Beyond the images of death, and destruction, beasts and dragons, of people falling away, and battles in heaven, it is first and foremost the apocalypse, the revelation, the fully making known, of Jesus Christ. Christ who received this vision from God the Father and made it known to His servant John. Christ who shows this revelation to John, but also serves as its subject. And His triumph, his victory over sin, death, and the powers of hell, and his reign at the right hand of the Father stand as the central themes of the book.
Articles by StPeters
It is as though we…we people of faith…have forgotten—or we have woefully underestimated—the word of the angel Gabriel to Mary. In the beginning of that creation that surely boggles both science and faith, when the Spirit of God hovered over the scene and God became His own image and likeness in the conception of Jesus, the angel said to Mary, “For nothing shall be impossible for God.” And with the Incarnation, God in human flesh, “by whom all things were made, without whom nothing was made that has been made,” with Jesus we Christians have the best invitation of all to think God’s thoughts after Him, to ponder His creation.
Every once in a while, you manage to see places that are all dried out. Places where the water doesn’t reach, places where nothing seems to grow, where dust, and death, and decay still seem to win out. Driving around this time of year, you have to really look for them, but they’re there. Along fences, or tucked in the back corners of a field. Places where the water just never quite seems to get, or places that have been worn down and packed hard by long use. Or in the old buildings, once so full of life and work, now empty, leaning, and lifeless.
The mystery of the Ascension is just that—it’s a mystery. It demands that we think what many people today think is almost unthinkable; that when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same space-time continuum, nor is it speaking about a spiritual world as contrasted with a physical world. No! Time and eternity for God are flip sides of the same coin. Spiritual and physical are not two different worlds, but together confess a reality that no eye has fully seen nor mind has fully plumbed!
LCMS World Relief and Human Care is already at work helping the people of Joplin. From their blog: Jackie Duncan was recovering from brain surgery when a killer tornado ripped through St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Mo. The storm’s force pulled Gary Duncan’s 76-year-old mother “down the hallway,…