God is on his throne

Some Reflections on Revelation 4 in the New Year

Audio Version!

I hope you all had a meaningful Christmas and a safe New Year—our calendar does not always coincide with “Happy.”

After sending the last post, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” I spent some time the next morning with my eyes closed, coffee in hand, in my mind’s eye looking at what John described.

I am no mystic.

Yet those few minutes took me to a place, not out of body, but almost like a quiet room with no external sound.

I was lost in the vision that John had described, unaware of my surroundings—and it was a wonderful place to be.

The contemplation of an existence worshiping the Creator along with all created beings is what Revelation was intended for.

No matter what is happening around us, God is on his throne.

And in reflecting further on Revelation 4 (and in anticipation of the continuation in Revelation 5), I realized that once again, John’s book was overflowing with theology.

Words about God.

Words that show and tell in the meagerness of our human language who God is.

(continued)

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Here are a few items that I think are worth considering:

1. Space, sense, and reality.

In his perch on Patmos—“in the spirit on the Lord’s day”—John left his ordinary perception into a different realm of consciousness, some would say a trance.

Yet unlike meditation and its self-focus, John’s experience was of the Other.

John saw and heard, but none of it was about him.

It was about God—as the rest of Revelation will be.

John was taken by the angel to a place of unveiling, of “revelation.”

It was not to a new place or space, but a seeing of things as they are beyond the physical.

The place of Elisha and Gehazi, of Isaiah, of Ezekiel or Daniel or Zechariah—all of whom experienced an unveiled reality outside or of beyond the physical senses.

Even John, along with Peter and James, had glimpsed this reality at the Transfiguration.

In his Revelation trance, John was

—outside of physical space: his journeys were in the visionary experience.

—outside of physical sense (though he described what he experienced in terms of seeing and hearing)

—outside of physical-objective reality (though once again he had to relate his experience to our terms of reality to communicate effectively).

Were the visions “real”?

Modern physics, I think, has shown that most of reality is unseen even at the physical level, and who’s to say that “beyond the senses” is at least in part where spiritual reality operates.

2. The center of reality is God.

For all the complexity of John’s vision of heaven comprising countless beings, the focal point of it all was the One Sitting On The Throne.

John repeated the “circle” image: rainbow, elders, living creatures surrounded the throne.

None were facing outward or sideways but inward toward the One Sitting On The Throne.

And the One Sitting On The Throne emanated power outward: lightnings, sounds, thunders, seven lamps.

All of reality revolves around God.

3. John did not explain his vision, per se, beyond what was given him.

He did relate clues given him from those in the visions (Jesus, the living creatures, the elders, angels).

He was told to write what he saw and heard and that is what he did.

Only rarely did he insert prophetic warning (unless those were from Jesus).

And this direct description from John, with virtually no interpretation on his part leads us to consider the whole enterprise of interpretation.

At the end of Revelation, Jesus gave the warning not to add or subtract from the book.

I witness to all hearing the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to these things, God will add the plagues written in this book. If anyone removes from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will remove his portion from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book. Revelation 22:18–19

Is our interpreting this book adding to it?

Maybe.

What is our role as reader or interpreter?

Maybe we are only to listen, visualize, and respond to the occasional prophetic summonings.

Why do I say this?

History is littered with contradicting interpretations of Revelation—no agreed upon interpretation exists.

All of the speculative attempts to historicize Revelation past, present, and future come very close to breaching Jesus’s command (as well as ignoring Jesus’s statement that no one knows the hour or time of his coming).

I am definitely not against interpretation, but the act of interpreting potentially adds heretical material to them.

Those interpretations that discount Revelation likewise “take away.”

John’s visions turned into propositions or predictions (or even scoffing) divert us from John’s described experience of the living God.

My task then is very precarious!

4. The Gospel of the Exalted Jesus

At this point, my frame of interpretation is that Revelation is the Gospel of the Exalted Jesus.

Everything in Revelation flows out of God’s work through the life, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus.

As we go through the rest of Revelation, not least of which is chapter five to come, this preeminent focal point will show itself over and over again.

Is there good and evil? Yes. But the war against evil is already won.

Are there violent images? Yes.

But these images do not point to God’s violence against humans, but to the triumph of the gospel in the blood of Christ and his witnesses—I will have a lot more to say about this statement.

(cont.)

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Concluding thoughts at the beginning of 2025:

Our world (and indeed the USA) is as violent as ever—as the events of New Year’s Day demonstrated.

This will not change, no matter who is “in charge.”

Perceptions may change one way or another, but human greed, rivalry, and desire for power will continue the back and forth of conflict and death.

Today then is the day for people of faith to turn their eyes to God for everything we need, especially the deep-seated confidence that God—the eternal God sitting on his throne—looks to the chaos and laughs, and to his people and says, “I love you; you belong to Me.”

The LORD is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?

The LORD is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1)

If God is for us, who is against us? The one who did not spare his own Son but gave him for us all, how will he not also freely give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God’s chosen? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns?

Christ Jesus is the one who died, and further was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39)