Up to the bridles?

I've been talking about Darrell W. Johnson's Discipleship on the Edge for some time now. It's a wonderful book, and I begin to suspect that it has reinvigorated my own sense of mission and purpose. Johnson uses the Revelation to John as his blueprint for understanding our times, and the role of a disciple--a follower of Jesus--in these times.

I had never thought of Revelation as a disciple-training and encouragement document. Although I have read Revelation often, until now I have never loved it. And to tell you the truth, some of its passages have seemed quite awful to me. One such passage is in chapter 14, where the blood is up to "the horses' bridles" the length and breadth of Israel. Johnson's treatment of that imagery, which follows in the footsteps of George Caird and F. F. Bruce, was eye-opening for me. And wonderful.  This is not a gruesome image of the blood of unrepentant sinners (one common interpretation), but a symbolic image of the the great extent of the salvific value of the blood of Jesus.

Last year I left a church I had been attending for ten years, and since then I've started attending an Acts 29 church. It's a good church, I have no complaints, but for reasons of my own I have not exactly gotten plugged in yet. You might say I'm in the wilderness. But Johnson's book has been  extremely helpful to me. He shows me that Revelation is a picture of our times and all times, and a delineation of what is at stake. At the end of his discussion of Revelation 14, he allows the imagery to lead him into four "re-evaluations":

1. Decisions about who or what one shall worship have consequences.
2. There is a remedy for wrong decisions.
3. Why be driven by that which is fallen?  Why try to keep pace with that which is collapsing?  Here he references 1 John 2:15-17
4. "Our role in the world is to join the angels in announcing the gospel.  To keep taking whatever flack we get and keep on announcing 'the hour has come.'  'Babylon is always falling.'  'Worship the living God.'  'There is blood enough for the whole world.' " 

Death has lost its dominion!

From Discipleship on the Edge: An Expository Journey through the Book of Revelation (p. 47-8):

"He laid his right hand on me, saying 'Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and look! I am alive forever and ever, and I have the keys to death and Hades'"(Rev. 1:17-18). Literally Jesus says, "Stop being afraid." Why? Because Jesus Christ has walked into the gaping jaws of the greatest enemy there is. On the cross he let all the powers that threaten to undo us have their unrestrained way with him. He let death take him captive. And then he burst out of the prison and carried away the prison keys!

... Jesus Christ has stolen the weapon of fear. Fear is a powerful force. Fear can keep us from doing what is right; and it can make us do what we know is wrong. All fear is firmly rooted in the fear of death. The fear of criticism, the fear of rejection, the fear of financial loss, the fear of pain--they are all, at rock bottom, the fear of death.

Let the imagery grab you! "I have the keys of death!" No one else has them. "I am alive . . . and I have the keys!"

Saturday Book Notes

I know I've come across Darrell W. Johnson's name from time to time, but it was this video that made me sit up and take notice:



So anyway, I looked up some of his books and was really taken by Discipleship on the Edge. It is a collection of thirty expository sermons on the Book of Revelation, and it is like no other book on that subject I've ever heard about.

I'm going to read this book very slowly and carefully over the next few months, sharing passages here from time to time. There's a very nice 9-page summary of the book here (pdf). For my first quote, the following comes from very early in the preface, as Johnson summarized why it it that if he could choose only one book of the Bible to read for the rest of his life, it would be the Revelation.

[I]n no other book of the Bible do we see Jesus as clearly and compellingly as we do in the last book. That is quite a statement coming from someone who has spent all of his adult life soaking in the Gospel of John! Yet I am convinced that no other book helps us see Jesus as he is right now as clearly and compellingly as the last book John wrote. No other book helps us see Jesus relative to the movement of history the way the last book does. No other book helps us see Jesus relative to "the powers" at work in our time the way the last book does. No other book helps us see him in a way that overcomes our fear and frees us for radical faith.

"You know you're reading the Revelation rightly if in the end you find yourself at the feet of Jesus Christ."