Revelation and Human Reality

Session 58 A-level Amphitheater LLUMC March 12, 2011, 10:30-11:30 AM

Johannine Eschatology

HEAVEN HEAVEN HEAVEN 1000 YEARS EARTH 1 st Coming EARTH 2 nd Coming EARTH New Jerusalem

The Johannine Voice



Rev 3:20 Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.



John 17:21, 23 As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us….. I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Timeline BEFORE AFTER

1000 YEARS

FINAL CALL SEALING GREAT ORDEAL FINAL OPPORTUNITY SECOND COMING END - 1 NEW JERUSALEM FINAL DECEPTION FINAL BATTLE END - 2 HARMAGEDON

Timeline: Judgment

(courtesy of Ralph Thompson)

BEFORE AFTER

BETWEEN

Explanatory Judgment

1000 YEARS

Pre-Advent Decision Judgment Post-millenial Distributive Judgment (not retributive)

Clarifying the Concept of Judgment

  “The judgment being never juridical but revelatory, it is not the expression of the servile terror of men, but of their comprehension of the divine reality.” “The judgment at this moment is then: to be what one has actually wished to be, but seeing in the light of God what it was.” Ellul,

Apocalypse

, 172, 176.

Nietzsche and Christianity Friedrich Nietzsche

      (Oct .15, 1844-Aug. 25, 1900)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

(1883 –85)

Beyond Good and Evil

(1886)

On the Genealogy of Morals

(1887)

Twilight of the Idols

(1888)

The Antichrist

(September 1888),

Ecce Homo

(October-November 1888)

The Genealogy of Morals

 Wholesome morality:  Strength = virtue 

Unwholesome morality:

 Humility = virtue

Making Virtue of Weakness

 “As is well known, the priests are the

most evil enemies

– but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters of the world have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.” (

G

13).

Nietzsche on Christianity – 1



“However there are other spectacles—that last eternal day of judgment, ignored by nations, derided by them, when the accumulation of the years and all the many things which they produced will be burned in a single fire. What a broad spectacle then appears! How I will be lost in admiration! How I will laugh! How I will rejoice!”

Tertullian (c. 160-225)

Nietzsche on Christianity – 2

 “For what is the blessedness of that Paradise? Possibly we could quickly surmise it; but it is better that it should be explicitly attested by an authority who in such matters is not to be disparaged, Thomas of Aquinas, the great teacher and saint. ‘Blissful, in the kingdom of heaven, they will see the sufferings of the damned so that their bliss should be more delightful to them.’” Friedrich Nietzsche,

The Genealogy of Morals,

trans. Horace B. Samuel (New York:Boni and Liveright, 33.68.

Nietzsche on Christianity – 3

 Make up for what? Make up by what? Dante, as it seems to me, made a crass mistake when with awe-inspiring ingenuity he placed that inscription over the gate of his hell, “Me too made eternal love”: at any rate the following inscription would have a much better right to stand over the gate of the Christian Paradise and its “eternal blessedness”—“Me too made eternal hate”— granted of course that a truth may rightly stand over the gate to a lie!

Resentment – Not Love

  “Resentment and not love is the teaching of the Revelation of St. John the Divine.” Revelation is “a book without wisdom, goodness, kindness, or affection of any kind.” Harold Bloom,

The Revelation of St. John the Divine

, (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988), 4.

Confrontation of Signs – 1



MARK OF THE BEAST Rev 13:16-17 Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.



SEAL OF GOD Rev 7:2-3 I saw another angel…having the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to damage earth and sea, saying, "Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.”

Confrontation of Signs - 2

MARK OF THE BEAST



IMITATIVE

(CHRISTIAN)

SEAL OF GOD



ORIGINAL?



COERCIVE



COMPETITIVE



REVELATORY



NOT COERCIVE



COMPETITIVE



REVELATORY

Mark of the Beast – 1

 

Rev 13:16-17 (see above) Revelation 14:9-10 Then another angel, a third, followed them, crying with a loud voice, "Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands, they will also drink the wine of God's wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.”

Mark of the Beast – 2



Revelation 14:11 “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the

beast and its image and for anyone who receives the mark of its name

.”



Revelation 16:2 So the first angel went and poured his bowl on the earth, and a foul and painful sore came on those who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped its image.

Mark of the Beast – 3



Revelation 19:20 And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed in its presence the signs by which he deceived those who

had received the mark of the beast and

those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur.

Mark of the Beast – 4



Revelation 20:4

I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God.

They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands.

They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

Echoes of the Sabbath in Revelation – 1



Rev 14:7 and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.” (cf. Ex 20:11)



Revelation 15:4 Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed.” (cf. Isa 66:23)



Echoes of the Sabbath in Revelation – 2

Rev 7:3 “Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.”



Deut 11:18 You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead.



See also Ex 13:9, 16; Deut 6:4-9

Sign of Revelation



'ôth

is a code word for a particular kind of sign, an

Offenbarungszeichen

, indicating a sign that has revelatory intent. Thus understood, the sign “is always to be understood within the framework of a divine disclosure in relation to which the sign steps in as the simplified filling-in and amplification of the revealing word of God.” Keller,

Das Wort 'oth

, 67; cf. Tonstad,

The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day

, 115.

Confrontation of Signs: One View

 Through the two great errors, the immortality of the soul and Sunday sacredness, Satan will bring the people under his deceptions. While the former lays the foundation of spiritualism, the latter creates a bond of sympathy with Rome. The Protestants of the United States will be foremost in stretching their hands across the gulf to grasp the hand of spiritualism; they will reach over the abyss to clasp hands with the Roman power; and under the influence of this threefold union, this country will follow in the steps of Rome in trampling on the rights of conscience. E. G. White,

The Great Controversy

, 588.

Confrontation of Signs: Some Ifs, Ands, and Buts

1.

The Sabbath is a plausible candidate for God’s sign in the final confrontation of signs. 2.

If the Sabbath is to play that role, it can only do so to the extent that it has come home to its actual meaning. 3.

The competing and opposing sign will only be ‘the mark of the beast’ if and when it deploys coercion.

BEFORE Timeline AFTER

1000 YEARS

FINAL CALL SEALING GREAT ORDEAL FINAL OPPORTUNITY SECOND COMING END - 1 HARMAGEDON NEW JERUSALEM FINAL DECEPTION FINAL BATTLE END - 2