June 16, 2021
Devotion by: David Petty
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years ... When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from prison and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, in order to gather them for battle. —Revelation 20:1-2,7
Pastor Sam has begun a sermon series recently on Revelation. When I think of this book I am reminded, as I’m sure others are, of the abuse of Revelation. You know what I’m talking about — the people who use passages of the book to make arcane calculations to predict the date of the end of the world.
Like many folks, I’ve ridiculed and reviled those individuals. Recently, though, I’ve come to see them somewhat differently. Although I’m sure some were scam artists whose motives were personal wealth, power, etc., I think most were simply seeking to know God. That’s something we all are seeking, consciously or not, and most of us would not consider it a bad thing.
We are aware that to truly know God, we will have to work as hard as those false prophets, only using a different approach. The basics are well known — one straightforward way to start is a list by John Wesley: prayer, scripture reading, communion, fasting, and small group meetings (“Christian conferencing”). Wesley did not call these ways of knowing God; he called them “means of grace” (and it’s more complicated than that, since he listed another category of means as well). But since he considered grace to be free, these were not means of obtaining grace, rather they were means of opening up to (knowing) it.
It’s good to be back together again after the closures. May we all grow in grace and the knowledge of God.
Gracefully submitted,
David Petty