I'm doing a really cool study right now on the book of Revelation. I've studied it a little before but this time something is different....it excites me...it makes me yearn for more....and it actually is pretty cool that there is no way and no body that will totally understand this book and that is the way God meant it. This book is sooo interesting...it has drama and glory and splendor and battles and death and so much that I could go on and on because I am learning so much. Number one, I am glad I have the mark of God and I have doubted my salvation in the past but overtime I have learned that my salvation cannot be taken nor lost. Something else I understand right now is that Righteousness DOES matter on earth. I cannot read these pages in scripture without thinking this. We serve a God that gave his ONLY son. In the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan he describes the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is pleading with His Father to do it differently..he is sweating, crying blood. Could any parent look at their child crying tears of blood and not do something differently...what AGONY, what TORTURE our Father must have gone through. I had never thought of it from God's point of view, always from Jesus'. This same God in Revelation 6: 9-11 tells the souls under the alter after the 5th seal is broken to rest for a little while longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be complete. The souls are crying out to Him to PLEASE take judgement and avenge their blood but God WILL NOT until the very LAST one that will come to HIM (and I guarantee he knows the number to a tee) does....I just love that. It is God's timing and He loves us so much that he will not judge until the very last person that will come to know him does.
I guess that was a little deep but it is sooo cool to me! I love reading about the unknown. I am no longer afraid nor scared. I feel a great peace about Heaven and dying. Another thing Francis Chan writes about in Crazy Love is Heaven and he asks this question. Some of us find it easy to accept Christ and we love him but do we really love him...if Heaven were full of the people that we love, no hurt, no pain, etc etc. etc but Jesus was not there...would we still want to go..???? I think what he was trying to get at is that we tend to love God for everything he can do for us at times, we can throw those prayers up and feel better but do we really desire Jesus??? so much that we want to give our day to him not just our 20 min quiet time? It was thought provoking to me!
One more thing...I just love this b/c it gave me such a great picture and I could relate! In Revelation 7: 15-17 it says...For this reason, they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will spread His TENT over them. They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.
When we are camping in a tent or in the small pop up camper...my whole family, the ones I most love are right there under me..under the same roof...I know John would protect us all at the drop of a hat and risk his life. It is a very comforting, protective, peaceful feeling to me to have everyone under one TENT! As soon as I read the above scripture, that is what I pictured....How satisfied that our God will be to have us under His TENT...his very being will being in all His Glory will be covering us! I think about the children in underdeveloped countries like Haiti with the sun beating down on them, eating mudcakes to survive and it made me think about how awesome it will be for them to be covered by His Tent!!!
Today I read in Chapter 11 of Revelation vs 7 where it says, "When they have FINISHED their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them....Finished here in Greek (our teacher explained) means complete....She made the comment that no one single servant and true witness of God is going (dying) prematurely...God has the last word...if they leave this world, then their witness was complete....
There is so much we will not understand until we meet our Saviour and that absolutely makes me totally excited....if we could understand everything then he wouldn't be GOD...
"His wisdom's vast, and knows no bound, A deep where all our thoughts are drowned"......Isaaac Watts
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