The Missing Book of the Bible

Years ago I bought a hefty paperback entitled "The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden." It included pseudepigraphal works like the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Lost Gospel of Peter. I found it fascinating.

When I first heard about the Dead Sea Scrolls, I immediately bought a copy. When the Gnostic library of Nag Hammadi, found in 1945 in Egypt, was finally published, I devoured it. In my first church in Illinois I even turned the Wednesday night prayer meeting into a study of the Old Testament Apocrypha, to the puzzlement of those good Midwestern Baptists.

People love spiritual mysteries. It accounts for the popularity of books like Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." The tenth chapter of Revelation mentions a missing book of the Bible. Up to this point the apostle John has been dutifully writing down all he has seen and heard during this visionary trip to heaven. He has recorded the words of the Seven Seals and the Seven Trumpets.

Now he sees an angel with a little book, the Book of the Seven Thunders. "When the Seven Thunders spoke, I started to write it all down, but a voice out of Heaven stopped me, saying, "Seal with silence the Seven Thunders; don't write a word." (Revelation 10:4) John was not allowed to reveal the contents of the Seven Thunders. But he is allowed to eat the book. (Rev. 10:10)

There is spiritual truth that can be apprehended but not recorded. There is truth that is sealed with silence. I am not talking about occult religion or Gnostic teaching. I am talking about intuition and communion. The Gospel is fundamentally about relationship with God. Relationships cannot be put into words, regardless of how much Hallmark tries.

The apostle Paul talks about an experience like John's Revelation experience. Paul says he was caught up into the third heaven; he did not know whether he was in the body or out of the body. "He was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." (2 Corinthians 12:4)

The Gospel involves a spiritual experience of God that cannot be encased in doctrine. When we try to speak of such things, out comes only paradox. It is "the exceeding grace of God in you.... His indescribable gift!" (2 Corinthians 9:14-15)

There is richness in sacred silence that can only be incarnated in our lives. We are His missing book. "You are an epistle of Christ ... written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart." (2 Corinthians 3:3)  

Atheists in Foxholes

I have been a pastor for thirty-three years and I have never seen a deathbed conversion. I have stood sentinel at a lot of deathbeds. I have had spiritual discussions with many critically ill people. I have invited dying patients to accept the life that Christ has to offer. But I have never seen a last hour conversion. I won't say they don't happen. I have heard and read stories of such accounts. But I have never witnessed them. It is my experience that people die the way they live.

Furthermore people live the way they die. They say there are no atheists in foxholes. Perhaps. But once the shooting stops, people leave their religion in the foxhole. Revelation 9:13-21 gives a symbolic picture of a great war in the Middle East involving two hundred million troops and weapons of mass destruction. It says that a third of humankind dies in this World War III. I will let the polyester preachers with their television prophecy programs fill you in on the details of the countries and dates. (Just realize they don't really have a clue either.) I am more interested in what happens after the war.

"The remaining men and women who weren't killed by these weapons went on their merry way-didn't change their way of life, didn't quit worshiping demons, didn't quit centering their lives around lumps of gold and silver and brass, hunks of stone and wood that couldn't see or hear or move. There wasn't a sign of a change of heart. They plunged right on in their murderous, occult, promiscuous, and thieving ways." (Rev. 9:20-21 - The Message)

People don't change. That is my experience. Extreme circumstances might temporarily bring about religious sentiment. People tend to be very reverent at funerals. But when things get back to normal, the heart returns to its sin.

One of the messages of the Book of Revelation is the hardness of the human heart. No amount of sounding trumpets wakes people up from their spiritual slumber. No amount of divine wrath poured from heavenly bowls turns people's hearts to God. The plagues of Egypt only hardened Pharaoh's heart. External circumstances do not change the soul.

The only hope is the inner work of God in the human heart. People don't change; God changes people. This is the mystery of salvation. This is the gift of Christ. This is the sealing of the Spirit. This is the grace of God.

Details in the Devil

I recently heard a debate between a Buddhist, a Christian and a Humanist. (No, this isn't a joke.) It was sponsored by the Veritas Forum and held at Columbia University. (Buddha, Man, and Jesus: Three Perspectives on Life.) The three intellectuals discussed a variety of religious topics, but the most heated discussion concerned hell. The Christian was scorned and attacked by the other two panelists for holding to the traditional New Testament doctrine of hell.

In chapter 9 of Revelation the abyss of hell opens its mouth and out comes a swarm of demonic creatures straight out of a horror film. (Revelation 9:1-11) They add an important element to Revelation - evil. Not some type of "natural evil" like natural catastrophes. Not the evil of the human soul. This is intentional conscious evil in the universe headed by an Evil One.

There is a spiritual darkness at loose in the world. These dark forces are important features of the Book of Revelation. Without these characters Revelation would be a boring and tepid affair. All good stories need a villain. In Revelation the devil and his minions play the evil roles. The archetypal battle between good and evil makes up the warp and woof of the book.

What are we to make of evil? There is no doubt that there is an abyss of evil in the human heart, a shadow side of the psyche that is often unacknowledged and projected onto our enemies.  We vilify and dehumanize others and thereby make them easier to imprison, torture and kill. After all, they are not fully "human" like we are. This accounts for Auschwitz and Abu Ghraib, slavery and abortion.

But there is more to evil than human depravity. To limit evil to human beings is just another form of anthropocentrism. There is evil in the heavens. It is no accident that evil is pictured as a fallen star; it comes from above. After all, the story of Lucifer says he was an angel in God's court before his fall.

The symbols of Revelation point to a reality that we deny at our own peril. As Van Helsing says in the 1931 Dracula film, "The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him." The same goes for the devil.

A Disaster Waiting to Happen

Let's face it. Revelation is a disaster. In fact, it is one disaster after another. It reads like one of those popular disaster movies about earthquakes, volcanoes, meteors, tsunamis, epidemics, or a new ice age. Revelation reads like a cosmic disaster film.

There's an earthquake, (8:5) "hail and fire mingled with blood," (8:7) a third of the living creatures of the sea dying, (8:9) a volcano polluting rivers and springs causing many humans to die (8:10-11) And that is just in six verses of Chapter 8! Wave after wave of divine and human violence fill the pages of Revelation. As much as Christians try to portray the book as one of hope, it is actually one disaster after another. ... mostly caused by the hand of God.

In the wake of the Haiti earthquake, there has been a lot of talk about God's role in natural catastrophes. Even news anchors could be heard asking, "Why did God allow this to happen?" There is no such theological hand-wringing in Revelation. God's angels blow trumpets of disaster and pour out bowls of divine wrath with no sense of remorse. My mother refused to read the Book of Revelation. It scared her to read about God doing such things.

The Hindus were wise enough to divide up divine responsibilities among their three supreme deities. They separate Brahma, the creator, and Vishnu, the preserver, from Shiva the destroyer. Shiva gets stuck with the job of doing all the bad stuff, which leaves the other deities' hands clean.

Christians don't have that neat type of compartmentalized God. We have one all-powerful and all-good God responsible for all of it. "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." (Isaiah 45:7) A truly omnipotent God is a big PR problem for Christians. How do we deal with the destructive and wrathful side of God so clearly portrayed in Revelation?

Most Christians try to defend God, explaining how somehow all bad things contribute to a greater good. (Romans 8:28) I too trust in the providence of God, but most attempts at theodicy (explaining evil by vindicating God) leave me cold. They always sound like rationalizations and platitudes. I prefer the answer of my son, who has been though some tough times in his life. He often reminds me, "Dad, it is what it is!"

Revelation is what it is. Nobody attempts to rationalize a painting or a symphony. It simply is. God is what he is. (Didn't he say that in the burning bush? "I am who I am.") As far as we are concerned, God says, "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10)

The world is a violent place, and it won't get any better as the end approaches. Jesus didn't sugarcoat it. He said there would be wars, famines, pestilences and earthquakes until the end ... and then it gets worse! (Matthew 24:6-7) Bad things happen, and ultimately the buck stops with God. He is big enough to take it. So I won't make excuses for God, and neither does Revelation. So sit back and read the greatest disaster script ever written.

Silence in Heaven

I saw the film "The Seventh Seal" by Ingmar Bergman long before I ever heard the passage about the seventh seal read in church. The Book of Revelation was not publicly read at the mainline congregation I attended as a child. It is strange to think I read words from Revelation in a Swedish film's subtitles before ever reading them from a Bible. During my freshman year of college, I sat in the dark auditorium where "art films" were shown on Friday nights, and watched a knight play chess with Death. The theme of the film was the silence of God in a world ravaged by death. I was in my "death of God" phase, and my young mind imagined the film filled with profound spiritual significance.

Revelation 8:1 says simply, "When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour." It is not until we read about this silence that we realize that up to that point Revelation has been filled with noise. If we were actually seeing this divine drama on a stage (as my seminary professor James Blevins said it was intended to be seen in his book "Revelation as Drama"), then we would have been bombarded with loud noises up to this point. Now suddenly the action stops, and there is a half hour of silence, mingled with incense as the silent prayers of God's people ascend to the throne of God (8:3-4).

My prayer life is mostly silence. I also pray with words. I intercede for those I know and love. But words normally come only after a half hour of silence. My "quiet time" is literally a time of silence during which I do nothing but listen to the Spirit. Truth be told, I try and listen to the Spirit. Mostly I listen to the incessant internal dialogue going on in my head.

Even after all these years of maintaining a discipline of contemplative prayer, my mind remains a hurricane of thoughts and feelings. That is actually how I picture my mental state. I visualize my uncontrolled mental gyrations as a whirlwind. Physical aches, people's faces, stray ideas, feelings, and insights whirl around my mind like the debris raised by the Kansas tornado in the Wizard of Oz.

In the midst of this mental storm I make my way gradually to the center. Usually after about twenty minutes I find myself in the eye of the storm. There in the center, I hear the silence of God. It is the silence Job heard in the whirlwind. It is the still small voice that Elijah heard on Horeb. It is the voice of God that Adam and Eve heard in the Garden of Eden. (I am told by those more knowledgeable in ancient languages than I am, that the Hebrew word for the "sound of the Lord" in the garden in Genesis 3:8 actually means a storm.)

The silence of God dwells in the depths of the human soul. It is the abode of the Holy Spirit who indwells my human spirit in the Holy of Holies of this earthly tabernacle of my body. It is a quiet and spacious garden, an interlude in the drama of my life. When I enter this interior garden, then for a half hour I hear the silence of heaven.

Hate the Hate. Love the Haters.

This morning I read a news account of the mass burials taking place in Haiti for the victims of the earthquake. They are numbered at 150,000. A huge number, but they can be counted. Yesterday I heard a message on abortion. Forty million children killed by abortion in our country. Terribly huge numbers ... but they could be counted. I read yesterday that nine million children die every year of malnutrition and easily preventable disease in the world. Over 25,000 each day. Can that be true? I can't get my mind around such numbers.

John saw "a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues." (Revelation 7:9) Who were they? We are told, "These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation." (7:14) In other words they are the victims of hate - persecution - religious violence. I have often heard that the number of Christians martyred in the twentieth century was more than all the previous centuries combined. And the twenty-first century is shaping up to be even worse. And Christians are not the only ones suffering. Baha'is are being persecuted in Iran. Tibetan Buddhists are persecuted in China.The hatred spewing from the extremist Muslims is itself the product of historic violence against Muslims. Hate gives birth to hate.

But we need look no further than the American culture wars to see hate. The rhetoric of the ruling party in Washington sounds like a hatefest. Am I the only one scared by the hatred in the eyes and the voices of the Democratic leaders in Washington? When did liberal Democrats become a hate group? But the Republicans are no better. Let's be honest - and objective - if such a thing is possible. Both parties hate. They just hate different people and groups for different reasons. "None are righteous, no not one," as the Bible says. Although there seems to be no shortage of self-righteousness! Right wing or left wing - they are both wings of the same bird of prey.

The only solution I know is to break with the hate and the haters, even if it means being the hated. Become a lover - lover of God, lover of enemies, lover of "all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues." Bless your enemy and do not curse (Luke 6:28; Romans 12:24) - no matter who they are and what the issue involved. Stop the hate. Stand with the Lamb who was slain. Hate killed Jesus. Only His love can stop it.

Singing On the Mountain

What is it about a mountain that brings us closer to God? In all the sacred literature of the world, the divine is apprehended on the mountaintop. In the Hebrew Bible there is Mount Moriah, Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb, Mount Hermon, and Mount Zion to name only a few. In the Christian scriptures there is the Mount of Transfiguration, the Mount of Olives, Mount Calvary, and the Sermon on the Mount. The Greeks have Olympus. The Tibetans have Mount Kailash, the Japanese have Mount Fuji. The Egyptians, Babylonians and Mayans built their pyramids and ziggurats to be archetypal mountains.

In Revelation we see the people of God - the symbolic 144,000 sealed by God - gathered on a mountain. There has been much speculation and argument about the identity of these "servants of God." They are clearly identified in Chapter 7 as Jews - whether literal descendants of Abraham or representative of the whole people of God is a matter of debate. But I am not interested in debating. I am interested in joining with them. The Book of Revelation does not stir me to speculation; it prompts me to inspiration.

Chapter 14 tells us they are gathered on Mount Zion, singing a "new song" in worship. Every year I make a pilgrimage to the mountains. For me the sacred peaks are the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I stand before Mount Chocorua or Mount Washington, I stand on the edge of the Great Gulf and sing a song to the Creator. Every time it is a new song. The ancient mountains never get old for me. "They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." (Lam. 3:23) The spaciousness of a mountain vista opens up the spaciousness of my soul.

Even though I go to the mountains, I also experience the same type of spaciousness in prayer. There is a tale that Muhammad once sought proof of his teachings by ordering a mountain to come to him. When it did not move, he maintained that God had been merciful, for if it had indeed moved they all would have been crushed by it. "If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain."

My experience is that when I can't go to the mountains, the mountains come to me. There is a spaciousness in my soul when I am "in the Spirit" in contemplative prayer. I experience a spiritual vista of the Holy Spirit. Looking into the depths of my human soul in the arms of God's Spirit is like peering across a vast canyon or gazing across the ocean. "There's a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea." Then with the apostle John, I hear the strains of the 144,000.