Video Study 1 “Jesus and The Apocalypse”
Reading: Revelation 1; 5

Background

I try to get away somewhere each year to be with God and pray. Since my wife Donna had long service leave this year I sensed it was important that we go away together. As she was interested in the Greek Islands I pounced on the opportunity to do the 7 churches area in Turkey and hop across to Patmos; most famous for its mention at the beginning of the book of Revelation (1:9-11). This series is built around several of my experiences during that trip; although the Lord started to speak with me at 3a.m. of our first night on the island I want to start with a slightly later experience.

I was at the breakfast table with Donna, eating with my bride as Jesus will dine with the Church when he comes to marry us (Rev 19:6-10)[1]. All of a sudden I was aware that Patmos was an island of joy for the apostle John even though he was there as a prisoner for his faith, and I started to sense what he saw in a vision when he was there almost two thousand years ago. John saw that his presence on Patmos made it a bridal chamber, that the area of the 7 churches to whom he wrote was also a bridal chamber and the whole cosmos is one vast bridal chamber where the people of God are being prepared for their marriage to Jesus. God the Father’s plan is for the whole of creation to be filled with endless and indestructible marital bliss.

This future destiny of Christ and his Bride the Church will fulfil the prophetic word laid down in Isaiah 4:(2-5), “In that day the Branch of the LORD[2]  shall be beautiful and glorious,…. And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy … when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning. Then the LORD will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy.” The Hebrew word for the “canopy” covering  the people of God (huppa) means a bridal chamber where a newly married couple come together in marital union (Ps 19:6; Joel 2:16).

If you are a follower of Christ then in the purposes of God everything that has ever happened to you, could ever happen to you, and will ever happen to you, has one great overarching purpose, to prepare you as a Bride fit to marry Jesus. This series will seek to expound on how God works in our lives so that we may become a Church that Jesus will “present …to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Eph 5:27 ESV).

The title of this conference, “The Bride of Revelation”, might tempt us to start with a talk on the Church; this would be a major error because from the beginning of creation the Husband must be spoken of before the Wife. As Paul teaches; “woman is the glory of man.” (1 Cor 11:7 cf. 1 Tim 2:13). This order does not imply male superiority, but it prophetically images the truth that the glory the Church has as a Bride is drawn exclusively from Christ her Head[3]. To help us most fully understand what it means to be betrothed to Jesus, God has given us the book of Revelation.

The Apocalypse

1. What is Apocalyptic?

The first word that appears in the Greek text of Revelation is “apocalypse”, a word whose meaning has been hijacked and distorted by our culture. For example a film produced in Perth called “These Final Hours” was released this year and is described as an “apocalyptic drama” because it portrays the end of the world in a fiery holocaust. But the Greek word “apocalypse” simply means the unveiling of what was previously hidden.  Apocalyptic is not about us it is about Jesus. The very first words of Revelation make this crystal clear; “The apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.” (Revelation 1:1ESV).

I originally wanted to call this series “The Bride of the Apocalypse”, but Adam Meredith persuaded me that this title would scare too many people away. Fair enough; but it must be said that Revelation is NOT a puzzle-solver telling us the identity of the beast, who will be left behind, a map to international political dealings  or informing us about the time when Jesus will return. The Apocalypse is a communication from heaven to help hurting Christians remain faithful to Christ under enormous pressures from evil powers. Only apocalyptic literature with its visions and symbols of a cosmic battle is intense enough to unveil the momentous conflict facing the Church of God being prepared through tribulation as the Bride of her heavenly Husband (Luke 24:26; Acts 14:22; Rev 21:2). Only apocalyptic writings can express the beauty of God in Christ and the inexpressible wonder of the things which he has prepared for us (1 Cor 2:9-10). If there is to be a revival of worship, art and mission to the nations in the Western world it will happen through a rediscovery of the dimensions of human existence laid out in Revelation. This demands a major shift in the way we experience reality.

The key to our understanding of apocalyptic is found early in the first chapter of Revelation. “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day….Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me…” (1:10, 12). John turned to see a voice, strange language to us but the Old Testament speaks of “the word that Isaiah saw” and “the word of the LORD…that Micah saw” (Isa 2:1; Mic 1:1). In the Spirit the Word of God is seen. A prophetic voice to an earlier generation, A.W.Tozer, makes an important point about our usual way of understanding; “Between the scribe who has read and the prophet who has seen there is a difference as wide as the sea….the Church waits for the tender voice of the saint who…has gazed with inward eye upon the Wonder that is God….”. One of God’s goals for this conference is that we will go away with a renewed ability to see things in the Spirit. If we are truly “in the Spirit” our field of vision will be filled with only one Person.

At the climax of the most important passage on the Bridegroom and his Bride, Revelation 19, the angel speaks to John, ““Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” (Revelation 19:9-10 ESV). At the climax of all Spirit-inspired apocalyptic experience is a heightened vision of Jesus. Biblical apocalyptic is a super-saturated form of prophecy that points in the most intense way to Jesus in his post-ascension glory at the right hand of God in heaven. Anyone who loves Jesus as he truly is today[4]will love the testimony of the book of Revelation.

2. The Apocalyptic Jesus

Revelation is the only book in the Bible which makes a promise like this; “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.” (1:3). It promises such blessing because it unveils  God’s final statement about who Jesus is for the world to come. The dimensions of the book of Revelation are the dimensions of Jesus himself. Let me try to sharpen up what it means to listen to the Spirit in reading ““The apocalypse of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1:1).

New Testament scholar Tom Wright pronounces, “Jesus is portrayed by the Gospels as a one-man apocalypse, the place where heaven and earth meet, the place…and…means by which people…find themselves renewed and restored as the people of …God, the place where power is…turned upside down or perhaps the right way up.”[5] Wright is completely correct in describing Jesus as “a one-man apocalypse”, but the radical difference between Jesus in the Gospels and Jesus in Revelation is that Christ is now the Lord of heaven as well as earth (cf. Matt 28:18)[6].  This makes Revelation an indispensable lens for understanding how God is preparing us for eternity.

3. The Apocalyptic Bridegroom

If in Revelation 1-3 Christ speaks of himself as the prophet to his churches, if chapters 4-11 disclose him as the Lamb of God and priest of his people, if the images of rule and judgement in chapters 12-18 portray him as King, then everything comes to a climax in the final chapters of Revelation where Jesus is the Bridegroom. Jesus is the complete prophet, great high priest and King of kings with a view to his forthcoming marriage. The comfortable Western Church of today desperately needs the heavenly insights of Revelation into this ultimate reality.

The message of Revelation takes us far beyond personal forgiveness and “getting to heaven”, it calls the Church to be conformed to who God has made Jesus to be (cf. Rev 14:6). Hebrews tells us that Jesus has been made perfect through suffering (John 1:29; Heb 2:10; 5:9; 7:28), Revelation tells us the same thing be referring to Jesus as the Lamb 31 times. The next big thing coming up for God[7], the thing which makes his heart beat with anticipation, is “The Marriage Supper of the Lamb” (Rev 19:9)[8]. The Bible does not speak of “The Marriage Supper of God” or even “The Marriage Supper of Jesus”. The Apocalypse is the apocalypse of the Lamb because the ultimate wedding is between a crucified-resurrected Bridegroom and a Bride who is being prepared for marriage in just the same way as Jesus was. To grasp the unlikely connection between the catastrophes and cosmic warfare in Revelation and the forthcoming marriage of the Church and the Lamb we must start with the Gospels.

The Apocalypse of the Lamb

The first person who seems to have had heavenly insight into the bridal themes to do with Jesus and the Church was John the Baptist. It was John who pointed out Jesus and declared, ““Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”” (John 1:29).  A little later in the same Gospel[9] the Baptist exclaims with excitement, “The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete.” (John 3:29 ESV). John the Baptist is usually portrayed as a serious preacher of repentance but when he speaks of the salvation in terms of a marriage he cannot contain his joy.

John was an apocalyptic preacher who prophesied that the Christ would ““baptize in the Holy Spirit and fire…separate the chaff from the wheat…gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.”” (Matt 3:11-12). John predicts a soon coming apocalyptic holocaust purifying a sinful world[10] . Yet there were some things about Jesus that John did not understand. Both John the Baptist and the first disciples fully anticipated that Jesus was sent by God to pour out his fiery wrath upon sinners[11]; but as the Lamb Jesus knew he must take the apocalyptic judgement of the consuming fire of God on himself![12] To understand what it means for Jesus to be the Lamb of God we must connect his prophetic teachings, his death on the cross and Revelation’s visions of judgement.

Christ’s prophecies of the last days parallel the visions of the wrath of the Lamb in Revelation[13]. In the Gospels Jesus spoke of coming wars, earthquakes and famines (Matt 24:6-7) and a great tribulation when the “sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Matt 24:29). These are the disasters released by the Lamb of God in Revelation chapter 6. Jesus predicted that many of his followers would fall away, betray and hate each other, and love would grow cold (Matt 24:10, 12). This is the situation addressed by Jesus’ words to the churches in Revelation 2-3. What has usually escaped our attention is how these last days’ events also took place around the cross. What I am about to share is a very heavy subject, so to avoid confusion about the nature of God I need to briefly mention an insight the Lord gave me about his dying some years ago in prayer. I could see that when the Father laid on the Son the guilt and punishment we all deserve his hand did this with the utmost gentleness.

The crucifixion narrative is intensely apocalyptic. Jesus experiences  betrayal and desertion by his disciples, as he gives up his life the sun is darkened over the earth and an awesome earthquake splits the rocks and the dead are raised (Matt 25:56; 69ff; 26:14-16; Matt 27:45 cf. Am 8:9-10; Matt 27:51, 54). At the peak of Christ’s suffering is the terrible cry of dereliction “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34) uttered as Jesus endures the End-times fiery wrath of God upon our sin (2 Cor 5:21). This is his “descent into hell”.  The images of the lake of fire in Revelation, which tormented my soul dreadfully day after day when I first read the Bible as an unbeliever, picture a reality that has already been endured by the Lamb of God (19:20; 20:10, 14, 15; 21:8). The hosts of demons which attack the lost in Revelation (ch.9) first attacked the Lord on the cross on the cross, but Jesus “disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.” (Col 2:15)[14].

Heaven, hell, tribulation, wrath, Armageddon and whatever other fear-inducing apocalyptic themes may be named[15] have all been mastered by the Lamb who appears in Revelation 5:6 “standing as slaughtered”[16]. The Bride has nothing to fear of the terrors of the Last Days.

Application

There is a profound sense in which Christians must read the Bible backwards. What God plans first he brings to pass last of all and Jesus is the key to it all[17]. At the start and finish of Revelation Jesus describes himself as “the first and the last the beginning and the end” (Rev 1:17; 22:13). When Almighty God placed the first husband Adam and the first wife Eve in the tiny Garden of Eve he was already thinking of the eternal marriage between Jesus as the last Adam and the Church as perfect Bride whose marital joy would fill the universe forever (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45; 1 Pet 1:8). The call of the Bride is to reflect the glory of her Husband, the Lamb of God who has taken away the sin of the world (John 1:29). We are the Woman who must be captivated by this vision.

Jesus is not like some hulking “bachelor” on a TV programme. His beauty as our Bridegroom is revealed in him being the Lamb of God which has taken on the evils of the world which so scare us. For a Christian the terror of Islamic State or the threats of the Ebola virus should be as nothing compared to what Jesus has endured and mastered. He is in absolute control of the apocalyptic dimensions of this world (cf. Rev 6:1ff.).

I believe it will become increasingly difficult to be a true follower of Christ in Australia in the years to come. If we are to follow Jesus uncompromisingly all the way to the altar we must have a greater vision of the Lamb of God as our Husband to be. We need to see the mysteries of God “in the Spirit” like never before (Rev 1:1, 10, 12). The Spirit is working on the Church in Perth to reveal her true identity as the wife of the Lamb standing as slaughtered (Rev 5:6).

The apostles call us to an apocalyptic lifestyle that images the priority of eternity; “the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.” (1 Corinthians 7:29-31 ESV cf. 1 Pet 4:7). We are called to endure and triumph over life’s fiery trials through faith in the Lamb of God as a sign to an anxious world that something eternal and indestructible is in their midst (Phil 1:27-28; 2 Thess 1:4-12; 1 Pet 4:12-17). That men and women may see through our lives the likeness of the Lamb of God who died to marry them. Only in this way, through others seeing a limitless spousal devotion to Christ, can the reality of eternity as endless marital bliss ever make any sense.

We all have times when we may be tempted to think God has abandoned us or evil has the upper hand. Speaking figuratively and apocalyptically, there are times when the sun in our life is darkened and the moon is turned to blood, friends desert us in our hour of need and those closest to us become like enemies. At times the inner pain will be so great you will feel like a sword is piercing your heart (Luke 2:35; Acts 2:37; Heb 4:12-13).

In preparing this teaching I began to see in the Spirit that the Lord is weaving all our lives into one great tapestry of glory. And sometimes the great pain we feel is because it is the tapestry needle in the hand of the Lord which is being threaded through our hearts. It is not any tapestry which the Lamb is weaving, but the tapestry of a bridal chamber (huppa) designed for exquisite marital love.

Praying this morning I was asking the Lord just what is it about you as the Lamb and Husband that the Church is NOT seeing today. The answer I received is especially relevant to our Australian experience of authority in marriage. The hand which was crucified for us, the hand which opens the scroll of God in heaven releasing all manner of apocalyptic terrors (like Islamic State and Ebola) and the hand which is weaving our lives together is a hand that operates with sovereign power AND infinite tenderness (Luke 24:39; John 20:27; 2 Cor 10:1; Eph 4:32; Rev 1:17-18; 6:1ff.).

The Spirit invites everyone who does not know the Lamb of God in this way of tenderness to come to him tonight and pray, to receive the Revelation of Jesus Christ.