Author: Bryan Richardson

Re: Verse reading–Revelation 19:11-21, 20:1-10 (day two)

“King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”  This name is another take on the name God reveals to Moses: I AM THAT I AM.  To make the claim that the triune God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—is merely the strongest being of all fails to articulate the necessity of God.  We don’t need a cosmic bouncer who’s got our back.  We need our existence—and the existence of all things—made possible in the first place.  God is the source, the ground, the origin, the finale.  Nothingness is the only alternative to God, but even that is sheer nonsense, because we can’t even envision the concept of nothingness without relying on God who makes such envisioning possible.  It isn’t for nothing that Paul calls him the “all in all.”  Now that’s [R/r]evelation.

Re: Verse reading–Revelation 17 – 18 (Day three)

“Come out of her, my people.”  We read here a violent tempest of condemnation: “abomination”, “blasphemies”, “drunk with blood”, “impure spirit”, “excessive luxuries”, “God has remembered crimes”, “plagues will overtake”.  Right in the middle of that storm of wrath, there lies the tender call of God.  He calls those who count on him to make their way to safety under his sovereign care.  The juxtaposition of such tenderness and fury does not reveal favoritism of a petty God towards the “in” group.  It reveals love.  This is the God who has warned and shouted and divided seas and saved widows and sent prophets.  This is the God who has served and healed and fed and bled and died.  The. World. Is. Ending.  Only those who hear and heed will survive.  This is love.  Are you listening?

Re: Verse reading–Revelation 15 and 16 (day three)

“God remembered Babylon the Great.”  No matter how powerful a national presence, nor how sophisticated a society, nor how celebrated one’s individual accomplishment, all must answer to God.  And just when one believes that God isn’t aware, that he doesn’t see, God remembers: “Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”  No one—no person, no group, no geopolitical entity—will get away with pitting his will against the Almighty’s.  This dreadful reality is actually the hope of those who count on God, just like it was the hope of our Savior, who declared as he stood before Pilate: “You would have no power if it weren’t given to you from above.”  Every power remains only as long as God allows—and no longer.

Re: Verse reading–Revelation 14 (day three)   

“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” Consider what death is: darkness, isolation, hopelessness, abandonment, cessation.  Jesus says in John 8 that the one who counts on him will know none of these things.  For the one who has obeyed the word of Jesus Christ, there will be, at the moment this life ends, not one millisecond of dread or regret—of falling into the abyss or receding into the void.  We experience that person as dead, because we cannot presently live with him, but that person will know nothing of the sort.  And one day, his body will be raised to join his spirit in a fully human life in this renewed universe that will never grow old. Now that’s blessed. Go on and rescue that word from social media before it’s too late.

Re:Verse passage: Revelation 12:1-6, 13-17; 13:1-4, 11-18 (day three) 

“The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”  People are often surprised to hear that their actions have consequences for which they are accountable.  And sometimes, people blame the church—or more commonly, “organized religion” (just a hair’s breadth away from “organized crime”) for making up this system.  But accountability is not an arbitrary system, it’s a fundamental reality.  And it’s certainly not an invention of the church.  (Accountability gives too much credit to the moral reasoning of the individual; you don’t want to emphasize the value of each person if you’re just seeking raw power.)  Accountability is the way the universe has worked from the beginning.  And sinful humans cannot survive it, so God’s mercy has been right there all along—“from the foundation of the world”—to save our lives.

Re:Verse passage: Revelation 10:1-9; 11:1-15 (day three)

“These two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.”  It’s not uncommon these days for someone to claim that he’s “evolving” on this or that issue, which almost always means that he’s moving from a biblically orthodox belief to a novel, less biblically-faithful position.  But the word “evolving” is a dodge.  Rather than owning his heresy, rather than arriving at a position through careful reflection, the person who caves to the spirit of the age will assign responsibility to forces beyond his control.  Both the Bible and the church will stand through it all, bearing witness to the truth: Men are accountable to God.  The Bible explains what the church lives out, and wicked men and women will find comfort in neither.  But they will find the way to eternal life.  Stay true, church.

Re:Verse reading–Revelation 8 and 9 (day three)

“The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands.”  God has designed this universe in such a way that our freedom to indulge in evil results in deadly consequences—sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but always by the end of history.  In other words, the wrath of God is reality.  That wrath is not the result of God’s getting worked up into a lather by unruly men.  Wrath isn’t an eventual state of mind that God arrives at after he’s tried to entertain us into good behavior.  No, wrath is a constant quality of his character.  Men who turn their minds against God will discover that God is already against them.  There is no secret escape passage from sin.  Do you know someone who needs to know this?

Re:Verse reading–Revelation 7 (day three)

“After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne.”  Man’s exclusivity is unremarkable: Who among us hasn’t quietly delighted in someone’s outsider status?  God’s inclusivity is the newsworthy item here: “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”  But the wideness in God’s mercy is not unaffected by our door-closing habits. So he takes to task those of us who set up barriers that invite men to become “twice as much of a son of hell” as we would be.  Are you, then, a road-blocker or a path-clearer? How many in that innumerable multitude will stand there despite your efforts?

Re:Verse reading–Revelation 6 (day three)

“They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!”  Sound familiar?  We’ve heard this before–in Genesis.  Those who want to keep on thinking about the universe in the same way will always attempt to hide themselves from God. The underside of a rock or the interior of a cave now becomes preferred real estate. The intimacy of the echo chamber holds greater appeal than the intimacy of the confessional.  Which place do you seek?

Re:Verse reading–Revelation 4:1-7, 5:1-14 (day three)

“There before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.”  “There is no there there,” Gertrude Stein famously said after visiting her childhood home and discovering it was no more.  Such a phrase taps into the common human anxiety that what should be permanent actually decays or fades away or perhaps didn’t really ever exist in the way you thought it did.  When a man contemplates God, that old anxiety again surfaces: What if God does not exist?  What if I have nowhere to go?  What if there is no there there?  In our sin-dimmed thinking, we have forgotten God, and we have lost the way to find him.  Into that twilight, John speaks a word of revelation: Someone occupies the place of sovereignty.  How will you live when you understand that God reigns?