Wednesday 14th December - Revelation 10

Today’s chapter is Revelation 10, you can read it here

Tom writes:

Call me a coward, but if I saw an angel who had one foot on the sea and one foot on the land and who shouted like a roaring lion - if I saw that angel - and someone asked me to go up to him and take his scroll off him... I would leg it. But maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe - if I really understood this section of Revelation - I would realise that these mighty angels are always around. Maybe I would realise that behind the sleepy-feeling days of this earth a crashing conflict is going on in the spiritual realms. Maybe I would then become more comfortable (if that could ever be the right word) with the idea of giant angels influencing every act upon this earth. This kind of talk is pretty much blasphemous to our modern “rational” ears. The disenchantment of the “enlightenment” makes most of us think spiritual stuff - if it exists at all - is “over there somewhere” while earthly stuff is “right here”. This means many of us can love Jesus and try to follow Jesus without seeing the world remotely like he saw it. We can look at our problems and other people’s power and we let them become the big story. If only we could get a new job, or have a bigger following, or get the government to do what we want them to do… then the stuff would be sorted.

Let’s google it and get the answer. We never imagine an angel needs to act, or some dark spiritual power needs to be undone. These passages show us that the unseen realm is where fates are decided. This doesn’t diminish the seen realm at all. The vision of Revelation is that these two realms are constantly intersecting (the angel hand his feet on our earth and our sea) and - in the end - will become totally united when the unseen Kingdom of God becomes fully seen once Jesus has won back his earth. So faithful endurance - living like Kingdom and Priests - means we now live as if we “see” the “unseen”. My prayer from this passage is that we become people who expect to see hulking angels holding scrolls. My prayer is that we pray and hear the words of heaven and see the visions God gives us.  My prayer is that we find new ways to live like the unseen God is really Sovereign on the earth, trusting that his unseen power is actually something we can see and influence and release upon this earth. 

Question for reflection

How much do you think you have a “disenchanted worldview”; where you only really think about “seen” things rather than “unseen” powers and forces?