Site icon Vern Bender

You’ve got it all wrong about John the Revelator.

Firstly, Revelations is written in obscure symbolism, subject to interpretation. Wrongful interruptions abound.  Does John the Revelator use bizarre word pictures?  Yeah, you bet.  George Bernard Shaw called Revelations “a curious record of the visions of a drug addict.” Pictures of evil.  The visions of the seven seals.  John sees the throne room with the four beasts and the twenty-four elders; God holds a scroll with seven seals.  The conquering lion wins via the slaughtered lamb.  John uses word pictures to make his points. The Lamb gives to receive.  Through the four horsemen, He shows the futility of battlefield conquests and the ruling power’s limits. Things are only momentarily within your control.  Your accomplishments are fleeting at best.  Nothing you do in the long run measures up to the everlasting. A red dragon, a seven-headed beast, stars fall, the moon turns blood red, and the antichrist shows up.  A cosmic battle between good and evil commences, and good triumphs.  Demonic forces are everywhere, and deception becomes a way of life.     It’s a disclosure story, written in the abstract.  It is a vision of hope, and God wins.  Sin loses to Grace. The book was written in Greek two thousand years ago.  There were seven Christian churches in existence, all in today’s Turkey.  Turkey was a Greek culture living under Roman rule. The battle was fought with the Creator’s lamb, the seven-headed dragon, and the beast/harlot of Babylon.  The book was instructive for those alive two thousand years ago.  After good wins, you won’t be doing war, no more.  Death gets swallowed up, and only life and peace remain.  The Spirit of truth remains, and the spirit of deceit is gone. The Prince of light wins over the angel of darkness. . When the sixth seal is opened, nature melts down, and accountability shows up.  Justice is at hand.  In the new life, evil is gone.  The new age began before the old era was gone.  Future hope arises from the trials and tribulations of now. Things have changed; faith, hope, and love shine through.   Countless crowds are saved. The seven trumpets perspective is LSD on crack, for the most part.  A third of everything gets torn asunder:  hellfire rains down, a fiery mountain is cast into the sea, drinking water is undrinkable, the sky goes dark, and demonic locusts ascend like helicopters from the underworld, devouring everything. The seventh trumpet announces that the end is now. Or, looking at it another way: Admittedly, plagues and hellfires don’t beget much change of behavior in you anyway.  Hope for the future inserts itself into the present.  God’s purposes are redemptive; never lose sight of that.  The beast’s purpose is death to you and wipes out justice every step of the way. So, If you make some changes, I’ll change the scenario that I’ve described:  Try to do it right, repent, and be saved from the turmoil that I described.  The ball is now in your court. Fix the worshipping community. Truth wins the war of words.  Oppression also loses to spoken and written truth—tyranny and deception end.  The door to the great abyss is opened wide, and the destroyers are cast inside.  Justice wins in the future. The book of deeds and the book of life are opened.  The final judgments are made.  Divine grace decides.  Alpha and omega are now one.  A new creation is now at hand. Death and its destructive forces are gone.  The rot of evil has been cast out. All remaining life is made new. The new transformation has been accomplished. The new Jerusalem is at hand, a world without end.
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