“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal
weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are
seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are
transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”[1]
This is another example of how the rest of Scripture helps
us understand the book of Revelation. Jesus said that in this world the church
will have troubles.[2] To help us through those troubles, God gave us
this book of visions. It serves the dual purpose of telling us that God wins,
and that he wants us to live by faith rather than sight.
As I once again considered the five angels of Revelation
7:1-8, how four are holding back the harming winds, and the fifth announcing
that harm would not be released until God’s servants were sealed, I realized
that this is a vision of an unseen thing. It is a description of something that
is taking place in the unseen world, and is more secure than all we see in the
material world.
In other words, we do not look at all the things taking
place in the world around us, the politics, the disasters, the terrorism, the
rampant wickedness, as though those things tell us the world is winning. Instead,
we look at the unseen things pictured in the book of Revelation and remind ourselves
that God is preparing us for the eternal things we cannot see.
There is the message of Revelation. Whether the light
momentary affliction is a beast, a false prophet, a Babylon, a prostituting
church, a one-world government, or the red dragon himself, there is “an eternal weight of glory beyond all
comparison.” Revelation helps us to see that eternal weight of glory in its
“beyond all comparison” relation to
everything of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The book of Revelation also helps us to recognize that “the things that are seen are transient,” meaning
they are the things that are passing away, while “the things that are unseen are eternal.” The unseen work of God,
his choices made before the beginning of time, will be the things we live with
forever.
When we consider all the images in Revelation, and all the
pictures they show us, and all the symbolic descriptions of what they reveal,
it is not so that we will start living by sight instead of by faith. We are not
given a picture of four angels holding back the four winds at the four corners
of the earth so that we will expect to see this happen, but so that faith will
believe that it is happening no matter what we see.
We are not told about 144,000 servants of God sealed on
their foreheads so that we will start to watch for physical marks on people’s
foreheads in order to know that this is taking place. Rather, faith accepts
that this is taking place, and carries on with the work of the kingdom until
God decides that the number he has determined has finally been reached.
Instead of treating the book of Revelation as if it is a
who, what, when, where, why, how, story describing the details we will see in
this transient world, take it as a vision of unseen things that build up our hope
in the eternal world. We can be sure that a day is coming when Jesus will break
through the clouds, the trumpet of God will announce his arrival, the archangel
will voice his appearance, the dead in Christ will rise first, and whichever
believers are alive at the time will be gathered together with them to meet the
Lord.
It does not matter whether we see one thing to affirm that
this day is approaching. The Bible says it is on its way, so faith and hope
encourage one another to persevere until the end.
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~
Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise
noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible,
English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
No comments:
Post a Comment