UNVEILED HOPE By Scotty Smith (This content is used with permission of Scotty Smith) UNVEILED HOPE INTRODUCTION: The Fulfillment of Our Great Hope As I write these words I am sitting at the foot of the Swiss Alps in the little fishing village of Iseltwald, just outside of Interlaken. All of my God given senses are engaged and heightened with an exhilarating intensity. Never have I seen bluer skies with a richness of hue that betrays description. I can feel the fiery warmth of the fall colors in the trees along the ridge of the Alps. And, I can taste the pure vanilla of the fresh white morning snow. Is there something that can be called too beautiful? Am I close to sensory overload? Before me is Lake Brienz whose blue-green waters seem so vast, so inviting, so absolutely calming. No tempest, just a tapestry of peacefulness that resonates with something deep in the core of my soul. It is so good to be here, right now, drinking in this astonishing vision..... for it has been a hard year, really, a hard season of life. So many changes, so many demands ..... I don't know when spiritual warfare has seemed as intense. Good friends are overwhelmed. Family members are facing loss and the adjustments forced with the advancing years. Maybe that's why this setting is just drawing me in. I feel like I am inhaling something much more vital than oxygen. The quiet of this place is so pronounced, so obvious, so centering. All I can hear is the rolling movement of a passenger train on the other side of the lake making its way to the wood carving village of Brienz. The aroma of baking bread is wafting up towards me from the kitchen below as I sit on my balcony. I watch as an older Swiss gentleman rhythmically hand sickles grass on the steep hillside just below me. To my left, a family of cows with brown eyes as big as bagels is grazing. The air is so clear I feel like I can see into next week. I want to get up and move about, to run, to laugh, to sing, to share this scene with those I love. But I am reluctant to disrupt the moment, this precious, holy moment. Surely, I was made for this. Everything seems perfect. "Lord, can I stay here, can this whole experience be frozen in time? What a gift this day is! Your timing could not be better. I've got an idea! I'll set up three shelters or at least a three bedroom chalet for you and Moses and Elijah, right here, right now!" You may be saying to yourself that this seems more like a Swiss travelogue than an introduction to a book about Revelation. Yet as I sit here I cannot think of a more appropriate setting for me to begin my writing, a context which brings together and gives expression to the two driving forces which are compelling me to hammer out my heart on this lap top computer: The first is a near obsession to get the Book of Revelation and its liberating visions back into the hands and hearts of God's sons and daughters. The second is a longing to see my family, friends, the congregation I am so privileged to pastor, and God's people in general, filled with the living hope that Jesus has won for us. These two passions and themes are pronounced in each of the following chapters. They are the twin voices which echo to each other in this entire work. Let me briefly speak to each. I have had many of my friends say to me, "Scotty, why in the world would you tackle Revelation as the focus of your very first book? Are you crazy or are you presumptuous?" No, but I am somewhat angry. My anger is similar to that of the Apostle Paul in his response to how the Judaizers were corrupting the gospel in the province of Galatia. After Paul had faithfully preached salvation by grace through faith, "certain men" came down from Jerusalem and started distorting the gospel by insisting that the male Gentile converts had to be circumcised in order to be fully recognized as Christians. In effect, these legalists were preaching "another gospel which is no gospel at all." They were attempting to put the Galatian converts back under the very law from which Jesus had set them free. Paul went pastorally and theologically ballistic! He knew, as Martin Luther would say later, on the eve of the Reformation, "bad theology is the worst taskmaster of all". The entire book of Galatians is written to confront and to undo the damage of the Jerusalem legalists. In a similar way I am stirred up at how the book of Revelation has suffered at the hands of its many interpreters though the years, and especially by those of recent generations. There are many who simply want to treat the last book of the Bible as though it is a prophetic jigsaw puzzle, written to be solved for the terminal generation of Christians. Others dismiss it as being too veiled, complex and culture bound to be of any benefit for the needs of modern believers. Some so spiritualize the text as to render Revelation little more than a book of parables and allegories. In the early years of my life in Christ I was exposed to a certain very detailed analysis of Revelation which was presented as the one and only correct handling of the text. I was grilled to believe that anyone who really took God's Word seriously and literally would adopt this interpretation, and all the charts that came with it. I was assured that it was the oldest and, therefore, the most trustworthy. All other attempts at explaining Revelation were labeled as being either from a theologically "liberal" tradition or of too recent a vintage to be taken seriously. This particular school of interpretation led me and many of my young Christian friends to develop some wrong thinking and habits concerning the Christian life. I found myself as an immature believer spending too much time reading the headlines and listening to the latest news reports in order to interpret Biblical prophecy. (I am still trying to find those Viet Cong helicopters in the text!) What I needed most was to develop a Biblical world-view, that is, to have been grounded in the Scriptures well enough to view all of life from God's perspective. I was too taken up with "end time" sensationalism. Looking back I can also see where I was influenced to be far more aware of Satan and the pervasiveness of evil than to be preoccupied with our sovereign God, ruling over all things from His throne in heaven; and with the triumphant Lamb of God, who "came to destroy the works of the devil." This led me to withdraw from my culture out of fear into the "safety" of an ingrown Christian subculture. It grieves me to reflect upon how uninvolved and detached I was from the "secular" world. But this "Christian cocoon" living was actually encouraged. We called it "community". Lastly, the teaching I was receiving on Revelation prompted me to develop more of a privatized and individualized spirituality. I had very little understanding of the importance of the Church and our corporate life as the people of God. Much of this spirituality was driven by fear and an inadequate view of the gospel. I remember receiving a whole lot more emphasis on being an "overcomer" through discipline and "trying harder" to please God than in being instructed to "trust boldly in Jesus" and in His all sufficient grace. Since I am a proud man who loves to perform, I became a Pharisee among Pharisees. Today, I'm a Pharisee in recovery. I am not sure which is greater as I recount these things, my anger or my pain. I finally came to the point of giving up on the book of Revelation. It became a closed part of the Scripture to me for several years. I returned to the "safe" haven of the epistles of Paul, like Romans, Ephesians, and Galatians. It wasn't until I was prevailed upon for months (hounded is more like it!) to offer a study of the book of Revelation, that I dared to venture back into the part of God's Word with which I had associated so many bad memories. However, an unbiased study of the text, along with good resourcing and research, led me, literally, to see Revelation in a whole new light. What a surprise our heavenly Father had in store for me as I sought to read and ponder it as though I were a part of the first community of faith in Asia Minor to receive John's series of visions. I have never enjoyed examining and teaching a portion of the Bible more than the year we spent working through this text. Owning both my previous ignorance and prejudices, it was wonderful to rejoice with childlike wonder at what God was opening to us through His Scriptures. This book and its contents is the fruit of that study. I will share with you, in the following chapters, what we discovered to be both true and freeing. Now let me say at the outset that I offer nothing new or novel in this volume. An angel has not appeared to me while in the Alps to reveal secrets that no other man has ever seen.