1. Placing John's Vision
Audio OnlySeeing visions is and ought to be a normal experience among all Christian assemblies. Not seeking the gifts and attributes of the Spirit, with confidence, is quenching the Spirit; thus the absence of visions is immaturity as Hebrews defines it.
Visions and prophecies are common in the Bible from beginning to end; they are normal expressions of the Spirit. A study of their use in Scripture gives us specific and clear instructions on how visions are to be interpreted. John’s vision is no different than Peter’s vision of unclean animals, for instance, and is interpreted in the same ways.
To Place. Yet of all books of the Bible, Revelation has been used for evil in the church in this world more than any other. C.J. Sansom, in his novel, Revelation, set in Reformation England, suggested that it would be better for humanity if it had never been written. From the historical story and perspective he presents, he is completely correct.
This lesson is the first of three introducing the book of Revelation before we begin the Jesus Secret pages, “Placing, Interpreting, and Applying John’s Vision.” My use of the word “to place” means to set out what a thing is and where it fits in the overall.
Studying Revelation. Through the years of my life, I have studied Revelation more than any other book in the Bible. Being able to teach “The Apocalypse” was always one of the larger dreams I have carried. Through Eyes of Fire was my first attempt to explore Revelation inside the present word of Christ our life. That exercise brought many important pieces of understanding to me, yet it was quite incomplete. The River of Life was partly a study of Revelation, a study which brought to us the primary way we are now looking at this book, and that is placing Paul’s gospel as the RULE over everything.
A Weaving Together. I started this lesson in September, weeks before this present beginning of study, because I was too excited to wait. And before I started this lesson, I laid out the entire study, most every lesson, and I put into InDesign all the Jesus Secret pages with their titles even before doing the final JSV. As I did that, turning the topics of Revelation into statements of faith as Christ speaking as us, and out from our wondrous study of John’s gospel and letters, a gospel of LIFE, I saw a weaving together of such glory and wonder.
The first part of “placing” John’s vision, then, is what is this book for, why did God place it into our hands?
For the Sons of God. Through the forty-five years since I first heard Sam Fife preach, I have never found a reason to see this book as anything other than what he taught. Revelation is in our Bibles FOR the sons of God at the completion of the age, that we might understand what God is doing through us, the revelation of Jesus Christ into our world. Revelation is NOT in our Bibles as a playground for every carnal “Tom, Dick, and Harry coming down the pike.”
We must contrast these two “uses” of Revelation at times, but I will not sidetrack this study into “exposing the false.”
The Two Trees. The two trees in the garden are found in Revelation 2, the Tree of Life and the tree of death, to eat of the first and to never know the other again, that is, death. These are the two gospels, and they are the two ways of interpreting and applying this vision, or series of visions.
Those who eat of the tree of death cannot see anything of LIFE in John’s vision. We who have passed through the wonder of John’s gospel of LIFE will see no death in his vision. Whenever we see Jesus, regardless of how others see Him, we know only that we are inside of Him, seeing through His eyes, and that He speaks His Word through us.
Place Upon – Take Away. I want to trace very briefly the death interpretation of Revelation, ideas which we all know very well.
But first consider this line. – I testify to everyone hearing the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone should place upon these things, God will place upon him the blows of affliction having been written inside of this book. And if anyone should take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and out of the holy city, of those having been written inside of this book (Revelation 22:18-19).
Even as I laid out this study, I saw what John really meant. Place DEATH upon – take LIFE away, that is, Paul’s gospel.
Confidence in Christ. Let’s read it again. – If anyone should place [death] upon these things, God will place upon him the blows of affliction… And if anyone should take [life] away… God will take away his part from the tree of life… Now let’s paraphrase the seventh RULING verse of the Bible. – “Those who are confident that they possess LIFE, possess life, but those who wiffle-waffle cannot please God.”
Consider these two lines. – (1) “Christ lives inside of your heart through faith,” and (2) “I saw a throne and One who sat upon the throne.” Those who hold the first above all place themselves inside a devoted God; those who hold the second against the first treat with God as contempt.
A Gospel of Life. For over 65 years, two generations of Christians lived with no knowledge of John’s vision. John wrote it and sent it into the Church during the greatest decade of persecution and martyrdom for Christians up until then.
Yet John wrote and sent out his gospel and his explanations of that gospel before he ever saw the vision. That gospel was a gospel of LIFE, confirming Paul’s gospel in every way. And the first thing John saw was Jesus revealed in His Church, giving us to eat of the Tree of Life, that is, of John 14:20, that is, of Himself.
Slowly, Bit by Bit. Yet we know from history that the Church did not hear or see Paul’s gospel confirmed by John. In the end, the only gospel they knew was the one first preached by Peter, that Jesus did something wonderful for us. Christian leaders were now being killed all across the earth; the Church was reeling under the bitter blows of death. Slowly, bit by bit, mostly among the Latin Christians rather than the Greek, through the AD 100’s and into the 200’s, two ruling doctrines based upon a faraway Jesus took the place of the gospel in the minds of Christians. Those were the theological doctrines of sin and death.
Exalting Sin and Death. Sin in the flesh meant that Christians everywhere exalted the flesh into the “great enemy,” placing it high upon a pedestal, and making controlling the flesh to be the primary task of Christian ministry. And death became the only way to “Life,” to “heaven” after you die. Death became the Christian’s friend, the one who would take them to this faraway Jesus.
But death does not enter as savior into Christian thinking without its companion, hades, following close behind. By the early AD 200’s, the pagan exaltation of the eternal triumph of hell fire, out from a God who “knows evil,” had entered the Church through the Latin theologians.
A River of Death. Here is the point. Within 100 years after John wrote his vision, out from his own obsession with a gospel of LIFE inside of Jesus, that vision in it’s symbolic, outward appearance had replaced Paul’s Gospel and John’s Tree of Life in Christian thinking.
From Damasus I and Jerome in the late AD 300’s, a great darkness, flowing out of the carnal abuse of John’s vision, came upon all Christian thought, blocking out the Tree of Life such that no one could even see the words of John 14:20 in their Bibles, nor any of the ruling verses of the Gospel. The source of this darkness is always contempt for other Christians, that is, contempt for God. Now I learn that the doctrine of “The Antichrist” was invented by Jerome.
Eternal Good inside of Death. It is John’s vision primarily that allows Nicene Christians to strike down any attempt to suggest Paul’s gospel. Yet it is not eternal evil “out from God” that is the great enemy of Christ our life in the minds of our fellow believers, but rather, the eternal “good” which they have placed inside of death. “Go to heaven, after you die” always casts to the ground a Jesus here and now, a Jesus who fills the Church with all that He is in all completion, a Jesus who is our LIFE.
What disturbed C.J. Sansom about John’s Revelation in Reformation England? – The fervent glee with which Christians used its words to kill one another.
A Ruling Verse. Here is the ruling verse from John’s vision in Nicene thinking – from the KJV. (And by “ruling” I do not mean consciously “thought about,” but rather, deep underneath, often not recognized, though it directs every thought.”)
The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night… (Revelation 14:10-11). – “Aonios aonios,” a strange Greek idiom used only this once.
A Veil, Heresy, and Deceit. One final piece of understanding before we turn back to the only place we live, kept utterly inside the Tree of Life.
I realize now that God deliberately drew a veil over the Tree of Life in John’s gospel, so that no one could even see it, no matter how often they read the words. Paul’s gospel did not fare as well, however. Rather, the key verses of Paul’s gospel became the great “heresy” verses. – “If you believe that, you are a deceiver going to hell.” But they dealt with the power of the writer of Hebrews differently. They dealt with Hebrews by deliberately mistranslating the words.
God’s Rule. We have looked at the evil “place” into which Nicene Christianity has taken John’s vision; let’s look again at God’s place for it. Here is God’s rule. – First, apostles, secondarily, prophets (1 Corinthians 12).
Paul and John served God first as apostles, but they both also filled a role as prophets, and Paul, even as a teacher separate from his apostolic knowing. Living Spirit Word flows into God’s Church through the ministry of the apostolic, then the prophetic ministry comes under that Word to confirm it.
Apostolic over Prophetic. Visions are given to confirm an apostolic word; never, never, never do they rule over it. Paul’s Gospel, flowing out of his apostolic anointing, and separate from all the other stuff he wrote, rules all the Bible.
John placed his gospel as an apostolic word alongside of Paul’s, not as a “copy,” but as a true second witness. But John’s vision is entirely a prophetic word. That means that it MUST be placed under John’s gospel of Life, given to us for one reason only, to better understand the implications, meaning, and fulfillment of LIFE. You cannot know John’s vision without knowing John’s gospel first.
The Veil Removed. When I think about my knowing of John’s gospel, I see two distinct time periods in that knowing, pre-“Studies in John” and post-“Studies in John.” During my pre-“Studies in John” life, I saw many good and wondrous things in his gospel and letters. Yet during “Studies in John,” God removed the last remnants of the veil from off our eyes, and now, post-“Studies in John,” we cannot comprehend how anyone fails to see the clarity and POWER of LIFE written through every single verse! More than that, my idea that John’s letters give us the needed definitions for John’s vision is proven wondrously true.
Placing Revelation 12. In every part of John’s vision, we will come first out from John’s gospel of life, through John’s definitions, and into an expansion of those truths into fulfillment on this earth.
Revelation is a view of Paul’s gospel confirmed by John fulfilled upon this earth inside this present age. Thus we see that Revelation 12 is a companion chapter to Romans 8 all the way through. Yet Revelation 12 also comes out from John 1:12, John 3:3 & 5, John 14:20, John 17:3, and John 19:34, yet it stands alongside of John 7:37-39 in power and victory upon this earth. Then, everything else in John’s vision serves only to enable us to know the meaning and impact of Revelation 12.
God’s Central Metaphor. And what is the CENTRAL metaphor of God in the Bible, in creation, and in all fulfillment of Word? A woman, the Church today, clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ, bringing forth the knowledge of God into all creation through her great travail.
And anyone alive who cares about God cares about one thing only. They care about this Church, that she would have all that she needs, protection and provision, for she alone can bring LIFE into creation. We are as Nehemiah upon the wall – PROTECT the Church, and PREPARE a place for her.
The Altar of God. And so, if you are entering into this study of John’s vision with me, then you are entering into the action of the meaning of your life, and of the passion and fire of your heart. You are entering with me into a commitment to Father’s heart alone, with no thought towards any lesser purpose.
You are placing yourself with me upon the altar of God, whatever the cost, that AUTHORITY might flow through our words, and travail through our days and nights, that Christians all across the earth would be PROTECTED from the beast and the dragon and would rush into the fulfillment of Tabernacles now rising upon this earth.
A Sword and a Trowel. From beginning to end, we will use this study of Revelation as the sword in one hand, striking down all enemies of God’s people by the power of the Spirit. And we will use this study of Revelation as the trowel in the other hand, building a wall of protection and fields of provision where God’s people can dwell.
God needs us. He needs the authority of our mouth in full confidence of faith through which He can enter freely into our world. This is what we will give Him, our voices, and we will not shrink away from any cost pressing against us.
Source and Completion. Another important point in placing Revelation is seeing it as completion. Genesis is God’s beginnings, and those things begun in Genesis are brought to completion in Revelation. At the same time, those things of Moses pointing to the Life of the Gospel are also brought to completion in Revelation, specifically God’s organizational patterns of the Tabernacle, the Feasts, and the journey of Israel.
More than that, we have seen how John’s gospel presents to us the SOURCE of Life; we will now see how John’s vision brings us to the Completion of Life. I am the A and the Z, the Source and the Completion.
In Such Confidence. Then we remember that God likes flipping Source and Completion. Sometimes He presents them as we would think, Source first and Completion last. But in the Ruling Verse, God places Completion first, as our active role in bringing forth a universe of Life – synergeoing with God turning all things good. And God places Source last, – already justified, already glorified, already Complete, right from the start.
This is how we can move forward in such confidence in God, for we synergeo with Him in the Completion of this age, coming out from all things already Complete.
A Guide-Book Forward. John’s vision is a guide-book, a manual, for us as sons of God, synergeoing with God in the bringing forth of the Age of Tabernacles out from our bellies and in the completion of the fulness of purpose for the age of human folly.
Of truth, I think that Satan has worked his greatest strategies in the in-part Church age, and sent forth his most conniving agents, to strip from the hands of the Church this critical road map of his defeat and removal. His greatest strategy is to strip the gospel from Revelation, and reattach it to the old covenant of death. Then he convinces Christians that this practice of taking Life away and placing Death upon is really what God requires.
The Veil Is Stripped Away. Before closing out this lesson, I want to re-iterate these introductory sessions prior to beginning with Revelation 1. In this lesson, we have placed John’s vision into its place in our lives in three or four different ways. We now know where it fits and how it must fulfill its meaning.
In the next lesson, interpreting the vision, we will create a list of God’s rules for interpreting a vision with explanations and examples of each rule. God’s instructions are explicit and clear. Yet God Himself placed a veil over the Tree of Life that those eating of death cannot see it. Paul said that the veil is stripped away from those who see, hear, and speak Christ alone.
Springs of Living Water. The third introductory lesson is titled “Applying John’s Vision.” We will use that to further explain Revelation 12 and its relationship to the whole. We will also introduce the radical approach we will take in speaking Christ our Life. Then, before we start Revelation Chapter 1, with “We Are the Apocalypse,” we will return to Studies in John’s Letters for a final lesson, “John’s Definitions for the Vision.”
One final note. – I have 2 + pages in The Jesus Secret II into which I will insert these three lessons. I have not tried to write any of that, thus no red print. I will write those pages as I always do, out from the springing up of living water in that moment, but I will also draw much from these lessons.
Reading for Next Time. Again, for this introduction to John’s vision, continue reading in the JSV, Chapters 8–15. Your purposes are the same as before, to refresh your memory of what the vision actually says, to note any differences between the JSV and how you have known these words before, and to gain an overview of the book as a whole before we start piece by piece.
A woman enclothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a garland of victory, of twelve stars. And having a child in her womb, she screams, being in travail and tortured to bring to birth (rough JSV).
Let’s Pray Together. Once we begin Chapter 1 of Revelation, our prayers will be “protect the church” and “provide her a place,” back and forth, that is, cast down the accuser for her sake and then send forth the River of Tabernacles into her experience. But in these introductory lessons, let’s place ourselves, by the words of our mouth, into the commitment expressed in this lesson, into the altar of God, into the passion of Jesus, into an absolute – God through us as He pleases.
Let’s go for broke, for there is no other way to go.
“God, our Father, look upon us here inside of Your presence, for we belong utterly to You alone.
“Father, we desire to share Your Heart. Cause us to know the depth of Your love for Your Church, for Your people scattered all across the earth, all who belong to Jesus. We believe that You gave us the book of Revelation so that we might know how to pray for Your people even as the Age of Tabernacles swallows up all the darkness of this world.
“Father, anoint us by Your Spirit that we might know Your meaning and determination, that Your Word might be glorified through us. Complete the preparation of our hearts shared with You, that we might be a wide-open doorway for You into Your Church and into our world. Be God through us for Your people’s sake. Let it be so; it is so.”