Apocalypse Now

John’s Apocalypse is still relevant because it always was.

I’m working over the text of my Bible study book on John’s Revelation. Instead of merely reformatting it as with some of the other books, I’m rereading my text against that of the Bible to ensure it more closely tracks where I am now, not where I was then.

If anything, John’s writing is even more relevant to me personally than before. I say that as one who rejects completely the goofy Dispensational beliefs so common among mainstream Western evangelical Christians today. The Book of Revelation isn’t primarily addressed to some final End Times prophesy and I’m utterly certain we aren’t in any End Times scenario anyway. This is most certainly a time of tribulation, and John saw a great deal of tribulation headed for his flock. He most certainly addressed their rising sorrow and suffering, but not as most of Western Christianity assumes.

John was a true Hebrew-Christian Mystic and wrote a profoundly mystical and symbolic book meant to draw us into the moral spiritual realm above our material human existence. That is the place where we find sufficient grasp on the ultimate truth of God’s divine personal character to discern how He does business in this fallen realm of existence.

This makes the content utterly timeless, reaching across the threshold of time-space awareness into Eternity with Hebrew symbolism. Our human minds are lost immediately, as evidenced by our total inability to think in terms without time-space limitations. So our human minds belong here inside this time-space bubble, but our hearts were made to operate on the imponderable truths of Eternity. John addressed the heart-mind level of awareness.

The symbolism invites us to explore moral reality, an awareness of God’s moral character as expressed in Creation. He calls us to leave behind this land of shadows and deceptions of apparent reality. We are compelled to operate in this Shadowlands with an inescapable connection to our senses and reason, but we don’t rely on those faculties to guide us to what is good and right. Moral truth comes down into the brain from the heart-mind awareness, the only part of us capable of hearing God’s voice.

So you can read the moralistic preaching of commentators who represent the elitist banking plutocrats and fear the typical reactions of humanity when they find out they’ve been had. Or you can learn to evaluate how there is plenty of blame to go around because human instinct ignores the heart-mind awareness. You can learn from John’s Apocalypse that this world is doomed and not worth saving, but that we are here to reflect divine glory. Yes, there will be unrest, a shredding of social norms that didn’t fit God’s moral reality in the first place. One evil system will be replaced by another evil system. We are just along for the ride and have no real commitment to what happens here.

We are called to live according to that otherworldly focus John promotes in his writing. Learn to recognize the handiwork and footprints of angelic messengers in Creation, pouring out God’s wrath on human systems that run in cycles.

I’m using windfalls to purchase stuff I believe will help me bring Him glory. There is a certain limited worldly savvy at work in my choices, limited mostly by whatever I can best perceive as God’s plans at that moment. It’s not about the stuff; it’s about His glory. And while my human instincts might feel jerked around, as if God were toying with me for His own amusement, my heart knows that having this nice stuff just for a short time is itself evidence of His divine mercy and compassion. He provides for the missions to which He calls us, and takes away things that hinder.

The Apocalypse isn’t a mere point in history, but the revelation of God’s own nature portrayed against human fallen nature.