Post 8, 666 Two Views of the Same Book

                             

                   

      The images above are titled Metal Confusion 1. They are the same image. This is what some people think of when they read the Book of Revelation.

      Recently, as Dana was going through old emails looking for possible blog ideas, he found something from March 2010. He forwarded the emails we wrote with this comment, “Possible blog idea.”

       That led to a short flurry of recent emails back and forth.

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John said on 9/2/16 8:41 AM

      I like the idea of this one for a blog. Doesn't get too deep into the hodgepodge of Revelation. As much as possible, I'd like to not get too close to that book for awhile, lest the Spirit leads.

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Dana replied on 9/2/16 12:00 PM

      The Spirit has led me to be teaching the Book of Revelation at my church.  I'm 12 chapters in as of this weekend.  Be careful to not turn up your nose at the book.  It IS the Word of God. It is a pertinent message to the Church, and therefore it is as relevant a book of the Bible as any other book contained therein.  It isn't the Revelation of the Anti-Christ, the Beast, the Rapture, the Millennium, the mark of the Beast, or any of the other distractions that get in the way of its true message. It is the Revelation of Jesus Christ to a church increasingly under the gun in a hostile world. (Does this sound familiar?)  If taught correctly and with sensitivity and charity toward all the different schools of thought, it is probably the most comforting book of the Bible, and maybe the most important for the Church in our world today.  

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Then John quipped in return at 12:05 PM on 9/2/16

J  Not with some of the people I'm associated with.

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Dana fired back at 1:32 PM on 9/2/16

      And that is the problem!  It's the last recorded Biblical prophecy, and at the same time, it’s the most neglected book in the Bible.  I would love to see that change.  And, will do all I can to see that change.  Depending on how the election goes, it will become a most important book.  The White House draped in rainbow colors was only the beginning.  We need the Book of Revelation more now than in any time in US church history.  I will not dance around it or avoid it.  It's too important--it plays a huge part in how we view Christ.  And much of the Church only worships a caricature of Jesus.  Where will they be when the whip comes down? And, I am afraid it's going to. 

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John’s background note to introduce the actual emails from 2010.

       How did this all get started? It began long before I knew Dana and especially our first emails. In the fall of 1977 after my first wife and I split, I went into a tail spin, and crashed. Then my neighbor asked me to church. And then, after a few Sunday mornings, one fall Sunday morning I went forward during an altar call and asked Jesus to forgive me of my sins and come into my heart.  I was born again. John 3:3.

      I knew enough to start reading a Bible. On my book shelf was a box, rarely opened that contained a presentation King James Bible from when, at the age of 12 in the Episcopal Church, I was confirmed. For 18 years I had carried that Bible half way around the world with me and through a now failing marriage, but never read it. My name was embossed in gold on the cover. The page edges were gold gilded. When I took it out and opened it, just as my life had been before I was born again, the pages cracked apart. It was still that new.

      I knew enough to go to my pastor Lowell Harrup, a wise, knowledgeable, Godly man, to ask him what to do with The Book. He suggested I start at the front in Genesis and read straight through and including the book of Jude. No, not through Revelation. In fact, he suggested I read through the Bible at least twice, and not read Revelation. He felt for me as a new Christian, it might be too confusing. So I didn’t read Revelation until my third time through the Bible.

     Quite straightforwardly, I still find it confusing. Generally, I don’t find myself being blessed. I get the gist of it but I handle it gingerly. If a new Christian should ask me about that book, I give him or her the same suggestion as my first pastor gave me—read the other Biblical books first before trying Revelation. But you see that Dana has an entirely different view of this book.

       Lest someone think I’m saying not to read it. Or if someone thinks I’m saying it is beyond understanding. Or if someone thinks I’m intimating Revelation is not part of the canon of scripture or is just someone’s wild dream or or or. No! God has what it is where it is for His purposes. It is for us, even for and especially for today.  So here is our introduction to Revelation. As time goes on, there will be other blogs pertaining to it.

       Revelation 1:1-3 NKLV  ¹ The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, ² who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. ³ Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.

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In 2010 John originally asked a number of people, including Dana the below questions about an article he had read in Time Magazine about a national biometric identity card for all US citizens

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1974927,00.html

I'm not usually given to alarmism. But when you read this, does anything go off in your Spirit?  How close is the End?

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 Dana responded

     Pretty freaky, but not to worry, we'll all have health care!  :)  Sorry, I couldn't resist.

     Generally, I hold that the "mark of the beast" is the opposite of Scriptural references to those who are marked with the mark or seal of God, which is seldom talked about. (See Revelation 7:3, 9:4, 14:1).  Now, when you read that do not do like many do (and I’ve done in younger days) and immediately get hung up on the numbers that follow, like 144,000, as “numbers in Revelation are more theological than they are mathematical.” I heard Rev. Eric Alexander say that once, and it was quite sagely advice. A very important concept. We would do better to use our knees and folded hands and an open Bible, as opposed to a calculator and calendar to interpret the numbers of Revelation. It’s not that they are unimportant, or do not have meaning, but they can become a distraction from the real message.

      Alistair Begg describes Revelation like a large painting, and that is an apt description.  If we walk up to the painting until our nose touches the canvas, we can only see very limited detail. Many view Revelation this way, and go completely sideways regarding this detail or that. However if we stand back far enough from the painting, we can see the entire picture. It’s the big picture that is important, and not all the tiny details that cause believers confusion, leading to argument and even separation from each other as to their meanings.  “What does the book say?” is a better question to ask than “What does the book say about horns or beasts or marks or, or, or, or, or, or, or?”

      The Bible allows for both "marks," (God’s and the beast’s) which I take to be more symbolic than literal.  There is ample historical evidence from the writings of many respected and Godly commentators to support the view.  In other words, people historically already have had, or do now have one mark or the other, rather than something specifically relegated to the future, and dependent on technological advances.  One bears the mark of their owner.  Both God and Satan know who are theirs.

      In New Testament times and shortly thereafter, Christians who wouldn't worship the particular "trade deities" assigned to their vocations, or images of the Caesar were refused participation in local commerce, that is, they were banned from buying or selling--something particular to those not having the mark of the beast.  In that day and time there was no physical mark required to designate the ownership of individuals, hence their marks were "understood" by their obedience to pagan authority or to their Lord.

     That said, there are and have been several accepted views of the end times held by Godly Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians, with the only thing in common being the visible, bodily return of Jesus Christ at the end of the age.  Most of my Christian life has been spent studying the end times books and passages.  My views differ from the Assemblies of God, and I was honest about them when I took my AG ministerial credentials test and interview for licensing.  Their (the AG hierarchy--District Superintendant etc.) recommendation to me was that upon receipt of my credentials, I promise not to make an issue from the pulpit as to those differences.  We both were able to live with that, and I held up my end of the bargain through the time I resigned my credentials. So there's some wiggle room, even in the Assemblies.  And so in Christendom the “mark of the beast” is and can be seen in different ways by different viewer’s views on the subject.

     I do not try to make a doctrine of any particular school of thought regarding end times theology, save the literal, physical, visible, unmistakable, 2nd coming of Jesus Christ in glory, at the time designated by the Father, and unknown to us (so we’d better be ready). Having studied all schools of thought on the subject, I tend to have a fairly eclectic view of what I believe prophetic and apocalyptic Scriptural passages have to say. Again, I’m not convinced that any one particular view, or school of thought on the end times, is the “be-all-end-all” of prophetic interpretation.  All of the schools have merits and demerits, and they all, to an extent, have to bend things a little to make them fit neatly.  The view of the end times to which I currently subscribe, is the one that left me with the least amount of unanswered questions. Nothing more, nothing less.  And like I am fond of saying, if my view is wrong, well…when we get to heaven, I’ll buy the coffee.  However if I’m right, you can buy the coffee.  Deal?

      That said, while I'm not convinced that the mark of the beast is a literal, physical mark, or chip, or tattoo, or biometric thingamajig or whatever, when faced with the question as to whether or not, according to my views on the end times, I would willingly receive any of the aforementioned things possibly construed as "marks," upon threat of not being able to buy and sell in the public market, I’d have to say, “NO WAY!”  I might be an "old dog," but not an "old dogmatist," especially when it comes to things like the article you sent me. 

      Yes, the article raised a couple of red flags, but then again, I grew up in the “The Late Great Planet Earth” generation, and spent a goodly portion of my early adulthood trying to see apocalyptical locusts as helicopter gunships.  We must resist the “goose bump factor,” as fun as it sometimes is in which to indulge, and we must be absolutely welded to the real “message” of Revelation, that God is on the throne, in control of every single detail of history and human destiny, that the Lamb has and will thoroughly triumph over all His foes, Satan included, and that all of God’s people will be safely in His care, basking in His presence for all eternity. To quote Alistair Begg another time, “There will be no empty seats in heaven.” Though the powers of darkness, acting through pagan, human entities and agencies rage against the church, the church will prevail, not by our might or by our particular doctrinal or eschatological stances, but because Jesus the Lord has declared it so. It is His church, and the Divine plan will succeed. That’s Revelation!

     We simply cannot allow certain happenings in the news or technological devices that man comes up with to lead us off into the realm of Christian science-fiction.  Revelation had something to say to a beleaguered first century church that was literally being hammered by the Roman Empire and, it has something to say to the church in all generations, including ours, and especially those under the lash of persecution and pagan hostility.  It is not giving us a puzzle to solve, or something to tickle our fancy and entertain us.  Revelation is the rock solid assurance that God reigns supremely, and that we have nothing to fear no matter how bad times or circumstances might get.

      I don't know if we're near the end of time or not, but we are closer than when you and I were at VFCC, and in fact, we’re 2000 years and change closer than when John the Revelator  was given the Revelation. Perhaps it's just my being an old geezer, but I see the world as vastly and exceedingly more sinful and depraved than I did 35 years ago, and, I have witnessed the love of many waxing cold in too many arenas to list. Does that say something about the end times? I don’t know.

       That man is trying to play God, there is no doubt.  When my son, JW was in school, in his science classes there was talk of silicone based life forms, as opposed to and in addition to carbon based life forms.  We (mankind) are close to being able to, if not already able to really "create" life. It's scary to ponder, that while man might be able to create a living body out of this cell or that, I am pretty sure they haven’t figured out how to create a soul.  So what does that make their creation?  Again, it can cause goose bumps to ponder, can’t it?  “Even so, come Lord Jesus!”

      When man decided to "be like God" in the Garden of Eden, things went south in a hurry.  When man decided to build a tower to reach Heaven, God intervened.  While He is a generous God, He will not share His deity or His glory, or all the rights, privileges and prerogatives thereof with His created beings. I think we'll (mankind) be allowed to go only so far, then He will step in again, and it will be, “Say goodnight, Gracie.”

        It may not be the very end, but if it’s getting close, to quote the Mexican bandits from B. Traven’s and John Huston’s "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," "WE DON'T NEED NO STEENKING BADGES!"  Biometric or not.

      Hey Happy Birthday Thursday, Bro!      Hope you have a blessed one,

Dana

P.S.  To quote a very good friend, "Heaven won't be like this."