Westserve

More reflections on Revelation

One of the challenges of covering Revelation in seven talks instead of more, is keeping the big themes and ideas in the book in their right context.
Most people would realise that Revelation is a book that is very easy to stuff up. All the imagery and bizarre symbology is ready material for mis-interpretation. If you have been following our talks, you will know that I’ve taken a pretty conservative approach, deliberately focussing on the big themes to avoid getting bogged down trying to make sense of things that we are probably not meant to be concerned about.

This coming Sunday (July 31st) Tim is preaching, and he and I have been working on the talk together during the week. The passage is Revelation 18-20 – the final judgement scene, where God’s righteousness prevails, all that is ungodly is destroyed, and Satan is finally taken care of permanently.
Very powerful stuff.
In amongst all the dramatic images in those chapters, arises one particular issue:
Revelation 19 speaks of the rejoicing in heaven at the defeat of evil on earth, chapter 20 and the culmination of that in 20:15 which says: “¹⁵ And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” And that seems to be a real sticking point for many.
The contrast between rejoicing as the people of God at the victory of His righteousness, and the thought of family, friends, loved ones who aren’t Christians, ending up in the lake of fire.

One friend admitted that he finds it very hard to pray for Jesus to return, because he’s so upset at the thought of people close to him ending up in the lake.
Time will be tackling this issue in his talk, so do catch up with it after Sunday. But in the meantime, how do we resolve:

• The huge joy we should/will participate in when God does prevail on the last day.
• Our genuine concern for our unsaved friends and family.
• Our understanding of what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty in reference to who is saved.

I’ll write more about this after Sunday, but in the meantime, please express your thoughts about this below.