Recent events certainly leave us all wanting more certainty about what comes next, but if history tells us anything, it's never that straightforward.
At the heart of the city in which I live is a ruined church:
It's now a memorial to the devastation that happened through the bombing that took place in the last Great War.
Notice what stands behind it - another great cathedral, this one dedicated to the power of commerce in our times.
If I had stated 12 months ago that both buildings would be standing as empty as each other within the year, I doubt anyone would have taken me seriously, but that's exactly what has happened.
Can you imagine how crazy people would have viewed someone, when they were sinking the foundations of this shopping centre, who proclaimed that it would be closed by plague some 14 years after it opened?
People, no doubt, would have reacted in a similar way if someone had predicted 300 years earlier that the new place of worship was destined in just two days to be 'destroyed by fire reigning from the sky'.
And yet, here we are.
The edifice of what has happened should clearly warn us of what can and probably will unfold so easily around us.
So it is when we come to the foretelling of a book like Revelation. Notice how what God says to John begins in the very real events that were unfolding in his own day. The troubles that Jesus had told the disciples as they sat together on the Mount of Olives prior to His death and resurrection were unfolding as He said they would, and Jesus continues to speak to John on Patmos in that similar fashion, beginning with the troubles amidst the churches in Asia, and unfolding what 'must occur shortly' from that basis.
It's easy to get lost in all the signs and symbols that are employed in the book as it proceeds, but there are several key themes that are easy to identify as 'general trends' of what will mark the days that followed.
These include:
Power. The first 'horseman' would be conquest, and from the very days when John wrote amidst the hunger of Rome, our world has witnessed the rise of one imperial power after another, all seeking to subjugate millions beneath its sway. This, almost always, incurs the appearance of the second rider John sees - War. If there is one evil that truly marks the past twenty centuries of human 'triumph', it is the sheer carnage we have wrought upon each other by our continual invention of new and better ways to brutally kill. As one writer put it recently, we didn't split the atom to help each other, but to murder others more efficiently. The consequence of these two realities is seen in the third - Poverty. How many have been brutalised because of the greed and ambitions of others who have cruelly employed their power for evil? The conclusion to such days - Death. This, John is shown, will be the primary legacy of the days which were ahead, which would also include a continual persecution of the Christian church (John himself was already suffering because of this) and a destitution of the natural world, principally as a means of recompense for humanity's cruel actions.
It's easy to read this and to not pause and reflect on what this says about us - about our race. Think about the causes which exist in us to not only allow, but to commence such vile realities in our world. It tells us so much about the poverty and the misery of the human condition.
The book is then essentially a picture of the conflict that takes place between the expanding nature of the Kingdom of God and the ravaging yet inevitable termination of the powers of evil, which clearly become more savage and desperate as the end approaches, anger and anxiety becoming the hallmark of the age.
The book presents us with some remarkable images that define the 'key characters' of history:
The Woman (also called the Bride).
This is clearly those defined as God's redeemed people, 'brought out' (through) the travail of this age to become God's eternal joy.
The Child (also defined as the Victor/Bride groom).
Jesus Christ, who from the opening verse, is the key focus of what unfolds. He is the one in whom all history will find its true purpose and conclusion.
The Dragon.
The antagonist of the age - the Devil. The one who stirs powers against the most high and His anointed Son.
The Beasts (Land and Sea).
The world powers, which are clearly the final manifestations of those powers first predicted by the Prophet Daniel.
The Harlot.
The false 'church' or religion which seeks continually to raise itself up and above a true knowledge of God and persecutes and murders the true church.
Babylon.
The merchants of the world, who fund and support the false political and religious powers that are steered by the Dragon.
Since the first promise given to Eve in the garden (Genesis 3:15), human history has essentially revolved around this conflict, but in the last days (which commence, according to Peter, on the day of Pentecost as he preaches in Jerusalem), this conflict will truly reach its conclusion.
We can therefore no doubt expect an intensifying of what is both good and bad in the days ahead. Evil will abound, as it has so many times in this past century, but the kingdom of God will continue to grow until, at last, the whole world will witness His appearing.
Let's continue to encourage one another with the certainty of God what has done, is doing, and will bring to completion in the splendour and beauty of His wondrous Son, Jesus Christ, who is coming again soon. As with d-day in the last Great War, the cross and the empty tomb tell us that victory is already close by - we are merely seeing the death throws of a defeated foe. Let us stand fast in that certainty.
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