Revelation 2 Thoughts So Far
What is the Resurrection like? Revelation is supposed to tell us. Here's what I've understood so far.
When Christians and Zoroastrians (in my experience) think of life after death, it’s of living as a spirit in a utopian fantasy called, “Heaven,” that’s full of love and free of strife devoid of all material bodies. That’s in spite of Jesus returning as a material being with some unusual characteristics. It’s weird how Christianity birthed because of the Resurrection, but people mostly focus on the cross and Heaven.
I, on the other hand, want to know what our life will look like in the end.
So far, Revelation 2 has given me a couple of ideas from the letters to the churches in Ephesus and Smyrna.
Note: I’m following N.T. Wright’s Revelation: 22 Studies for Individuals and Groups and his newest book 20th Anniversary Edition with Study Guide, Revelation for Everyone. See my post Prepare for Revelation for suggested materials.
How Does One Get In?
Jesus praises and warns the church in Ephesus, and Jesus praises the one in Smyrna. But Jesus tells both what they must do to enter the Resurrection.
From the letter to Ephesus, it’s a basic necessity to love like Stephen loved the Hellenistic widows, but one must also be able to discern false prophets, distorting dogma, the superficial religious. Truth is important; but without love as a verb, you’ll vanish.
From the letter to Smyrna, you must have perseverance through torturous times. In those days, persecution was cruel and relentless. Today, here in North America, persecution isn’t the same, but the relentless pressure to not speak about Jesus or one’s faith shuts our mouths. This pressure doesn’t come solely from the secular or atheistic parts of society, but also from those who loudly proclaim they’re Christian while putting their dollars ahead of helping others to survive and thrive. They make one cringe and ashamed of using the word, “Christian.”
If you love, cultivate the ability to discern truth, and persevere through difficulties without giving up your faith, you’ll get in, so to speak.
It sounds like an exclusive club. I don’t know much about the Rapture, other than the idea seems to have been launched out of thin air. But the idea that only a select few will “get in” contradicts Jesus. Jesus quite clearly talked about going after that one lost sheep. Even one not getting to live with Jesus wasn’t going to happen…or God didn’t want to happen.
Christians have waited 2,000 years and counting for Jesus’s second coming while humanity has progressed millimetre by millmetre with an awful lot of backsliding towards living the way the Gospels taught. Although we are impatient, God is apparently quite willing to wait for millennia — as long as it takes — for human beings to learn to live radically in the way Jesus taught. In other words, as Piloo Nanavutty on the Zorastrian Gathas put it:
“The inference seems to be that each soul will be taught to develop his/her faculties and learn to live fully in a different dimension of existence from that of the earthly.” Page 43, The Gathas.
What Is It Like?
But what do you get in to? N.T. Wright in Surprised by Hope talks about the Resurrection. It’s a good book to read. And I may reread it before I begin writing the third book of my Resurrection trilogy. But right now, I’m thinking about what Revelation reveals.
Anyone may access the Tree of Life. What was centred in the Garden of Eden and forbidden to humans will now dominate a garden that all resurrected peoples can stroll in. All may enjoy plucking and eating the Tree’s fruits.
“The tree of life stands in God’s paradise, and I will give the right to eat from it to anyone who conquers.” Revelation 2: 7.
Once in, humans will no longer face second death — the death of the soul. Instead, life will crown them. A crown is a mark of authority, respect, beauty, wealth, leadership, and service because a Queen or King lives to serve their subjects. Since everyone will be crowned, there will be no subjects. Yet everyone will have those markers of wearing a crown. I guess, then, life in Resurrection will have a very different societal structure than any we’ve seen before.
“I will give you the crown of life….The second death will not harm the one who conquers.” Revelation 2:10-11
Conquers?
The word “conquers” connotes going through a battle and winning. It’s not a passive word applied to nice passive people who never confront, never persevere through conflict, never make hard choices, never lose friends, never change, never learn hard lessons and apply them. It’s a word for people and countries who’ve had to enter a war, whether literal or metaphorical, and to keep going despite fatigue, pain, despair, discouragement, illusory wins, loss, brief respites before backsliding, grief, and who knows what other disasters and crises. And to keep going and going until they at last emerge victorious.
At some point or other, to reach Resurrection — to be able to eat from the Tree of Life and live in a uniquely equal societal structure — you must face tragedies and discouragements and conflicts and confrontations and pain and exhaustion and grief — not avoid, not diminish, not pretend away, not stuff down unpleasant emotions, not blame as a way to weasel out from under all the bad things life on Earth brings. You must persevere honestly. with love as an action, through all these things until, having applied Jesus’s teachings, you emerge with faith and love intact.
A little impossible I think for material beings. It makes me wonder what Heaven is really like…