The Dragon of Revelation 12

I have a few confessions to make...Yep; I am going to come clean on a few things that you should know about me.  Okay, so here it goes... First, you should know that I have not watched even one episode of the TV series Game of Thrones. Secondly, I have no idea what the craze is about the Pokémon Go game, and lastly, of the original Star Wars trilogy that started in 1977, I have only seen The Return of the Jedi.  So, there it is, I already feel better just sharing this with you.

However, even though I have not immersed myself in this epic pop culture, what is clear to me is that the adventures of various characters "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" has gripped the imagination of our culture across many generations. It is like everyone gets it when you say “The Force be with you.” I can see how people can get hooked on this epic phenomenon called Star Wars. It’s about illuminated swords clashing in an epic showdown between the forces of light and darkness. It is as if stories of the battle between the forces of good and evil wants to win our loyalties to the side of good and to alienate us from evil.  Somehow we know that that is the way it is suppose to be...

We see this same phenomenon in the Roman culture during the days that John received the Revelation. It was Greek tales of good and evil that gripped the imagination of the people of that day. In one such epic story, as shared by Koester, 

“The antagonist was a fierce dragon named Python and the protagonist was a woman named Leto, who was the mother of the god Apollo. When Leto became pregnant by the god Zeus, the dragon pursued her in order to kill her and her child. The north wind rescued Leto by carrying her away, so that she eventually found refuge on the island of Delos, which lay in the Aegean Sea. There the woman gave birth to Apollo and Artemis. Four days later, Apollo set off in pursuit of the dragon, soon slaying the creature to avenge his mother.”

This story had such a powerful impact that the Roman emperors were able to put the tale to good use by associating themselves with Apollo, whose defeat of the evil dragon was said to have ushered in an age of peace and prosperity in the Roman Empire. Citizens of the empire could be expected to identify the woman in the story with the goddess Roma, who was the queen of heaven. Her son would be the Roman emperor, who overcame the forces of evil and chaos so that light and peace could flood the world.

So, when John tells about a pregnant woman and a dragon in Revelation 12, Christians in the seven churches would have heard echoes of the familiar story of Leto. What is fascinating, however, is that John's version reverses the usual implications of the tale, so that in his version the woman in labor is not a pagan goddess, but the people of God; the child is not the emperor but Christ; and the dragon represents the forces that oppose Christ and threaten his church. In the end, a story that was used to celebrate the popular culture is now transformed by John to tell a powerful story of the battle in Heaven between the dragon and Michael, the archangel. Michael takes on the dragon, (who now is identified as Satan), and the next thing you know, Satan is cast out of heaven. This defeat dramatically limits the area in which Satan can operate. Instead of being able to work in heaven, denouncing the saints before God (Rev. 12:10), Satan is banished from heaven so that he must restrict his operations to the earth.

This brings a powerful encouragement to those who heard this message from John for the first time and for us as well.  In short succession, let me highlight a few very encouraging points from this fascinating depiction of the limitations of the power of evil:

• In the end, it is the saints that have a safe place under the throne of God, but Satan lost his place. This means that evil has no place in heaven.
• It was Christ’s death, resurrection and exaltation that caused Satan to be cast from Heaven to earth. It is the slaughtered Lamb who ends up on the throne, not Satan. And this, my friends, is not a Game of Thrones, it is the real deal.
• What we should know is that Satan rages here on earth like a trapped animal, since he has already lost Heaven. This should encourage us to resist him in the name of Jesus.
• The serpent who tempted Adam and Eve in Gen 3, who accused Job in the throne room of heaven, who tempted Jesus in the wilderness and goes around like a roaring Lion is defeated. He is on a leash for just a short time.

And together with the saints around the throne of God we say AMEN!

By the way, this is not a George Lucas production!

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Come be a part of COMMUNITY

• Join Us For Worship - Join us Sunday mornings at 8:30 or 10:45 as we continue our journey into the fascinating book of Revelation.
• Watch Live Online - Can't be with us in person? Be a part of COMMUNITYonline and join our live webcast Sunday mornings at 10:45. Click here.
• Watch Past Sermons - Missed this week's sermon? You can watch it here.
• Wednesday Evening Q&A - Join us Wednesday nights at 6:30 in the Gallery for a deeper look at Revelation
• Ask Pastor Tredoux a Question - Submit questions to Pastor Tredoux here.

What about Hell?

     Two church members were having a chat about their local church where they worshipped. The conversation went something like this...

“’How is it going at your church?’ ‘Well,' said the other church member.... 'we are going through an interesting time at our church. You see, a few months ago our church fired our pastor.’ ‘How come,’ the 1st member asked?’ ‘Well’ said the 2nd member, ‘it is like this...this pastor kept preaching that we are going to go to hell, and so we fired him.’ ‘Wow’ said the 1st member, ‘that seems to be very drastic. So how does your church deal with this difficult situation?’ ‘Well, you see, we got a new pastor,’ said the 2nd church member.’ ‘And how does he preach?’ the 1st member asked. ‘Well, it is interesting that you asked. He also preaches that we are going to go to hell.’ ‘So, what is the difference between this pastor and the one you had before? Are you going to fire him too?’ the 1st member asked. ‘No,’ the 2nd member responded. You see, when the first pastor preached it seemed like he liked preaching about hell, but when our new pastor preaches about hell it breaks his heart.’ ‘Wow,’ the 1st member responded and thoughtfully walked away."

     And so it is in many congregations today. As you know, we prefer to talk about the pleasant side of Christianity and we like preachers that do. But what do we say about the alternative, if people choose not to follow Jesus? If we don’t follow Jesus, as persons and communities, what results can we expect? How do we talk not only about Christian comfort, but also about discomfort? How do we grasp the significance of what the Church has said down the years about the awful possibility of final loss?

     First, it must be said as clearly as possible that as soon as we find ourselves wanting to believe in Hell we find ourselves in great danger. The desire to see others punished – including the desire to do the punishing ourselves – has no place in a Christian scheme of things. Of course there is a right and proper desire for justice, but the desire to punish, must be distinguished from this. If I want to see someone else in torment, it may say more about the condition of my heart than anything else.

     Second, most of the passages in the NT, which have been thought by the church to refer to people going into eternal punishment after they die, don’t in fact refer to any such thing. When Jesus uses language about the awful punishment in store for those who rejected his message, it must be read as warnings of the awful future that awaited the nation of Israel if she rejected the way of peace which Jesus was proposing. When Jesus spoke about “Gehenna,” the Greek word for hell, he was talking about the Jerusalem rubbish-dump – a great, foul, smouldering heap of trash away from the city. His warning was that those who persisted in going the way of nationalist rebellion rather than the way of peace would turn Jerusalem into a huge and foul extension of its own rubbish dump. And of course, as we know, this warning came true when Caesar Nero in 70 AD destroyed Jerusalem.

     Third, if we worship other gods, and not the one in whose image we were created, we run the risk of becoming less and less human. These other gods are not life giving. Every day on television we see images of those who have ceased being truly human, because they have given themselves over to the demonic gods of this world. They are more like beasts, when they make the decision to blow themselves up or kill innocent people. They in fact have become inhuman. Those who persistently refuse to follow Jesus, the true image of God, will by their own choice become less and less like him, that is, less and less truly human. We sometimes say... these people have turned into monsters. So, here is my point... If human beings insist that God leaves them alone then God’s final response is “as you will.” Because some choose to dehumanize themselves, and because God gave his human creatures the risky gift of freedom and choice, I also see God honoring that choice. Hell is the final resting place of the person who has chosen to reject God.  Hell is a condition of horrid Godlessness, outside the city, where a person is severed from the very source and giver of life and love. The reality of how God will handle this in the end remains a mystery. And let’s not forget about accountability. Every person will have to give an account of him or herself and stand before the judge, which is Jesus Christ himself. Here, I am glad to say that Jesus will be a fair judge. After all, he knows what it’s like to be human.

     In closing, we can’t ignore the heart of God. It is a heart of compassion not wanting anyone to go astray. 2 Peter 3:9 says: “It is not God’s will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” The call for us is to follow the one who brings to us a kingdom of gentleness and justice. It is the voice crying in the wilderness...”Come to me, all you who are weary and I will give you rest.”

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Questions to ponder:

1. Do you view hell as a place for people to get what they deserve or a sad finale to one's life? 
2. How would this view of hell affect how you live day to day and interact with others? 
3. How would viewing hell as "A condition of horrid Godlessness, outside the city, where a person is severed from the very source and giver of life and love" affect your sharing of the Gospel with unbelievers?

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Come be a part of COMMUNITY

• Join Us For Worship - Join us Sunday mornings at 8:30 or 10:45 as we continue our journey into the fascinating book of Revelation.
• Watch Live Online - Can't be with us in person? Be a part of COMMUNITYonline and join our live webcast Sunday mornings at 10:45. Click here.
• Watch Past Sermons - Missed this week's sermon? You can watch it here.
• Wednesday Evening Q&A - Join us Wednesday nights at 6:30 in the Gallery for a deeper look at Revelation
• Ask Pastor Tredoux a Question - Submit questions to Pastor Tredoux here.

Couldn't join us Wednesday night? Watch the Exploration Revelation Class - Week 4

Recorded Live on July 6th, 2016

Exploring Revelations with Pastor Johan Tredoux - Week 4
Posted by COMMUNITY Covenant Church on Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Where Is Heaven?

Heaven...Where is it? What is it? What can we learn from John's glimpse behind the veil into the throne room of God? This is week 3 of our 10 week exploration of the book of REVELATION. Thank you for being a part of COMMUNITYonline and journeying with us as we explore God's Word to the 7 churches of Rome.

Imagine There’s No Heaven

     Where has Heaven gone to? A few years ago John Lennon, in a famous song invited us to imagine it didn’t exist. In a dreamy voice, he sang...

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today 

     This song was very tempting for a generation tired of heaven being used as a carrot stick to get them to behave. Because this strange distant place exists, and because you might want to go there yourself some day, you’d better behave nicely here, or so the saying went. This was part of my story growing up as well. To me it meant, if you don’t drink, smoke or chew and stay away from girls that do, you might have a chance at Heaven.

     Today, our society is still as confused over Heaven as it was when Lennon sang his song. On the Christian side Heaven is central to the Gospel as a promise to those who put their faith in Christ. Given that Heaven is where Jesus went, we as followers of Jesus, better get our minds round it. Is it possible that the book of Revelation might just give us that fresh new insight we need to deepen our understanding of Heaven?

     So far, (our previous blogs) we have tried to understand John's apocalyptic tradition and the world of the Roman Empire in which he lived and wrote. Our next task is to come to grips with the questions of when and where John expected his visions to be “fulfilled.” Many people take Revelation's references to “the End” or to “heaven” as being about specific times or places that are “later” or “apart from” the time and place of first-century Roman Asia. There are then a few important questions we need to ask,

•  How would John's audience have understood his language about “heaven”? 
•  How did people in Roman Asia think of time and space? 
•  What did the concepts of “heaven and earth” mean to the inhabitants of the first-century Roman Empire? 
• What relationship existed between these “realms”?

Space

     One of the challenges of the common notion of “heaven and earth” found in our world is that it projects two distinct places between which there is little connection. Part of this perception was developed from the way ancient Israel understood YHWH as a “sky-father” god like other powerful storm gods around them. The literal meaning of the Greek term ouranos, which is translated “heaven,” is “sky,” that is, the physical space above the earth. The same meaning is also found in the Hebrew word for heaven as seen in Gen 1:1. Here the word for heaven is “She-maim.” What is fascinating is that “maim” means water and “She-maim” means water from above. This very ancient understanding of heaven as reflected in our biblical creation story shows the primitive understanding people had of time and space. For them the earth was flat and Heaven was a fixed canopy from where water falls. This was before the days of Galileo. It is this understanding that still captures many Christians’ imagination of heaven.

     However, in Revelation we find John describing heaven from a different perspective. Heaven in Revelation is more about describing two realities. In Revelation, “Heaven” is holy while “earth” is evil. Earth is the perspective of empire. Heaven, on the other hand, is where John sees that the truth is unveiled. In Revelation, John does not describe heaven as a place far away “way beyond the blue.” For John, Heaven is God’s space, which intersects our space but transcends it. As the veil was pulled back for John, heaven was experienced as only a further dimension of our world. N.T. Wright says: 

The Christian hope is not (despite popular impressions) that we will simply “go to heaven when we die.” As far as it goes, that statement is all right; after death those who love God will be with Him, will be in His dimension. But the final Christian hope is that the two dimensions, heaven and earth, at present separated by a veil of invisibility caused by human rebellion, will be united together, so that there will be new heavens and a new earth. Heaven isn’t therefor an escapist dream. Heaven is the extra dimension, the God-dimension, of all our present reality; and the God who lives there is present to us, present with us.

John expects his audience to be familiar with apocalyptic writings, which mean that “heaven” is not in the sky or after death, but co-present with daily life, hidden only by a veil. In being invited to “heaven” by a heavenly angel, John of Patmos is given privileged access to the truth of things. As Richard Bauckham explains:

John (and thereby his readers with him) is taken up into heaven in order to see the world from the heavenly perspective. He is given a glimpse behind the scenes of history so that he can see what is really going on in the events of his time and place.

Because John of Patmos had personally seen the apocalyptic truth of heaven and had communicated this through his book, the Christians addressed in the 7 churches were able to know that it is where God lives and reigns that constitutes the ultimate reality, not the illusory reality of the Empire of Rome.

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Questions to ponder:

1. Does this affirm or challenge your perception where and/or how you think of “heaven” as existing? 
2. How would this view of heaven affect how you live day to day? 
3. How do you see God's space intersecting with your daily life?

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Come be a part of COMMUNITY

• Join Us For Worship - Join us Sunday mornings at 8:30 or 10:45 as we continue our journey into the fascinating book of Revelation.
• Watch Live Online - Can't be with us in person? Be a part of COMMUNITYonline and join our live webcast Sunday mornings at 10:45. Click here.
• Watch Past Sermons - Missed this week's sermon? You can watch it here.
• Wednesday Evening Q&A - Join us Wednesday nights at 6:30 in the Gallery for a deeper look at Revelation
• Ask Pastor Tredoux a Question - Submit questions to Pastor Tredoux here.

Couldn't join us Wednesday night? Watch the Exploration Revelation Class - Week 3

Recorded Live on June 29th, 2016

Exploring Revelation with Pastor Johan Tredoux - Week 3

Posted by COMMUNITY Covenant Church on Wednesday, June 29, 2016