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Category: Revelation (Page 5 of 8)

A Communion Glimpse

February 22, 2013 / / 0 Comments

“People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the Kingdom of God.” ~Luke 13:29

Jesus is talking about heaven when he says Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets will be around the table. John’s Revelation tells us that heaven will be the ultimate gathering of “every nation, tribe, people, and language,” the ultimate feast around our Lord’s banquet table.

At communion time on Sundays, we get a small heavenly glimpse of that great eschatological feast. We come together around our Savior’s table. In the eating of the bread and the drinking of the cup, we connect not only to our Lord, but to every person in history — past, present, and future — who’s been saved by the blood of the Lamb. We’re united as one.

Different people. Different ages. Different cultures. Different languages. Different backgrounds. Different viewpoints. Different habits. Different genders. Different zip codes. Different jobs. Different haircuts. Different beliefs. Different likes and dislikes.

Same sin. Same need. Same Lord. Same baptism. Same forgiveness. Same salvation. Same commitment. Same table. Same loaf. Same cup. Same Body. Same Spirit. Same hope. Same faith. Same God and Father of us all who is over all and through all and in all.

Our communion meals point us to the heavenly meal. It gives us a peek. A holy glimpse. We spend most of our communion time in quiet introspection, reflecting on things that happened in the past. I believe our Christ intends that we spend our communion time in joyful expectation about what’s coming in the future. The way we eat and drink and share the Lord’s Supper must be shaped and practiced more and more by our great anticipation of that day when all of God’s children will be home, gathered around our Father’s table.

Peace,

Allan

The End is Near

December 20, 2012 / / 0 Comments

People and communities of people have been predicting the end of the world almost since the day the world began. Tomorrow’s Mayan Doomsday is merely the latest in a long, long line of interesting predictions about the demise of the planet and the return of our Lord.

500  – According to his calculations regarding the Bible’s mythical “6,000 Year Rule,” Hippolytus predicted the world would end this year. It didn’t. But that didn’t stop others from figuring their own dates with numbers from Scripture.

989  – Halley’s Comet always brings impending doom. Always.

1874  – The Jehovah’s Witnesses begin a long and lucrative career of predicting Armageddon, starting with this year. By the way, it didn’t happen.

1878 – It didn’t happen this year, either.

1881 – No, really. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were on a roll.

1910 – Again? Well, if the Jehovah’s Witnesses say so.

1914 – People are beginning to wonder about Jehovah’s Witnesses.

1918 – We like the four-year cycle, but could the Jehovah’s Witnesses maybe split it up into a summer apocalypse and a winter apocalypse?

1925 – About this time, people may be forgiven for hoping the world ends just to shut the Jehovah’s Witnesses up about it.

1975 – They gave us a 50-year break (which included World War II, which was full of its own apocalyptic signs), but the Jehovah’s Witnesses think now they’re on to something.

1984 – George Orwell buffs and Jehovah’s Witnesses alike considered this to be a significant year for the end of the world. Unless Van Halen is the anti-Christ (and that’s not completely unproven), they were wrong.

1994 – Nostradamus tries posthumously to beat the Jehovah’s Witnesses record for most failed predictions. Luckily for him, he’s much more vague and obscure, so he’s never really wrong…

1997 – No, really, the Christ is now here according to Share International. He’s already come.

2000 – The change of the millennium makes a great date for the end of time. Turns out to be merely the beginning of survivor-type trade shows and reality programming.

2008 – The Lord’s Witnesses (not Jehovah’s Witnesses!) are pretty sure it’s over this year. Or in 2009 or 2010. It’s one of these years, they’re 100% certain.

2012 – This is a very popular choice. It will remain a fairly popular choice until probably Friday night or Saturday morning.

2014 – This one comes from a Pope, so it must be true. In 1514, Leo IX gave us 500 more years. You’d think that would be long enough to get our act together. Apparently not.

2017 – The “Sword of God Brotherhood” say they will be the only ones to survive this year and they will be tasked with repopulating the planet. Hopefully, there’s a “Sword of God Sisterhood” too.

2240 – The Talmud says the world as we know it will only last about 6,000 years, starting with the creation of Adam. A computer-assisted numerical analysis says this is the year.

2280 – The Qur’an gives us 40 more years than the Talmud. Same kind of analysis of the text. We’ll see.

3797 – This one comes from Nostradamus, but so have quite a few other dates. Just in case this was the year he really meant, clear your schedule.

The Church says, “Lord, come quickly!” And Jesus replies with, “I am coming soon!” And he says this to encourage us, to comfort us, and to empower us. He tells “I am coming soon” to motivate us and keep us going. This “coming soon” assures us that our time of trial is not indefinite. According to God’s plan, our time of suffering and tribulation has a limit. We don’t know when it will end; but we are promised by Jesus it will end.

And that gives us hope. By hope — I want to be very clear on this — I mean knowing that what our God has started, he will finish. Our faithful God is bringing this thing to completion. Our hope is not about wishing this is true, it’s knowing how it turns out. It’s like the cartoons and we’re the Roadrunner: we’ve got an arrangement with the writer! It’s like seeing the Indiana Jones movie for the 40th time: I know without a doubt he’s going to escape!

I don’t know when it’s going to happen. Nobody does. Jesus says it’s happening soon. And in faith, the church says, “Lord, come quickly.”

Peace,

Allan

Orienting for Glory

September 21, 2012 / / 4 Comments

This coming Sunday marks the first of six straight weeks in which our adult Bible classes here at Central are pairing up with one another in an effort to better live what we preach in intergenerational, multi-cultural relationships. If you’re one of our members at Central, for six straight Sundays you’re going to be in a Bible class with people who are not your age. Their kids won’t be the same age as your kids. Their salaries might not match yours. Some of these people may come from completely different backgrounds, have completely different viewpoints, and sport a completely different skin color than yours. For six weeks a lot of you will listen to teachers you’ve never heard in a classroom you’ve never visited.

It’ll be different.

We’re all going to be pushed out of our comfort zones. We’re all going to experience a little vertigo as we get used to the different people and different styles. We’re all going to have to give a little, to bend a bit, to sacrifice and serve to make this happen.

It’ll be difficult.

But this is not a move to disorient us. It’s actually intended to orient us. This is an effort to orient us to that blessed day when all of God’s children are together around that one table at the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb. Different colors and languages, different ages and styles, different backgrounds and sets of experiences — yet, one people around one table.

That glorious day is coming. God has promised it, Christ Jesus died and was raised for it, and the Holy Spirit is working toward it. And we should live our lives today in great anticipation. We should be leaning into it daily. Looking forward to it, practicing it, getting ready for it.

It’s only an hour on Sunday mornings for just six weeks. But our prayer is that it’ll go a long way in helping us experience and express our Father’s holy will for his Church.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 1,000th posting on this five-year-old blog is going to happen before the end of October. And I’d like to celebrate that weird little milestone by giving you, the readers, brand new copies of some of the great books that have informed and shaped my thinking and writing and preaching. We’ll hold a drawing on the day of that 1,000th post. The only way to enter the drawing is by posting comments between now and then — see the end of yesterday’s post for details on how you can enter your name up to 14 times. You can enter multiple times, but you can only win one prize.

Grand Prize – all three books in John Mark Hicks’ series on the sacraments of the Church of Christ: Come to the Table, the book that launched my continuing quest to better understand Christ’s meal; Down to the River to Pray, a wonderful call to restore Christian baptism to the center of the life of the Church; and A Gathered People, a beautiful look at the ways God works in our corporate assemblies to transform us into the image of his Son.

First Prize – Resident Aliens, Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon

Second Prize – Surprised by Hope, N. T. Wright

Third Prize – The Reason for God, Timothy Keller

Fourth Prize – The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis

Fifth Prize – The Jesus Way, Eugene Peterson

Peace,

Allan

 

We’re Not Alone

September 13, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Since our sins first separated us from our God, he has longed to live with us again. His covenant with us communicates our Father’s desire for intimate relationship with his people. From the Law (“I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.” Leviticus 26:12) and the Prophets (“My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God and they will be my people.” Ezekiel 37:27) to the New Testament (“I will live with them and walk among them.” 2 Corinthians 6:16) through the end of time (“Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.” Revelation 21:3),  the promise is that God will live with us.

The gift of God’s Holy Spirit is the ultimate fulfillment of those great covenant promises. God not only lives with his children, he actually dwells inside us! It doesn’t get any more intimate than that!

It’s Christ’s greatest gift to us as we wait for his triumphant return: the power of his actual presence inside us. God’s Holy Spirit is alive and powerful and real. He’s very real. And he lives inside all of us who confess Jesus as Lord and put our faith for salvation in God through Christ. The Holy Spirit lives within and moves about and works through the Church. And that actually scares some of us. That makes some of us nervous. Some of us might think we talk too much about the Holy Spirit or we rely too much on the Holy Spirit. Some of us are leery of that.

But those worries are unfounded. There is no need to be concerned. This is our heavenly Father we’re talking about. The One who is motivated solely by his great love for us. The One who acts only in our best interests.

Jesus promises around the dinner table on that last night to send the Spirit of Truth. And that is a wonderful blessing! Christ gives us the actual presence of God. He gives us unbridled access to the Father. For us, the presence of God is not an elusive thing way off in the clouds somewhere. It’s not to be sought at the top of a shaking and smoking mountain. It’s not hiding away in a faraway chapel or ancient church building on the other side of the world. God’s Spirit is not above us or beside us. He’s within us. He lives inside us. It doesn’t get any more relational or personal than that.

Peace,

Allan

 

Learn to Praise

March 27, 2012 / / 4 Comments

“Is this not the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” ~Daniel 4:30

We must be praisers of God. We are mostly praisers of people, praisers of things, praisers of ourselves, praisers of almost anything and everything but God. But we must learn to praise God. We must give him glory. We must give him honor. We must give him credit.

We must stop praising technology. We must stop praising innovation. We must stop praising politicians and platforms and parties, celebrities and athletes, preachers and churches, corporations and CEOs. We must learn to praise God.

Without him, we are sinners condemned to hell; with him, we are righteous sons and daughters of his eternal glory. Without him, we are an assembly of misfits and morons with no potential for good; with him, we are a community of heaven’s ambassadors on a mission to change the world. Without him, we are blind and lost; with him, we can see and we are saved. We must learn to praise him more and praise him better. We must give him more glory and honor.

We must stop just sitting there in our Christian assemblies, Sunday morning after Sunday morning, refusing to praise our God. Young people, old people, and everybody in between — we must learn to praise God. We must stop sitting there as spectators while others praise. We must stop the selfish and sinful practice of choosing when to praise and when not to praise according to who’s leading and what they’re leading. We must stop the arrogant practice of, even in our singing, while singing, being proud that we’re praising correctly, being proud that we’re doing it right. We must stop spending twenty minutes at a time writing down requests for prayers of physical healing and financial deliverance and start spending hours on our knees together in earnest prayers of praise and thanksgiving to the God who has already rescued us.

We were made to praise him, created to bring him glory, empowered by God’s Holy Spirit to give him honor. We were meant to turn our eyes and energies toward him, never toward ourselves. Good things happen when we praise. When we praise God, we actually feel better — physically, emotionally, spiritually — because we’re doing what we were always designed to do.

Power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise. None of it belongs to us. All of it belongs to our God.

Peace,

Allan

Blowout at Armageddon

December 1, 2011 / / 1 Comment

We know there’s a battle going on between good and evil. We understand the conflict. We get it. Forget the TV and newspaper and the internet. There’s horrifying evidence of the evil on every channel, on every page, on every website. Forget that. Let’s acknowledge that we’re all personally caught up in it. We understand it personally because we’re dealing with it right now. Broken families. Bad news from the doctor. Pink slips at work. Addiction. Rebellious kids. Divorced parents. Intimidation. Depression. Hopelessness. Things are not the way our Father intended. We know that.

The earth God created and called good and the people he created and called very good are being tortured. Tortured by war, disease, violence, death, poverty, greed, lust, injustice, slavery, idolatry. We’re paralyzed by Satan, imprisoned by sin, terrified by death.

We’re in the middle of a cosmic war.

Our merciful Father knows that, too. He understands it. That’s why he gives us a beautiful vision of the already-determined outcome of the battle. He shows us the ending.

God gives it to us in Revelation 20: the battle of Armageddon. Satan calls together all the wicked of the world, all the evil in the universe. They come from all four corners of the earth. They’re gathering for battle against God’s children:

“In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves.”

Looks bad for God’s children. They’re surrounded. No escape. Out flanked. Outnumbered. Outmanned. Out of luck. It’s over.

“But fire came down from heaven and devoured them!”

There is no battle of Armageddon. Look it up. Revelation 20. There’s no battle. Satan never even touches the saints. None of God’s children are harmed. Not even a scratch. It’s like Jesus rides up on his white horse and says, “Make my day.” Boom! It’s over. We don’t fight anything. We don’t have to. That’s the Lord’s job.

Of course, it’s against our nature to sit back and let God do the fighting for us. The picture in Scripture of what it looks like for us to oppose the evil in our world is not typically the way we handle things. Instead, our first inclination is to politic. Picket. Petition. Boycott. Lobby. Threaten. We think if we show enough force, if we gather enough power, we can defeat evil by voting correctly or by supporting the right platforms together or by pushing the proper laws through worldly systems.

No.

The ones who are called “conquerors” in Revelation, the “over-comers,” are the ones who have submitted faithfully to suffering and death, totally trusting in God to deliver. God’s children are the ones who live in patience and mercy and grace and trust God completely to take care of the battle.

It’s important for us to know that the victory of Jesus Christ has already been won. In a blowout. A rout. Not even close. And it’s important for us to live with that expectation. Or into that expectation as though it’s already here. We live every moment today in light of what we know is ultimately going to happen.

We don’t wait to acknowledge the complete and sovereign rule of God. We acknowledge it and we submit to it right now. And we witness, we testify. We change the world. Not by power or force or influence. But by patience and gentleness and mercy and love. By faith and loyalty in our God and his victorious Christ. And, yes, even by some suffering. For a little while.

Ephesians 2 says we are already, right now, seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. We are. So we live like it.

Peace,

Allan

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