REVELATION 4-6
SEGMENT 1
Revelation 4-6
“…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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