a perpetual revelation

The Word for today:
Revelation 14:1-5

mark this: 14:3
And they sang a new song before the throne...

'New' might be my favorite word.  It never gets old.

Some people see the Bible as old.  I see everything else but the Bible as old!

The Bible from cover to cover is new. Genesis opens with a new creation. Revelation closes with yet another new creation; even the end of the Bible is a new beginning!

God tells us to forget the old, because he is doing a new thing:
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? (Isaiah 43:18-19; see also Isaiah 42:9; 48:6-7)

His mercies are new every morning! (Lamentations 3:23)

Jesus shows us a new and living way.  (Hebrews 10:20)

Even I am new!--
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.   (2 Corinthians 5:17)

With a new heart and a new spirit.  (Ezekiel 36:26)

So new that the old rules don't even apply!--
Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.   (Galatians 6:15)

Someday I will even have a new name (Isaiah 62:2; Revelation 2:17).

In fact, God makes all things new (Revelation 21:5). 

And he always will. Heaven isn't going to stand still. History and eternity are a perpetual revelation of God's new and fuller appearance.

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the nature of the beast (part 2)

The Word for today:
Revelation 13:11-18

mark this: (Revelation 13:18)This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.

and this:  Revelation 16:13
And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.


Yesterday, Stand in the Rain looked back, locating preliminary appearances of the beast--the antichrist--throughout scripture. The reader who has not done so may want to begin there.
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Warning: This article contains word-pictures of graphic evil. The reader will also encounter some extremely dark surmise.
It is not recommended for children, or for the scripturally inexperienced, or for the spiritually immature.

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666?

First, the facts. Then we'll draw the face of exponential evil.

In Revelation 13, Satan appears (as a "dragon"--see 12:9 and 13:2) along with two "beasts"--one from the sea (13:1) and one from the land (13:11).

(The "sea" in scripture indicates the nations other than Israel. Thus a political Antichrist--the beast from the sea--can come from any nation other than Israel.
The "land" indicates Israel. Thus the false prophet, a religious Antichrist--the beast from the land--will come out of Israel.)

'6' is the number of man since Genesis, when man was formed on the 6th day. So 666, in the context of Revelation 13, is formed when the beast from the sea (a man, a '6') and the beast from the land (a man, a '6') assume their roles in an unholy trinity (a '6-6-6') of Satan's devising. This is the ultimate culmination of Satan's pride and man's idolatry. Finally, Satan and man can worship themselves.

The formation of this counterfeit Trinity stems from Satan's longing to be like God, to enthrone himself in God's stead:
How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
For you have said in your heart:
"I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High."   (Isaiah 14:12-14)

Unredeemed man, like his father the devil (John 8:44, below) seeks to take God's place. This can take many forms, but it often begins when individuals decide that they will be their own arbiters of right and wrong. From there, it's not too long before a society--a government--will vote themselves the ability to decide matters of life and death. God has not relinquished these matters to man.

These are dark days in the USA. A man goes on a killing spree in Tuscon. He has a satanic shrine in his backyard and when his math instructor wrote '6,' he insisted it was '18.'

Looking through his twisted arithmetic, I discern a demonic inside joke: the beast--a man, a '6'--is one with a trinity (a '6+6+6'). So, 6 is 18. It's merely the arithmetic of hell.

Identifying the face of evil in Revelation 13 isn't a parlor game, a riddle, or a puzzle for us to solve. Evil, in Tuscon, is the grotesque smirk behind a 9mm Glock. Jesus knew this face:
You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.   (John 8:44)

Evil, in Revelation 13, is a self-worshipper who knows his time is short, and is determined to take everyone down with him--

Because maybe, just maybe, God won't have the heart to judge so many.

Then God would be a liar--shirking his promise and responsibility to judge sin--and thus no longer God. And so the crown and throne and scepter that Satan could not gain through usurpation, he would attain through God's abdication…

That's the spirit of 666. That's the nature of the beast.

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the nature of the beast (part 1)

The Word for today:
Revelation 13:1-10

Mark this: Revelation 13:4
And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?


Revelation 13 concerns "the beast," famously associated with the numerals 666.

So over the next two days, Stand in the Rain will delve into this topic. But we will not concern ourselves with identifying who the beast is--or will be--because whether he is Joe, Sam, Willy, Ferdinand, or Oglethorpe has not one whit of significance for this writer. ("A rose by any other name is still a rose…")

We will endeavor to convey not his name, but his nature.

Part 1 will look back--locating preliminary appearances of the beast in scripture.
Tomorrow, part 2 will convey "the nature of the beast."
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The beast. The Antichrist. The false prophet. 666.

What to make of all this?

First of all, it should be known that the Antichrist will be an embodiment of a spirit that is presently at work among us, greasing the slippery slope to hell.

The word “antichrist” appears only in the epistles of John (1 John 2:18; 2:22; 4:3; 2 John 1:7), and the Bible student will learn as much about Antichrist from these epistles as he will learn from John's other book--Revelation.

"the spirit of antichrist"
“The spirit of antichrist” (1 John 4:3) refers to the demonic deception that will work to produce the final world ruler who rules as the false Christ. The spirit of antichrist is always actively seeking to pervert the gospel by distorting Jesus Christ’s true nature:
Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

"many antichrists"
Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. (1 John 2:18)
The plural--“antichrists”--in 1 John 2:18b refers to false teachers whose false doctrine distorted the truth and opposed Christ (Matthew 24:24; Mark 13:22; Acts 20:28-30).

"antichrist"
The singular--“antichrist”-- in 1 John 2:18a refers to the coming final world ruler, energized by Satan, who will seek to oppose and replace the true Christ.

Thus the final antichrist of Revelation 13 will not be something new, but will embody all the antichrist spirits that have perverted truth. This can be seen in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12, where the man of lawlessness (Antichrist) is still to be revealed, but the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.

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For further study:

The Bible student should be able to trace the movements of "the beast" prior to his arrival in Revelation.  He is--
"the little horn" of Daniel 7:24-26;
"the desolator" of Daniel 9:27;
"the abomination that causes desolation" of Matthew 24:15;
"the man of sin" of 2 Thessalonians 2:4-8.
To the beast Satan gives the power which he offered to Christ (Matthew 4:8-9; Revelation 13:4).


Extrabiblically, the Bible student should be aware of "The Second Coming," a culturally influential poem by William Butler Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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the flip side (pt. 2)

(written by Pastor Joe)


The Word for Today: Revelation 12:10-13:1

Mark this: 12:11
They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

Whether or not you are a fan of philosophers or people from Denmark, I am sure that you will be a fan of this piece of advice from Soren Kierkegaard. He writes: "While reading God’s Word, you must incessantly say to yourself: It is I to whom it is speaking; it is I about whom it is speaking." This does not mean to that we ignore context or what the author intended, but rather that we take God at His word that His Word is indeed living and active. It means that we come before the word NOT to study and dissect it, but rather we come before the world and let the Word study and dissect our hearts and lives and motives.

We want to allow today's passage not just to inform us, but also to transform us. But the tendency with a complex passage like today's is to try to come up with some feasible explanation and then move on to more "pertinent" or "understandable" sections. After all, things like battles, angels, dragons, and the very elements of the earth fighting may not normally interest everyone.

But right in plain sight of these very action-filled verses are two very important concepts, and we are going to look at them in reverse order.

The first concept is found in verses 13-17, and describes the Dragon’s attack on Earth. Here we learn the Reality of Warfare. We have already seen the devil’s violent attempts to overthrow heaven and destroy Christ. We have also seen the angels of God, and Jesus Christ Himself fighting back and being victors.

But this last passage shows us that although he has been defeated, Satan is still making war against those who follow Jesus. Satan is a defeated foe, but a very desperate and dangerous one as well. Peter warns us that our "enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. (1)" Until we grasp that our enemy is real, we are only setting ourselves up for failure. After all, we can’t win a war that we done know we are in.

The second concept is found earlier in verses 7-12. This section shows us the Reality of Victory. It takes us way back to when Satan rebelled against God. We are witnesses to a cosmic battle between good & evil. And Satan is defeated and thrown out of heaven. God wins!!!

This message is not unique to Revelation- that's been the plan since Genesis 3:15 "He (Christ) will crush your (Serpent) head" up through 1 John 3:8- "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work."

What is even more amazing is that we see that not only did God’s angels overcome the enemy, but we can share in that victory. Look again at verse 11. The amazing truth is that we overcome the enemy not by our might or religion or wisdom or piety. We are victors because of the blood of Jesus Christ.

We can share in that victory.
We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (2)
Victory means not that we are suddenly immune from failure or pain or setbacks or struggles or suffering. Rather, it means that we can work through these hard times in Christ’s power.

This passage in Revelation is a call to wake up:
To realize the reality of the unseen world
To realize the reality that we have victory in Jesus Christ
And to realize the reality that we are in war and have a battle to fight.

It is an invitation to believe in God and join with Him. He is calling all of his children into his service, because that is what it means to be a Christian.

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(1) 1 Peter 5:8
(2) Romans 8:37

the flip side (pt. 1)

(written by Pastor Joe)

The Word for Today: Revelation 12:1-9

Today's passage is going to be a final look back at Christmas, which may seem strange, because many of us have never connected Revelation with our traditional understanding of Christmas.
Now, when I say traditional understanding I mean what I usually see in Christmas plays, nativity scenes, and in Christmas cards . That 1st Christmas is portrayed as something very simple, very safe and very comfortable. Best summed up in the classic hymn- “Away In The Manger”
Away in a manger, no crib for His bed

The little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet head
The stars in the bright sky
looked down where He lay
The little Lord Jesus Asleep on the hay ....
.... The cattle are lowing the poor Baby wakes
But little Lord Jesus no crying He makes

Now I don’t want to belittle this hymn, but it is what it is, a children’s song. We have an edited version of Christmas designed for children. You get the picture that everything is clean, neat and beautiful, and that even the animals are singing in unison. But this Christmas carol lacks some of the hard truths. That very first Christmas was not very simple, safe nor comfortable.

Consider the following:
• The very long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem (80+ miles) while very much pregnant
• The lack of any decent place to deliver a baby.
• The agony & mess that is child birth.
• Then being forced to spend the night with disgusting mess that comes with housing animals.

For most of our Christmas cards, nativity scenes, and traditional understanding of that 1st Christmas is based more on that hymn than on the reality behind the Christmas event. It is important to move beyond romantic and childish understanding of that 1st Christmas or the incarnation of Jesus Christ in general.

But even beyond that scene in Bethlehem, we need to recognize that there is more going on that night than just the interaction of the nativity scene. In today's passage, we have a wholly different picture that is painted surrounding this event. I have yet to see a nativity scene or a Christmas card that depicts this version of Christmas. (Maybe I ought to use the picture above next year and see what kind of reaction I get.)

What clearly emerges from these 1st 6 verses is kind of the cosmic view of Christmas. There is no manger, shepherds or even Bethlehem. Instead, we have three main characters:
1. The Child- Represents Jesus Christ Himself- (This is undeniable because it quotes Psalm 2 to talk about the ruler of all the nations.)
2. The Dragon- Represents Satan- who tries to devour Jesus. From King Herod onward, there have been many who seek to destroy the Anointed One.
3. The Woman- Represents the Nation Israel (generally) and Mary (specifically)- who gives birth to Jesus. Remember that Joseph was warned in a dream about Herod’s intentions to kill Jesus, they fled into Egypt (the desert).
This passage changes our view & shouts is the reality of the unseen world. We live in an age that denies the supernatural. We are skeptical about stuff we can’t explain. We always look for the human explanation to the various situations and circumstances we face. To some degree this is okay. We don’t want to get ridiculous and believe that every time something bad happens the devil was behind it. That’s foolishness.

But we American Christians have gone so far in the other direction that we think and live our lives all too often as though this world is all that there is. The Bible speaks otherwise. It lets us know in no uncertain terms that there is much more to reality than what we can see, taste, touch and hear. In fact, the unseen world is actually the more permanent of part of reality. This planet, our physical bodies, and all out material possessions are fading and will eventually be destroyed, but the eternal will remain.

Remember, the stable, the manger, and all the physical objects of that original Christmas are now long gone. The shepherds, magi, King Herod, and even Mary & Joseph have since passed on. But that night began the greatest counter-insurgency ever in the spiritual realm and we still feel the consequences to this day. So remember and celebrate that 1st Christmas, certainly. But never forget the enormous repercussions of that event- most of which could not be seen by human eyes. "Therefore, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (1)
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(1) 2 Corinthians 4:18

God rolls a series of 7's: this joint's about to close

The Word for today:
Revelation 11:15-19

mark this:  Revelation 11:15
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever."



What’s with all the sevens?--

7 churches,
7 letters,
7 lampstands,
7 stars,
7 seals,
7 angels,
7 trumpets,
7 crowns,
7 plagues,
7 bowls,
7 hills,
7 kings,
etc.--

If you suspect that the series of sevens is saying something, you are right.

Seven is a sort of biblical shorthand; throughout scripture, ‘seven’ indicates completion, or complete-ness. So the series of sevens reminds us throughout Revelation that God is wrapping things up.  Another well-known instance of seven used in this way can be found in Genesis 2:1-3:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

***

When I did not follow Jesus, I chased after this life almost as hard as I'm now chasing after the life to come. Many, many nights found me perched on a bar stool until (depending on that county's closing time) 2, or 3, or 4 o'clock.

Then, no matter where I was, the lights would flicker--off, then on; off, then on; off, then on--like a kind of semaphore code that we bleary-eyed drunks could understand, signaling that the tavern would soon be closing its doors.  Outside, a new day was overtaking the old one.

The number seven, repetitively blinking its way throughout Revelation, serves to proclaim the same sort of message:  This sad old joint is about to close.

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Will the real "Two Witnesses" please stand up!

The Word for today:
Revelation 11:1-14

mark this: Revelation 11:3
And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days...

One of the great parlor games among Bible freaks (like yours truly) is to--

NAME THE TWO WITNESSES!

Who are they? That's the 64,000 dollar question among my fellow Bible nerds. Some oft-mentioned possibilities from the pages of scripture include Enoch, Noah, Elijah, Moses, Steven, and John the Baptist.
Well, I know for fact who the Witnesses will be, so if you'll just send me $64,000 in a stamped, self-addressed envelope, I will provide you with the answer. (Or you can just read the rest of this article for free.)

I base my answer partly on the principal of rhyme, and partly on the principal of reason.

The Bible, you see, "rhymes" itself with its every other part. (Biblical rhyme is not a matter of matching sounds, but of matching thought or circumstances.)

Turning to the last chapter of the Old Testament, we see the Sun of Righteousness rising with healing in his wings. (We know that the Sun of Righteousness is a biblical metaphor for the Second Coming of Christ.)

Besides the Sun of Righteousness, only two other persons--Moses and Elijah--appear in that last O. T. chapter. In order, then,  to fulfill biblical "rhyme," these two names must re-surface at the end of the New Testament, at the Second Coming of Christ.

***

Reason (which is far less reliable than rhyme!) also leads me to conclude that the witnesses must be Moses and Elijah:

Moses was Israel’s great leader and lawgiver who exercised God’s miraculous power to authenticate His message and destroy Israel’s spiritual enemies. There are many similarities between the plagues and judgments against Egypt (Exodus 7-11) and the future plagues and judgments of the two witnesses during the Tribulation.

Elijah was a vital leader to Israel during a critical time in the life of the nation. During his ministry, Elijah prayed that God would stop the rain for three and one-half years (1 Kings 17:1). This power over the rain corresponds to one of the supernatural signs of the two witnesses—the power to shut up the sky so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying (Revelation 11:6), which will be a period of 1,260 days.

***

Finally--and most convincingly, to me--we recall that Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:2-3). Moses, representing the law, and Elijah, representing the prophets, appeared together to affirm Jesus’ claim as God’s Messiah.

It is likely that the Bible will be banned during the Great Tribulation. But should Moses and Elijah return, "the law and the prophets" (a phrase denoting scripture as a whole) will still be represented, not in paper form, but in the flesh--similar, in a way, to Jesus' First Coming, when the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.)

The ultimate witness to Jesus is the Bible. It stands to reason that Moses and Elijah--representative of "the law and the prophets"-- would be sent to a Bible-banning world to maintain the testimony to Jesus, which is the entire purpose of scripture in the first place:
"For the essence of prophecy is to give a clear witness for Jesus."  (Revelation 19:10/NLT)

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