"The Future Belongs to God"

Preached by John DeBevoise
At Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church
 On December 31, 2000

And war broke out in heaven;  Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.  The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.  The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
                    Revelation 12:7-9

I think that we’re equal amongst interpreters here because a major foundation of the Protestant tradition is that you are equal interpreters of the Bible, and that you even have this responsibility to be interpreters of the Scripture yourselves, and to be reading it and studying it and deciding for yourselves what it means in your own lives.  But I think, as one interpreter amongst many here, that this book Revelation is a kind of poetry.  That’s what I think. 

When I get up on Saturday mornings and wander into the kitchen to make waffles, I always have to use a recipe.  I’ve been making waffles for twenty-one years, and I cannot remember it one Saturday to the next.  I have to use a recipe. It’s a kind of writing.

Or, when the architect meets with the construction team here to look at the new building and to talk about changes they are making, they use blueprints.  A particular kind of writing.

But if I want to talk about love, that mystery of the human experience, then sometimes poetry is the language that best suits what it is we are trying to say.  I think this is language that throws us up against the boundary experiences of human life.  It’s a kind of poetry, I think.

But the church affirms that here in this book we have great mystery and great complexity.  In every age we have wrestled with the interpretations here.  Here we find significant and profound and complex images.  And as a result, this book has been much debated in the church across the centuries.  Luther, for example, wondered whether it should be in the canon at all.  As the church went through the upheavals of the Reformation, Luther said maybe this book should not even be included in the sixty-six.  And Calvin, that father of Presbyterianism, wrote commentaries on every book of the Bible, save for this one.

It’s a book of great mystery and great complexity.  I think it’s a kind of poetry.  We know that even its authorship has been debated and discussed and studied in the church very early, as early as Iranius, which is early in the life of the church.  People were writing about the authorship of this book and trying to decide exactly where the authorship stood.

It is a book full of complex imagery.  Now some folks, particularly in this century but really in every century, have associated figures in Revelation with historical beings:  Hitler, Stalin, and the Pope.  And Sadam Hussein have all, in my lifetime, been listed as figures synonymous with certain figures in Revelation.  Or some folks have associated events, particular historical episodes, with images out of the book of Revelation.  I know the Communist Revolution, and the atom bomb, and the creation of the state of Israel and the Gulf War, have all been associated with scenes from this book.

I don’t intend to degenerate any who have found comfort and help in those specific interpretations.  I stand in what I hope is sort of a respectful silence before their work and the help that they have found there.  However, I report to you that up to this point, attempts to find in Revelation a specific timetable for the end of history have not been successful.  And believe me, it isn’t because people haven’t tried!  You don’t hear much about the unsuccessful attempts later, because they were unsuccessful.  But you remember the work of the Branch Dividians in recent time, and how they saw in Revelation themes that they were sure were quite specific in their lives. 

I remember last year I went to the dry cleaners late on New Years’ Eve.  I shared this story with some of you.  The dry cleaner guy said, “I’ve got to work just one more hour.  I’m off at seven o’clock, and I want to be sure and clock out.  I said, “You don’t want to work New Year’s Eve?  He said, “No.  I think the world is coming to an end tonight, and I don’t want to be here at the dry cleaner’s when it happens.

Well, he was wrong.  Which goes to show you that you shouldn’t get your theology from the dry cleaner, and you shouldn’t get your dry cleaning from the church!

The book is full of complex imagery.  I find it difficult to associate with specific historical events.  However, the Christian community, in every century, has been clear about continuing to hold this book within the sixty-six.  There has never been a century where the Christian community has done anything but hold this book, finally, within the books that we have found the Spirit speaking to us through.  We have, across the centuries, concluded that this also belongs in the canon of scripture.

What is it that it has given us?  How is it that God has blessed us through this book?  It’s interesting to me that scholars are in great debate as to whether or not it’s the last book of the Bible.  In fact, most scholars believe that it was not the last book written.  But nonetheless, the community has affirmed that it should be the last book in the collection.  Here are the themes we find to be ones of end-times and completion and fulfillment.  So we continue to make it the last of the sixty-six books.

I can’t focus on specific interpretations, nor do I think I should.  But I do want to lift up two general affirmations from the Revelation for you.  Two general affirmations that I think affect your day-to-day living.  Here is the first:  The Christian faith holds Revelation teaches us that history will come to an end.  That is to say that history has a beginning point and that therefore history will have an ending point.  This is not everyone’s view of history.  You may stand so comfortably in your Christian tradition that you are not fully aware of that.  But there are other views of history.  In the ancient Greek and the Buddhist views of history, for example, are much more cyclical, seeing a rhythm where history is often repeated as it roles along. 

But in the Christian faith, as a part of the legacy given to us by our Jewish ancestors and the Hebrew scriptures, we understand a linear view of history, which means that history has a beginning point God created, and that history will have an ending point.

What Revelation teaches us is that this history moves along a line, a line where God is at work in that history.  At work in our history and in the world’s history.  With a linear history, you have a history where God can be at work, doing something new, bringing about a different thing, and bringing God’s purposes to completion and to fulfillment. 

Revelation helps us to understand that Jesus Christ stands as the center point of that linear history, that the history which began with God’s creation moves up to Jesus Christ as the center point.  Not necessarily chronologically, but in terms of the purposes of history, Jesus Christ is the center point, and that from there history moves to a completion which will include also Jesus Christ.

Revelation affirms that Jesus is coming again.  It does not give us the details of the end, but it does give us the character of the end.  It does not affirm that we know everything about the end.  In fact, I believe it’s an arrogance, a kind of sinfulness, to presume that we can know the exact content of the end.  How could we know the full content of God’s purposes and plans?  We cannot even figure out human romance, let alone the full character of God!

Revelation does affirm for us that we can know something of the end, and that is the character of the end.  Because we know the character of the Creator who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, and because we know the character of Jesus Christ, we know what the character of the end is going to be like.  It’s going to be like the love which God made known to us in Jesus Christ. 

Last night I watched the movie Rio Bravo on TBS, an old John Wayne movie that had also in it Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson.  They were all good guys.  One of the great things about the movie is that I could tell you at the beginning how it was going to turn out at the end.  And it did!  John Wayne wins at the end!  There’s a wonderful thing about watching a movie like that.  It had me in suspense at a couple of places, but I never doubted for a moment how it was going to come out in the end. 

Christian history as it is given to us, and as Revelation affirms it, makes that same witness.  It makes the witness that Jesus is coming again and that what God did in the center of history through Jesus Christ will be like what God does in the end.  It will be like the character of Jesus Christ. 

The trajectory of the future, while we may not have the details, the trajectory of the future is made known to us through Jesus Christ. 

My daughter, Mary, is hesitant to watch with me the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, which is one of my favorite Christmas movies.  She’s hesitant because the only amount she’s seen of it so far is distressing to her.  So she gives up before she gets through to the end.  I keep telling her, “Hang in there with me, Mary!  You’re going to love it if you get to the end!  But so far we haven’t made it. 

That’s what Revelation is telling us about human history.  Perhaps Reinhold Niebuhr said it best in his famous quote where he said, “Jesus Christ corrects and clarifies and completes for us all other revelation that God gives us.  And that is not only past revelation, but revelation to come.  We know that the content of the future will be like the character of Jesus Christ.  I think Revelation has been given to us in the canon to comfort us.  To comfort us about the future with the knowledge that it will be an ending that we have seen prefigured in Jesus Christ.  Revelation teaches us that history will come to an end, but an end which belongs to Jesus Christ. 

The second affirmation is this:  Revelation teaches us that there is a struggle.  That’s why I read the passage about Michael and the angels and the battles in heaven.  There is a struggle, but God will triumph in that struggle.  Now you know that life is a struggle.  I know you know from what I know of your own individual stories.  Life often contains struggle. 

Revelation has many images and stories of this, where often they are battling a beast.  Revelation helps us to know that the reality of evil is very significant and that evil can be very personalized.  I think it’s a mistake, a kind of blindness, to ignore the fact that evil can be very personalized.  We only have to look at the events of the last hundred years to see how evil was so terribly personalized in the lives of specific human beings, whether it be Adolph Hitler, or Pol Pot, or others whose names you could name. 

Revelation helps us to know that the reality of evil is very significant and can often be significantly personalized.  And sometimes in the human story, in the human adventure, it may seem to us that the beast is getting the upper hand.  At times it may seem like that to you.

For a moment yesterday afternoon, as I gathered at the graveside with Pat and Jean Jones, it was a temptation to believe that the beast might have the upper hand. 

For many tortured and persecuted Christians across the centuries, as they have known pain or seen their lives end, or seen their loved ones face death, it’s been a temptation for them to believe that the beast has the upper hand.  But the book of Revelation testifies to us that God is going to triumph, and that has been an enormous source of comfort in the terrible occasions when we have desperately needed that comfort.

People have given their lives and their loves to the battle against evil.  People who have died in the cause of justice, from police officers who have been killed in the human struggle in the line of duty, to Catholic sisters who have been raped and murdered in the last two years in Central America.  Revelation helps us to know that there will be justice and that God will triumph and that God will punish evil. 

There is a struggle.  But God and God’s values will triumph.  Life does contain uncertainties, but Revelation preaches to us and proclaims to us the encouragement, “Keep up the fight!  Continue the race!  God’s justice will triumph in the end! 

Charles Allen used to tell that wonderful story of his days as a college baseball player.  He talks about being in a close game, and his being up to bat at a critical moment, a hit that if he hit it well, could win the whole game.  The stands were full, he said, and he hit the ball and took off running without being able to fully see where it went.  He rounded first and kept going towards second, and as he headed past second, he wondered whether he was about to be tagged out over third.  Over the din of the crowd, Allen reports he heard his father’s voice cutting through, hollering to him, “Come on home, Charles!  Come on home!  And he knew he was going to make it.  He kept running with the encouragement of that voice. 

That’s like the book of Revelation, you see.  Calling us to home, even when we can’t see where the ball may be coming from next, telling us that we are going to make it safe, and that God’s will is going to triumph.  We may not know all of the details about the future.  We may not know what the future holds.  Your futures likely will hold struggle and some sorrow.  But we know who holds the future.  And the book of Revelation helps us to understand that the future belongs to God. 

On a pastoral and concluding note, I want to share with you where  I have found myself reading and using this book most frequently in my ministry.  It has been on those occasions when I have gathered with families in the experience of death.  Again and again in the pattern of the church, I have found myself turning with them to the twenty-first and twenty-second chapters of Revelation.  The verses that Bill read as the first reading, when the apostle speaks of his vision, that in the time to come, God would put an end to sorrow.  And the tears that many people know now, God would wipe from every eye.  In that vision, where the apostle tells us that to him it has been revealed, that in the time to come, there will not be any death.  There will be no need of a lamp to do away with darkness, because the Lord God will be the light.  And his light will shine forever.

I think of the reality of the fact that there are verses in this book that many of you have committed to memory, and you may not even know it.  Do you know what I am guessing the most familiar verses from the book of Revelation are to you?  Those wonderful verses from the Hallelujah Chorus, which you have sung again and again, or listened to.  Those come from this Revelation.  “Hallelujah!  The Lord God omnipotent reigneth.  And he shall reign forever and ever!  King of kings and Lord of lords.

At the end of the year, it’s a really prevalent image to see the pictures of the old man leaving, Father Time, and the new baby coming in.  I suppose it’s a popular enough image that maybe there’s some merit in it.  But I want to lift up another New Year’s image for you today, and that is the image from Revelation of Jesus at the door.  Jesus holding the light.  Jesus standing at the door, which you may not know exactly what is on the other side of.  But you do know that Jesus Christ is there to lead you through it.  And where Jesus Christ is, then the love of God is.

We will greet each other over the next twenty-four hours, with shouts of “Happy New Year!  You may think of it as a civil greeting, but I would like to lift it up to you as an affirmation of your faith.  Happy New Year!  Happy New Year!  A greeting not denying that there may be struggles ahead.  Not denying that there may be even sadness in the year ahead.  But a greeting that shares the affirmation of Revelation that the future belongs to God, a future revealed in Jesus Christ, and that we can approach that future, Happy New Year, that we can approach that future with confidence and with courage and with comfort in the knowledge that God’s will and God’s justice and God’s love will be at the end of all of our futures. 

Happy New Year!  Worthy is the lamb that was slain.  And to him be blessing and honor and power and glory forever and ever!  Amen.

© John T. DeBevoise, 2000