Tag: Revelation 7

Interacting with God in Eternity

Today, especially if you are living as a disciple of Jesus, you interact with God. At the most basic level, God keeps you and the universe you live in functioning. God is aware of your actions and thoughts. He hears your prayer, considers your situation, and moves in this world for your well-being. You can experience God teaching you when you study the Bible. You can experience God working through you when you step out to serve. It’s good but it is not what we would like.

We want to see Jesus and touch Him. We would like to see and feel the Father and the Holy Spirit. Will we?

The best and certainly the most underrated blessing of eternal life with God is the interaction we will have with God in Heaven and in the New Earth. What will that be like?

My understanding is that we will always be a creature that is in one place at a time. There will be no omnipresence for us even in Heaven. That said, I understand the Bible to say that we will ultimately have a very vast domain to explore: a recreated universe (not just a planet) and the whole domain of Heaven. With that I would infer that our means of movement will be greatly enhanced; but no matter where we go, Jesus will be near us. That will be a great blessing.

Right now, Jesus is with us as well, but we don’t perceive that. After we leave this life, Jesus in His already resurrected body will speak with us, comfort us, guide us first just in Heaven and then after Judgment Day everywhere.

For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Revelation 7:17 (ESV)

What about the other persons of the Trinity? It is true that when you encounter Jesus, you encounter them all, but will we specifically experience the Father or the Holy Spirit?

Jesus is still the incarnate Son of God. While omnipresent, He has a specific, human form. The Father and the Holy Spirit are spirit(s). I believe that means that they can take on forms but are not specific in their appearance.

One way we will experience the Holy Spirit is as the waters of the River of Life.

 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

Revelation 22:1

I don’t think this river is just something to look at. I expect that it is something to experience. We will wade into the river of Life and experience an interaction with the Spirit unlike anything we have in this life.

It would not be surprising if we encounter the Spirit in many forms, including human form. It will make for a uniquely beautiful relationship.

How will we experience the Father?

 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

Revelation 22:3-4

The curse is attributed as being the cause of many woes in this life: illness, natural disasters, defects in genetics, really anything that is not directly caused by sin. But what is it? I think it is just God stepping back a bit from the controls (Not stepping away). The world operates out of sync. It is a part of our rejection of Him as God. The curse also phases in (in Genesis) as people lose the face-to-face interaction with God. In Heaven and the New Earth, that will no longer be an issue.

There we will see the Father’s “face”. Does He have a face being a spirit? I’m not sure. What we will behold will be glorious. How we will behold it is still a mystery. Seeing God’s face implies a broader and more personal interaction. It is not just reserved for when we enter His throne room.

The experience of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, will be the pinnacle experience of eternal life. The limited revelation we have and our best speculations I’m sure don’t come near to describing it. There is value, however, in trying to imagine what will come. It keeps us looking forward. There is also value in making the most of the interaction that we can have now. That sense of personal relationship with God keeps us strong in the faith.

An Insight into Heaven

I am fascinated by those who were chosen as prophets. They tell us what they have received from God, but rarely give any insight into how they received it. As a pastor I have a “semi-prophetic” role. I don’t produce a sermon out of brute biblical research. I do experience ideas that are true to the text or texts, and they seem to come so easily. Too easily for me. It is a spiritual gift. No visions. No voices. No out-of-body experiences. What happened to John as he received Revelations? Was it a vision or a field trip?

This week is All Saints Sunday. It is a day to remember those who have gone before us, and a day to think about what comes next after we die. The text I am using is Revelation 7:9-17. It makes you think. Was it a trip or a vision? Where is this? When is this? There are clues. Here is the first part:

9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 11 And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Revelations 7:9-14 (ESV)

I believe that it is very possible for God to take us anywhere in Creation, even forward or backward in time. That said, I believe that other visions of God’s throne room in Heaven, Isaiah 6 and Daniel 7 for example, are visions not trips. The reason is that Jesus said no one has gone into Heaven, among humans to that date, except Him (John 1:13). The reason, I believe, is that we could not tolerate it prior to our sin being atoned for by Jesus. John wouldn’t have that restriction. Still, the last line quoted above gives away that this is a vision.

Jesus’ blood cleanses souls not robes. The robes are symbolic of the human soul. Therefore, I think it likely that this is vision. Being a vision doesn’t make it unreal or just a dense metaphor of some sort. It is much like being there. Still, it is an input straight to his mind or right before his eyes.

Where is there? It could be Heaven, but it could be the New Earth. God’s throne room is currently in Heaven, but will move to the New Earth post-Judgement Day. There are no telltale clues in the text. The context places this in Heaven because it is in the midst of the opening of the seven seals. John’s Revelation moves across the breadth of the Earth’s remaining time several times. But this is in the midst of it. Judgment Day happens on the next page with the seventh seal and time resets.

When is it? Before Judgment Day, to be sure, but is it at John’s time? The clue is who is seen. John sees millions of people. By John’s date there would be the Old Testament righteous and those converted since Jesus (maybe 55 years), that might be a big number. But John notes that there are people from every tribe and nation. That wouldn’t be true then and not yet even. This is future, just before God wraps things up. The people are also described as “those who have come out the great tribulation”. It doesn’t say that they were martyrs as Revelation 6 and 20 note. So I don’t see that Heaven is only for those martyred. The great tribulation could be a period of time just before Judgement Day when persecution is very high, but it could also be a reference to every period and place in this life. Living under the curse and with sin and Satan is tough. Relatively speaking this world stinks.

The last part is exciting:

15 “Therefore they are before the throne of God,
    and serve him day and night in his temple;
    and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
    the sun shall not strike them,
    nor any scorching heat.
17 For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Revelation 7:15-17 (ESV)

At first blush, maybe serving God in His temple “day and night” doesn’t sound exciting. It is hard to conceptualize what it will be like to see God and what exactly we will do but expect it to be very exciting and a type of duty that you will covet. Also, don’t think that this is your whole existence.

The end of 15 and all of 16 describe a curse-free existence. All the things that make life now uncomfortable and frustrating will be gone. That is true for the redeemed after Judgment Day as well. In fact the similarities between Heaven and the New Earth lead some people to conflate them. They are two distinct things.

Finally, verse 17 is an intriguing one. Jesus, the Lamb “in the midst of the throne” will be their shepherd. Maybe we are thinking about the throne as just a large chair. It could be a whole world, or even a whole universe parallel to this one. We will be will Jesus doing many things beyond our comprehension. And there will be no reason to grieve and we will have a reconciled memory of what we went through here.

When you consider even the little that we know about Heaven from this text. It is hard to imagine that there could be more. But God plans more. The resurrection of our earthly bodies and a new Heaven and Earth.

We Will All Be Changed (Part 2- Physical Frailty)

When I ask kids what they would like to have changed when they enter Heaven, many choose to have more formidable physical skills.  ” I want to be better at basketball”, for instance. We are all often earth-bound in our imaginations of what a Heavenly or Resurrected body may be.  That said, Scripture does say of the Resurrected body, “It will be sown in weakness, it will be raised in power.”  What kind of power might this include?

Greater speed, strength, impermeable to damage or illness; I expect “yes” to all of them.  Greater beauty, shorter recovery time, more intelligent?  Sure, why not?  According to Genesis people were living for hundreds of years prior to Noah’s flood.  Is this merely mythic?  I see no reason to say so.  There is a branch of science that studies the genome looking for ways to extend human life expectancy.  It is believed that there is a built-in clock within our DNA, and I agree.  In Genesis 6, God seems to adjust that clock so that human life expectancy will slide back to 120 years.  It eventually does so, and remains so to this day.  Can God give us a different genetic code or even use a different means of encoding the construction of our bodies?  I’m sure it is not even hard for Him.  God is able to make us physically immortal. “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable.” (1 Corinthians 15:42).

I expect our brains will be a vast improvement over current models.  Many people ask if we will recognize each other.  I expect that you will not only recognize those you knew, but you will also know those you never met.  On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James and John knew Moses and Elijah.  They had the gift.  It was not introductions or name tags. I expect we will be capable of vast learning without the frailties and maladaptions of our current brain.

Will there be pain, hunger, thirst, nausea, itching or other unpleasantries.  “No” says Revelation 7 for the Heavenly body and Revelation 21 for the Resurrected body.  Could there be any injury, or will we be like the Terminator?  This is hard to say.  There will be no mortal injury, but there might be a need for healing and the source will be quickly provided.  The Tree of Life exists at least in the New Earth, and I expect also in Heaven.  It is for the “healing of the nations”.

Will we age?  Aging as it currently plays out is part of dying.  It is the wages of sin.  We will not get old and frail or lose our beauty, but there might be a life cycle.  Isaiah 65:17 and following is a strange passage that says it is about the New Earth.  In verse 20 it speaks about infants and old men.  This passage needs to be understood in light of other passages that say that we are eternal.  So how can you be an infant or old man; or is this just a figure of speech?  The “Immortal Jellyfish” might give us a model.  This species goes through stages like a frog or a butterfly, but it can revert from its “mature” stage back to its initial larval stage without dying.  The Isaiah passage would be referring to the Resurrected body.  Perhaps we go from infant to adulthood and back to infancy.  Who knows?  Eventually, we will.

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