“After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.“
Revelation 4:1-2
–
Can you imagine if a door opened before you….to heaven?
As we saw yesterday, the words “Revelation” and “Apocalypse” mean “unveiling”; these ancient genres used garish symbolism to compare the unjust powers ruling the world with the just and compassionate power of the King of Kings.
Sure enough, this week’s chapter uses incredibly strange and bizarre symbolism. But what is being unveiled in this chapter is heaven.
We typically use the word heaven to describe the place where we will live with God after we die. But this is not actually how the Bible uses the word. In the Bible, heaven is a very real but transcendent place where God is enthroned. The first readers of the Bible viewed the earth as flat, and it made sense that this real-yet-not-approachable place that shone like the sun would be up there somewhere. And so, the same word used to describe what we now call “space” (“the heavens”) was used to describe this otherworldly place humans could never travel to.
In other words, heaven is God’s throne-room. (And it isn’t really in the sky.)
God’s intention in the Bible is always for humans and all creation to live on earth with God—that was His original design, and His ongoing redemptive plan. Eden, the Tabernacle, the Temple, and Jesus’ own body were places where humans and God could meet in unmitigated communion, in the meantime. But God’s plan all along was to redeem this world so that it could be a place where all creation dwelled with God: the world made new. The biblical writers spoke of a time when God’s good earth would finally be again a place where God and Creation could live fully embodied together—as God always intended.
So while we wholeheartedly believe that God is here and has always been here and will always be here there is a place we also believe transcends this earth, a place where God is enthroned fully right now—as He has always been and will always be.
That place is called heaven, and John is going to “unveil” a glimpse of it to his readers in this chapter.
Questions for reflection and discussion:
- How do you use the word “heaven”?
- How do you imagine God’s throne-room?
- What do you dream of in the world made new God is making?
Church Reading Plan: Isaiah 5; Hebrews 12