Casting Our Crowns

Intrepid voyagers, thanks for sticking with me on this ride. Revelation is a hard book to understand, and I'm probably raising more questions than answers at this point. But I'll forge onward anyway. We're heading into Revelation 8-9 today. So far, it seems like there are stages in this book that level up every two chapters or so. I ended yesterday with the throne room of heaven resounding with the perfect praise of the angels who responded to the praise of the saints on earth, and then in 8:1... 

The Lamb opens the seventh seal, and immediately silence falls. 

I thought at first: How anticlimactic! Six seals bringing four horsemen, cries for justice from the martyrs, great apocalyptic distress, 144,000 before the throne of heaven, singing praises... and then...

Silence. You can almost hear it, right? In the cinematic scope of epic war movies, you've probably heard something similar: drumbeats, a great roar, a mighty wave of noise. The last baton falls on the last drum, the leader lifts their sword, and... 

Silence. 

My footnotes say that this same word for this same type of silence was used in Acts when Paul motioned for silence speaking to the crowd (Acts 12:17). It's a revered silence, a holy awe, and it carries as much weight or more as the perfect praise of the previous chapter. 

And after that silence, an entirely new wave of things begin to happen. 

An angel went up onto the altar of God before His throne with a censer pan (I'm picturing it as a metal pan that can hold hot coals). The pan held the prayers of the saints. When he was on the altar, he filled it with fire from the altar, and then... 

He turned around and hurled it back at the earth. 

Immediately, there was thunder, lightning, and an earthquake, signifying God's coming judgment.

Ouch. Unacceptable prayers, offered too little and too late, after the Lord has closed the door. "See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut" (Revelation 3:8). Until the Lord does it Himself. 

Next in John's vision, seven angels are given a trumpet each, and... small surprise, there will be some not-so-nice repercussions to the blowing of them. 

When the first angel blew his trumpet, hail and fire mixed with blood fell on the earth and burned up a third of the vegetation. 

When the second angel blew his trumpet, something "like a mountain" fell into the sea and a third of all the sea animals and ships were destroyed because the sea had turned to blood. 

When the third angel blew his trumpet, a great star fell on the rivers and turned a third of them greatly bitter so that people died. 

When the fourth angel blew his trumpet, a third of the heavenly bodies were struck, including a third of the sun and a third of the moon, so that a third of the day and night was completely without light. 

I'm struck by the fact that these judgments are similar to the plagues of Egypt recorded in Exodus. Symbolically, only the Egyptians were touched by them; the people of God living in Goshen were unaffected. They prepared to leave that land; similarly, this judgment will be just before the people of God leave the world (*Note that I have no settled belief about pre-tribulation/post-tribulation taking of the church. All I know is that Jesus is coming, and we need to be ready). 

And then... there's a small break before the last three trumpets, where an eagle flies through the air and sets the stage. Eagles are known for their keen sight and their ability to fly high above their enemies; here, I think the eagle was the presage, the bearer of bad tidings (yeah, even worse than what has happened so far). "Woe, woe!" he cried. "Woe to the inhabitants of the earth because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!" (Revelation 8:13). 

He wasn't wrong. I thought the first four trumpet blasts were bad; the next two kind of blew them out of the water, so to speak (the seventh angel will sound his trumpet in chapter 11. We'll get there). 

The fifth trumpet blast allowed an angel to fall from the sky with the key for the Abyss. He opened it, and an enormous horde of scary locusts/scorpions/horses/men in an all-in-one package deal, burst out of the smoke from the Abyss. They went over the whole earth, destroying... but were told not to harm vegetation or those who had the mark of God on their foreheads. 

When the sixth trumpet sounded, the four angels who had been kept for this exact hour, day, month, and year were released to kill a third of all mankind. So they did, using troops that numbered 200 million, and their armor was brilliant red, yellow, and blue... 

Which, I thought was interesting, as those are the primary colors, the truest light source, the only colors that are unmixed with any other light. Make of that what you will. 

This army killed a third of mankind, and you'd think that anyone left would have had enough, right? The surrender given, the white flag flown, "Enough! We give up." 

But you'd be wrong. Because in 9:20, it says: "The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood - idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality, or their thefts." 

And that ends chapter 9 on a cliffhanger before the seventh trumpet is blown. 

Y'all... again, I'm not a hardcore Biblical scholar. I read and reflect and pray and ask for wisdom, but much of the symbolism here, I don't understand, and I don't know that I WILL understand until the end of days when I stand in the courts of heaven and can talk to Jesus face to face. "Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). 

What seems abundantly clear to me, though (and this is a reiteration from yesterday): Get right with God. Strip away pride, idolatry. Stop holding onto straw houses. Stop clinging to frail sticks. Those comforts, securities - they're not going to last forever. The full grocery store shelves, the high-priced cars and unbroken roads, they're going to pass, too. The lavish Hollywood cinema with which we fill our time will eventually pass. The Rock, the Rock that is higher than any one of us is where we should be rooted, planted firmly; everything else will wash away in the crashing storm and the shifting sands.

My heart is heavy this morning. Yesterday, as I was praying, I heard a message from the Lord: "Cast your crowns before me" (based on Revelation 4:10b). Lay down our idols before the throne. We have made comfort and security an idol. We have fought tooth and nail to extend our lives, we've strained away from gnats and we've swallowed camels whole. We've forgotten what is truly important. 

In my prayer time this morning, the Lord showed me a vivid picture of a landscape: a large field, furrowed for planting, but the rows were hard, as though the furrows were long dried up. Stubble and weeds grew, but they were yellow and scraggly. Dust blew across the field. The sun was setting; the end of the day was coming, dusk was at hand.

I held a water bottle in my hands, but it was turned upside down. Its lid was open, and nothing was coming from it. A single, solitary drop of water was all that was left, hanging from its rim. 

To the side was an enormous cistern, big as one of those massive missile silos. I stood on the edge and looked down inside. It had been used to store water, but the water was almost all gone. Far down at the bottom, I saw a person measuring what was left; it was a mere puddle, hardly anything. 

This took me to Jeremiah where there is a back-and-forth exchange between Jeremiah and God as they discuss the drought and famine that Israel is experiencing, and the coming judgment for Israel's lack of repentance. Historically and biblically, the Israelites did not escape captivity and judgment; they were carried off to Babylon (read: the whole book of Daniel and other prophets). 

God rarely ever works in the way I think He should. When He works, it is always for a greater purpose and holds much farther-reaching consequences than my plan. 

In the game of My plan v. God's plan, God's plan always wins. 

This picture of the empty cistern and the dry field seems devastating. In asking the Lord to show me what it means, I came to the conclusion that it speaks to the wealth and prosperity that we as a country have enjoyed for a long while now. Before Israel was carried into captivity in Babylon, they clung tenaciously to their idols. Where are we with the idols we've set up for ourselves here in this country? Maybe they're not statues and Asherah poles such as the Israelites had. But what about the others we've put up? 

The ones to Comfort. To Plenty. To Wealth. To Entertainment. To Military Might. To Political Clout. To Humanism-as-our-god. What was it Nebuchadnezzar said the day the Lord turned his brain off and made him eat grass like the wild animals for seven years? "Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?" Oh, Neb. Let's not do the same! 

Lord, we cast down these idols, we cast down these crowns, and we return to our knees, Father, humbling ourselves and seeking Your will rather than our own. In the lack of prosperity, bring us Your hope. In the lack of material wealth, bring us Your riches. Not the gold, silver, bronze that can suffer destruction, but heavenly comforts that will stay with us for eternity. 

Matthew 6:19-21: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."