For There Shall Be

"Our vision isn't God's character."

JOHN’S REVELATION was written so we’d know God has written the end. So that we wouldn’t write it ourselves. We, the church, have done it anyway. We simply call it salvation. But our vision isn’t God’s vision. Our vision isn’t God’s character.

We don’t know Him.

I know Him. We spend time together – all day, all night. He’s my everything, and He speaks to me. He’s shown me His heart. For people. For the Jews. For the earth. For prophecy. Not that I know it all, because I don’t. My understanding is, in fact, very small. God is huge, more than we could ever take in. It isn’t that I overflow with interpretation, but that I see His character in it. In everything. And what we’ve made of what the church calls “end time prophecy” is, frankly, a mess. It doesn’t look like Him.

God is peace. Jesus is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). The Holy Spirit produces the fruits of love, joy, and peace in us (Galatians 5:22). Angels cried out God’s design for us at Jesus’ birth. He came to bring “on earth peace, good will toward men (Luke 2:14).” Yet we predict war. Why would God destroy what He sent Jesus to earth to save? He SO LOVED us. He SO LOVED the world. John 3:16. To destroy it breaks His promise to it. He promised Noah “seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease (Genesis 8:22).” He made a covenant with the creatures on the earth that there’d be no more destruction.

“And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.” (Genesis 9:15)

I love Psalm 93:1, which says this as well. “The world was set in place; it cannot be moved (GW).” Psalm 23:3 says He leads us on paths of righteousness FOR HIS NAME’S SAKE. Put simply, for Him to leave us to flounder, for the path He’s put us on to be UN-righteous, makes Him look bad. What kind of God is He to do that? And why worship Him? We’re given this picture in Ezekiel 20 as well. For every sin of Israel, in that past generation, rather than punish them as He had the right to do, instead, for His name’s sake, He forgave. For His name’s sake, they’d walk in His statues, they’d hallow His sabbaths. And today, they do.

Our picture of wrath is the issue. We see it as human, filled with sin. That isn’t what it means by “God’s wrath” at all, as translated in the King James Version. God’s wrath is where God is not. It isn’t an action taken in anger against anyone. It’s never, ever God being out of control. Instead, it’s us being outside of His Presence. His life runs everything. Nothing lives without the life of God in it. The Scripture says He sends His rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45). Even the unjust have the barest life, that they think, that they talk. Salvation brings to men the fullness of Him. It ends spiritual death. It is GOD WITH US, Emmanuel (Matthew 1:23). This is who He is. He wants to be close, to speak and for us to answer.

Jesus is Healer. He destroyed no one while He prayed for people on the earth. Where He couldn’t heal, in His hometown, for instance, where doubt was too big, He marveled at it (Mark 6:6). His heart was to raise the dead, set the oppressed and possessed free, to make the lame to walk again, the deaf to hear, the mute to talk, and the blind to see (Luke 4:11; Acts 10:38). He healed the unclean, lepers, the woman with the issue of blood, and anyone else who called upon Him. He sought them out, even. There is no hatred in Him for mankind. He is one forever. He is King of the Jews. He is Jew. He adores the Jews.

Prophecy is meant for exhortation, edification, and comfort. 1 Corinthians 14:3. Any other use of it is not God. When we know Him, His character, principles, methods, and will, when we love Him, when we are consumed by our love for Him, we will measure our words, preferring Him above ourselves. Our desire will be to always see His heart and to lay our own selfish humanness down. For God has spoken what the end will be. He would have us see it.

Matthew 24:14. “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”

Revelation 21:4. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

Illustration by Grisel Alin Gomez Rangel at Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com