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GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 36 (How to liberate the world)

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       Questions .   Many people turn to the book of Revelation with the following question in mind: How is it all going to end?   As often happens when we bring our questions to the Bible, we discover that our questions aren’t exactly the right ones.   This is often simply because our questions reflect our concerns, while God’s concerns are often quite different.   In the beginning of the book of Acts, the resurrected Jesus is with the apostles outside of Jerusalem, and the disciples ask him one of those questions: “…“Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1.6-8) Like good, faithful Jews, the apostles are eager to know if Jesus will finally do what they think the Messiah is
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GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 35 (when God comes home)

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  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God... And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” (Rev. 21.1-4)      The ancient world was choked full of temples, much like the modern world is replete with churches, synagogues, mosques, and various places of worship.   The ancient gods were believed to “inhabit” their temples in some way; the image of the god(dess) in question symbolized the divinity’s having taken up residence in its “home” (naturally, the last step in the construction of a temple was the installation of the god’
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GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 34 (how to conquer the world)

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       A Divine Revolution.   In their Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels said: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains . They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”      While the connection between the creators of communism and the book of Revelation might not be immediately obvious, make no mistake!   Revelation is a book about a revolution and a dream of a new world where there will truly be justice for all .   Revelation has been misunderstood, domesticated, and reduced to a “Christian cosmic horoscope”.   Strangely, Revelation has often been put forward as providing a vision of “the great escape” from the world into “eternity”, “heaven”, call it what you will.   Perhaps this is be
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GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 33 (the fate of the nations, part III)

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  “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.  The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it …Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life…and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations .” (Rev. 21.22 – 22.2)      There’s no way around it; the book of Revelation is full of violence.   Whether the violence is perpetuated by evil empires or by the Creator of all things, it is pervasive and vividly portrayed throughout the book.   One way of understanding this explosion of destruction is that Revelation is the ultimate expression of the biblical longing for evil to be judged and for righteousness t
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