Rescued By The Lamb, The Good Guys Win.

Friday of the 34th Week in Course 2024

Probably a few metric tons of ink have been spilled over the generations as scholas and preachers tried to make sense of the Revelations of St. John. But a few things in this murky and often confusing part of God’s Word come through to us quite clearly. The Church established by Jesus on the apostolic foundation stones was being persecuted by Rome—and others. Revelations is written in a kind of scriptural code, because it would have been risky enough to write what we have, let alone to write in clearer Greek things like “Emperor Nero is a jerk and deserves condemnation.” And here at almost the end of John’s letters, we have the predicted happy ending. Jesus is triumphant over the forces of the Dragon Satan, and death and Hell. In fact, all the bad people and institutions will be rolled up with Satan, Death and Hell and thrown into a fiery pit, while the people of Jesus are saved and enter the heavenly Holy City. When that will happen is sometime in the near future. That it will happen is assured by the death and Resurrection of Jesus. Who will do it is God, acting through Jesus, the victorious Lamb. All the incidental stuff like Gog and Magog and the Beast and the Great Whore of Babylon will not matter then, because they will have been among those rolled up in the great Rug of Evil and thrown into the flaming pit. In summary, rescued by the Lamb, the good guys win. Jesus gets the Bride, and that will be all of us who believed in Him and lived and died in love.

Inspired by this picture of the heavenly Holy City, New Jerusalem on high, the psalmist memorializes the Old Temple in earthly Jerusalem, which by the time Revelations was written was a heap of ruins after being destroyed by the Romans. The Old Temple was an open-air building; only the innermost Holy of Holies was sealed from the outside. The psalmist remembered composing and singing his melodies to harp and lyre, and sighs “crying out for the living God” as he recalls the swallows singing as they built nests for their young on the sanctuary walls. He prays “blest are all those whose strength Thou art, for they go from strength to strength” as they absorb grace from the right praise of the worshipers. This is a psalm that will be more meaningful for us after we die and give praise directly to God in his Kingdom.

Jesus never took His eyes from the Father. He experienced in a way no human had done before Him the undying love and compassion of His Father, the God of both Testaments. That experience was always transcendent, so the words He used to convey Truth to us were themselves a little beyond our ability to grasp. When I read the words of today’s Gospel, about fig trees, I’m more likely to think of peaches and plums, that have very obvious, bursting-forth blossoms that form tiny fruits as soon as they are pollinated. When does that happen every year? When it’s still cold outside, and nothing seems to be turning green yet. Jesus tells us that when the culture is coldest, we should look for the signs of a revived faith around us, and obviously have a revived faith ourselves. Because summer is near, the summer of Christ’s return. Maybe not this year; maybe not next year, but we must believe He is coming, and He wants to bring us all home to the Father. So we’d better get ready and stay ready every day.