THE BOOK OF REVELATION - A SYNOPSIS

MY BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF REVELATION

 

John, was the friend of Jesus, gospel writer and evangelist. The purpose of Jesus’ incarnation was so real and empowering to John. He watched Jesus die. He saw him alive again. He saw Jesus ascend through clouds and out of sight. He knew everything Jesus said about the devil and sin and redemption, and the Kingdom were true. He wrote that God loved the world so much that He sent the divine Son, Jesus, so whomever believes in Jesus will have eternal life. 

RAPID CHRISTIAN RESPONSE IS NOT A TOO-TALL EXPECTATION.

It’s not surprising that some Christians become disillusioned and disappointed with a church, with its leaders and with the Christian friends who comprise it. Christian education and evangelism are not the only services a church should prioritize. When a person, or couple or family experiences a crisis, the church should respond. Rapid Christian response should be the ready position. Christian friends should jump to assist. Even when the presenting issue is awkward, distressing, immoral, angry, or hopeless, it is a God-assigned responsibility to love and to listen and to counsel and to shelter and to give aid. That’s not a too-tall expectation.

FREE BOOK:HEARING GOD IN CONVERSATION BY SAMUEL C. WILLIAMSON

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Christians are comfortable saying that Christianity is about a relationship with God. Yet many might also say that they sense little meaningful actual connection with God in their own lives. The foundation of good relationship is communication - but conversation with God often seems to go only one way. We may sing of walking and talking with God in the garden, God's voice falling on our ears, but few have heard that beloved voice themselves. Sam Williamson acknowledges the fundamental human longing to hear God's voice and offers a hopeful supposition: God is always speaking, we've just never been taught how to recognize God's voice. Williamson handles this potentially heady topic with his characteristic straightforwardness and leavening humor. This book deftly bridges the gap between solid biblical spirituality and practical application, addressing how to truly pray without ceasing, how to brainstorm with God, how to navigate our emotions, how to answer God's questions, and how to hear God's voice for others.

EVEN SINCERE CHRISTIANS ATTEND CHURCH LESS OFTEN

Even sincere Christians are attending church less often in our North American culture? This is a statement of fact rather than approval.

As we entered church yesterday I said to Christine, "it feels like we've been gone for six months." Really, it's been a few weeks when we have had commitments, preferences and holiday elsewhere. We are not the only absentees. This compelled me to read and to think about why good Christians are attending church less frequently than before. (Here is what I thought.)

Susan Mattinson, 2012-2016. Reproduction permitted with permission of creator

DAVID BOWIE - CHRISTIANS HAVE NO CLAIM

Photo: Reuters

All of you Christian journalists and magazine editors, don't you dare try to claim some association between David Bowie and Christianity. You were always quick to denigrate his lifestyle, song content, drug use and personae. Yet I already bumped into a Christian Post article that said, "During his 40-plus-year career, Bowie, who experimented with Christianity and appears to have held on to parts of the experience …" What do any of us know about his pilgrimage other than by Bowie's own confessions. What is known is that he searched and dabbled. He told Ellen Degeneres in 2004 that he had experimented with several religions like Tibetan Buddhism, Neitzsche-ism, Judaism, Satanism, Christianity and "pottery" he amusingly added. Finally, he seemed to settle on singing as his faith.

OPINION ABOUT THE OLD TESTAMENT (2nd of several)

Some Christians disparage the Old Testament. Of course that position appears a bit shocking to traditionalists and purists. After all, Christians have normally considered the Old Testament to be God’s Word. They have found help and pleasure in reading Proverbs and spiritual inspiration in the Psalms. The training of Christian preachers has emphasized proficiency in Hebrew and Greek to insure accurate application of Old Testament narrative and instruction to New Testament times.

So why would people ignore the Old Testament?

CHRISTIANS ARE RUNNING WEARY

So many Christians are running weary. I am thinking primarily now of adults, young parents who responsibly raise children and teens with team sports, chauffeuring to school and church activities, volunteer to teach, lead, govern, and exhaust all their discretionary time. They have no time for themselves. They have carved no time in a day, maybe in the week for personal debriefing, assessment, reflection, time alone with the LORD. They feel busy but dissatisfied. They have cheated themselves. And then comes Sunday. They have to show up again.

Your bum on a seat at Sunday church is not a good measure of your spirituality. Being there does not insure you are being fueled. It may be just one more event that eats up your time. Being seen at Sunday worship should not be equated with worshipping. You and scores of others will actually worship corporately when each person has met with God in earnest relationship before the meeting. Intimacy with God does not begin at the formal meeting with a call to worship, with a rousing song. A heart tug and a stung conscience from a stirring sermon will not ensure behavioral change.

Too soon, you may conclude as so many have, that the church is not meeting your needs. The pastor's material is not connecting with you. Perhaps another alternative can be found, another church, larger perhaps, some place to get lost, a place to take the kids off your hands for a couple of hours, a place where when you say "no thanks" to an invitation to participate, no one will care. And some time later, your children lose interest because your own experience is not encouraging them. And you drop off and drop out.

It will be preferable that you take responsibility for yourself. Your personal spiritual development is your concern. Ultimately it is a relationship with the living, loving God in which you are interested. No one can give that to you or nurture it for you. Some people can be a resource, that's all. You yourself must take control of your schedule and your priorities to know God and talk over life with him, and become excited about what he is doing in your and around you each hour of each day. As the amazement increases and the enthusiasm mounts, you may want to find other believers with a vital walk with God, and together worship with a passion you thought was possible but never knew.

A 24/7 COMMUNITY CREATED BY THE SPIRIT

The Church is a community created by the Spirit. The church is people, the called and redeemed people of God. As a spiritual community, the church uniquely delivers the presence of God to the world. The lives of redeemed people that are empowered by God's Spirit are missional wherever they are lived and at all times. We forget that church is "us" 24-7 when we constantly think and speak about church as place and time, or organization and ministries.

Spirit-filled 24-7 people exhibit the presence of God in profound ways in diverse situations among countless networks of other people. That's the God-plan.

The plan allows for community to gather in one location for brief periods to exalt God together and to experience Body life, and presumes that the saints, that is, followers of Christ will then disperse to live life in a Spirit-filled 24-7 manner among people who are not of the community called church. While the church formally commissions specific persons to full-time missional investment in their own neighbourhoods and overseas, every believer must know and live a commissioned life as salt and light. Character and calling and giftedness are prerequisites for every child of God, not just a few. We are all missionaries - full-time. One hour on Sunday out of 168 hours of each week, is not enough.

The church is so much more than a human organization with well-managed functions or a massive property with a large budget. It's a community created by the Spirit to deliver God's presence in the world.

LET’S HAVE A SAFE AND OPEN TALK ABOUT PEOPLE LEAVING CHURCH

There are Christians who remain theologically evangelical but who have journeyed philosophically from being comfortable within church as the one way to live church. I suspect that I cannot talk about this in an open way in most of the church circles in which I am known. To suggest that some people may actually satisfy their spiritual hunger outside the church, may be perceived as criticism of church, which is not my target. Yet this is among the issues with which Christians and churches should engage. A trickle of people have stopped going to church over many years. The trickle is a stream according to some reports. I am certainly aware of numerous friends and acquaintances who no longer attend church. They still love the organized church for the foundation it provided to them when they were young and when they were growing up spiritually. They have found, however, that they are uncomfortable within the culture of the westernized church. They require something else.  

I have been advocating that Christians inside churches should work at understanding rather than at suspicion. I am not convinced that all of those who leave have taken or are taking steps appropriate to spiritual development. It is easy to become lethargic. If spiritual disciplines were lacking while attending a church, they will not easily emerge outside it. So while I advocate to the insiders, I implore the outsiders as well to act on the conviction that allowed them to leave - namely, church is not the main or only place where we worship God. 

IF I STARTED A CHURCH

I look at churches in my area. I think of the church of which I am a member. I am an observer and advocate for church planters. I wonder if I were involved in a church plant, what kind of church would I seek to build.  Based upon my observations and my personal preferences it would predictably be something dissimilar to what is. I would want to rediscover the New Testament church. But that may be a crazy aspiration, hazardous to my health. The first two AD centuries were not superlative times for planting Christian communities. There was an ISIS-like disposition in Palestine, Asia Minor, and Rome. And I have become a chicken, a tired one at that.

Am I dissatisfied with my church, or other churches that I watch? No, that's not it. And anyway, I am past my three score and ten so why should I be concerned and why should anyone pay attention to me?  Understand that I pastored churches and gave executive leadership within a denomination of churches for over 40 years. I'm not a novice. I am not a complainant. I am an enthusiast for what Jesus began. I love Christ's Church.

If I was still pastoring, I wouldn't be able to change much, and I wouldn't dare to make the statements I am now making. In fact, I have found a stunning metaphor in foods, nutrition and eating habits. Warning: the following information may be dangerous to your peace of mind and your impression of me.

We raise foods differently and we eat very differently than we did 100 years ago. We also do church differently and make Christians differently than we did in century one.  The nutrient density of food has declined 40-60% over the past 100 years. Our food today typically has 50% fewer nutrients compared to the food that our grandparents ate.  I cannot make a comparative parallel with any accuracy. I can only ask myself the questions. What is the spiritual nutritional density of the musical, lyrical and educational components within typical church today? I am dissatisfied with results of my own assessment. If I were involved in starting a church I would want to concentrate on that answer. There’s more, maybe tomorrow ...

SCRIPTURE-FREE

Canadians and Americans live in an increasingly scripture-free public space. More disturbing is the reality that most Christians live in a scripture-free personal and family space. Within the general population it can be assumed there will be misperceptions and ignorance about the Bible. However, we must waste no more time advocating or condemning either traditional or emerging churches when the scandal is really the emerging biblical illiteracy among professing Christians. It can now be assumed that Christians don't know much about the Bible.

image by Aidan Hart

Marriages of Christian couples are dissolving at the same rate as marriages of non-believing people. Christians participate in interpersonal conflicts and churches endure internal power struggles with the same frequency as irreligious individuals and organizations. The light emitted by Christians in communities shines no brighter than the lives of agnostics or other faith groups.

To any thoughtful student of Christian faith, this is not merely curious, it is shocking. Christians espouse Christ, the Son of God as their Saviour, King, Lord. Christians speak of an inside-out transformation, a conversion, a personal rebirth. Christians understand that God's own spirit, the Holy Spirit, Deity himself, resides within them to teach them, and to reproduce within them an unmistakable resemblance to Christ. Can we appreciate the reasons for suspicion and cynicism among observers when our best evidence for the truth is falling so abysmally short of convincing? The credibility of the Christian gospel hinges upon the product, the professing follower, the so-called disciple.

If all else fails, read the instructions.
Christians don't read their Bibles. It is therefore unlikely that they will live as followers of Christ.

ECCLESIOLOGY AND MISSIOLOGY MUST MATCH

Some eager Christians may have a great game plan to reform society outside of the local church, or without involvement of the local churches. That’s a case of having a commendable mission concentration but having a faulty ecclesiology. That would be unfortunate since the apostle Paul called the local church “the pillar and ground of the truth.” That’s a significant role. The local churches should be the equipping and accountability agencies that facilitate the marketplace leaders who are working to reform, serve and build health into societies. Local churches disciple and build character and emotional health into the lives of the reform leaders. Does that make sense? That’s large ‘C’ Church functioning together missionally from a sound ecclesiology.

DEHISTORIZING THE OLD TESTAMENT

Don’t bother reading this unless you have the time and the interest. The theme is, ‘Why would you Ignore the Old Testament?’ Some Christians disparage the Old Testament.

Christians have generally regarded the Old Testament as God’s Word and have often found pleasure in Proverbs and spiritual inspiration in Psalms. Christian preachers worthy of the calling have confirmed their proficiencies by drawing profound applications from Old Testament historical narratives.

Many Christians today are dismissing the Old Testament because they find parts of it morally offensive or quite bluntly, irrelevant.

THE POSTMODERN MIND AND THE CHRISTIAN

A large percentage of people today have a naturalistic worldview and a relativistic morality. For them truth is perceptual and subjective rather than objective and absolute. Experience and observation determine whether something is true or false, and that renders a variable reality, which differs from person to person and culture to culture.

ENGAGING THE WORLD LIKE JESUS DID

Pharisees by James Tissot

Today, Christians tend to relate to the world either as separatist Christians or as cultural Christians. Neither way works well and these approaches have been seen before.
Pharisees insistently enforced rigid obedience to God’s Law and developed additional traditions in order to protect Judaism against the impact of Greek culture. Pharisees held on to their Jewish identity at the expense of relevancy, (Matthew 15:8-14).
Sadducees contrarily clutched relevancy at the expense of their identity, seeking to assimilate with culture, even if it meant surrendering some doctrine. Resurrection was objectionable to the Greeks so the book of Acts reveals that Sadducees threw it out, Acts 17:3; Acts 23:7-8; Matthew 22:23. Into this religious climate Jesus came.

CHRISTIAN SCHIZOPHRENIA ABOUT ENGAGING CULTURE

I hope to demonstrate a correlation between the last two posts on Monday and Tuesday, that is, the church’s schizophrenic engagement with the culture and the increased number of millenials leaving the existing church.
First, I underscore the paradox mentioned in yesterday entry. Christians grapple with tension because scripture urges them to be careful about the world’s influence upon them while instructing them to be intentional about influencing the world.

CHRISTIANS AND CULTURE

CHRISTIANS AND THE CULTURE AROUND THEM

How well are Christians engaging with the culture outside the protected church environs? It has been common for churchgoers to view culture as “secular,” evil, and something to be avoided. The former group of Christians whom we may term as ‘legalists’ has categorized believers who have not made the secular/sacred distinction as ‘liberal’ or ‘libertine.’ This dichotomy is not uncommon to Christian conversation and Christians have stereotypically opted for one or the other of these approaches to engaging culture.