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Summarizing the Old Testament as a demonstration of how selfishness fails in families, neighborhoods, cultures and nations. Despite our failings, the Most High remains constant in his love. Inspired by the loyalty and courage of the Lamb, the angels also struggle along with us. While love sometimes feels distant, the prophetic writings of Revelation teach us that it will win through in the end.

One of the challenges I face in reaching the faithful is that they already know so much about the Bible when they read Revelation. They want to treat Revelation as the next part of the Bible – as a story about people. They become confused when I suggest that Revelation is a story about angels. Worse, it’s a story told several times from different perspectives. Revelation 4-7 was the story as experienced in heaven; Revelation 9-11 tells the story again as the history of God’s work…

Revelation 11 is a prophetic chapter, which allows us to play with ideas again. Although Douglas Adams – a cynical atheist – chose ’42’ as a silly answer to “life, the universe, and everything,” it has a coded meaning in Revelation 11. It signifies the era of civilization after the coming of Jesus  – the era in which the Most High completes his process of healing the world through the religions given to the Gentiles (Christianity and Islam). That accomplishment – first celebrated in Revelation 7 – is celebrated again after the sounding of the seventh trumpet. We should heed to warnings in particular: honor his scripture, and care for the earth.

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams took on the ultimate question: “What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?”

Now the question isn’t normally asked that way. Normally we ask “What is the…

Brains shift the field of evolutionary struggle into learning. In Revelation 9, the Most High adopts new methods to force animals to learn to cooperate. But selfish spirits liked the dinosaurs – they were wonderful machines. So when the Most High wiped out the dinosaurs, their ghosts took root in their successors: insects, birds and mammals. That spiritual infection troubles us even today.

Winter is cold and flu season, but every year we make appointments to get a flu vaccination. When the sore throat and sniffles start, we might wonder “Where was my cold vaccination?”

There isn’t any, and there probably never will be. The reason is that getting a cold is something that keeps our brains from freezing when the weather gets cold. A cold blocks up the nasal passages and sinuses that lie right next to the skull, keeping the cold air from flowing through them and reaching the brain.

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…