Partakers Christian Podcasts

Gems in Revelation - Part 139

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 139 - Revelation 7:9-17
The worshipping crowd

John sees a great crowd of the people of God, but he has a problem: are they ordered and countable or are there far too many of them for that? He doesn’t know so he describes them both ways.

If they can be counted how many are there? He chooses a number and since he has to describe them he does it in terms of the ancient people of God: the twelve tribes of Israel though he is no longer really drawing a line between Jew and Gentile. And how many are there? He has to choose a number. So he is careful to pick a number: 144,000, which is neither too many or too few. He will not have known how many followers of Jesus there were as he wrote. So he picks a stylised number made up of products of 10 and 12. Two twelves and three tens multiplied together will give him what he wants. That must have been at least two or three times as many as the number of followers of Jesus there were then. So, allowing for the rapidly increasing churches it is a number that means that no one who heard it would need to despair of being one of the chosen ones. But it is not such as enormous number that his hearers might think that they were automatically alright then and need do no more to get their seal on their forehead. Such a number will not do today; there are far too many of us now. At least one more 12 and 5 more 10s to take it up to over 17 billion would now be needed to get a small multiple of the known number of Christians now in the world.

So perhaps John’s second picture of an uncountable number in a great multitude is the better one. And we, you and I, are somewhere in that throng. If our eyesight in heaven is much the same as it is here on earth we wont even be able to see the throne and the Lamb because as comparatively late comers we shall be so much on the edge of the throng. But we shall still get the white robe that will signify that we are counted as pure, forgiven through the blood of the Lamb and thus partaking in his victory. Even if we are not very good singers here on earth - no matter - this praise and worship is to be spoken! Even if our voices are now old and shaky we shall then have ‘loud voices’ rejoicing in the fact that we have been saved. We shall hear the praises of the elders and the living creatures and, although it does not say this will happen, no doubt picking up the gist of what they are saying and joining in.

When John asks who are eligible to be in this great throng he is told that they are “those who have come out of the great tribulation”. All sorts of fanciful theories about what the great tribulation is, or will be, have been proposed. We don’t need to worry about it; in a throng so big there is bound to be room for little you and little me! WOW and hooray.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 137

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 137 - Revelation 6:1–8
The four horsemen of the Apocalypse

From the glories of the last two chapters we come to earth with a bump when we turn to chapter 6. The famous picture of the Four Horseman is a graphic description of the sad way the world of mankind was in as John wrote. And, very sad to say, it is still an incredibly accurate account of where the world still is, now, in 2018. These first 8 verses do not comprise a gem of any kind. I set out, a long time ago, to find and comment upon some of the many marvellous things for our comfort and encouragement that can be found in the writings of the Johns of the New Testament. Nothing here qualifies on that score. But these verses are so famous as ‘The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse’ that I cannot pass them by.

There is no doubt what the second, third and fourth of them mean. But there is some doubt about the first. Because the rider is on a white horse and appears to be in good health (unlike the others) some have thought he must be Jesus since Jesus appears in 19:11 - 16 on a white horse in judgment and thus in a not entirely pleasant aspect. This will not do. These are pictures, and a symbol from one picture cannot necessarily be transported to another. In this particular context Jesus would find himself in some very strange company.

No. The first rider represents all those whose greatest desire is to lord it over other people. Just occasionally a president or a prime minister will appear whose greatest desire is to serve. Even when they do, human nature being what it is, after a while the attractions of power often overtake their initial commendable desires. The English phrase ‘Prime Minister’ means nothing more or less than ‘first servant’! There are many examples in the present day world where those already at the pinnacle of power in their own nation cannot resist the desire for more. It is tempting to list some of them, but I am sure you can fill in the blanks whether of a small nation or a large one.

The second horse is red. Its rider stands for even worse things. The rider of the white horse was at least only trying to establish his position. The rider of the red horse stands for people with an even greater ambition, to establish some different way of organising people that they think are better. So we have had Fascism, communism and Islam each of which in their turn over the last century have attempted, or are attempting, to bend mankind to their way of thinking regardless of how many people they have to kill to do so.

The rider of the third, black horse represents famine. The world in which we live is very unevenly balanced. Some countries experience an almost continuous shortage of food while other countries have a super-abundance. The hope is that eventually market forces will bring the world into something nearer equilibrium but there is little sign of that happening as yet.

The fourth horse and its rider are symbols of all the other things that can go wrong in a part of the world. Perhaps particularly it represents disease, which still kills a great many people in many parts of the world. Again, there is a great disparity between those countries where modern medicine can effect minor miracles in healing people and keeping them alive while in other countries people die from easily cured diseases because they cannot afford the cures.

So, we have four causes of death (Revelation 6:8). It will be no accident that two of them refer to the way people die simply because of human behaviour; two die from causes which are non-human but could easily be prevented were the human race better at organising itself and more even-handed in the way it shared its resources.

The world belongs to the God on the throne of Revelation 4 and the Lion/Lamb of Revelation 5 but this chapter reminds us that the devil is still alive and kicking and rampaging through the world. Much of the rest of this remarkable book is devoted to suggesting where it is all going and how eventually the devil will meet his end and mankind enter into better days along with all the rest of creation. The Three in one God will triumph - but not yet.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 136

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 136 - Revelation 5:9 – 15
The great praise and worship

The effect of the death of the Lamb, who came to life again, is clear. It was a huge chorus of praise, described by John in three parts. In the first the symbols of all of creation and especially of all humans prepared to worship the Lamb join together in a rapturous song of praise of the Lamb; the emphasis is on the human aspect of what had happened. A countless number of people had been purchased (who they were bought from is not a question ever considered in scripture). We must simply accept that it is the best way of describing what had happened to all believers - to you and me. We have been purchased, redeemed, ransomed from the natural life that all mankind are born into.

 

Now they were expressing their thanks for that wonderful event. The twenty-four elders that represented them were carrying golden bowls of incense which represented the prayers of God’s people. I don’t know how it is where you are but everywhere I have been and heard the prayers of God’s people they have been too concerned with themselves and not sufficiently with what the Lamb has done for them, oh dear. But we are who we are and fortunately we have the ultimate loving and forgiving God! The other thing the elders were carrying was harps. That surely is to encourage us to sing his praise as often as we gather together. Our songs will not be as full of joy and melody as theirs will have been, but, no matter, the PA systems of heaven will be able to translate them into the most beautiful melodies ever heard.

Not only has the death of the Lamb secured our salvations he has, by that act, established that he is the one who was worthy to open the scroll and thus enable the onward march of the purposes of God to continue. As a result, we, from all round the world, anyone who has access to the Internet, are by reading this brought to the knowledge that we are or can be members of the Kingdom and able to serve the Creator God. That is the significance of when John talks about ‘a kingdom and priests’. In practical terms it means that we are not lacking in anything worth having. We are probably not rich in the financial terms this world craves, not significant as the world counts significance, but content. We have what we need to live a fulfilling life.

The second great swelling surge of praise comes from angels numbering at least one hundred million. John probably did not have any way of easily talking about any other numbers, which will be why ‘billions’ do not come into it. They formed a great crowd circled round the symbols of human and creation praise. And it was the thunderous sound of their praise that so excited all creation that it formed the outer circle of praise and worship. Quite how it is that the creation worships in the super heat of a tropical day in a desert area, or a winter’s day in the arctic regions we will never know. But still the thought serves as a warning for those of us who have to live in great cities and urban conurbations not to get so drawn into the excitements of the human, concrete environment that we lose sight of the countryside where the role of the creation is so much more obvious.

Pray, praise, worship, sing to the Lamb to the summit of your ability. All will be well received in heaven.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 135

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 135 - Revelation 5:1–8
The Lion/Lamb

John’s chapter 5 is one of the great chapters of the Bible. He has this wonderful picture of the lion that turns out to be a lamb. That says a great deal of what the whole work of Jesus was about. He was the lion of Judah prophesied and therefore promised in Genesis 49:9 in the final blessing of his sons by Jacob. The lion has always been considered the king of the beasts. Not only was he the top predator of that area, all of Africa, and much of Asia, he simply looked majestic. So, when they wanted someone sufficiently strong and majestic to open the great scroll that contained the plan of the future who was more appropriate than the king of the beasts? At one and the same time he was the Root of David, prophesied as the Root of Jesse, David’s father, by Isaiah in 11:10. It was widely accepted at that time that this was a reference to the Messiah, the greatly longed for one who was expected to deliver Israel from all the foreign powers, particularly Rome, who so reduced the nation treating it as a vassal state, little better than a kingdom of slaves.

And so, in his vision, John heard what was said and watched, prepared to be awestruck when he saw the lion. But, in place of a lion, he saw a ‘lamb, looking as if it had been slain’. If you have ever come across a dead lamb lying out on the ground you will know that it is the most pitiful of sights. Most dead animals look like the animals they are but just without life, but a dead lamb becomes just a scrap of wet wool (the ones I have seen have all been in the highlands of Scotland and so inevitably wet!) so the one who was equivalent to the most majestic of all creatures is the one who died on a cross the most abject and painful death. He had 7 horns and 7 eyes. He was all seeing and all powerful - though it was not the sort of power that this world delights in.

This was Jesus, Son of God, Saviour of mankind, king of all creation, lord of the kingdom of God. He set an example to all his followers that few have dared to follow in its entirety. ‘Take up your cross’ he told them. As this goes out to be read over all the world a few of you who hear and read will know that you face the possibility of following Jesus all the way; seeking to follow the lion you may be required to be literally a lamb and a dead one at that. Most of us do not expect that to be the way we shall have to go. If at the last it is demanded of us that we should face martyrdom for him we do not really know what our response will be. Will we boldly or tremblingly, be prepared for the ultimate sacrifice? We do not know. We can only conjecture. And there we must leave it. Making rash boasts is not helpful for us, or anybody. Please Lord in the final trial make us faithful.

There are many ways in which mankind is upsetting what might be the even tenor of the world. We shall come across some vivid pictures of some of these before we are finished with this wonderful book. But all the troubles of mankind are now downstream from the sacrifice of the Lamb. Where ever we are; whatever has been our lot in life; whether we have had it easy or life has been one long struggle, we can look back at the work of the Lamb of God. He has conquered in his strange upside down world where it is better to be a Lamb than a Lion. It is our great privilege to have been told this and, in part at least, to understand it. So it is our great privilege to live as the sons and daughters of the King.

The Lamb has taken the scroll and the plans of God continue to be realized. No wonder that all John sees next is praise and worship.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 134

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 134 - Revelation 4:1–11
The Creator God

John tells us he saw a door standing open in heaven (4:1). ‘Open’ is a key word in Revelation. John uses it to say that he is starting to tell us about a new vision he had. So it means something like ‘I am opening up a new vision, a new story. And a wonderful one this one is. In these next 2 chapters John is going to paint word pictures of Father God and Jesus Christ.

He has told us about the disturbing atmosphere in which the seven churches are living, their dangers and difficulties and also their opportunities. He is going to go on to talk about the terrible mess the human world has got itself into, and is still in today, because of the way the devil, Satan, is controlling so much of mankind. Only, finally, in his last two chapters, will he be able to talk about the wonderful positive things towards which it will eventually all come.

In this chapter particularly he is doing the impossible: he is describing the indescribable. To do so he uses much of the language of Ezekiel’s first chapter. Ezekiel ends up by saying that he is describing the ‘appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord’ thus shielding himself from any accusation that he was describing God. John might well do the same. Any attempt to make a painted or drawn picture out of his description would be foredoomed to disaster. Most of the attempts of the artists of former centuries do not portray Father-God but rather Grandfather-God or even Great Grandfather-God anyway! We cannot answer the question what does God look like, both because we are unable to and we are forbidden to do so (Exodus 33:20 – 23).

Yet we still have a wonderful picture in front of us. The things that surround the actual figure on the throne indicate how God is to be treated. The strange living creatures with the four different faces are the nearest things to the figure on the throne and they lead the praise and worship. They may be strange but they are a clear indication that it is not just human beings who worship the Lord God: all creation does. The twenty-four elders are usually reckoned to be indicating the twelve tribes of Israel and the people of Jesus represented by the twelve apostles, thus all the people of God. They have but one function - they are to worship. There is a double chorus of praise and worship going on continuously round the figure on the throne: the inner circle represents creation, the outer circle represents humanity. We are to praise because the creation rejoices in its creator as we rejoice in our saviour.

The elders represent us who are his people. We are to work to earn crowns we do not deserve (2 Timothy 4:8) but like the elders we shall only use them to throw down before the great glory of the Lord God. They represent a great challenge for us all; to strive to have the best possible crowns so that we throw the best possible gifts before the Lord God. Look forward to that day.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 132

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 132 - Revelation 3:12
The city of the name

The ‘gem’ is in the promise that ends the letter following the words ‘to the one who is victorious’. Here is the rest of the letter :

To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:
These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David.What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. 8 I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. 9 I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. 10 Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.

11 I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. 12 The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on them my new name. 13 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.


Names are important in the letter to Philadelphia. People are named for one of 3 reasons:
i) the parents liked the name, the way it sounds or some association it brings to their minds;
ii) it is a family name handed down through the generations - though that may be a trap as some names may go very out of fashion, for example someone who ought to be call Euphemia, a very old fashioned and clumsy name in our culture, may be called Effie for a generation or two and then that is boiled down to Fay, a much nicer sounding name;
iii) the name may be given to express the character and personality of the person.
All 3 can be found in the Bible but the important one for our purposes is the last, the name that expresses personality and character.

To start with the name of the city is significant, phila = love and delphia = brother, so brotherly love.

The small Christian community in the city did not enjoy brotherly relations with the Jewish community. The latter would have been a large and respected part of the city with many good buildings, big houses and a well understood part in the community including non-participation in some activities because of their belief in one god. The Christians would probably have been only a few dozen strong and from the poorer section of the society with no great respect shown to them.

 

So their problems were not with the pagan groups as in most of the cities that received letters but with the ancient people of God who they were always trying to convince should now be setting out to follow a convicted criminal Jew! Hence the talk about keys of David “ I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.” (referring to a new leader of the people; Isaiah 22:22) etc. They had survived and done more than just survive - they had used what strength they had well and earned the promise that they would be kept from further trials.

As a result they are told they will be pillars in ‘the temple of my God’, bearing the names of the great city of the new heaven and the new earth, the name of God and the new name of Jesus. That is a promise that all the power and personality of the triune God will somehow be theirs. That is a tremendous promise to them - and to us. That makes it well worth persevering in our walk with Jesus even if we have but little strength. It is not necessary to be a member of some great and famous church. A little struggling church will do provided it has ‘kept my word and not denied my name’.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 131

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 131 - Revelation 3:5
Walking with the Lord

The ‘gem’ is in the promise that ends the letter following the words ‘to the one who is victorious’. Here is the rest of the letter :

“To the angel[a] of the church in Sardis write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits[b] of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.2 Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. 3 Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.
4 Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. 5 The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels. 6 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

What a magnificent promise that is, walking with Jesus! Unfortunately it is not given to to all the church members in Sardis but only to those who ‘have not soiled their clothes.’ It is not hard to see why it was restricted to the few because the church ‘has a reputation of being alive, but you are dead’. There are few clues as to what the problem was. The majority of the church had ‘deeds unfinished in the sight of my God’. What that meant in the first century is not clear. But, sadly, it is a description that can all too easily be applied to many churches today. Too many, in this country at least, are hives of activity with all sorts of things happening but seem to be more social clubs than true centres of spirituality. Perhaps that was the problem in Sardis; it would certainly fit the scant evidence we have in John’s description.

What, in our day, are the necessary aspects of a church which is truly alive? There has to be plenty of activity to be sure. What is truly important is where is the focus of what goes on. It must be Jesus, his worship, living in step with him and his promotion before all. To accomplish that a true and accurate study of scripture is essential. That is always necessary but it is not sufficient. It is possible to have the scripture properly studied from the front and yet the focus not to be on Jesus. It may instead be on people in general, or the leadership, on those in the church, or those outside the church, on organisations within the church, on the vigour of the worship, on the splendid accuracy of the doctrine taught in the church, on how modern they are or how well they maintain ancient thinking. It may even be on the building, on the finances, on the splendour of the robes worn by the leaders, and a hundred and one other considerations, worthy in themselves but not the appropriate place to focus the efforts of the fellowship.

It is never possible to be sure what is happening. It is easy to set up an organisation to keep a check on things like schools or hospitals. A count can be kept of how many students have passed external examinations at a good level or how many patients have survived difficult and dangerous operations, but it is not possible to send someone in to check on what is happening in a church. That would have to be in terms of how deep its spirituality is, which means, of course, what progress are people making in following Jesus, something largely well hidden from the sight of all but the Lord.

All this means that no one is a good Christian because they go to church, read an internet site like this every day, were baptised as a baby, belong to a Christian community, hold a passport which says ‘Religion - Christian’ or reckon they are ‘a decent, good living person’, once upon a time went forward at a big Christian rally, were ‘born again’ that way or any other way, and so on. No! Things are much more difficult than that. Ultimately only the Lord knows who are truly his. We may have a good idea of whether we personally are or not if we are honest enough, but not really anyone else,

Being a true follower of Christ is a process, not a once off single event. Of course lives start with a birth and all processes have a start point and this one is no exception. It may sometimes be so well hidden in our childhood or at the end of a lengthy process that we scarcely know when it all began. There should be no such doubt about the continuing process that follows.

Hopefully we, you who read this and I, will be amongst those who walk with Jesus, dressed in white as it says here, to signify our purity and holiness developed over the days, or months, years, or decades that we have been walking with the Lord getting stronger of leg and lungs and heart beat as we go. May it be so, dear Lord.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 130

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 130 - Revelation 2:26
Given authority through Christ

 

The ‘gem’ is in the promise that ends the letter following the words ‘to the one who is victorious’. Here is the rest of the letter :

 

To the angel of the church in Thyatira write:
These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. 19 I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.

20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.

24 Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets, ‘I will not impose any other burden on you, 25 except to hold on to what you have until I come.’

26 To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations— 27 that one ‘will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like pottery’—just as I have received authority from my Father.28 I will also give that one the morning star.

 

Jesus continues his imaginary journey through his churches in the city of Thyatira. It was another manufacturing centre though not as large as the last one, Pergamum. It seems to have had much the same problems as Pergamum. The main difference seems to have been that where the Christians in Pergamum had a rather fragmented fellowship with several splinter groups teaching different things these folk had only one split - though that a big one. A woman, here referred to as Jezebel (unlikely to be her real name), had a considerable following in the church. She was leading people astray, probably not teaching sexual immorality directly but encouraging people to enter fully into the culture of the city, which would rather inevitably lead to participation in various sexual events.

The reason for that was the same as in Pergamum: the necessity to be in a guild with its strict rules about who might or might not carry on a particular trade in the city. You had to be a member of the Guild of Bakers if you wanted to bake and sell bread as a business etc. You would then be required to attend a certain number of the regular feasts, eat the food provided, some of which would probably have reached the table via a sacrifice at a pagan temple, drink the alcohol provided, and participate in the general socialising, which might well include sexual activity with cult prostitutes. Much of that was contrary to Christian teaching. But ‘Jezebel’ was encouraging her disciples to full participation in all that went on.

Most cultures round the world today have not descended quite that far, but many are on a slippery slope headed that way. So what do we do? The depth of your problem will depend on what is going on in the particular society you are in, or would like to be in.

The fundamental principle has to be ‘no’. Of course, you may, with a clear conscience, do all you can to fit in with the society you want to be in provided you do not do anything that following Jesus would mean you should not do. The WWJD, What Would Jesus Do, slogan has rightly been criticised by many people but in this particular situation it is good and appropriate to use it.

We simply cannot step right outside our culture and society. When Christians have tried to do so, in Calvin’s Geneva, some early American States and so on, it has never worked satisfactorily. It is not possible to get those who have not set out to follow Jesus, of whom there are always some in every society, to follow the same pattern of behaviour as those who have done so. It cannot be done and shouldn’t be attempted. That is the way human behaviour has been since the Fall.

So we, who do strive to follow Jesus, must accommodate ourselves to the situation around us. To help us do so we have the great promises given to this church in Thyatira. When we set out to follow Jesus he comes to us, loves us in a new way and grants us the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, his Spirit. We receive something of his authority and status over all nations.

(The words are a quotation from Psalm 2:8, 9.) But we have always to remember who he was and how he behaved.

Of him it was said that ‘“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his teaching the islands will put their hope.” (Isaiah 42:1-4). As we receive him into our lives we must be like that too. Tough, but infinitely rewarding.

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Gems in Revelation - Part 128

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 128 - Revelation 2:11

No second death.

 

The ‘gem’ is in the promise that ends the letter following the words ‘to the one who is victorious’. Here is the rest of the letter :

⁸ To the angel of the church in Smyrna write:
These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. ⁹ I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. ¹⁰ Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.
¹¹ Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.

The church in Smyrna had its problems and was soon going to get more and greater ones! We don’t know how John knew enough to say this unless it was a prophecy. More serious persecution was coming their way. It wasn’t a rich church, as people normally counted richness, but they were rich in the way they lived their lives, particularly their spiritual lives. Jesus, through John, is promising them that he will be with them whatever may happen to them so they should be high in confidence, in courage and faithfulness. Then he makes a promise to them that is hard to understand: “you will not be hurt at all by the second death”. There are two problems here: what is the second death and why should they be at all concerned about it anyway.

Second death is a phrase that only appears in Revelation at 20:6 and 14, and 21:8. The first of these says that those who share the first resurrection (with Jesus) have nothing to fear from it, the other two are both about ‘the lake of fire’. This seems to be about the place of everlasting torment often mentioned in the New Testament, particularly by Jesus in places like the parable of the sheep and he goats where he says ‘depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire’ (Matthew 25:41) and this is ‘eternal punishment’ (Matthew 25:46). These statements seem very much at odds with the other things Jesus said.

There are places in the world where such language would be deemed right and proper by the followers of other faiths in relation to the ‘infidels’ but for those of us in the Western world it strikes a strange note. It may simply be a different way of expressing things where only analogies can be used but it still seems very strange.

The best way round the problem is probably the word picture drawn by C. S. Lewis in his children’s book The Last Battle (one of his children’s books about Narnia but they are full of deeply spiritual insights!). At the end of the book and the world all the characters, human, animal and mythical, are forced to look into the eyes of Aslan, the lion, who is the image of Christ. ‘When some looked the expression of their faces changed terribly - it was fear and hatred …. And all who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to his left and disappeared into his huge black shadow …. The watching children never saw them again. I don’t know what became of them. But the others looked in at the face of Aslan and loved him though some of them were very frightened at the same time. And all these came in at the door, in on Aslan’s right. …’.
‘I don’t know what became of them’ is a very wise comment we should take for ourselves.

The faithful people of Smyrna did not have to worry about such things for they would not ‘be hurt at all by the second death’. The same goes for all those who are faithful in these days!

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Gems in Revelation - Part 127

Gems in the book of Revelation

Part 127 - Revelation 2:7

Eating from the tree of life.

As with all the other seven cities the ‘gem’ is in the promise that ends the letter following the words ‘to the one who is victorious’. To put those promises in context we need to read the rest of the letter in each case so it is printed first.

To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

These seven letters to churches in what is now west Turkey are not full of gems. They tend rather to analyse the specific churches and that implies finding faults. Only two, Smyrna and Philadelphia, escape without words of condemnation.

However each church receives words of encouragement towards the end of their letter following the words “To the one who is victorious, I will give …”, or some minor variation on it, and these we will consider gems, particularly as it is quite clear that the gifts are available for all people of all times who qualify in the same way as the folk for whom they were first designed.

What did being victorious mean in real everyday terms for people in churches under increasingly hostile attention from the authorities? It means having succeeded in moving forward along the narrow and difficult path that leads onwards towards the final great day.

The first and largest city in this journey of the imagination is Ephesus. The congregation in the church here are strongly criticised. They have done many good things but in doing so have failed to live up to the standards they originally set for themselves. It is not hard to form a story suggesting what might have happened:

By the time John wrote this the church in Ephesus had been going for probably at least 30 years. They had started off with a great flash of enthusiasm imitating Jesus as much as they could in all their relationships with their neighbours. But – guessing a bit - probably some legalistically minded guys had got hold of the reins of control and, with the best of intentions, set out to bring system to what was going on in so many small, diverse and apparently chaotic ways. They wrote down what should happen, made sure it did and generally brought order to a confused situation. Unfortunately in doing so they had succeeded in killing off that first flush of enthusiasm and leading of the Holy Spirit - they had never really begun to understand the Holy Spirit and how he works. That sort of scenario fits rather well the very brief comment about what was going on. Is it a familiar picture?

What is shocking is the depth of the punishment the church was to receive. Although it survived for a long time it eventually disappeared, as Jesus said it would.

On the other hand for those who survived the problems, sorted them out and returned to the attitudes of love that had motivated them at first, all would be well. The tree of life first appears in Genesis 2: 9 and in Genesis 3: 22 is described as the way to live for ever. It reappears in Revelation 22: 2 and 29 where it is clearly implied that it is the way to eternal life, which we may think of not only as a life that will go on for ever but one of the greatest possible quality to be lived on this earth here and now.

And the implication is that this is available for us!

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