Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Gospel from Patmos
Commentary
for the January 5, 2019 Sabbath School Lesson
“Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this
prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written
in it, because the time is near.” Revelation 1:3,
NIV
Not every child is so fortunate as to have grandparents
still living, but those who do often have a very special relationship with them
that transcends the generational gap. Relieved of disciplinary responsibilities
by the parents who are now fulfilling the role that the grandparents filled for
them in the previous generation, grandpa and grandma become more the harbingers
of new experiences and gifts beyond the daily routine. They come with hugs and
kisses, often bearing gifts and treats, and all too soon leave. Promising to
return, they fill children’s hearts with hopes and dreams about the next visit
which will surely come, for didn’t grandma promise?
When I was one of those grandchildren, my siblings and I
would thrill whenever our parents told us grandma and grandpa were coming for a
visit. We would watch at the window every few minutes in hopes of spying their
car coming down our street. The entire day would be spent in this anticipation.
Even our favorite games and toys could not occupy us for long without us running
to the window. Eventually all of our vigilance would be rewarded and their car
would not only appear on our street but would also turn into our driveway, and
we would run to meet them as they emerged, travel worn but happy to see us.
Sixty years later, I can still see in my mind the vague image of their car
pulling into our driveway. Often, they brought us Crackerjacks, and we would
sit together on the porch steps while we opened the box. While the caramel corn
and peanuts were yummy, both grandparents and grandchildren were more
interested to see what prize was in the box. In those days, the prizes were
often real plastic toys or puzzles that you could assemble and play with.
Crackerjacks were not just a treat but an experience.
Perhaps it is this innocent expectation that is one of
the aspects of childlike faith that Jesus referred to when he told his followers
that unless they became like children they would not enter the kingdom of
heaven.[i] It is of note here that
Jesus did not make this a condition of entering the church, for there is no
such requirement to be in the church, but the kingdom of heaven does indeed
require a childlike trust in God, and an innocent belief that what God has
promised, he will do. The church has many doubters. The kingdom of heaven has
none. The church has many who would cause us to doubt our relationship with God
over the food we eat, over the version of the Bible we use, and even over our
race or gender. The citizens of the kingdom of heaven have passed beyond those
things to simply trust the accepting compassion and grace of Jesus. Like a
child whose heart belongs to grandma, their heart belongs to Jesus, and they
trustingly and patiently wait for his word to be fulfilled. Watching, waiting,
and telling others that he is coming is all they are consumed with, and they
know he will not come empty handed.[ii]
However, far too many think it is all nonsense. They
note that Jesus promised to return in a speech given early in the 4th
decade of his life.[iii]
But two millennia have passed since then. No one has returned to take anyone to
heaven. It might seem somewhat of a miracle that anyone still believes those
words after all this time, but they do. Even Jesus acknowledged that it would
be hard to find faith on the earth as time draws to a close.[iv] Peter said, though, that
the overwhelming disbelief of others is simply evidence of the nearness of the
Parousia.[v] The light has not gone
out, however, and perhaps the book of Revelation is a primary reason why it
hasn’t. The return of Jesus was felt to be imminent by the disciples. They
hoped to see it with their eyes and lived in that expectation, but one by one
they were each taken by death, often violently. When John was exiled to barren
and rocky Patmos, most, if not all, of those who had also seen Jesus face to
face were now gone. Even John may have felt he was going to pass into death
without the realization of that blessed hope. But God had other plans. Perhaps
those plans were foreshadowed by Jesus’ enigmatic statement to Peter after the
resurrection about the possibility of John living to see Jesus’ return.[vi]
As human beings, we live within the constraints of time.
Because of that, it is significant when many centuries pass in expectation, but
nothing transpires to fulfill the hopes of those who are patiently waiting for
the promised visit with its rewards. But God is not so constrained. The traits
we use to define him such as omniscience, omnipresence, infinite and other like
attributes place him beyond our ability to define him within the dimensionality
we inhabit. This at the very least defines him as existing in dimensions beyond
our ability to measure or comprehend. It may even imply that his existence
transcends dimensionality entirely, which is strongly indicated by statements about
his uniqueness and underived being. Such a being could intersect our limited
experience at any time or place without reference to linear time. In fact, John’s
vision on Patmos may have been exactly that, not some esoteric dream world
floating about in cosmic clouds, but an actual experiencing of the real
Parousia in real time. Although in the dimensional plane where John was privileged
to have such an experience, linear time may be no more significant than a child’s
two-dimensional chalk drawing on the sidewalk is to our day in the “real”
world. This may explain why, as John tries to grasp what he is seeing and write
it all down, he struggles not only with defining the images, but also appears
to leap back and forth in relation to any temporal linearity that his
experience in our dimension would normally move him towards. To our understanding
and especially to that of the “scoffers” Peter wrote about as previously
mentioned, two thousand years has made the Parousia very delayed. We question
that delay and doubt. But if God and heaven itself both transcend time, then
the Parousia will always be late, early and right on time. For time will only
have meaning here. But significantly, we ourselves will enter heaven. We are
told that we will undergo physical change when that happens and our own existence
will be defined by eternity.[vii] We may very well
discover existence at a level where time is irrelevant for us as well, and we
may marvel at our former concerns about such things.
John lived a long and faithful life. In my threescore
years plus some, I can begin to feel some of the weight the years must have
brought to his elderly frame and the desire he must have felt to be released
from his earthly shell. Like a withered rosehip on the winter bush, he may have
looked back on the glorious summer of his youth and longed for the invigoration
that Jesus’ return promised to bring. He had faithfully cared for Jesus’
mother, Mary, as the Savior had asked.[viii] Now he only looked for
the heavenly dwelling that Jesus had promised all of the disciples. Perhaps he
longed to see again the faces of brothers and sisters in the faith that had
long been silenced in death. Perhaps some of those were among those around the
heavenly throne he saw.
For those who may be tempted to doubt the possibility of the reality of John’s
experience as opposed to being simply something ephemeral, I ask you to
consider our own state. Even limited by the few dimensions we occupy, we have
gone from scratchy reproductions of sound on waxen cylinders to streaming media
capable of producing immersive virtual reality experiences in only a little
over a century. We also have experienced the realm of sleep where time passes
in the woke world, but conceptually to us the amount
of time that passed from the moment we went to sleep until we awoke was only an
instant. In a sense, those that have preceded us to death have already
transcended time for the very next instant for them would appear to be the
Parousia. They may even believe they were carried to heaven immediately upon
death, though the Bible says otherwise. These things themselves argue against the
significance of time beyond our immediate experience. And the immersive media
experience argues for the possibility of the injection of an alternate reality
into our present reality that we hitherto considered stable and immutable. Does
it not seem unreasonable then to deny as some sort of “magical” thinking the
possibility that John’s vision and the gospel paradigm may be more real than
reality itself? Mathematics has already constructed theoretical “proofs” of
dimensions beyond our own. However, hard evidence has been lacking. Perhaps
this is because we are like someone using two dimensional instruments to
measure a three-dimensional object. The faith of a child may be the instrument we
need.
