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Combining Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection with Revelation Book 8 to disprove Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. The key departure from popular teaching? Revelation 8 does not describe disasters waiting for us in the future, but disasters hundreds of millions of years in our past: the great extinction episodes revealed in the fossil record.

An associate at work is studying Revelation as popularized by many Christian teachers. Frustrated by my objections to their “wisdom,” he asked me “Why were we given Revelation?”

In the modern world, Christianity faces two great objections. The first is a moral objection: Why does God allow evil? Our study in past weeks has offered a response. The Most High allows evil because he loves unconditionally. He loves all of creation, the beautiful and the ugly.

He believes that ugliness yearns to become pleasing. That can create conflict when ugliness – rather than seeking its…

Gathering up the insights from our study of the first seven chapters of Revelation, our focus on the Most High leads us to a new – and overwhelmingly tolerant – Christology.

Today is a day for looking back on our journey together. The study has been far from daily things. We’ve talked at times about raising children, about fighting fires. But those were meant to help us understand what goes on in heaven. We have not talked much about how God helps us in our daily lives.

Instead, we’ve talked about the beginning of the Bible and the beginning of Life. We’ve talked about how God is changing the angels through living creatures (including us, of course). We’ve talked about why the angels might resist God’s guidance.

So why would the Bible, which is God’s story, give this knowledge to us? Simply: to help us understand why there are no…

Having surrendered the earth to sin in Revelation 6, book 7 recounts the mustering of the forces of change from among the masculine half of the elders of heaven. The promises made by God to these volunteers are revealed – and their eventual realization shown.

As global warming makes itself felt in California, we have suffered a long drought. The forests have dried out, and beetles that once would have drowned in sap now bore into the center of the trunk. The russet stands on the mountainsides are not autumn displays that hope for spring, but signs of a terminal illness.

The coup de gras comes as a great fire. The most hear-breaking to me was the Station Fire in Fall 2009. The spring after the destruction, the Las Colinas Camporee was disrupted by powerful winds sweeping down from the barren hills. When a few months later I tried to take…

The seven lamps in heaven are often interpreted as the Christian congregations that John transmits letters to in Revelation 1-3. Those letters were critical, suggesting that the congregations were swept up in a struggle against selfishness. They were meant to epitomize the “Spirits of God” represented by the lamps, but had not yet achieved that end.

But what are the lamps? Given that the Most High must love his enemy just as we were taught by Christ, the lamps must be perfections of the behaviors unleashed when the seven seals are broken. Those behaviors actually serve a beneficial purpose in God’s plan: they preserve us from being consumed by love, and thus allow us to continue to receive it.

So by identifying the vices hidden in the scroll of seven seals, we can identify the seven Spirits of God by considering how the vices are changed into virtue by love.

Imagine…

Interpreting Revelation 5 as an account of the moment that the Most High created the Lamb, and illuminating the reasons why the sacrifice was necessary.

Attribution for the maps of the European Union.

Passion week is always a struggle for me, and it was made harder this year in preparing to discuss Revelation 5. The book shines light into the darkness, and what is seen there is painful.

So before we begin, I want to explain some things about the crucifixion. When we love, a great power stands over us. It waits for us to prove that we won’t become selfish. Jesus proved that on the cross: he loved even those that murdered him. When the book says “the sky became dark,” don’t imagine that it was a solar eclipse. The writers of the book knew about such things, and would have written “the moon passed before the sun”…