Thursday, February 18, 2010

Revelation

The biblical writer, John, calls his book "Revelation", and what a revelation it is! The imagery and descriptions of the visions he saw are so bizarre and "out of this world".

I would not be at all surprised if todays script writers of modern science fiction/ animated monstor movies have taken ideas from this book.
I must confess that Revelation is not my favorite. It has always left me with a confused, eerie, uneasy feeling. But this time I am reading it in the contemporary language of "The Message".

Like a great finale to a fireworks show, Peterson writes...."The Bible ends with a flourish; vision and song, doom and deliverance, terror and triumph. The rush of color and sound, image and energy, leaves us reeling. But if we persist through the initial confusion and read, we begin to pick up the rhythms, realize the connections, and find ourselves enlisted as participants in a multidimensional act of Christian worship."

Hearing a good choir sing the Hallelujah Chorus gives me tingles all over. This morning I really got that feeling reading the following words in chapter five. What a picture of worship!

"I looked again. I heard a company of Angels around the Throne, the Animals, and the Elders---ten thousand times ten thousand their number, thousand after thousand after thousand in full song: THE SLAIN LAMB IS WORTHY! TAKE THE POWER, THE WEALTH, THE WISDOM, THE STRENGTH! TAKE THE HONOR, THE GLORY, THE BLESSING!

Then even more joined the singing...can you imagine! Every creature in Heaven and earth, in underworld and sea...all voices in all places.

TO THE ONE ON THE THRONE! TO THE LAMB! THE BLESSING, THE HONOR, THE GLORY, THE STRENGTH, FOR AGE AFTER AGE AFTER AGE.

YES!