Kingdom transition
Day 707, Sunday, July 19
Revelation 11:15-19
Revelation isn’t over yet, but the end has been assured: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever.” We live now in a world torn between two kingdoms: the kingdom of the world and the Kingdom of God.
Why doesn’t Revelation end here?
We don’t know why John was led to structure the book as he did; we just know it in the form we have it.
The remainder of Revelation will cover much of the same ground we have covered already: protection and perseverance for God’s people, and punishment and judgment for their enemies.
As hard as many people have tried, you can’t really make a cohesive timeline for the “end times” out of Revelation. It is a series of visions that have a single meaning but not a single story line. In that sense, the fantastical imagery of Revelation is strangely realistic—neither our individual lives or our history as a human race move in neat, orderly narrative. The best we can hope for is that the overlapping stories of triumph and tragedy will, in the end, bring us home to our God.
-Rev. Mark Fleming
Sunday meditation
Ecclesiastes 11:1-6
Ship your grain across the sea; after many days you may receive a return. Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.
If clouds are full of water, they pour rain on the earth. Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there it will lie. Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.
As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.
Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.
Prayer focus
We seldom understand even our own lives, Lord, but let us trust that you hold life’s victorious conclusion in your hands.