John goes to Heaven alive and sees God personally with his
multi-eyed monsters
A sceptical Bible reading – Revelation Chapter 4
With the 7
churches of Turkey addressed in
the preceding chapters, the events leading to doomsday begin in earnest with this
chapter.
A door opens up a dimensional portal worthy of any science
fiction or fantasy story. John is invited to step through and he does so. The
door takes him into Heaven itself He sees God (the father) sitting on his
throne and describes him in all his glory. (Christ, the living human guise of
God who was in the first three chapters is not mentioned at this point.
Round the throne, on smaller thrones of their
own, are seated twenty-four figures described as Elders. They may be a mixture
of the Old Testament fathers like Abraham, Joseph, Moses, etc, and the
Christian Apostles (excluding Judas
Iscariot).
A raging
thunderstorm emanates from the central throne, and seven lambs, are identified
by John as the ‘Seven Spirits of
God’ (Verse 5). Quite why God needs more than one spirit lamb is unclear.
The throne room, and especially its centrepiece, are set in a vast sea of
glass.
This is a very
heady and dizzying layer of detail on detail. It would take a big film budget
and colossal amounts of CGI to recreate and re-imagine this. The Revelation suffers from excessive detail and
information overload. It’s like a cake overcooked with too many rich garish
ingredients. You can’t take everything in.
Around God’s
throne, there are four bizarre creatures covered back and front in eyes. They
are a lion, a calf, a man, and an eagle. All have wings. All sing hymns to God
continually. The twenty-four elders
sing his praises 24 / 7 too.
The level of
opulence and vanity seem almost offensive. If I had people
and multi-eyed monsters venerating me so continually I’d feel as if I was using
them and abusing them. The vanity of such perpetual veneration would drive me crazy. The singing
would probably get on my nerves extremely quickly. The God depicted here
seems to want this continually. It begins to look as if God is quite
simply insane.
Arthur Chappell
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