No Matter What!
David Orendorff · Revelation 4 · October 1, 2006
One Sunday morning in Kevin, Montana, a woman, a regular attendee, came to me during coffee with obvious fear in her eyes and told me how the night before she had been driving the back road to Cut Bank. It is truly a Montana back road with no light except the stars and maybe a bit of moon. She had been listening to a Christian radio station when a late night preacher began to warn of the coming great apocalypse. He warned how the world would soon end and he warned that all those marked by the beast would be destroyed in terrible plagues, famine, war and awful disasters. She wanted to know, “Was this really in the Bible? Was it really going to happen? What about her grandchildren?”
The Revelation to John has been used again and again to frighten us. It is a shame, because it was not meant to be a revelation of terror but to be a comfort for those already terrorized. For this week and the next three weeks I will lead us in a look at the major themes of the Revelation to John, one of the most misused and abused books of the Bible.
John’s revelation is filled with fantastic images of red, white and black horsemen, a seven humped beast, a great dragon, and a great harlot; all bringing plagues, disasters, war, torture and death. But it is also full of the images of creatures who sing beautiful praises to God, of faithful elders who throw their crowns before God, of a lamb/warrior who fights evil in heaven and on earth, who defeats all malevolence then marries the world in a great wedding. The revelation climaxes when a new heaven and new earth appear. A heaven and earth now void of suffering, of tears, and of death. A new heaven and new earth filled with great love.
We don't know all that much about the John who saw all this happen. We know that he was a traveling Christian evangelist in the region of present day western Turkey. He taught of God's great love for the people. He taught of how God was present in Jesus, so that when the people looked upon Jesus they saw God. He taught how there was only one God, one Lord, one truth of life.
It is this teaching that got him into trouble with the Roman authorities. Rome demanded allegiance to the gods of Rome and many emperors considered themselves a part of the divine pantheon. The Christians refused such loyalty and thus were liable to persecution. Sometime around the year 95 John was arrested for heresy by agents of the Emperor Domitian and then banished to Patmos, a small, rocky and barren island 35 miles off the west coast of Asia Minor. John's life was stripped from him. He had no contact with his family or with his brothers and sisters of the faith. For eighteen months he lived by rain water, insects, what fish he might catch and prayer.
John was not the first to be arrested. Before John's arrest, one Antipas, “a faithful witness,” was killed by the authorities in Pergamum (Rev. 2:13). And there were probably many others for when in heaven John sees, “underneath the altar the souls of those who had been killed because they had proclaimed God's word and had been faithful in their witnessing (6:9).”
It is during his time of exile that the Spirit of God takes control of John and says, “Write down what you see, and send the book to these seven churches; in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea (1:11).” John reveals how well he knows these churches, not only speaking of persons in each church, but also reflecting upon the character of each congregation. And the seven churches know each other as well for they are as close as the churches in our area from Woodinville, to Redmond, Bothell, Everett and Bellevue.
John is lifted in the Spirit to heaven and shown “what must happen very soon.” I like to think of John as having a God given, very vivid dream. Not a dream that can be relegated to the category of garlic meatballs before bed, but the dreams of which C.G. Jung says, “reveal the nature of the soul.” It is a dream of such power that it both frightens us and offers us hope. This dream is directly relevant to John’s time and life, but also is of such great revelation that it also is revealing to our lives and times.
Read: The Revelation to John: Chapter 4
It is a startling dream. God in Technicolor sits upon a mighty throne. Four creatures that look like a lion, calf, man and eagle, but with eyes in front and back, and with six wings, never stop singing “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.”
There are 24 elders, the mature and faithful ones wearing the golden crowns. When they hear the creatures praise God, they fall prostrate around the throne; remove their golden crowns, the signs of their personal authority and power, and place them before God singing “Our Lord and God! You are worthy to receive glory, honor, and power; for you created all things and by your will they were given existence and life.”
It is a glorious vision of God's greatness and our praise. John may have wanted to leave heaven at this point and return to Patmos much inspired. But there is more and dreams tell the truth. John's vision holds frightening images of war, famine, disaster and death; of the Beast who embodies false hope; of the Dragon who destroys; of the Harlot who seduces; and of the slaughter of innocents.
To know terror is to be alive and live through suffering. The elders of John's vision respond to life’s tragedies in a peculiar way. Each time a disaster comes they turn to God, surrender their authority and power, and sing praise. When the horsemen of the apocalypse ride and while the world hides in fear, the elders fall down on their faces and sing, “Amen! Praise, glory, wisdom, thanks, honor, power, and might belong to our God forever and ever! Amen! (7:12).”
When the second terror is over and the seventh angel blows his trumpet for the third terror, which is war in heaven, the 24 elders fall from their thrones and onto their faces, singing, “Lord God Almighty, who is and who was! We thank you that you have used your great power and have begun to rule! (11:17)”
When the seven angels come with seven bowls of plagues, the elders sing, “Lord, God Almighty, how great and wonderful are your deeds! King of all nations, how right and true are your ways (15:3)!” No matter what is happening or how bad it is, the elders sing praise to God.
It is an odd response, is it not? We are more likely, I think to cement our crowns to our head and to question God with “Why are you letting this happen?” or “Why are you doing this to me?” And when we have had it, to shout at God, “What kind of cruel God are you?” To praise God for salvation while our lives are being terrorized seems irrational.
And yet, in John's revelation, this is just what the elders do. They praise God because before there are any signs of hope they know that God is working for their salvation. But that is the subject of next week’s sermon. It is enough to say today, that in the end, John sees a new heaven and a new earth. And a voice says to him, “Now God's home is with the people! God will live with them, and they shall be God's people. God will be with them, and God will be their God. God will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief, crying, or pain. The old things have disappeared (21:4).”
This is God’s message to John and all those suffering hard times.
Is it only a dream, only the hallucination of an exile? Can we trust that no matter what happens in our lives; we can praise God for the time will come when there is no more suffering; when God will wipe all tears from our eyes? Dare we praise God and build our lives on the hope of a tomorrow of justice and compassion? Can this be true for us when we suffer disease, divorce, and death? The elders, the ones of deep faith, answer “Yes, it is not only possible, it is certain.”
Etty Hillesum was a young Jewish woman who was interned in the Nazi death camps. She died at Auschwitz in November of 1943 at only 29 years old. For the last two years of her life she wrote a diary, now published as An Interrupted Life. Here is a woman, who like John, had been torn from the people she loved and the world she knew.
At one point she writes of her life:
11 August 1943 Later on, when I no longer have to sleep on an iron bunk in a camp surrounded by barbed wire, I shall have a little lamp above my bed so that I can have light round me at night whenever I want. When I lie drowsing, thoughts and little stories often whirl through my brain as random and transparent as soap bubbles, and I would so like to be able to capture them on paper.
In the mornings, when I wake up, I lie cocooned in these stories; it is a rich awakening, you know. But then I get twinges of pain, the ideas and images simply demand to be written down, but there is nowhere for me to sit in peace, sometimes I walk around for hours looking for a quiet little corner. Once a stray cat came in during the night, we put a hat box for it on the w.c. and it had kittens inside. I sometimes feel like a stray cat without a hat box.
Tonight Jopie's son was born. His name is Benjamin and he sleeps in a drawer. They have now put some sort of madman beside my father.
You know, if you don't have the inner strength while you're here to understand that all outer appearances are a passing show, as nothing beside the great splendour (I can't think of a better word right now) inside us - then things can look very black here indeed. Completely wretched, in fact, as they must look to those pathetic people who have lost their last towel, who struggle with boxes, trays of food, cups, mouldy bread and dirty laundry, on, under and around their bunks, who are miserable when other people shout at them or are unkind, but who shout at others themselves without a thought; or to those poor abandoned children whose parents have been sent on transport, and who are ignored by the other mothers: they have worries enough with their own brood, what with the diarrhea and all the other complaints, big and small, when nothing was ever wrong with them in the past. You should see these poor mothers sitting beside the cots of their wailing young in blank and brute despair.1 An Interrupted Life, The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943, (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), 252-3
It is the incredible image of a woman trapped by her circumstances, exiled to Patmos to die, with no place to call her own, or to create life and yet able to speak of her life as “the great splendour.” A week later, on 18 August 1943, she continues:
You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue. Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised towards Your Heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in my bed and rest in You, oh God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer. I have been terribly tired for several days, but that, too, will pass; things come and go in a deeper rhythm and people must be taught to listen to it, it is the most important thing we have to learn in this life. I am not challenging You, oh God, my life is one great dialogue with You. I may never become the great artist I would really like to be, but I am already secure in You, God. Sometimes I try my hand at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one single word: God. And that says everything and there is no need for anything more. And all my creative powers are translated into inner dialogues with You; the beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches.2 ibid. 255
Etty is one of the 24 elders. In the midst of great evil and holocaust she places her crown before the throne and says, "Our Lord and God! You are worthy to receive glory, honor and power. For you created all things, and by your will they were given existence and life. (4:8-11)
The power of the Revelation to John is that though it was first given to John, it has become the revelation and vision for Etty in Auschwitz and for all of those whose lives are terrorized by misfortune, by war, by brokenness, disease, plague, and disaster. It is the revelation that no matter what is happening in our lives, we praise God for God is even now working out our salvation.
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The power to rule over the world belongs now to our Lord and his Messiah, and he will rule forever and ever!” Then the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell down on their faces and worshiped God, saying:
“Lord God Almighty, who is and who was! We thank you that you have used your great power and have begun to rule! (11:15-17).”
Whatever would put you on Patmos, whatever exiles you from the ones you love, from the world or from yourself, keep singing praises to God for God is our salvation. Reach for whatever strength remains to you and lift your voice to sing from the loneliness of your soul, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty! Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.” For God is even now working for you, to save you from suffering. And God's day will certainly come to you and make for you “a great splendour,” a “new heaven and new earth.” We'll talk more next week. In the mean time, do not lose hope for the Lamb is coming to the rescue.
Shalom and Amen.