iMonk Classic: A Young Person’s Guide To The Book Of Revelation

This is an essay Michael Spencer prepared as a way to help the young people he taught understand the book of Revelation. I find that, even though I’m no longer “young,” this helps me greatly when preparing to read through what may be the most difficult book in all of Scripture. You may want to print this off to refer to as you read Revelation as well.  JD

Michael Spencer

One of the best things about working with young people in churches and in a Christian school, as I have for almost 28 years, is answering questions about the Bible. There is, however, one thing I have noticed about young people’s Bible questions. Most of them are about the most difficult book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. And those questions are very hard to answer.

Young people are curious about the book of Revelation for many reasons. If they have read it, they are certainly curious about what they have read. It’s full of mysterious things that are mostly unexplained. Revelation is also the subject of books and movies, such as the popular Left Behind series and “The Omega Code” movies. Preachers on tv and in churches have a lot to say about the book of Revelation, and much of what they say seems very certain about the meaning of the book. Naturally, young people are curious about the book when they hear that it predicts the future.

The book of Revelation has a reputation different from any other book in the Bible. It’s been very rare that I have a student ask a question about the book of Romans or Acts. These books are assumed to be boring, and if a student reads them, the story and ideas seem to be all from “long ago.” Revelation, on the other hand, seems to be about the immediate future. It seems to be talking about “things that must shortly come to pass.” Any normal person is curious about the future, and the book of Revelation seems to scratch the “itch” of that curiosity.

What do we know about the book of Revelation?

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Saturday Ramblings 10.8.11

The Tulsa State Fair is underway, which means two things. No one has yet figured out that Tulsa is not a “state,” and you will breathe more secondhand cholesterol there than the rest of your life combined. Not exactly pining for a Krispy Kreme burger or a slab of fried butter this year, I passed on the fair. That left me more time to ramble through the news of this last week, and I am going to tell you once again: I cannot make this stuff up. So if you are done with your deep-fried Twinkie and pork parfait, let’s ramble.

In case you have been spending all of your time on the midway at the fair and not keeping up with the news, Steve Jobs passed away and Apple announced a “new” iPhone this week. We are very sorry for both, but have no comments to make beyond that. This is iMonk, after all, not the Kim Komando show.

Well, I don’t often find myself agreeing with Al Mohler, and I’m not sure I totally agree with him in this essay. But he makes some valid points about Joel Osteen. One thing is for certain: Osteen’s publisher needs to hire a media coach before he makes another TV appearance. Meanwhile, Joel Osteen says that he doesn’t preach “Gospel lite” and prosperity isn’t just about money. And … and … sigh …

On the other side of the world is a real pastor who, because he does preach the Gospel, is facing death by hanging. Yet even his own country says this may not be legal. iMonks, we must keep our brother in our prayers, remembering him as if we were in chains with him.

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No Stinking up God’s Place! (or, “How to Be Perfect like God”)

I’m pleased to introduce you to our newest writer, Craig Bubeck. I’ve known Craig for a decade now as a fellow editor and as a book co-writer. But most of all, Craig is my dear, dear friend. When we have gone to writers’ conferences together, we would sit up late into the night talking theology and writing and C.S. Lewis and baseball. Craig is a great writer because he is a great thinker. As you know, I am very particular as to who writes for InternetMonk. Craig is one I have wanted to write for us a long time, and now, well, here he is. Please join me in welcoming Craig to the iMonastery. 

by Craig Bubeck

We hear it all of the time in modern evangelicalism. “God is pure, and he cannot endure impurity.” Most skeptics I’ve come across dismiss such a god because (1) he must be some supreme perfectionist who just can’t stand impurities in his house (“Ooh, get it away . . . it burns, it burns); or (2) he would have to be the supreme grump who gets just plain irritated by it (“Whew—wow! Get that stench out of here . . . it’s stinking up the place something awful”).

I don’t consider those characterizations to be irreverent, because I now believe they are byproducts of a well-intentioned but wrong-headed (sometimes wrong-hearted) evangelical idolatry, which I have long and enthusiastically practiced and preached. I came by it honestly enough, though . . . it’s ubiquitous in just about everything evangelical. Nevertheless, the consequence is a doctrinal malady in the Western church of which I’d like to argue it’s time we all repented, especially in our evangelizing, preaching, and teaching.

Christian faith is not about sin management, it’s about managing to love.

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Brennan Manning’s Last Words

There is something very haunting about Johnny Cash’s album, Ain’t No Grave. Cash finished recording it just a few days before his death in September, 2003. Listening to tracks on this album, you can hear death in Cash’s voice, making the songs even more poignent than ever.

The same can be said of The Wind, Warren Zevon’s final album. The last song he recorded, just months before his death (five days before Cash’s death) from a rare form of lung cancer, was “Keep Me In Your Heart For A While,” a rich and deep farewell from the manic genius. You can almost hear him forcing the air from his dying lungs through his throat and lips so we could hear such great lines as “There’s a train leaving nightly called When All Is Said And Done.”

I thought of these two albums as I read Brennan Manning’s latest book, All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir. The 77-year-old Manning now needs round-the-clock aid in his New Jersey home and no longer can travel to speak. He worked with co-writer John Blase to record his thoughts about his past, and you can tell he was having to force air from his dying spirit so we could hear his last words to us.

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The Mysteries of the Rosary

The above heading is a phrase from a short prayer said during the recitation of the Rosary: “Let us pray. O GOD, whose only begotten Son, by His life, death, and resurrection, has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life, grant, we beseech Thee, that meditating upon these mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise, through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.”

That’s what I want to do here; not teach you how to say the Rosary, but to take a quick, short look at the twenty mysteries of the Rosary and do a little mediation on them.  Why?  Various reasons: October is the month of the Holy Rosary, primarily because the liturgical feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated annually on October 7.  The feast was introduced by Pope St. Pius V, under the name of “Our Lady of Victory”, in the year 1571 to commemorate the victory of the Christian forces in the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571.  The victory was attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, as a rosary procession had been offered on that day in St. Peter’s Square in Rome for the success of the mission of the Holy League to hold back Muslim forces from overrunning Western Europe. In 1573, Pope Gregory XIII changed the title of this feast-day to “Feast of the Holy Rosary”.  For those of you interested, there is a stirring (if perhaps not wholly historically accurate) poem by Chesterton called “Lepanto.”

And for those of you for whom this is way too Papist, you can substitute instead another sea battle, the victory over the Armada, when “He blew with His winds, and they were scattered” (to borrow the inscription of a commemorative medal), when a storm (the “Protestant wind”) aided greatly in wrecking the Spanish fleet.  Something for everyone there.

Main reason: to disentangle the prayer a little and explore what we can hold in common.  Yes, the Rosary is a Marian prayer.  Yes, it is a recitation of the “Hail, Mary.”  Yes, there are events not attested to by Scripture, derived solely from tradition (and Tradition) celebrated.  Yes, it is rote prayer and if you really feel you must, you can quote the “vain repetition” Bible verse at me.  But the Rosary is also Christological, since it is based on the events in the life of Mary, which are events connected to the life of Christ also – how could they be otherwise?

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Open Mic: The New Apostolic Reformation

C. Peter Wagner was interviewed this week by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air. Gross is a seasoned interviewer who through kindness draws out what many other interviewers would never even get to in a subject.

Perhaps we found out more from Wagner than we ever wanted to hear. Wagner is the leader of the ever-morphing New Apostolic Reformation, a loose-knit group of “apostles” and “prophets” who seek to take dominion over seven “mountains”: business; government; media; arts and entertainment; education; religion; and family. The way to establish dominion in these areas is through prayer and the casting out of demons.

And Wagner sees a lot of demons in action these days. For instance, he says that Japan’s natural disaster woes as well the twenty-year decline in their stock market is due to the emperor of Japan having sex with the sun goddess. I kid you not. And we think Bill Clinton was stepping wide. He settled for a common intern when he could have had a sun goddess.

I could take this apart and offer my very opinionated opinions, but why should I when I can hand you the mic? What I am looking for is this: Is there any validity to Wagner’s approach to furthering the Kingdom of God? Is this part of the Christian’s life, or has Wagner and the NAR departed from what the Founding Fathers would recognize as even the barest form of Christianity? And finally, what do we do with movements such as these? Do we confront them or ignore them and hope they just go away?

Ok, it’s your turn at the mic. I am looking for constructive comments, not just dogpiling. Play nice.

Five Things Science Cannot Prove (but are necessary for science to work)

iMonk contributor and Liturgical Gangsta Daniel Jepsen stopped by the iMonastery today to share some thoughts on science. I told him his ideas were quite timely as I am hoping to explore this topic more fully this month. Daniel agree to share his thoughts with us all. Read and comment as always, but remember, he is not speaking against science, only to its limitations.  JD

Perhaps the most common misunderstanding of science today is the idea that it alone operates only on what can be proven.  The scientist, we are told, unlike the historian, sociologist, or (shudder) the theologian, believes nothing except what is proven to be true by the scientific method; therefore he or she alone is the oracle of true knowledge of the physical world.

It is remarkable how prevalent this thought is, even when not articulated, since it is so easily shown to be not the case.  Science is a wonderful and noble way of exploring and understanding this world we find ourselves in, but it in no way operates solely on the basis of proof. Some things it must assume. I will list a few of them.

[Note: nothing I can say will stop some people from viewing this as an attack on science; it is anything but, as I think as any reasonable reading will show.]

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Innocent For Now

Becoming a grandparent is a very retro experience. I’m only getting started, but I’m already remembering things I’d forgotten about my children when they were infants. If you’ll indulge a doting “Grandmere,” I’d like to share just one of them.

The other day I went to visit my five-month-old grandson, Silas, at daycare. His daycare is just a skip and a hop from the building where I work, so I take advantage of the opportunity to pop in fairly often. Usually the older children are bouncing around playing, and they flock around me to report what they’ve done that day. This time, though, the mood was noticeably more subdued.

“Miss Amanda” was taking the group out to the playground, but three of the preschoolers remained inside. “Miss Pearl” seated herself in a chair and gathered them on the floor around her like little chicks. These three tots were being kept indoors because of misbehavior. Miss Pearl wanted to be sure each one knew why he or she was not getting to play with the others. She asked the wee wrongdoers what they had done amiss.

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Denise Spencer: Innocent For Now

Becoming a grandparent is a very retro experience. I’m only getting started, but I’m already remembering things I’d forgotten about my children when they were infants. If you’ll indulge a doting “Grandmere,” I’d like to share just one of them.

The other day I went to visit my five-month-old grandson, Silas, at daycare. His daycare is just a skip and a hop from the building where I work, so I take advantage of the opportunity to pop in fairly often. Usually the older children are bouncing around playing, and they flock around me to report what they’ve done that day. This time, though, the mood was noticeably more subdued.

“Miss Amanda” was taking the group out to the playground, but three of the preschoolers remained inside. “Miss Pearl” seated herself in a chair and gathered them on the floor around her like little chicks. These three tots were being kept indoors because of misbehavior. Miss Pearl wanted to be sure each one knew why he or she was not getting to play with the others. She asked the wee wrongdoers what they had done amiss.

Continue reading “Denise Spencer: Innocent For Now”

What To Expect

Hi there, fellow iMonks. Your friendly, neighborhood publisher here, wishing you well on this Monday, the first Monday in October. Things are rather, well, less normal than usual here at the iMonastery today. That’s because Chaplain Mike has gone and left us. Okay, he’s only gone for a month, but I already miss that big ol’ Cubs fan. But we will carry on best as possible here—all for you, brothers and sisters, all for you.

So, what should you expect in this crisp fall month? Well, if you’re in Oklahoma, you should expect more days in the mid-80s with not much hope of rain. (We are in one of our semi-annual droughts here.) On the iMonk front, you can expect a lot. We will continue with the dispatches from the post-evangelical wilderness, which seems to grow more crowded all of the time.

Our regular writers have said they will step up and offer more of their incredibly insightful, um, er, insights. Damaris has agreed to take Sunday mornings, and started it off yesterday with a poem that caused me to shake as I was preparing it for publication. Martha, as always, is coming up with essays that make me laugh and repent at the same time.

Adam and I had a wonder two-hour lunch with Dr. Ken Weed last week. Ken is a chemistry professor at a nearby university, but has a lot to say about science in general and how it leads to worshipping God. That will be a fun one to assemble. And Adam has some things on his heart he wants to share with you on his own.

We will even have some contributions by Denise Spencer, our First Lady. (I know—I can’t wait, either!)

At least one of our own, David Cornwell, has agree to share his thoughts with us in more detail than will fit in the comments section.

We’ll be looking at some books this month: Brennan Manning’s memoir, All Is Grace. Mark Galli’s latest, Chaos And Grace. And (hopefully) Lisa Randall’s Knocking On Heaven’s Door. 

What else? Well, we’ll just have to see. I suppose I could review a couple of Pink Floyd’s remastered albums released last week. (Division Bell—incredible. The Wall—there are not words…)

Suffice it to say we will be keeping busy while Chap is away. So busy that I must now get back to my other duties. Ah look! Chaplain Mike left his robe behind. Do you think if I wear it, I’ll be as smart as he? What’s that? Is that you, HUG? What did you say? Yeah, I don’t think so either.

Let us sail gayly into the month of October! (And I know one word in that last sentence will elicit more comments than anything else we write … )