There is an old Indian parable about six blind men who are trying to describe an elephant. It goes something like this: One day six wise blind men went for a walk. Along the way, they ran into an elephant. Their leader, first blind man, walked right into the side of the elephant. He put out his arms to either side, but all he could feel was the big body of the elephant. The first blind man. “We have walked into a wall.” The second blind man accidentally touched the elephant’s trunk. He quickly let go and shouted, “This isn’t a wall. This is a huge snake!” The third man touched the animal’s tail and exclaimed, “This is neither a wall or a snake. This is a rope.” The fourth blind man ran into the elephant’s legs. He concluded that the elephant was a huge column, and they must have run into a temple. The fifth blind man felt the animal’s two long tusks. He said, “It seems to me that this object is made up of two spikes.” The sixth blind man scratched his head and thought but could not understand what in the world they were confronting, so he asked a passing wise man. “My friends and I can’t seem to figure out what this thing in front of us is. One of us thinks it’s a wall; one thinks it’s a snake; one thinks it’s a rope, one thinks it’s a warrior’s spike, and one thinks it’s a column from huge temple. “You are all correct, the wise men said. This elephant seems like something different to each one of you. The only way to know what this thing really is like is by sharing what each of you knows and understands.” [1]

As we humans try to understand God we are like the six blind men: There are so many aspects of God that to understand God we must share and combine different understandings. During our study of Revelation, we are going to see many images of the Risen Christ. Each of them will tell us something important about him. Today, we are going to study the most important images of Christ from the Old and New Testament.

Two Sides of Jesus.

Two weeks ago, we read John’s first vision of the Risen Christ. This vision bears a lot of similarity to a vision given to the Prophet and Wise Man, Daniel (Daniel 7:9-14;10:5-6). In this vision, the Risen Christ is seen with a golden sash, pure shining white hair, flashing eyes, and bronze feet. This vision is of the risen, royal Christ filled with the wisdom, holiness, and power of God. In this blog, we see that vision reinforced and deepened.

Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then, one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,
because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”

Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne, the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”

Then, I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”

The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped. (Revelation 5:1-14).

Prayer: God of Wisdom, Love, and Power: Come to us this morning and let the image of the Lamb that Was Slain enter into all of our hearts. In Jesus Name, Amen.

The End of history is in God’s Hands, Not Ours.

Two weeks ago, I introduced the congregation (and my readers) to the importance of the number seven in John’s writing. [2] In Revelation 4, we are introduced to the seven lamps that are the seven spirits of God, symbolizing the perfection of God’s Spirit. [3] Revelation 5 contains a continuation of the vision of Revelation 4—a revelation of God on this throne in heaven surrounded by the patriarch’s, the apostles, and the heavenly court, all worshiping God. There may be trouble in the seven earthly churches, but that trouble is not to be found in heaven. In heaven, God is on this throne and everything is fine.

As the vison continues, John looks and sees the right hand of the One on the Throne of Heaven holding a scroll with writing on both sides. This scroll is sealed with seven seals. Once again, if seven is a perfect number, then the scroll is perfectly and permanently sealed because it contains important information that only a worthy person should know. In fact, no one on our earth is entitled to see what is in the scroll. It will take a special person to undo these seals! Soon, we shall see that the scroll is a very important and powerful scroll. The scroll contains the secret to the future and to human destiny. What any of us would give to have such a document.

As John looks around, he realizes that no one in heaven or on earth comes forward to open the scroll because no one is worthy to do so. He begins to weep. There is no one to open the document and answer the deepest question of the human heart: “What does the future hold for me and for my loved ones?”

Imagine the power of knowing the future. The movie is old now, but in the second of the three “Back to the Future” movies you may remember that Marty McFly goes into the future where he purchases a magazine containing the winner of all sports events from his time until the time in the future where he is an adult. [4] Biff ends up stealing the magazine with terrible consequences: He becomes fabulously wealthy by using the magazine to gamble. The future of Hill Valley and of Marty’s family is damaged almost beyond repair until he undoes his mistake.

The movie illustrates a fact that is so important to remember: We human beings were never intended to know the future. In fact, we cannot know the future. [5] We can study the past, we can study and live today, but we can only live wisely by faith regarding the future. Therefore, I like to say that Revelation, Daniel and other apocalyptic literature are a kind of wisdom literature—wisdom operating at its limits where only metaphors, images, and symbols are possible. [6]

History is fortunately not in our hands or in the hands of any single human being. I always dislike it when politicians speak of themselves as being on “the right side of history” and of their opponents as being on the wrong side of history. We human beings simply do not know the future, where it is headed, or where it will end. What we do know is how God expects us to behave in the meantime. God expects us to live with wisdom and with love towards others in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The One Who Is Worthy.

As John is weeping because there is no human being worthy of opening the scrolls, he hears the voice of one of the elders saying, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” (Rev. 5:5). So far, there is nothing unusual about this vision. Every Jew knew that one name for the Messiah, the Anointed One, the one who would reestablish David’s kingdom and rule forever on David’s throne was the “Lion of Judah” (Genesis 49:9). However, what comes next is totally unexpected. When John looks, he does not see a lion. He sees a lamb looking as if it had been slain.

This too is a symbol that Jews would have found familiar and which the early church readily adopted. As far back as Exodus, God had instituted Passover, a night that remembers the deliverance of the people of God from slavery in Egypt. On Passover, God asked the Jews to sacrifice a Passover Lamb and place its blood over the doorposts of their homes. When they did so, the angel of death, which was to punish Egypt for its sins, would “pass over” them and they would be spared the death of their first born (Exodus 12:1-50).

The early Christians almost immediately saw the Passover Lamb as a kind of type or symbol for what Jesus had done on the Cross. Because of the death of Jesus, the perfect lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), the angel of death passes over the sins of the people of God and in mercy makes them righteous before God. This understanding made sense of Isaiah 53 where the prophet said:

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth (Isaiah 53:4-9)

In Jesus, the Lion of Judah, the King of Kings, the True Heir to David’s throne, was revealed to be a suffering, sacrificial lamb who died for the sins of his people.

A Lamb Like No Other.

As John describes the Lamb Who Is Worthy, it turns out that this is a lamb like no other lamb you have ever, ever seen. This lamb has seven eyes and seven horns. The seven eyes are the same seven spirits we discussed earlier—a symbol for the Holy Spirit. It turns out that this lamb is no ordinary lamb; it is a lamb that perfectly possesses the fullness of the Spirit of God. In other words, this is a lamb symbolizing God as the Second Person of the Trinity, the Christ, the One who is uniquely filled with the Holy Spirit, the very wisdom and love of God.

The Lamb also has seven horns.  In the Old Testament horns are a symbol of power. This is obviously an unusual lamb, and it is worth thinking a bit more deeply about the meaning of the image, for it will impact how we read the rest of Revelation and how we live our Christian lives. There is a kind of “pop eschatology” that implies that in Christ God was meek, lowly and loving to give humanity a chance and time to repent. Nevertheless, in the end, God is going to come with a universal violent judgement to put those who do not repent in their place. This would be the Lamb that became a Lion. The image, however, is of a Lion, the Lion of Judah, revealed to be the Lamb. Jesus was, is and always will be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and he represents a God of love who has and will always act in love. [7]

A Lamb We Are Called to Imitate!

The Paul in Philippians tells us that we should have the same kind of mind that Jesus had (Philippians 2:4-11). He goes on to spell out what that means. Jesus, though he was in the very form of God did not grasp and maintain that royal position. Instead, he was willing to be humbles and take on the form of a servant becoming obedient to the Father even unto death, death on a cross (Phil. 2:5-8). If we are to have the same mind as Christ, then we too must become lambs willing to be slain for the sins of the world—not as Jesus was but in our own way.

The first six months of each year we train elders. Recently we met on a Saturday to cover a portion of the training. There is a lot of information to cover, but the message of today is the most important message: Those who follow Jesus follow the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world, a lamb that is in fact the greatest truth about God—the most powerful force in the world, the force behind all other forces, is self-giving love. As his children, we are to be transformed into the image of the Lamb and give ourselves for the world just as Christ, the Lamb of God, gave himself for the world.

Amen

Copyright 2017, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] See, the Blind Men and the Elephant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant (Downloaded, January 30, 2017).

[2] As mentioned before, the number seven appears in John in the form of the seven signs around which the book is structured and the seven “I am sayings” that occur in the book. The seven signs are generally thought to be the changing of the water into wine (2:1-11), healing the official’s son (4:46-54), the healing of the paralytic (5:1-18), feeding of the 5000 (6:5-14), walking on water (6:16-24), healing of the man born blind (9:1-7) and the raising of Lazarus (11:1-45). The seven I am’s are: “I am the bread of life” (6:35), “I am the light of the world” (8:22), “I am the sheep gate” (10:19), “I am the good shepherd” (10:11), “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25-26), “I am the way, the truth and the life” (14:16), “I am the true vine” (15:5), In Revelation, the number seven appears fifty-four times. There are seven churches (1:4) seven lampstands (1:12), seven stars (1:20) seven spirits (1:4), seven seals (5:1), seven bowls of wrath (15:7), seven trumpets, (8:2) and some imagery is often repeated as in the letters where the seven lampstands and seven angels appear and reappear. See, William Hendricksen, More than Conquerors (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1940, 1967), 23.

[3]  The seven lamps (or torches of fire) symbolize the Holy Spirit of God using symbolism adapted from Zechariah 4 in which the prophet uses the same symbol for the Spirit (Zechariah 4:2-6).

[4] Robert Zmeck, wr. Back to the Future Part II Dir. Robert Zemeckis, starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas F. Wilson (Universal Pictures, November 22, 1989).

[5] Matthew 24:36, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Evangelicals often forget that this saying does not mean “No one knows the day nor the hour until they read Revelation. It means no one ever will know. We can only read the signs of the times and live faithfully.

[6] See, G. Christopher Scruggs, Path of Life: The Way of Wisdom for Christ Followers (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2014), 195-204.

[7] I am thankful to M. Eugene Boring, “Revelation” in Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1989), 109.