our own allowing.



Twice, in the pages of Revelation, the forces of good and the forces of evil

face each other to do battle. Neither time results in fighting. The evil side

just goes away.



The beast only has power as long as we allow some of ours to be used. As soon

as we stand and say, "No," his power is gone.



A final word needs to be said about John's final warning, or instruction. In

verses eighteen and nineteen of chapter twenty-two, John warns any hearers of

the prophecy of this book, Revelation, against adding anything to the words of

the book, or taking any of them away.



When I discuss these matters with those who are locked in to a particular type

of understanding of what the Revelation means, I am often accused of adding to

the words of the book.



In all honesty and humility, let me suggest, as quietly and kindly as I can,

that if this seems to you to be the case, perhaps you are taking words away by

inattention to some or prejudice toward others.



The only way any of us can work with Revelation is to continue to press for

understanding, having asked for the aid and guidance of the Holy Spirit. As we

do so, any violation of John's rule cited above will be brought to our

attention very forcefully...by the Holy Spirit.



But any who feel the need to "speak for God" in this matter to warn another

that they are in error, come dangerously close to judging.



I had a seminary professor once who said, "Anything you can't laugh at has

become an idol for you." Over the years I have come to agree.



Perhaps you don't feel like laughing at Revelation or any other scripture. At

least, for the sake of avoiding making an idol of our holy scripture, you can

practice, at the very least, a sense of playfulness regarding scripture.



Jesus joked about God, and encouraged us to address the Creator as, "Daddy."

We might allow ourselves the same privilege regarding God's word.



Blessings and peace.





APPENDIX A



777







Years ago, when I was fresh out of seminary, I followed the advice of the New

Testament professor who advised us that we would never begin to really learn

from Revelation until we began teaching it.



I began a class.



At one point, while preparing a lesson, I listed out all of the series of

things that consisted of seven items. After much comparing and sifting, I

concluded that there are only four. Even though many lists of things, events,

angels or qualities, can be squeezed into a framework of sevens, the four that

are actually NUMBERED within the text seemed to have a special significance.



Of course, many things are listed as seven in number, like eyes, angels,

lampstands and whatnot, but they are groups of things and cannot be compared.

It became obvious that I would be working in this comparison with the letters,

and with the seals, trumpets and bowls.



I made a chart, placing summaries of each letter, seal, trumpet and bowl in

columns under the numbers one through seven. That was the first time I

realized that the latter three were very significant, and that the importance

of the letters was of a different nature.



My chart became a series of three sevens.



The very first thing I noticed was how much larger the sections for the number

six had to be.



The second thing I saw was that in the second and third series, the trumpets

and the bowls, the same things were effected, earth, sea, water and heavenly

bodies. That immediately drew my attention to the first four seals.



I could not for the life of me see what the connection was between the four

living creatures and earth, sea, water and the heavenly bodies.



Unless.



Perhaps earth, sea, water and heavenly bodies were similar to earth, air, fire

and water, the ancient idea of the four basic elements of creation. Perhaps

the four living creatures somehow represented the powers of creation.



Well, it was an hypothesis, at any rate. One I could test.



I concentrated on the first series, the seals. It used four of the characters

of the previous scene. Perhaps the fifth through seventh seals did as well.

But there were twenty-six characters in the scene, and only three seals left.

Twenty-six doesn't divide by three - that isn't it.



Well, of course! The twenty-four elders are a group and that leaves the Lamb

and God, three places. Does it work, though?



The martyrs under the altar were humans, as were the elders, so that seemed to

fit.



What about the sixth seal? Once I was looking, I saw it, "the wrath of the

Lamb."



But that left the seventh seal to represent God. That didn't seem to work,

because all that happened there was a half hour of silence.



Oh. Sorry Lord. Of course.



That moment when I realized that the seventh seal was God's position in the

framework was the closest I have come to that instant KNOWING I spoke of about

John. All of a sudden, so many things fit.



God - the beginning and the end, known in the silence in our noisy world. This

was the moment, some time in 1979, when this book was begun. This was when I

noticed the internal and external relationships of the 777 framework.



Externally, it had a relationship with the scene in chapters four and five.

The experience of God, the Lamb, people and creation seemed to be very

different, but the connections were there. What did those differences mean?



From this series of questions, the whole organization of Revelation began to

appear, be revealed. That is presented in the body of this book.



Internally, the seven positions each were related to the same positions in the

other two series. That was my first clue. But there was another internal

relationship within each series.



The progression from 1-4, elements of creation; to 5, human; to 6, Christ; to

7, God; is developmental. It traces our spiritual evolution from various kinds

of automatically-reacting, less-than-fully conscious beings, to human

consciousness, to Christ-mastery, to submission to the Creator.



Most systems of spiritual development and humanist development follow this

progression in some form or other. At least one I know of, that developed by

the Russian mystic Gurdjieff, is an exact fit.



So, what is the meaning of 666 in relation to 777? Yes, the numerical

equivalent of the name NERO CAESAR is 666. People did things like that two

thousand years ago, as they do now. John may even have purposely had that in

mind.



But look at this. It is possible to progress in one's spiritual development

from the automaton level (1-4) to human consciousness (5) to mastery (6) and

then not acknowledge God. Our spiritual lore is full of such, beginning with

the tradition of Satan, the brightest of God's angels, who rebelled.

Throughout history, the beast has been known to us in the form of human

leaders who exercised incredible control over people and, seemingly, nature. 



One who works through to the mastery level and doesn't acknowledge God as

Creator, has stopped at the sixth place. Satan, thrown down from heaven is 6.

The beast who was called forth from the sea (chaos) is 6. The beast who arose

from the earth is 6. These stand, 666, in contrast to the 777 of the complete

worldly existence, the pattern of wholeness and salvation presented by John.



In Paul's first chapter of Romans, we are told that the original sin is 

ingratitude.





APPENDIX B      The medicine wheel.



A few years ago, I was listening to a Native American medicine man give a

teaching on the Medicine Wheel. After his presentation, I shared with him some

of the work I was doing in Revelation, and showed him how the medicine wheel

was a perfect diagram of the scene in chapters four and five of Revelation.



He has ever since incorporated chapters four and five of Revelation in his

Medicine Wheel teaching, and has recently published a book containing it. I

was and am glad to have given him something useful, but since he didn't name

me in his book, I won't name him here. But I will share the wonderful

connection that God allowed to manifest through two small humans.



The Medicine Wheel is often portrayed as twelve eagle feathers arranged in a

circle, with four arrows pointing inward toward the center at the four points

of the compass. The arrows are red, yellow, black and white. Immediately, we

can see that it is a variation of the quartered circle symbol of creation.



Some of the teachings of the Medicine Wheel are that the four arrows represent

the four directions, north, south, east and west, and their colors represent

the four races of humans. The Medicine Wheel is the world, and as we stand on

the earth, we experience six directions, plus one. The six directions are

before us, behind us, to the left, to the right, up and down. The seventh

direction is within. Sound familiar?



If we extend the arrows all the way to the center of the circle, the heads of

the arrows form an "X" at the center of the circle. Each eagle feather is very

definitely two-toned, about half dark and half light, representing twenty-four

realities around the edge of the circle. Sound even more familiar?



All that is missing is the Lamb, and that is yet another similarity. Remember

when we were diagraming the scene? We didn't know where to place the Lamb in

the scene. He was at once on the throne, among the living creatures, and among

the elders. The Lamb can't be diagramed on the Medicine Wheel, because it is two-

dimensional. Up and down can't be portrayed at the same time as before and

behind. "Within" can be portrayed, though. Symbolically, with an "X" at the

center of the circle.



As the human stands on the earth, facing west, consciously aware that there

are myriad kinds of relationships at work in human existence, and at one with

them, she is on the Medicine Wheel. That's very much how I feel about the

kingdom of God.



I hope this has been interesting.There is more - much more.