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REVELATION
4-6
SEGMENT 1
Revelation 4-6
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“…When
I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days
ordained for me were written in your book before
one of them came to be. How precious to me are
your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of
them!”
-
Psalm 139:15-17, emphasis mine
The first prophecy in
Revelation is quite a challenge to understand
because several large subjects dovetail into this
prophecy. To make this presentation easier to
understand, I have divided it into four segments:
The first segment will deal with motive –
why did God write a book before He began creating
life? The second segment will examine why the
book had to be sealed with seven seals. The third
segment will examine the timing of Revelation
4-6, and the last segment will deal with the
meaning of each seal.
Segment 1
Why
Did God Write the Book?
The
Problem with Sin
You may ask how can an
omniscient (all-knowing) and omnipotent (all
powerful) God have a problem. It all started when
Lucifer, the brightest and highest of God’s
created beings, exercised his God given right
to rebel against his Maker. Lucifer and the
angels (like Adam and Eve) were created with a
pure heart, having a propensity for
righteousness. There is no taint of selfishness
or rebellion in them. At some point in time,
Lucifer chose, of his own free will, to
rebel against Christ’s authority.
Lucifer’s actions created a chain of
problems, which ultimately introduces rebellion
to the universe. During a lengthy period of
grace, God tried to get Lucifer to repent, but he
refused. When Lucifer and his followers became
hopelessly defiant, God cast them out of His
house. God did not destroy them because He knew
His largest problem was not the presence of sin
in His universe. From the beginning, God’s
greatest problem has been preventing sin and
rebellion from rising a second time.
Think about this. If you
were God, how would you prevent sin from
occurring again among children that you gave the
right to rebel?” Because our “Heavenly
Father knows best,” He allowed Lucifer and
his followers to live for a while so that angels
and humans alike could understand the nature and
properties of sin as it developed. Because God is
omniscient and omnipotent and His character is
love, He has devised an elegant process that, in
the end, will constantly thwart the rise of sin
throughout the endless ages of eternity. In
simple terms, the process works like this: At the
end of sin’s drama, God will repopulate
Heaven with people who had sinful natures, but
chose to submit to His authority. The angels who
chose to rebel against God with Lucifer will be
replaced by ex-sinners who overcame the rebellion
of sin. By doing this, God will have a host of
seasoned witnesses – elevated to the stature
of “kings and priests” – who will
be able to resolve any issues that might lead to
rebellion in the future! (Revelation 1:6) How
ingenious! The seasoned experiences of ex-sinners
will forever keep the universe free of sin! God
knows that the price for sin has been too great
to ever have it rise again.
Think
This Through
The Bible
says that God is love. (1 John 4:8) Because He is
a loving God, He gave each of His children the
most precious gift that a Creator could offer a
created being – the power of choice. If we
so choose, we can rebel against our Creator. Of
course, all choices have consequences, and
rebellion against God’s laws and authority
are not exempt; they too have serious
consequences. In the beginning, only God had the
knowledge of good and evil. This means the angels
did not understand the consequences of sin.
However, when the drama with sin is completed,
the knowledge of good and evil will exist as an
eternal verity (a highly exalted truth that will
never fade) because everyone in God’s
universe will clearly understand four matters:
- God’s
laws are designed for the benefit of His
children. Because God knows the end from
the beginning and He knows what laws are
essential for eternal happiness, His laws
are unchanging and nonnegotiable. God
Himself is subject to His own changeless
laws, even to the point of death.
- There
is no selfishness or self-seeking in
God’s heart. The Father was willing
to annihilate Jesus for our sins and
Jesus was willing to cease to exist, if
necessary, so that we could have eternal
life.
- The
self-centered behavior of the sinful
nature is not only self-destructive it is
corporately destructive. Rebellion
exposes every child of God to injury or
loss.
- Because
God will not impose His will on His
children, the only way there can be a
happy and harmonious universe after
rebellion occurs is through justifiable
annihilation of those who insist
on rebellion.
Because these four
matters will be widely understood and highly
exalted at the end of sin’s drama, God will
not be able to spare future rebels from immediate
execution if sin rises again. Keep in mind that
God did not destroy Lucifer and his followers, or
Adam and Eve, at the time of their rebellion,
because the knowledge of good and evil had not
yet unfolded in the universe. However, after the
four points listed above are widely known and
proven to be true (at the end of sin’s
drama), God will not tolerate rebellion against
“the righteous order” necessary for the
happiness and the benefit of His children. (Have
you noticed in Genesis 2:17, that Adam and Eve
were to be destroyed the same day they sinned?
God relented because Jesus offered to die in
their place. Jesus was willing to die for Adam
and Eve because the guilty pair did not sin
defiantly.)
This is a key point: God
does not destroy sinners because He is offended.
Rather, God destroys those who insist on
rebellion because rebellion hurts everyone.
Annihilation is the only way to terminate the
horrible consequences of sin. When the universe
clearly understands the consequences of good and
evil choices, sin’s victims will prevent a
second rise of sin forever. (Nahum 1:9; Matthew
12:31,32)
Currently, God is
resolving two problems. He is resolving the
existing problem of sin, and He is resolving the
problem of sin in such a way that His children
will refuse to participate in sin again! How
wonderful! When the current drama with sin ends,
it will become obvious that only an omniscient
God of love and wisdom could so masterfully
resolve both problems.
Foreknowledge
at Work
The subject of God’s
foreknowledge can be hard to understand because
God’s behavior is not like our behavior.
(Isaiah 55:8,9) God is love. This means that He
has no selfishness in Him. God does not
manipulate His creatures on the basis of His
foreknowledge. He has given us the power of
choice and He always treats us on the basis of
love even though we do make choices that are
contrary to His will. Fallen human beings have
selfish hearts. If we had the gift of
foreknowledge, we would manipulate others to our
satisfaction and we would manipulate the outcome
of life to protect ourselves and enhance our
circumstances. In other words, if the gift of
foreknowledge were mixed with human selfishness,
the result would be extraordinary manipulation of
those around us. Consider the following
illustration:
Let us assume that a
recently married husband and wife have
foreknowledge. Let us assume they intend to have
a family of nine children. Since they had
foreknowledge, they foreknew that their firstborn
child will be a son which they will call
“Louis,” and they know he will be born
on august 10, 2004. Fifty years later, on
Louis’ birthday, August 10, 2054, they know
that Louis will start an intense argument and he
will attempt to kill both parents that evening.
Before his fifth birthday, this husband and wife
know that Louis will attempt to steal their
assets to support his reckless and indulgent
lifestyle and his addition to drugs. Because they
have foreknowledge, the parents know that Louis
will use lies to alienate the other siblings from
them. To keep his true motives from being
detected, Louis will try to convince his brothers
and sisters that his parents are evil.
Furthermore, he will claim they owe him money and
are unwilling to meet their obligations. The
parents foreknew that two of their children will
sympathize with Louise and take sides with him.
Even though they know these terrible events will
unfold, they also know that during his first
forty years of his life, Louis will be a
wonderful, loveable son. In fact, of all the nine
children, Louis will be their favorite. Since
these parents know what the situation will be on
Louis’ birthday in 2054, what should they do
right now to protect themselves and their
offspring from Louis?
A.
Have no children.
B.
Have eight children, do not give birth to
Louis.
C.
Abandon Louis immediately after he is born.
D.
Kill Louis before he turns forty.
E.
Kill Louis when he starts taking drugs.
F.
Kill Louis when he begins to tell lies to
limit his influence on the other children.
G.
Write out the contents you know is going to
happen (foreknowledge) and seal it up before any
child is born so that at the right time, your
children and grandchildren can examine the whole
story and determine the truth about Louis and his
parents.
These seven options may
sound ridiculous, but they have a serious
parallel. God is all knowing and He foreknows
everything in the past, present and future. Of
course, some of these options were not viable
options for a loving God, but they illustrate a
range of considerations that God faced before
creating life. God foreknew that Lucifer, the
first and highest of His created beings would
eventually choose to become His enemy. God
foreknew the damage that Lucifer and his
followers would cause in His house. God also
foreknew that Adam, Eve would sin, and that Earth
would be filled with billions of rebellious
people. (Isaiah 44:8, 46:10,11; Jeremiah 17:10).
Given His heart of perfect love and
foreknowledge, God looked at all the options and
He chose the equivalent of option “G.”
To better appreciate the problems that God faced
before creating life, let us consider these seven
options from God’s perspective:
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