26. Using the Visions

I have a book on my shelf titled Mathematica Principia by Isaac Newton, written in the late 1600’s. You have spent many hours of your life studying out from this book, even though you had no idea that you were. If you took algebra or calculus in school, then you wrestled with understanding Newton’s formulas. From this book arose the modern age of engineering and technology, for without the practical application of Newton’s mathematical principles no modern device or structure could have been designed.

But Mathematica Principia was not Newton’s greatest work nor was it the consuming passion of his life. For through his later decades, Newton gave his brilliant mind to the deciphering of the layout of times set forth in Daniel and Revelation. You haven’t studied Newton’s incredible findings? Why not?

The answer to that last question is easy – because no one cares.

Why should I waste my time looking at Newton’s findings when I can figure out my own analysis of the times and seasons set forth by God and through which I can predict the future?

I have no doubt that there are thousands upon thousands of similar intellectual studies down through the centuries and especially in our world today. When I was still a teenager and not even walking with the Lord, I was still impacted by one such layout titled, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey.  Yet I can reasonably assume that in almost all of those studies, few discover the revelation of Jesus Christ through His church inside of John’s vision of the revelation of Jesus Christ. (Madame Guyon was one who did find Jesus revealed in Revelation.)

There is a simple reason for that. I could create a diagram, but you have seen this specific layout in diagram form many times. One circle is titled – Christ lives inside of my heart through faith. The other circle is titled – All other realms of knowledge ignorant of Jesus sustaining all.

You and I have one interest only – knowing the Jesus who lives in our hearts. And thus, we study everything inside of and out from that one primary absolute. That is not a small study, then, for everything in creation, including everything studied by science, is coming every moment out from the same Jesus who lives in our hearts.

Yet any study inside all the realms of knowledge that is not found inside of or coming out from the Jesus of our hearts is a study only in confusion that results only in death. You could study the sex life of beetles or how Daniel and Revelation give us the keys to predicting the future – same difference. Both are studies of confusion and neither one will take anyone out of death and into life.

What is my point? Simply this. God did not give us the Bible so that we could eat of the tree of knowledge, even though anyone who wants is perfectly free to do so. God gave us the Bible to eat of the tree of life, that means Jesus alive inside of our hearts through “Let it be to me.”

The problem is that most everyone who studies the Bible, and especially Daniel and Revelation, are studying it out from a series of deep underlying assumptions about every aspect of “reality,” assumptions they have never looked at or penciled out or questioned or considered. Yet those assumptions RULE how they read every word in their study.

Let me explain to you what I have done differently and why.

I shared with you regarding those terrifying hours in my youth when I saw the gates of the heavenly city barred against me seemingly forever. The image of that moment is almost as clear in my mind today as ever. I am not driven by any ungodly fear of such a thing nor have I ever, but I have been compelled in a godly fear by it all the course of my life.

In other words, out from that vision and out from the vulnerability of being an Asperger’s man and therefore of limited ability to fake my way through life, I have held the certainty inside of me that I cannot hear, “Depart from Me,” but I MUST hear, “Well done, My good and faithful son.” And thus – If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father and I will come to him and make Our home with him – became the only reality available for me.

It was at my lowest point of hopelessness in February of 1998, then, that God placed deep inside of my frame one of the most important RULING ASSUMPTIONS every one of us most hold as a bedrock reality of everything we think or do.

That ruling assumption is this – I CANNOT keep His word.

It’s settled. Making one more attempt is stupid. I cannot keep His word.

If I am to hear the only thing I can hear (for I cannot hear, “Depart from Me”), then Someone else must fulfill God’s requirements inside of me, whatever those might be, else I am lost, and that is not something I will have. I will not see Jesus revealed in glory from afar as if I did not care to be inside of Him.

As I began to understand the critical role of underlying base assumptions as they work inside every human soul, I determined that God would write His own base assumptions deep inside of me by my drinking into myself the core words of God at the center of the gospel and of His Covenant with me, that I would know only what God Himself actually says, and that I would know Jesus alive in me as the only meaning of what God speaks.

I have drunk into myself over the last twelve years, then, what I call “The Ten Most Important Verses in the Bible,” along with all their companion and supporting verses, so that the Spirit of God could write inside my heart HIS base assumptions of Christ all through my knowing. My Symmorphy texts contain more than 2000 pages of study, most of which is simply an endless repetition, at ever deeper levels and in increasingly further dimensions, of these ten “verses.” And I still am discovering in them things I had never seen before.

Yet through my many books, you will also see the same drinking and unfolding of the patterns of God intermingled with the verses of the gospel, so that we might know how everything of God through us actually fits together.

Why have I done this? I have done it and will continue because I want a different set of ruling assumptions and a different arrangement of ideas to be written inside my knowing, different from those obviously false assumptions and false arrangements held by almost all, assumptions and patterns that brought me only to utter hopelessness.

Again, what is my point?

In these two letters I want to “speculate” concerning the layout of the elements of Revelation, bringing in a little bit from Daniel, etc. I want to piece together all these different facets of numberings and events and give comments on how I presently understand these things. Some of those comments will simply be that I have no understanding – but then, I also assume this, that if I have no understanding, neither does anyone else, no matter how strongly they pretend they do.

And I am doing this for one reason only – so that we can understand our part of what Jesus is doing through us His church in these last days, that is, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Please understand that, even though I am a human and a writer, one who is tinged with ambition and vanity, I have not written this vast panorama to show that “I have figured this thing out.” I have written only because I want to live. And since Jesus said that LIFE is knowing God through knowing Jesus Sent into my heart as every Word God speaks, then, by gum, I must have my Bible become my heart by faith and by writing.

The first thing we must understand about Revelation is that it is a confused mess. This is part of the temptation offered to all the “brilliant” minds through the centuries – “I will be the one to ‘figure out’ this confusion.”

But against that understanding we place this – as we look at what is coming upon all human society through advanced technology and the determination of the wicked people who control things in this world, all doubt must be set aside – we are in the last part of the last days of this present age. It’s not coming; we are in it.

And through me runs a deep excitement, for God is handing us an enormous task; we get to construct the wall of protection surrounding His Church through this time. Indeed, we are that wall, and the fierceness of the heart of Jesus is arising as the determination of our own hearts.

We are as Nehemiah, with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. This is the very thing God made us for. Building a house is my stock-in-trade.

All right! Enough rambling. I must get on with my more orderly speculations. And, in fact, I will go back and forth between making use of the patterns and making use of the visions without any attempt to devise a fully sensible layout. And we are making use of both patterns and visions for one purpose only, and that is so that the Spirit of God might make known to us at ever deeper levels and in ever further directions, the revelation of Jesus Christ out from our hearts and the outflow of rivers of living water.

I want to start with an ordered layout of Revelation. This will enable us to see the flow of the various parts as they are found in the text. One of our purposes in looking at this layout is to see that there is no relationship between events in time and the flow of chapters and verses in John’s vision. This is a vision, not a history; it is governed by the clear Bible rules of interpreting visions, and not by the rules of knowing history.

This is important. God has set out in His word a clear set of rules for how we are to understand and interpret visions, and those rules are very different from the normal rules of thinking by which we talk about and understand history. Part of the confusion with John’s vision is that God’s clearly set-forth rules of interpreting visions are completely ignored.

And here is the ruling verse over how we are to interpret every murky symbol or metaphor, vision or dream found in the Bible. – It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing; the words that I speak to you ARE Spirit and they ARE Life (John 6:63).

An Ordered Layout of Revelation

1:1-8	1:9-20	2:1-7	2:8-11	2:12-17	2:18-29
Establishing the One being revealed.	Placing the revelation of Christ into the Church.	Hearing the eating of Life.	Hearing no separation from Father.	Hearing the intimate knowing of Jesus.	Hearing the authority of Christ through us.

 

3:1-6	3:7-13	3:14-22	4:1-11	5:1-6	5:8-14
Hearing being clothed with Christ in the Holiest.	Hearing the name of Father as our identity.	Hearing sharing heart with God as His Mercy.	Seeing the authority of the One who lives in our hearts.	Introducing the writing of Christ to be opened.	Introducing the Lamb who opens our hearts.

 

6:1-8	6:9-17	7:1-8	7:9-17	8:1	8:2-6
Breaking demon seals 1-4 from off the Church.	Breaking demon seals 5-6 from off the Church.	Sealing our minds into God.	Seeing the joy of those entering into Christ.	Breaking demon seal 7 from off the Church.	Introducing the seven trumpets.

 

8:7-13	9:1-12	9:13-21	10:1-7	10:8-11	11:1-6
Getting people’s attention; trumpets 1-4.	Getting people’s attention: trumpet 5.	Getting people’s attention; trumpet 6.	Hearing that the time is now, today.	Sharing judgment with God.	Moving in the authority given to us.

 

11:7:14	11:15-19	12:1-6	12:7-12	12:13-17	13:1-8
Laying down our lives for the sake of our brethren.	Getting our attention; the last trumpet.	Fulfilling God’s pattern of LIFE.	Fulfilling God’s pattern of trial and verdict.	Fulfilling God’s patterns of redemption and salvation.	Seeing the force of all human rule.

 

13:9-18	14:1-5	14:6-13	14:14-20	15:1-4	15:5-8
Seeing the force of all religious imagination.	Seeing our standing in full symmorphy with Christ.	Contending with the contention of God.	Reaping the two harvests of the earth.	Singing the Song of the Lamb.	Preparing for the elimination of human rule.

 

16:1-21	17:1-6	17:7-18	18:1-8	18:9-20	18:21-24
Pouring out the vials that end Adam’s rebellion.	Marveling at that out from which we are delivered.	Hearing our victory over religious and human rule.	Hearing the judgment of Nicene Christianity.	Rejoicing over the end of all that opposes.	Knowing that all are rescued out of falseness.

 

19:1-10	19:11-16	19:17-21	20:1-3	20:4-10	20:11-15
Hearing our full union with Christ.	Knowing Jesus as He is through us.	Finishing the judgment of Adam.	Finishing the judgment of the serpent.	Judging the Age of Tabernacles.	Judging hades and death.

 

21:1-8	21:9-21	21:22-27	22:1-5	22:6-11	22:12-21
Declaring all things new; God among us.	Describing God among us.	Setting forth God among us.	Placing the river of Life.	Placing the integrity of every Word God speaks.	Placing the Church as the water of life.

AnOrderedLayoutofRevelation.pdf

Okay. This came out quite differently than what I thought I was going to do. You see, my purpose was to try to place all the dark things in the order of their utterance. Instead, I have placed the darkness into the light and somehow, it seems to have vanished away.

Here is what just happened. As I began this layout, I started with a participle (establishing), an ongoing action in which you and I are involved. As I proceeded into the seven overcomings, I realized that these things are given to us to see and to hear, to stand and to judge all things together with the Lord Jesus.

So, when I got to the trumpets, my pattern was already set: how could I break it? But by the time I had finished, I could see that we now have a way to place everything in John’s vision fully into all the victory and revelation of Christ.

Who would have thought? – To find the revelation of Christ in the Revelation of Christ! Quite a remarkable idea. (I trust you understand I am being silly in pointing out the utter folly of looking all through the Revelation of Jesus Christ and finding everything but the revelation of Christ in all victory.)

Okay, here is the temptation and the confusion offered to all who try to “figure out” Daniel and Revelation. (And yes, I did take a course on “Daniel and Revelation” when I was in college at Blueberry, taught by one of the apostolic ministries in the move fellowship. You may or may not be surprised to know that what was taught in that course was very much in line with what I teach now, all except for the ignorance of our precious union with Christ. In fact, the brother who taught that course has read a number of my books and used from them in his present sermons.)

Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: his number is 666 (Revelation 13:18).

I have said that God does not play games. When it comes to integrity, that statement is true, but when it comes to those who prefer to twist what God says, according to David, God is more than willing to twist right back concerning them.

Revelation 13:18 is just such a twist, as Solomon says, God catches the wicked in their own foolishness.

Who is the one that is encouraged by God to “calculate” the number of the beast? Why – it’s those who have wisdom and understanding! And so God catches the foolish in His trap.

Here are the words of one of the wisest of all humans in history, wiser even than Solomon, from Proverbs 30. – Surely, I am more stupid than any man, and do not have the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom nor have knowledge of the Holy One. Who has ascended into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son’s name, if you know?

But look at all the Christians down through the centuries who are “smarter” than Agur, including Isaac Newton. They will figure this thing out! – But – anyone who calculates the number of the beast has set themselves forth as idiots, and thus not qualified to “figure it out.” But that obvious fact does not slow them down.

Here is that same verse in the Jesus Secret Version, however. – Here is wisdom. The one having understanding, let him count the number of the beast; for it is humanity’s number, and the number of it is six hundred sixty-six.

Because we like Agur, we’ll stay with his measured ignorance. Nonetheless, it is not wrong to see the meaning of the number as 6 representing man and 666 representing man as a “god” in himself, but ONLY out from God’s definition of man set in contrast to the serpent’s definition of man and “god” in the garden.

What I mean to say is this. It would not be wrong for us to understand this beast, its number and its name as referring to the union between Adam’s unthankfulness and the serpent’s accusation, a false union that places man as the source of his own false story, for the purpose of superiority and contempt, for dominating all these other stupid humans beneath of “me.”

It would not be wrong for us to understand this number and this name as that force in human affairs that compels everyone to speak the story given to them by a world of unthankfulness and accusation.

Here, then, is the great puzzle of the count of specific years.

John’s vision says that the time of slander against God in victory over the Church is 42 months, but Daniel calls it “a time, times, and half a time” (usually seen as meaning 3 ½ years). Then Daniel speaks of a “week” of seven days (usually seen as seven years), a “week” separated into two parts by the final sacrifice that ends all sacrifices (“It is finished.”).

Thus, we see that Jesus’ ministry was 3 ½ years in length, which could lead us to surmise that the finishing of that same ministry through us would be 3 ½ years as well, completing Daniel’s week of “seven years.” But Daniel also gives a very cryptic “one thousand two hundred and ninety days” followed by an even more cryptic, “one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.”

Meanwhile, Jesus, in Matthew 24, throws all kinds of monkey wrenches into everyone’s careful calculations. Here is Jesus’ biggest monkey wrench, verses 21-22 in the New King James. – For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.

Finally, in John’s vision we are given the 42 months of slander against Christ and the Church, which is, of course, 3 ½ years. Then the ministry of the second witness of Christ is called “one thousand two hundred and sixty days,” stated like Daniel’s final numbers, but not the same number. The woman also is provided for over a period of “one thousand two hundred and sixty days,” also 3 ½ years. But later, John says that she is nourished for “a time, times, and half a time, away from the face of the serpent,” 3 ½ years, yes, and stated the same as one of Daniel’s many cryptic accounts of times.

You can see the great and busy task given to all those “wise” people who understand exactly how they are quite able to figure God out. Inside of knowing well all the details of these accounts, I can honestly say that I really have no idea what on earth God means by these things.

Except I will say this. We do NOT then attempt to force a contrived time period onto a series of “events” at the end of this age. None of these things have any meaning EXCEPT out from the fulfillment of Paul’s gospel of our symmorphy with Christ now in the fullness of times as God proves Jesus faithful and true through us.

More than that, these “time periods” as well as the ordering of seals, trumpets, and vials, are elements in a series of visions, they are not to be structured as consecutive “events in time.” That doesn’t mean that there will not be consecutive events in time. It just means that our purpose is to know Christ revealed through us. Then, when the events do happen, we will see and we will say, “This is that spoken by God in these visions of Christ revealed.”