Monday, March 30, 2015

Revelation’s book with seven seals


And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. (Revelation 5:1)
I was recently reading online different articles put out by the church about the Book of Revelation and the New Testament Student ManuelChapter 54 about Revelation 4-11 had a picture of what the sealed book described by John probably looked like.  I found it fascinating and suggestive because it was different from what I expected.

 replica of sealed papyrus scroll

Somehow I had a different image in my head that was more like pages in a codex (modern book form) with seven divisions of the pages, each division of which was sealed.  



With my assumption that the book was in codex form, that led to the view that the opening of the seals enabled the next section of the book to be read and that world history was what was written in that book.

But when you assume the book is in scroll form, all of a sudden it is clear that history is what happens between each subsequent opening of the seals and when that is all done, we can finally read what’s in the book.  We haven’t been reading all along, we have yet to get to the book itself.  And we have to get through all the seals before we can get to any of that lovely stuff in the book.

It also suggests that what we see as the macro events of the centuries and even millennia is really a paltry sliver of time to the Lord.  He has the wide view that spans the eternities.  (And it is so marvelous that He listens to our little concerns moment to moment as we pray…)


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