Faith Crisis

Faith Crisis

Revelation 12

Michael H. Koplitz

Seven years ago, I received a calling from my Lord Jesus to leave my vocation and enter pastoral ministry. I was told in my calling to go out and to preach the Word of God. But how could I do this? I was only baptized a couple of years earlier and was not well versed in the Scriptures. I had completed a lot of readings and studies at the church that I was attending, but that certainly couldn’t be enough.

When I spoke with the Rev. Cal Cole, my pastor, he told me that I would need to go to seminary. That meant going back to a University setting. That meant being in classes and writing research papers. I was an engineer, not a social scientist. The thought of seminary was just scary. It had been over 17 years since I took my last Master’s level class and over 12 years since I was an instructor at York College.

Be that as it may, when the Lord calls you into His service, you don’t ask questions you simply go knowing that the Holy Spirit will give you the support needed. I had to take a night class because of my work schedule, so I attended Lancaster Theological Seminary. The only class that I qualified for was titled “The Ministry of the Bereaved.” So not only was I to start on a Master’s level program, but my first class was on a topic that I had some personal issues with.

I remember standing in the hallway on the first day of that class, looking out the window and asking God, what was I doing there? Perhaps this was a test like Abraham’s almost sacrifice of Isaac. Maybe God would stop me from entering this classroom and just drop the knowledge into me as I did with Paul on the Damascus road. Well, that didn’t occur, and I went into the classroom, and my seminary career began.

About three weeks later, I contracted a physical ailment. I saw my doctor who gave me one drug and said, see you in two weeks. That drug didn’t work, so she gave me another drug. You know this story, right? That drug didn’t work either. After two months of pain and suffering, a test was scheduled. The results you may ask, were inconclusive.

This ailment gave me pain from the moment I awoke to the moment I went to sleep. I came to a point where I practically stopped eating, which you can see is not a characteristic of me, and I started to sleep a lot, which Sandy will tell you is very uncharacteristic. I prayed to God, asking why I was being stricken with this illness. Why can’t my doctor discover an answer?

I reached a point where I felt that God had abandoned me. I even questioned God as to how this could happen when I was not only ready but eager to do His will. I knew that I would be leaving my nice income vocation within two years. Sandy and I started to prepare for that time. I was enthusiastic about the work I would be doing for Christ. I wondered how God could allow this bad thing to happen?

John of the Cross described this type of faith crisis about 500 years ago as “The Dark Night of the Soul.” It is a time when we can’t feel God's presence, and it appears that God has completely abandoned us. It is a time that one thinks about one’s faith. I never lost faith, and God pulled me through, but I wondered why did this have to happen?

Here in the twelfth chapter of the Revelation, an answer is offered. Let me review for you the symbolism that we have read about this morning, and then we can examine what might cause a faith crisis.

The chapter starts with a pregnant woman who is about to give birth being chased by a red dragon. The dragon wants to devour the women’s child. If the child lives, the dragon could either die or lose a lot of its power. Here we see a new element in the symbolism of the Revelation. Greek and Roman readers of this text would recognize the story from Greek mythology as the birth of Apollo. Apollo had a mortal mother and a god for a father. When Apollo’s mother was about to give birth, the dragon Python waited to devour the child. The goddess Leto spared the child by taking Apollo’s mother to the island of Delos just before she gave birth. There she gave birth to Apollo. The legend of Apollo says that four days later, the dragon came to Delos and was slain by Apollo.

We can see how John mixed Greek mythology with some Hebrew Scripture text. The woman Hagar fled not once but twice from the tent of Abraham into the desert because of the child that she bore. From the Christian Scriptures, the story of Joseph and Mary fleeing to Egypt to save Jesus from Herod is seen this story.