Revelation & Worship 3

REV 4:1  After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this."

2  At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.

3  And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.

4  Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads.

5  From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God.

6  Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back.

7  The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle.

8  Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come."

9  Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever,

10  the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:

11   "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being."

I have noticed a trend in charismatic circles in the last ten or fifteen years that many of the songs that are sung are, what I would call singing to one another about God, or encouraging one another regarding some area of Christian endeavor. They could be called “ME” songs.  Very little of what is sung is actually worship, where God is exalted and glorified. Very little is speaking directly to Jesus about who he is and what he means to us. On one occasion when we visited an Eastern Orthodox Church I was able to talk at length with the priest. I didn’t ask the question but he seemed to perceive what I was thinking as my eyes roamed about the sanctuary looking at all the icons of the saints that covered the walls. He said, “We believe that all worship takes place in heaven, when we open the liturgy saying: ‘blessed be the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and forever, unto the ages of ages, amen.’ We believe at that point we are entering into the heavenly realm and from there we worship the Lord—heaven to heaven. Heaven is outside the realm of time and space and the icons remind us of the great cloud of witnesses that the Bible says surround us and witness what we are doing. We worship together with them.”  (not an exact quote) I immediately understood that they are at least touching a revelation of worship that is woefully lacking in today’s churches. I’m not suggesting that we all run off and join up with Orthodox Churches, but what I am suggesting is that we re-visit what worship really means and how and where we do it.

The next thing I noticed in my trips through Revelation and focusing on worship was, in all of the five places where it is mentioned that God is being worshiped, in every case there is reference to bodily action.

I heard Derek Prince say that every Hebrew and Greek word translated worship has to do with bodily action, from bowing, kneeling, kissing the hand, to prostration.

In 4:10 the twenty four elders fall down on their faces…mainly falling on their faces and cast their crowns before the throne.

Then in 7:11-15 it says, “all the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God,” We see that in the midst of all this one of the elders asks him, “

"Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?"

John, of course doesn't have a clue. The elder answers "These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.  Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them.” Think of it! The martyrs have a position before the throne in the midst of the heavenly worshipers. If the Angels, living creatures, elders and martyrs all fall on their faces before the throne why are our earthly times of worship so seemingly devoid of any bodily action? Maybe we have not seen Him who is on the throne and received a revelation of his majesty and greatness. We tend to look at worship as something oriented toward ourselves and evaluated by what we get out of it and how we feel. So many times when I was pastoring I would hear people talk about a worship service in terms of what they received or if they didn’t feel anything then the service was somehow substandard. What is a worship service for anyway? It just occurred to me, why do we call it a worship service? That in itself reveals the misguided mentality behind it—a service? Who is being served?

Why do many churches today lower the lights during worship or have a light show going on over the worship team and behind the words on the jumbo-tron an ever changing landscape background? I have heard that some are actually using smoke machines—how interesting, is that to impress God or to illicit an emotional response in us?

Perhaps if we just seriously read some of these passages in the Revelation and considered who we are approaching in worship or prayer we might come with a different attitude. Think of the seraphim who worship before the throne, day and night, which is a way to explain to us that it goes on nonstop because there is no day or night there. They have six wings, and eyes all over them, the vision of what is before them is so majestic that they cover their faces and fall foreword before the throne crying out “Holy, Holy, Holy.” I remember hearing Jack Hayford say that every time they get up off their faces they are filled with such an overwhelming revelation of the one who is seated on the throne that they can do nothing but fall on their faces again saying, Holy, Holy, Holy. And they have been doing that for a long time.”

In the vision that Isaiah saw, the seraphim  cried out to one another, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!"

Concerning the word holy, [qadosh]  Alec Motyer in his superb work on Isaiah says, “Only here is the threefold repetition found, holiness is supremely the truth about God, and his holiness is in itself so far beyond human thought that a ‘super-superlative’ has to be invented to express it.”

Holy describes the complete otherness of God

The word seraph in Hebrew literally means burning ones.

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to give us a glimpse of that scene as we come before him in prayer and worship.

(to be continued)

REVELATION & WORSHIP 2

REVELATION AND WORSHIP 2

I have continued to think a lot about worship a lot.

Let’s look again at the song of Moses.

"Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almighty!

Just and true are Your ways, O King of the nations!

Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name?

For You alone are holy.

For all nations shall come and worship before You,

for Your judgments have been manifested."

Moses immediately exalts the Lord for his works and his ways. In the first line he uses three different names of God. Of course Moses didn’t compose the song in Greek and I don’t know Hebrew well enough to venture a reverse translation, the originally Hebrew would be interesting. One thing I have noticed in most highly anointed worship songs is that they start out in the present glorifying God and quickly launch us into the future, the eskaton, the eternal world. A contemporary example is THE REVELATION SONG by Jennie Lee Riddle  that went viral through an album by Kari Jobe.

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain
Holy, holy is He
We Sing a new song to Him who sits on
Heaven's mercy seat/

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty
Who was and is and is to come
With all creation I sing praise to the King of kings
You are my everything and I will adore You

Clothed in rainbows of living color
Flashes of lighting rolls of thunder
Blessing and honor strength and glory and power be
To You the only wise King.

Filled with wonder awestruck wonder
At the mention of Your name
Jesus Your name is power, breath and living water
Such a marvelous mystery

Listen and watch at the link below – see how the song begins in the past—in some sense in eternity past, through present earthly worship and culminates in heavenly worship before the very throne of God.

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain
Holy, holy is He.
We Sing a new song to Him who sits on
Heaven's mercy seat.”

Then it moves into the present,

“With all creation I sing praise to the King of kings”

Finally culminating is the glorious finale before the throne in heaven.

“Clothed in rainbows of living color
Flashes of lighting rolls of thunder
Blessing and honor strength and glory and power be
To You the only wise King.”

Christ is king now but His kingship is presently veiled. When He returns to earth his kingship will be obvious and indisputable. He will not return as a meek suffering servant. He will rule with a rod of iron!

“His head and His hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, "Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.’” (1:14-18) 

Those who have a problem with the sovereign rulership of Jesus Christ will have difficulty with His return to earth. If your theology is one that tries to domesticate God and make him compatible with post modern thinking, the Apocalypse ( book of Revelation) is written to get you accustomed to what he will be like upon arrival here on earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rFxJ2xTVK0

REVELATION AND WORSHIP

In recent months I have read the book of Revelation several times. I used to read the book like most folks do, in order to find out about the future. One of the first books I read as a new believer was The Late Great Planet Earth; by Hal Lindsey; Over the years most of what Hal teaches has morphed several times and the same concept has been expanded into twenty-some volumes in the Left Behind series. Historically these attempts to find answers to the nagging questions around when will Jesus come back and when will the rapture take place, have always ended up sadly lacking in reality. From Justin and Irenaeus on through the reformers and in recent days the advent of teaching on a pre-tribulation rapture, many have predicted dates and times and everyone has proved to be fallacious. But lately I have been trying to go beyond the speculative and to begin to see what I have decided is a more important narrative, that of worship and the emergence of a picture of the glorious Son of God coming as the judge of the whole earth.

Worship is found in twenty one different places in the Revelation. Five times we find the elders, angels and the living creatures worshiping Christ. We find the resurrected saints worshiping Christ. We find, four times the inhabitants of the earth worshiping demons, idols and the beast. We see the martyrdom of faithful who refuse to worship the beast. Later we see that wrath is poured out on those who worship the beast.

After that we find the song of Moses:

"Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almighty!

Just and true are Your ways, O King of the nations!

Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name?

For You alone are holy.

For all nations shall come and worship before You,

for Your judgments have been manifested." (15:3,4)

a song that is still being sung by those in heaven! Imagine that? I have often thought about Moses spending 40 years in the Sinai desert after God called him to be the leader of Israel and what happened to him during that time. I will have to take that up at a later date but to my knowledge no other human has ever composed a hymn that has been sung by the heavenly choir.

Worship is the divider, not just in the Revelation but in all history. Why, because God needs to be worshiped? Hardly, he has no needs, but we have the need. True worship draws us into the sublime realities of God and his Son Jesus Christ that are inexpressible in mere prosaic language. It allows us to enter into His presence in new and profound levels.

Some think that the temptation to worship the beast will only take place in the end of times but it is happening right now.

To be continued—

MEDITATIONS FROM THE CAVE part 2

THE MAGI AND THE PROPHET DANIEL

Getting back to our questions from the previous installment, Which was, ‘How did the magi mentioned in Mat. 2; know anything about the birth of a Jewish king who would rule the entire world?’  Maybe we can find out where these men came from and how they knew about the coming Messiah and his significance for them. A friend sent me a link from You Tube that approaches the issue of the star from a historical/scientific perspective ¹ and I really enjoyed it and agreed with almost all of it but it seems to leave my questions unanswered, which is, “How did these guys know that this strange star was a sign that influenced them to travel to an unknown destination and bring expensive gifts for a child?” I am convinced that the ‘wise men’ had access to the book of Daniel and could determine from it and perhaps, from stories about Daniel concerning future events, including the birth of Messiah who would rule the whole earth.

Our first clue that connects these astrologers with Babylon is found in the name, translated, ‘wise men’ in Matthew 2:2  (KJV). In Greek it is magos or magi (Pl), a very old and interesting word. It refers to the Persian priestly cast, related to the 6 tribes of the Medes. They were the priests of the Zoroastrian religion. Their existence in Persia and Babylon goes back before the time that the prophet Daniel, who was among the captives in the exile, lived and ministered. These facts connect our magi with Babylon, which at the time of Daniel ruled a huge amount of geography including Persia.

 In Daniel 2:2  “Then the king gave the command to call the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams. So they came and stood before the king. 3  And the king said to them, ‘I have had a dream, and my spirit is anxious to know the dream.’”

The Hebrew word here translated “magicians” in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament from approx. 200 BC) is Magi, the same as Matthew.

Secondly, from chapter 2:4, until the end of Chap. 7, Daniel switches from Hebrew to the Aramaic language.

2:4  Then the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic, "O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will give the interpretation." Aramaic was the language of Babylon and was undoubtedly spoken by Daniel since he arrived in Babylon as a child and was trained in the language and literature of the Chaldeans

Do you think it an accident that Daniel shifted to the language of the land where he lived for this portion of the book?

Third: Daniel prophesied three different governmental shifts in Babylon, that the local astrologers and others witnessed, two of them in dramatic fashion.

You know the story. Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and calls his magi to interpret the dream but this time he orders them to tell him what he dreamed as well as what it meant. Perhaps he was suspicious that the magi were just making up the interpretations that they had told him before. Nebuchadnezzar ordered the execution of all the magi if they couldn’t tell him the content of the dream, as well as the interpretation. Daniel hears about it and goes to the king with what God has given him and thus saves the lives of all the magi. I’m sure the magi held on to this story and later paid close attention to the ongoing fulfillment of that prophesy and others.

The last portion of the king’s dream ends with the coming messianic kingdom and Daniel’s interpretation of it.

“While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.” (2:34, 35)

Then Daniel’s interpretation of the dream:

 v.44 "In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. 45  This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands --  a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy."

Undoubtedly, the magi of Daniel’s day heard or later found out about this and other prophetic words that Daniel gave. They watched the beginning of the fulfillment of them in their day. I have no doubt that these stories were passed on by word of mouth and in writing through generations of magi until the ones that saw the star and followed it all the way to Bethlehem.

I would like to invite you to take your own journey through Daniel and imagine yourself as one of the magi. See what you might find in the writings of this great prophet and see how it might have influenced your life if you were a magi!

Later we will look at another prophetic word in Daniel that might have shed even greater detail on the timing of the coming of the messianic king.

¹  Here’s the link to a scientific perspective on the star of Bethlehem <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzWi0tWKoxo>

IMAGINATIVE MEDITATION I

IMAGINATIVE MEDITATION I

One of the things that have happened since we have been attending a more traditional Church is that they put a lot of attention on the Church calendar. I used to view all this with a good bit of suspicion and saw little value in it. After following the calendar through lent and Holy Week for the first time, I not only began to see value in it but my understanding of the events of that time grew a lot and I started to value  the annual repetition of these events.

Now we are at the third Sunday of Advent. I have been focusing my reading and meditating on the stories of the birth of Christ and Isaiah’s prophesies regarding the coming Messiah and reading On The Incarnation by Athanasius of Alexandria (296-373 AD) .  I have found that this season was so important to the ancient Church that they fasted for 40 days prior to Christmas day. (actually the Eastern Orthodox Church still observes this fast (not a strict water fast but more like a ‘Daniel fast’)

One thing that has always perplexed me is the story of the Magi. I have wondered how they knew about the King of The Jews and that He was to be born, and beyond that why the birth of a supposed heir to the throne in a tiny country would be significant, since Israel had been ruled by The Roman Empire since 63 BC. It seems that these Magi, some translations say “wise men” but that is a nice translation for astrologers, must have had more information than just a strange comet appearing in the sky and moving in the direction of the west. What would make them gather up treasures, load up camels, secure the permission of their king and walk as far as they did to find a new born baby? At that point there was no apparent evidence that this baby was destined to be a king, much less a king of a nation that would affect the nation that these astrologers were from.

When they arrived in Israel it seems that they first sought out Herod, the puppet ruler of Judea under the Romans. Perhaps they assumed that, if a king was to be born, it should happen in the palace of the reigning king. There is no biblical evidence that they gave any gifts to Herod or venerated him in any way. They only stayed long enough to get information from the Jewish religious leaders as to where the Messiah was to be born.  When they arrived in Bethlehem and found the house where the baby Jesus and his parents were living, they prostrated themselves flat on their faces before Him in worship and present Him with expensive gifts.

I would like to invite you to participate in a biblical meditation that uses your imagination.

1.      Take the passage before the Lord in prayer. Ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate the story to you.

2.     Read over the passage in question (Mat. 2:1-12) several times, until you feel that you have the information and the story line in your thinking.  Sometimes it helps to use several different translations.

3.      Imagine yourself as one of the characters in the narrative. Ask yourself some basic questions about the incident.

4.     Imagine yourself as other members of the cast and think about how your presence in the drama might affect them.

5.     In this particular case think about it from Jesus’ perspective.

6.     Talk to the participants in the story; ask them questions about what is happening. (relax, this is not praying to them just an imaginative exercise)

7.     Ask Jesus to teach you how He thinks and sees the situation.

8.     Get in a comfortable and quiet place, close your eyes and attempt to run the “video” of the entire scene in your mind and see what the Spirit of God might show you.

Later I will suggest some background reading that might help answer the original question; that is how these magi knew about the coming birth of the king of the Jews and why they were interested?

Let me know how your time goes with this exercise.

Blessings during this Christmas season

pablo