7pm this Wednesday, we’ll be discussing chapters 14-16 of Revelation.
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Last week we discussed chapter 13 and looked at the two beast which the dragon raises out of the land and the sea. We spent a bit of time discussing all of the various imitations these creatures and their actions have in relation to the true trinity and to Christ (father, son, spirit – dragon, beast, prophet; christ rising from the dead – the beast’s seemingly “mortal” wound; etc.) We also spent some time on the beast’s mark that he imprints on all his followers and how there seem to be some clear lines being made between the followers of Christ and those of the beast. A great point that Keith brought up was the seeming ease and lack of questioning the masses undertook before following the beast and applied it to contemporary culture; the beast is pretty powerful and cool, seems to be able to do a lot, how could it be bad? Satan (the dragon/beasts) seems to do a very good job of being quite deceitful, we’d do well to heed the warnings toward perseverance and not be deceived by seemingly innocent, harmless, and “good and powerful” things that can easily distract us from true worship directed toward the true God.
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This week as we go through the next three chapters we’ll be reintroduced to the 14400, have three angels finish up the “symbolic histories” section, do some harvesting, and go through the seven plagues/seven bowls.
We see the aspect of “marking” once again this time with Christ’s followers being marked – what have we discussed so far as the importance of these markings and how would this have any implication on our current lives? The saints also proceed to sing a song which only they can learn, because they are pure/virgins – what does the concept of sexual purity have to do with these saints and with the song they sing?
The harvest metaphors are a pretty powerful story, based on what you know about harvests and based on other portions of scripture that use harvest stories, what’s going on here?
This week’s section has a lot of singing and praising God for his just wrath against evil, we are often very quick to praise God for all his good blessings and provisions, but as a culture we don’t usually praise God as a just, holy, and wrathful ruler. Why can these characters in Revelation bust out some powerful and heartfelt praise for the horrible calamities poured out upon evil and what can we learn and apply from these praises to our own life and culture?
We finish up our time with the seven bowls of God’s wrath – in many ways these are similar to the trumpets we’ve already seen (or heard if you will) but what ways are the different? How does this progress the narrative of Revelation toward completion?
