I, John, am the one who heard
and saw all these things. And when I
heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed
them to me. But
he said, “No, don’t worship me. I am a
servant of God, just like you and your brothers the prophets, as well as all
who obey what is written in this book. Worship only God!” Then
he instructed me, “Do not seal up the prophetic words in this book, for the
time is near. Let
the one who is doing harm continue to do harm; let the one who is vile continue
to be vile; let the one who is righteous continue to live righteously; let the
one who is holy continue to be holy.” “Look, I am coming
soon, bringing my reward with me to repay all people according to their
deeds. I
am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” Revelation 22:8-13
Much of what the angel said to John was prohibitive; it
was hands-off! We can easily understand the admonition to
not-worship an angel. God has told us He
is the only One worthy of worship in the universe. The other word of prohibition to John is
about the words of prophecy in God’s book.
John is not to seal them up,
because the time is ripe to allow it free access to all people. But there is an unspoken (but implied) third
prohibition, stated inversely. The angel
tells John to let the Word have it’s way with evil…and for John (and by
extension all believers) to not compel
others to do right, rather to let free will run its’ course.
This third injunction makes it clear that believers are missing
the mark of compliance with God’s will when trying to coerce behavior. In my lifetime the growth of government
regulation has gone off the chart. The
latest wave is the wokeness generation’s
compelling so-called
righteous behavior. If you don’t toe the
line, you’re ghosted…exiled to the land of foolishness…a non-entity.
Marching against “wokeness” are some rather
well-meaning, but ill-advised people, who want control of the government so
they can correct all the nonsense. You
can see it in the push to assimilate political power in the name of
righteousness. You can see it in the
infamous January 6th invasion of the Capitol. You can see it in the indignation of
believers who want to punish wrongdoers severely, but can’t keep their own
house in order. Well-known and popular
Christian leaders who couldn’t see past the glitter of power-grabbing, spearheaded
the presidential campaigns in 2016 to gain control of the White House and
Senate.
There is a well-known saying, little heeded or even
acknowledged these days, which offers the same kind of advice about all that,
which the angel offered John:
When the church gets in bed with the government,
it isn’t the government that loses power.
The church’s real power is in prayer and the example of
Christ, lovely, sacrificial, respect for all, with joy, unspeakable, and full of glory.[1]
As the angel told John, God will do the judging and
correcting soon. The Alpha and Omega is
better at it than any of us. For now,
hands-off the judge’s gavel.
For You Today
It is a good thing
to want to do something, instead of just standing by. Today would be a good day to look
around: you’ll have no problem finding
someone who is hurting for lack of food, clothing, a place to live, or a
friend. Then, do what’s natural for a
child of the King…be a blessing.
There are about 2,000 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper on
today’s topic, explore some of these:
Images: Title
image Pixabay.com Images without citation are either personal
property of the author, or in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
