Armageddon

While we are in the book of Revelation, it's important to talk about an idea that the world could not have gotten more wrong, as a show of just how willing we are to create a narrative that does not have God in it at all. The idea is called Armageddon.

Armageddon has on and off been a popular topic for Hollywood, at the very least; popular culture in some other respects. We are all enamored, it seems, with the end of the world as we know it and what happens in a desolate place. Most of us have seen the clips of the images of man's imagination, with dust-covered streets, bombed-out cities, not a single man in sight except, of course, for the one who somehow survived the end of everything. (This has never made sense to me.)

It's Armageddon!

Except...it's not.

Contrary to what Hollywood would have us believe, Armageddon is not an event; it's a place. And it's one of the most beautiful places we could never imagine.

The word itself shows up only once in all of the Scripture, in Revelation 16:16, where John tells us that the kings were gathered at the place called Armageddon in Hebrew. That means that the place itself is ancient in Judeo-Christian culture, for Hebrew was the language of the Jews, not of the Christians; the Old Testament, not the New. It is the oldest-fashioned language of God, and in Hebrew, words had profound meaning.

The word Armageddon in the Hebrew is drawn from two words combined into this one. The first word is a word meaning "mountain" and the second is a word meaning "strong." Thus, when John talks about the kings being gathered to Armageddon, he is not at all saying that they are brought to dust, destroyed, laid waste. Rather, he is saying they are brought to the strong mountain.

Anyone who has spent much of any time at all in the Old Testament knows that mountains are strongly associated with God. There was Moriah and Sinai and Ararat, just to name a few, and the people of God sojourned quite a bit around Sinai. Zion, which is associated with Jerusalem and the City of David, is often referred to as a mountain, and Jesus prayed at the Mount of Olives. There are a lot of strong mountains in Scripture, and they all have one thing in common; they are the places where the Lord Himself dwells.

So when we're talking in the end about Armageddon, we're talking about being brought to this strong mountain, to God Himself, to the place where He dwells among us. 

Which means that these completely-destroyed, barren, hopeless images of the end of the earth that Hollywood would have us buy into are missing one key element of the true end of time: the steadfast love of the Lord that never ceases. The eternal presence of our God, our solid rock. What all these movies seem to be missing at the end of the world as we know it...is Hope. When all else fails and falls away, there is but One that remains, just as He always has, just as He promised always to do. 

Armageddon. 

Building Altars

Revelation is an interesting vision for the end of the world, and most of what we find in there is, at the very least, strange. For example, we have been talking about the Book of Life and the name that God has given us, which will be handed to us on a stone when the account of our life is read on that day. And that raises an interesting question:

What are we supposed to do with a stone?

It is an odd eternity-warming gift. That much is for sure. Welcome to Heaven, here's your rock. A real rock, not that Rock. We would think that perhaps this rock might become the cornerstone of all that we have in Heaven, of that mansion that God has promised us. But I tell you, I do not want a mansion built on the cornerstone of my own creation - even the most perfect idea of my creation - not when the Cornerstone Himself walks among us. I want everything that I have in Heaven to be His, to be centered on Him, to be rooted in Him.

Which brings us back to the question at hand - what are we supposed to do with a stone? Certainly, we should not be expected to carry it around with us for all eternity. In worldly terms, a stone is often associated with a burden. It is either lugged around as a reminder of something grievous that one has done, a weight one simply cannot shake, or it is tied around one's neck as an assurance that one should drown. The God who has told us to take His yoke upon us, the God who shouldered our burdens once for all on the Cross, cannot also be the God who gives us a burden forever. That doesn't make any sense.

Again, we are brought back to the question - what are we supposed to do with a stone?

We are to build an altar.

This is what God's people have historically done with stones; they have built altars with them. They have drawn them out of the bed of the Red Sea, taken them from the shores of the Jordan River, carried them from lands where they have been persecuted, lands where they have been saved, battles they have fought, blessings they have harvested - everywhere that God's people have gone, they have taken stones and stacked them into altars as reminders of God's tremendous blessings.

They have called their altars witnesses; they have named them testimonies.

And I think that that is what happens here. When we come into the presence of God, we are given this stone with our name on it, the name that God has given us, the name that we have, through our best moments and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, written in the Book of Life, but it is not a stone that we are to keep. It is a stone that we are to lay down, right at His very feet.

Heaven seems like a strange place for an altar, admittedly. Why should we need an altar when God Himself walks among us? But we are not, of course, talking about the kind of altar that is in the Temple, which John tells us will no longer be necessary. We are talking about the altar of the sojourner, an altar that stands as a witness and a testimony.

The act that sums up our lives and our first act in Heaven will be that of a witness, as we lay all that we are at the site of this altar and proclaim that God is there. That this....this is the place where Heaven and earth meet. That we join together with all creation in recognition of our God, His power, His promise, and His love, and add our testimony.

Our witness.

Our stone.

Forever.

Living Named

If the Book of Life is merely a record of the things that you have done with the time that God has given you and if your name is written in it only when you do those things that honor the name that God has given you, then what we have to understand about the Book of Life is that God has not arbitrarily recorded anything in it; 

we determine what is written on its pages.

And that means that there is certain way that we ought to live our lives, something that we ought to be doing with them. I think that something is that we ought to be working our way closer and closer to the names that God has given us, closer and closer to sharing our heartbeat with Him, His in us, with every step.

We are told that when we stand before God, when we read through the Book of Life that records our deeds, God will tell us what our name always was, what He had in mind when He created us. Some of us spend part of our time here wondering what that name might be, agonizing over what seems perhaps unknowable, wondering if we are missing out on the lives that God designed for us because we haven't a clue what He called us when He knit us together in our mother's womb. 

How are we ever supposed to do anything worthy of our name if we do not even know what our name is? How does it come to be written in the book of life...is it purely by accident? Sometimes, we just stumble upon it and do something good, completely unbeknownst to us at the time?

Of course not. 

This is the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Holy Spirit is responsible for guiding us toward what God has planned for us, for affirming and confirming in us the very nature that God has given us. It's the Holy Spirit that whispers into our hearts whether a thing is right or wrong, whether something that we're thinking about will bring God's glory or not. It is the Holy Spirit that enables us sometimes to glimpse that glory, even when we don't understand it, for it is that glimpse that confirms to us that we are on the right path.

The longer we live listening to the Holy Spirit, guided by Him, the more often, I think, our names start to show up in our own stories. Adam was "the man;" Eve was "the woman." But as their stories go on, they become more firmly Adam and Eve, and this does not come as much of a surprise to anyone. Look at how they are living, how they are doing just what God created them to do. When they don't, they become the man and the woman again, but overwhelmingly, increasingly, they are Adam and Eve. God formed "the man," but Adam died. He made "the woman," but it was Eve who left her legacy. 

So as our stories go on, as our pages turn, our names ought to become more frequent in their passages. Our names ought to become more common and more common until of course that is who we are. Anyone reading the early pages of our story might recognize us in the man or the woman, but they should smile and nod as the Book of Life continues when our name starts to surface. Ah, yes. I knew that that woman must be ________. Or it makes perfect sense that the man would be _______.

And when God hands us this stone that has upon it our name, it's no surprising name. When He reads us our story and this character, this creature, this image of God starts to appear under this name, it's no shock at all. It is brilliant understanding, perfect affirmation. For we will know by that time where the Spirit has been leading us. We will know those things in our lives that brought us great joy, that felt somehow holier than we ever could have been, that gave us glimpses of God's glory and assurances of His presence. What we will finally understand in that moment is only how deeply this thread was truly woven through our lives. We shall see what our name has been, read it in our story, watch it dance across the page more often and more often and more often, and we shall say, "Ah, yes."

Of course.

There is my name. And would you look at that? 

By the grace of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it is written in the Book of Life. For in my finest moments, however unaware, I have lived up to it and given a glimpse of God's glory into the world. Hallelujah.

The Book of Life

Much is made about the Book of Life, the book that John the Revelator tells us about when he talks about what it will be like on the day that we stand before our Lord. Cursed is the man, we say, whose name is not written in the Book of Life; he will be thrown into the lake of fire.

And most of us think that it is up to God whether or not our name is written there, that at His discretion alone, we are either in or we are out. Calvinists, or predestinarians, say that God made this decision about us long before we existed; others say that it depends upon whether or not we are baptized; still others say that God writes our name in the Book of Life when we write His name on our hearts and actually hold onto faith in a meaningful way. 

But none of that is what Revelation says. 

Revelation says that the Book of Life records not our names, but our narratives. The Book of Life tells the stories of our lives. This means that right now, every second, every breath, we are writing our own names in the Book of Life. Perhaps.

Here's where it gets a little tricky, so hang with me. The Book of Life records our living, which means that we are writing right now the stories that are going into it. On that day, John tells us, we will be held to account for what our stories tell. God will read our pages from the Book of Life, looking to see what we did with what He had given us. 

And one of the things God has given us is a name. In this section of Revelation, we are told, as well, about receiving a stone with our name written on it, the name that God has given us. Because we know from the very beginning, God named man. And Jesus reminds us, just because we call on Him does not mean He knows us; we have to be on a first-name basis. We have to call Him by name, and He will call us by name. 

Names, to God, have meaning. They always have. Adam was a play on adamah, which meant "earth" - he was man formed of the earth. Eve meant "life," she was a giver of life. And these meanings helped to reveal what it was that God expected from Adam and Eve. He told them as much, but their names served as reminders. Adam was to be earthy, to be created, to do something worthy of dust-breathed-life; Eve was to bring life into the world, to give birth, to nurture the next generation. 

I believe that when Adam and Eve stand before God and the accounts of their lives are read from the Book, their names are written only where they have done what God expected of them by their very creation. Eve is named when she gives life to Cain, Abel, and Seth; Adam is named when he tends creation and breathes the spirit of God. In the places where they sinned, I don't believe their names are written. 

For example, I don't think the Book of Life says, "Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit." These were not named acts; they were not acts in accordance with their creation, with God's design for them. The Book more likely says, "The man and the woman ate the forbidden fruit." For right here, they are not Adam and Eve; he is not dust-breathed-life, and she is not life. 

I think the same is true of our stories. All of our deeds, all of our acts, are recorded in the Book of Life; John tells us that much. But I think at the places where we are less than God intended us to be, we are not named. We are the man, we are the woman. 

What God is looking for are those moments where we are living in such accord with His design for us that our names make sense, that you can call us what He called us, that He can confidently, proudly write our names next to it. In these moments, we become named, and our name is right there in the Book for all to see. And when our stories are read on that final day, when we stand before the Lord Himself, He reads through it all...."The man....the man.....the man....Adam. Ah! There you are!" "The woman...the woman....the woman....Eve. Yes!" And there is great rejoicing. 

Great rejoicing, indeed. For we, created as we are, have shown up in our own stories. And in doing so, we have shown up in His.

Go On Hoping

Just a few short hours ago (here, anyway), the clock struck midnight and the most amazing thing happened: millions upon millions of persons got their hope back.

Every year about this time, it happens as we say goodbye - and often, good riddance - to the previous year and look ahead with great anticipation and excitement toward what the new year is going to offer us. New opportunities, new chances, new experiences, new hope. 

And all of that is well and good, I suppose. But how many of us remember that the year we just so happily threw in the trash bin of history started with the same fresh hope that we have this morning? The sad truth is, not many.

It doesn't take long scrolling through social media or flipping through television channels to see just how many persons were disappointed in last year. How many were discontent with it. How many were hurt by it, worn out by it, tired of it. How many look back and remember not even the slightest hope, but all of the little slights that it brought to us. 

So long, you horrible, rotten, stink-faced, steaming pile of a year! We're never going to miss you! You were terrible.

The problem is not that we recapture our hope on this day; the problem is that the hope that we have this morning is so fleeting. It's so thin. Because if you go back through our histories, you find essentially the same story every December - goodbye, horrible year. You were terrible. And you'd start to think that our lives were just one horrible, terrible year after another after another after another. And if all you had to judge us by was the comments we made about our years once they were over, you'd think our whole lives were terrible and that we hated them. They were terrible.

No wonder we are one of the unhappiest generations ever to have lived. Or...whatever we call what we're doing with our lives.

Maybe it's entitlement, I don't know. It's like we think we're supposed to be immune from all of the bad things that happen in a broken world. But God told us the bad things were going to happen. God told us what fallen life looks like; it's cursed. It always has been. It always will be. 

Does that mean we're supposed to live in this vicious hope/disappointment cycle, where we start anew again and again only to end up in the same rut, the same defeat, the same disappointment that we have every year? 

I don't believe hope was meant to feel so fragile. 

I think what's happened is that we've gotten this idea that hope is our carry-on on this ride that we call life, that it's something we pack for the journey and try desperately to hold onto over all the bumps in the road and the twists and the turns and at some point, inevitably, hope falls out of our backpacks and it's not until we slow down, make a pit stop, take a breath that we realize we've lost it and try to find some new hope to re-pack.

That's not life. That's not how it was supposed to be. 

Hope is what's supposed to take us for the ride. Hope is what we're supposed to hold onto as it drives us over the bumps in the road and through all the twists and turns of life. Hope is the safety bar on this roller coaster of life, not the elephant ear we just ate; it's what keeps us locked in, not what we're trying not to lose. We don't pack hope in our carry-on; it's our vehicle for getting through. Our lives are what we pack, and if some of what we've got happens to fall out along the way, that's fine. If it was important, we'll stumble upon it again. 

Hold on white-knuckled to hope for all it's worth and let it take you on this crazy adventure called life.

Because...can we be honest for a second? It's not hope that changes. Hope...real hope...is rooted in God, and God never changes, so hope never changes. It's life that changes. And on some level, we know that because the hope that we have this morning is the same hope that we had on this morning last year and on this morning the year before that and the year before that and the year before that. Every time we find our hope again, it's the same as we left it; it's our lives that changed. 

So take this morning, take this hope, and remember what it feels like. Decide that that hope is the one thing that's not going to change this year. The bumps in the road are coming. The twists and the turns are coming. The flat tires and the empty gas tanks and the dangerous storms are coming. That's just life; God told us that's how life would be. 

But hope will get us through them if we just hold on, if we don't let go. Because no matter what comes this year, no matter what lies ahead, no matter how it "feels," hope is the least fragile thing we've got.

At least, it ought to be.