Tuesday, December 9, 2008

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls that are filled with the seven last plagues came to me and said, "Come, I will show you the bride, The Wife of The Lamb." He carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, possessing the glory of God. Its radiance was like a precious stone, like a jasper, clear as crystal. Rev. 21:9-11.

The landscape along Interstate 57 in central Illinois is extremely flat, mostly farm fields and pasture, with an occasional stand of trees. One overcast day in mid-March I was a bit startled to see what appeared to be a gigantic gray cross barely visible against the gray sky in the distance. My first impression was that it must be some sort of industrial contraption that just happened to have the shape of a cross. but as we drew nearer, it became clear that it was truly a representation of the cross of Jesus Christ, the beams set in diamond-shaped metal, perhaps 80 feet high. There was no sign or other explanation as to why it was there by the road-it just was.

I wondered if that monument was someone's response to a special intervention by God. Parhaps he or she had been drowning in a lake and said, "Lord, if You'll save my life right now, I'll build You the biggest monument in the state!" Or perhaps it was supposed to be the bell tower to a church, but the congregation ran out of money before it could construct the church itself. Be that as it may, that cross is certainly the centerpiece of that portion of the Illinois landscape.

It is like that with the book of Revelation, also. If we are not careful, we might get the impression that the beasts, the vultures, the darkness, the earthquakes, and the hailstones are what the book of Revelation is all about. But they are more like the general landscape of the Illinois prairie. The true centerpiece of the book of Revelation is not war or catastrophe, not oil or the Middle East, but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

One would expect that the arrival of the New Jerusalem would be an event in its own right. The enormous size, the radiance, the unusual shape, could easily be the centerpiece of the story. But this book is the revelation of Jesus Christ. So the New Jerusalem is no ordinary city. It is the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And John does not allow even the New Jerusalem itself to distract from the overwhelming focus on Jesus. To read this book without gaining a claerer picture of Jesus is to miss the key point.

Lord, in my excitement over the glories of the future world, never let me lose sight of that fact that You are the real reason anyone would want to live forever. I want to know You better every day for an eternity.

In secret devotion our prayers are to reach the ears of none but the prayer-hearing God. No curious ear is to receive the burden of such petitions(TFMB 84).