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 interesting 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.

FOREWORD INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 APPENDIX A, 777 APPENDIX B - The Medicine Wheel REVELATION HOME PAGE