Article archive
08/09/2016 07:59
Beginning in verse 9 of chapter 21, the focus shifts slightly. The New Jerusalem had appeared in the first section of the chapter as the accomplished goal of God’s redeeming purpose and work. Verse 9 begins a subsection bringing greater detailed clarity of that New Jerusalem. The city was first...
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08/05/2016 08:33
Following the presentation of the scroll in this third and last scroll section, the results of the whole scroll sequence are realized. The scrolls, remember, are John’s way of organizing this book highlighting the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Kinsman Redeemer. The scroll signified, in effect,...
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08/04/2016 08:00
The last few verses of chapter 20 speak of final judgment. The sea gives up its dead. Death and Hades personified give up their dead. Death and Hades themselves are said to be thrown into the lake of fire—the second death. And in fact, the climax is that all who are not found written in the book...
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07/21/2016 07:23
Revelation 20:1-10 emphasizes again for us in pictorial form what we already know preached throughout the rest of the New Testament. Revelation is a difficult book to understand only when we insist that it must be something new and different from what God has shown us of faith, love, relationship,...
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05/11/2016 07:49
Christ’s kingdom is one that concentrates on love relationship resting in the infinite and ultimate truth, goodness, and beauty of God. In fact, we may also say it in reverse—that God’s truth, goodness, and beauty necessarily rest on love relationship. Truth, goodness, and beauty without love...
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05/03/2016 06:16
In the last part of Revelation 11, the seventh trumpet is blown, and we are told that the kingdom of the earth has become the kingdom of the Lord and his Messiah. Surely, however, this was already so, was it not? We had been reading in chapter 11 of our current age, which precedes the seventh...
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04/18/2016 08:13
As 2 Corinthians 6:14-16 tells us, we are the sanctuary of God. Yet, Revelation 11:1 is not meant simply to inform us that the measuring has to do with individuals getting saved in this interadvental age. That first verse instructs John to go measure, not to build. John is not building something...
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04/11/2016 19:16
Verse 2 of chapter 10 tells us that the angel plants one foot on the land and one on the sea. Continuing with the understanding that this angel is none other than Christ himself, we must find his firm stance as meaningful. Remember that at this point the seals have been removed from the scroll that...
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03/24/2016 13:43
While the sixth trumpet represents the torment of search for satisfaction in self as did the previous trumpet, the fifth had done so regarding relationship with God while the sixth focuses on broken relationship with humanity. The order shown from fifth to sixth emphasizes that without God’s truth,...
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03/07/2016 08:09
As Satan opens the abyss, smoke belches out of the great furnace, blocking out the sun. The imagery here is clear. The sun is normally associated with illuminating light of revelation. God gives light, and the sun then represents that brilliancy of truth, goodness, and beauty that comes from God....
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