Wednesday 20th December - Revelation 15

Today’s chapter is Revelation 15

Tom writes:

It has shocked me how much worship has gone on in Revelation.  I knew the big passages like Revelation 4 and Revelation 19 were replete with crown-casting kings, but I hadn’t realised the praise-craze had soaked into every corner of this book.  Most shocking, perhaps, is the fact that worship seems to lap right up and over all the most awkward bits about bowls of wrath and sharp-sickle-swinging angels. To me it feels a little hard to read about trampling the winepress until blood flowed out and then to say ‘Great and marvellous are your deeds Lord God Almighty”.  But then again, I’m not yet on the right side of this view.  I don’t yet have the perspective of one who has been victorious over the beast.  I have not yet been given a harp by my God. Revelation isn’t God explaining himself to us, for us to find him more palatable. It isn’t even about God making himself more understandable to us. It is about him showing us he is great. He is good. He has got Satan licked. He does everything well and must be trusted until the end.

Understanding this means we get more out of the book of Revelation than if we approach it like a chronology of the future. Then we might act like guests at a foreign language wedding trying to best-guess where we are in the Order of Service based on what seems to be happening in front of us. Then our eyes would be on something other than the Lamb. Instead Revelation embeds “advert breaks” of worship into multi-layered visions of angels and trumpets and woes and wonders. Revelation shows the cosmic crashing together of heaven and earth… and how the Alpha and Omega stands serene, secure and sovereign over it all.  Revelation dares us to be destabilised and still to declare “who will not fear you, Lord”. Revelation gives us a verbal volley akin to smoke and glory filling our minds, and urges us to admit “you are King of the Nations… just and true are your ways”. Will you follow Revelation where it is trying to take you, even if it leaves you slightly paralysed by it all, like God’s servants have often been?

Question for reflection

Is worship the constant “advert break” in your life?