Come and See

Rev 6:1,3,5,7 "Come and see."

Here is another call to John. It is kind of similar to the call that he received at the beginning of chapter 4 where he was told: "Come up here and I will show you things." The invitation was still being extended to him. The four living creatures who had heads full of eyes and had different faces were telling him to "Come and see" what was happening when the seals were broken by the Lamb.

The cool thing about this is that John was being let in to see what God was doing. He was told to come...to move from one place to another, and see, discern, understand what he was about to see. To think that God would invite a man to come to the door of heaven and then to watch was about to take place is amazing. And I believe that this invitation was given to John not just so that he could see and understand what was going to take place, but he wrote it down so that we can understand what God is up to.

The book of Revelation is a tough book. Some people shy away from it because it is hard to grasp what is written. The thing is, I think that God wants us to get it. I am convinced that God gave us this book to figure out what is going to happen at some point in time in the future and to get ready. God is not playing a game with us. This is not a giant puzzle for us to figure out. My philosophy in going through this book will be to read it for what it says and believe it. Sure, there are words that are used that are descriptive that John can't explain what he is seeing any other way other than to bring it down to our level. In those instances take the picture. But there will be other times that things are plane...easy to understand...real.

For example in chapter 6 John tells us of the seals. What is going to happen when the seals are opened? Things like a Conquerer and a loss of peace on the earth, and people who are killing each other, and significant economic inflation, and mass death, and persecution of believers, and earthquakes, and probably meteors falling to the earth. This is not allegory, this is truth and it is going to happen and it is going to be horrible. So, get ready.

I believe that we are beginning to see the precursors to some of this stuff now. The United States along with Europe is financially ruined. When you are talking about being trillions of dollars in debt, there is no way that we can sustain our lives as we know it. Money will have to be printed, inflation will have to skyrocket, and we will be hurting. Then I look at what is happening right now in the UK. Riots for no good reason. Kids are taking to the streets and destroying property, some people have died. Why? Because it is there. There has been a huge breakdown in the moral fiber of that society that will be echoed in the U.S. and around the world. I hate to say it, but things are not going to get better and we better be ready for it. Just take a look at 2 Tim 3:1 and we will see what it will be like...actually what it is like right now.

So the invitation to John to come and see is an invitation to us to come and understand and get ready. Am I?