Hearing the Silence of Heaven
Introduction
Very early this morning I was very conscious I was not hearing anything from the Lord. That is, the consciousness of not hearing was pronounced. As I prayed into this awareness, clarity emerged. To set the theological foundation for today’s teaching, when Jesus triumphantly proclaimed, “It is finished” and immediately “gave up his spirit to the Father” (John 19:30; Luke 23:46), humanity’s ability to hear God in the Spirit was reunited with the divine glory (John 17:5). Now, all “the sons of God” can hear our “Abba! Father!” in “the Spirit of the Son” (Rom 8:14-16). This taking of humanity into God (Athanasian Creed) flows from the triumphant cry, “it is finished” (John 19:30). Whatever the ups and downs of our experience (Eph 4:14), the Church already indwells the most intimate presence of the Lord. Our location “in the heavenlies” means we are all located inside the heavenly theatre of endless glorious praise (Eph 2:6; Col 3:1-3; Heb 12:18-24; Rev 1:1ff.). Whilst this is all true, it is also quite beyond the experience of most of us.
Dull as a Beetle
My very working-class mum and dad roots often insulted slow-minded people with the simile, “such and such is as dull as a beetle.” To illustrate our present dullness, the mass and highly public events, the COVID 19 pandemic, the upcoming Australian Indigenous Voice Referendum and World Prayer Assembly 2023, seem devoid of an indisputably clear specific word from the Lord through the Church. Given clear scriptural witness, “For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret plan to his servants the prophets…The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.” (Am 3:7; Rev 19:10), I cannot believe that the Lord is that silent. The seeming silence of the Spirit points to our ignorance of the cross. “The way to Pentecost is Calvary; the Spirit comes from the cross.” (https://jamesfenwick.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/thomas-smail-and-a-pneumatological-theology-of-suffering/).
Dreadful Ignorance
Spiritual ignorance is a sure sign of idol worship (Hab 2:19-20 cf. Ps 115:4-8), and the only force able to free us from this demonic power (Deut 32:17) is the Lamb of God. Given gross idols are uncommon in secular societies like our own, we must search out in the Spirit “the depths of God” (1 Cor 2:10) to understand the root of our dullness of hearing (Luke 24:25). The ministry of John the Baptist is surprisingly illuminating here. Whilst John is a personal folk-hero (same birth date, 24 June), he had limits we need not share! Whilst stunningly prophesying ahead of time, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), John soon went through a crisis of faith. He inquired of Jesus, ““Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”” (Luke 7:19). John’s paradoxical mix of belief and doubt can be explained only in the shadow of the cross!
John had earlier prophesied of the impending last days ministry of Messiah, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”” (Luke 3:16-17). As Jesus intentionally omitted “the day of vengeance of our God” (Isa 61:2) from his first foundational sermon (Luke 4:18-21), so John (with the Twelve) could not yet be given revelation “from heaven” (John 3:27) that the Lamb must die in the place of sinners. The mystery of the “scandal of the cross (1 Cor 1:23) was sovereignly “hidden in God” (Eph 3:9) until its unveiling (Tit 3:4) after the resurrection. As an old covenant man, John must perish as a witness of Christ without the clear revelation of the substitutionary death of the Saviour (Heb 11:36-38). Not knowing where to listen, we are often as deaf as John and the early apostles to the implications of the all-completed work of Christ.
Hearing the Presence
The Lord speaks in unexpected ways in relation to his death. The testimony of Pilate’s wife comes to mind, “while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.” (Matt 27:19). Then closing the brackets around the story of the crucifixion, the Roman centurion prophesies, “Surely this was a righteous man/the Son of God”” (Luke 23:47, Mark 15:39). This remarkable prophetic vindication of the blamelessness of Jesus by Gentile sinners came prior to Christ’s resurrection (cf. Rom 1:4). The Spirit’s speaks in strange places. I recall a haunting song from my early teens (1965), “The Sound(s) of Silence”. These lines are prophetically unforgettable: “And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said, “The words of the prophets Are written on the subway walls And tenement halls And whispered in the sounds of silence.” Conservative Rabbi Chaim Potok (The Chosen) prophesies beyond his own personal comprehension: “you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own….You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn’t always talk. Sometimes – sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.” This speaks to us as Christians of the silence of the Lamb of God.
Hear the Silence of the Lamb
Infatuated with the roar of “the Lion” (6x in Revelation e.g. 5:5) contemporary Charismatic Christianity fails to be attuned to the silence of “the Lamb” (29x in Revelation e.g. 5:6). “When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” (Rev 8:1). The breaking of the seventh and climactic seal by the all-conquering Lamb of God signals the impending “finishing” of God’s wrath (Rev 15:1; John 19:30). We see in this consummation the End of all God’s terrible judgement on idolaters, and the fruit of Christ’s terrible cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). Here, once and for all time (Heb 9:26), the Word could not hear himself speaking in unity with the Father. Yet this silence anticipated an endless Victory (1 Cor 15:55). In Christ the Father heard all the stilled voices of the aborted, the abused and paralysed too traumatised to cry out to a distant God. In Christ God has drawn near through his hearing the “better word” (Heb 12:24) of the dying Lamb.
Conclusion
The suffering silence of the Lamb shared with his interceding saints (Isa 53:7; Rom 8:36) is pregnant with assurance of total final triumph (Isa 53:12; Hab 2:20 cf. Zeph 1:7; Zech 2:13; Rom 3:19.). This profound intimacy with the Lord is about to released upon us. The crashing of the “wave of glory” (https://world.prayerassembly.org/) will be widely audible (Hab 2:14)., but its hidden inner spiritual working will be everlasting. When the Church of Perth releases its authority inside the silence of heaven (Rev 8:4) the cries of all earth’s victims and impotent sinners will be prophetically heard by the Father. This must mean indescribable revival.