throne – I Write – the Steve Andrulonis blog

“Come up and see, and I will show you things to come.”

Jesus extended this invitation to John the Apostle in Revelation 4. At once, he went in the Spirit through the open door and into the place of majesty.

The scene before John reflected the sovereignty of the Almighty. All was honor and glory and fullness.

Revelation began with the Lord confirming the triumph of the Finished Work of the Lamb of God. John celebrated the cleansing power of the Blood to release us from the stain of sin. He fell before the Son when he saw Him. Awed by the Presence, John could only put his face to the ground. And then Jesus touched him and lifted him.

The encounter represented the personal relationship Jesus establishes with each of His sheep. He proceeded to give John words and a mission to communicate those words to the particular churches and their leaders.

Judgment indeed begins at the house of God. These congregations were family to the Lord, and as the good, good Father, He took note of areas worthy of commendation as well as those things in need of correction in each assembly. He gave directions and charged them to turn to the way of Truth.

Now, in Revelation 4, John gets taken higher. Up and up he went to bask in glimpses of the Lord in authority over Creation. In Revelation 5, the Apostle will begin to witness the scope of the Son’s position over human history and its ultimate outcome. John’s experience fulfilled what was written in Psalm 119:96: “I have seen the end of all perfection.”

Emerald Expression

Consider the Throne of Heaven as John expressed it in Revelation 4. One sat upon the seat over Creation. Only One — God the Son — and His appearance was full of sparkling and radiant spectacle. A rainbow enveloped the place with its emerald hue, the bright green, emphasized. The saying goes that someone can be green with envy. But in the economy of God, green symbolizes renewal, restoration, and resurrection.

Autumn brings falling leaves and their hues of brown and yellow and red as the decay takes its toll. Winter sends cold. Snows fall. The world gets iced over.

With Spring comes the thaw. Warmth softens the soil. The Easter lily blossoms and trees and fields come alive again. Green with freshness, our landscapes and vistas shout the arrival of a new beginning.

That’s what John is being shown – a New Creation is coming. The world has been entrapped in death. The wages of sin have exacted their tolls over and over and over. The ruler of darkness, the liar and the prince of the power of the air has had his way. His time is short, however.

The Son’s Day approaches. Ultimate reality is communicated in the vividness of these visions brought before John. The Lord reigns.

The Community

Portrayed for John is the community of Heaven and its unity with the earth. Unlike the individualistic, self-oriented, destructive nature of this world’s cosmic system, the Lord shares His government. Note that 24 “elders” are situated around the Throne. They are robed in white, crowned with gold.

Who are these attendants? The testimony concerning their garments and the crowns indicate that they are representative believers who worship the Lamb. No Scripture identifies them. They discern the sense of attitude proceeding from the One on the Throne. They sit in counsel, ruling and reigning with the Son, their presence is a precursor of how His saints shall rule with Christ in a glorious era to come to earth.

Thunders and lightnings and voices are heard. Lamps — seven of them — are seen. These torches are like the tongues of fire seen in Acts 2. These fires represent the manifold nature of the Holy Spirit whom Christ sent to live in those who come to Him. Isaiah 11:2 gives some definition of His sevenfold nature: “The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.”

Seven is the number of wholeness and completion in the Bible, and the Spirit evidenced the Finished Work of redemption in coming to fill the disciples of Jesus. Revelation 5:4 refers to the seven “eyes” of God in another reference to the Spirit. This reflects the omniscience and omnipresence of this Person of the Godhead.

For John, these visions indicate the authority of Heaven in the spirit realm. Satan may have a grip on power in the atmosphere he stimulates with worldliness, but above it all sits the Lamb of God on His Throne.

Four Creatures and the Crystal Sea

Also, we read of beasts bearing different faces. The imagery is similar to what we read in Ezekiel chapter 1. One beast has the face of a lion, another, the face of an ox, the third, the face of a man, and the fourth, a face of an eagle.

In keeping with what the Lord is revealing to His Apostle, these beings represent the Lord’s sovereignty and His power among all things that have the breath of life in them. The lion points to animals in the wild as the ox speaks of domesticated beasts. The eagle represents the fowl of the air. And then there is man, the one made in God’s image to exercise dominion.

These beings possess six wings to designate their representative status, similar to how military rank is demonstrated. This picture would have been commonly understood given the attire worn by the Roman soldiers throughout the region where John and the churches lived. Also, the four creatures were said to be “full of eyes” — they perceived the things going on in their realms of representation.

God’s Throne is in command of Creation, every part of it. He is in charge and His purposes continue.

What else did John observe before the Throne? A sea of glass with the appearance of crystal.

To the ancient mindset, the image of the sea stirred fear. Dark and stormy, with waves and forceful currents, the waters were most often spoken of as signifying chaos and impending doom.

In Heaven, the sea is clear and still, firm in its form. John once witnessed Jesus awakened from sleep during a turbulent and raging storm on Galilee’s waters. The disciples were sure their boat was about sink to the bottom. Terrified, they cried out to Jesus. With calm, the Son stood and spoke to the air: “Be muzzled” (see Mark 4:39). At His word, the wind and the waves fell silent and calm.

Before the Throne, no chaos exists. All is in order and under full control.

Harmony and Worship

Taken together this scene is punctuated for John with music. The sounds of worship are heard from the elders and from the beasts. Their songs are ones the Lord wanted John to teach the believers to sing as they faced seasons of trial. The rest of the letter that is the Revelation to John will graphically inform the Jesus followers of the troubles destined to come.

The message we must take from Revelation is this one: the Lord reigns in majesty. Hold fast to this Truth in spite of human circumstances. The Lamb who was slain is alive forevermore and we are His people. Seated above, He ever intercedes for us.

Heaven knows. Heaven sees. Heaven sings.

And so should we lift our voices in praise to Him:

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”

“You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for You have created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

Jesus came as the Final Word from Heaven to earth. God got down in the dirt with us, as one of us.

There was no other way to say what needed to be said, and so God took a Body prepared and lived the life in Person, under the sun and upon the waves. A top down operation it was not, as we read in the first chapter of the book of Hebrews. He did not ride into the world followed by a mass of angels, though He truly could have as the Captain of the host of Heaven.

Instead, God entered the horizontal plain. He came to see us eye-to-eye. In doing so, He spoke as the truest Prophet, served as the highest Priest, and claimed the surest of all crowns as King of kings.

Through the ages, prophets were raised to deliver the messages. They came and went. A few were heard and their words were heeded at certain seasons.

Voices for God

Samuel, for one, was called by God to bring Israel back to right worship after the disastrous era of the Judges. They had left the tribes fragmented and defeated in their distance from the One who had delivered them from bondage in Egypt.

Samuel’s ministry was one of restoration. The Word came to him as a youth serving in the Tabernacle. A time of renewal and victory was the result of his ministry, as his preaching and teaching touched the people and moved them nearer to God.

But Samuel grew old and this prophet’s sons were weak men who did not walk in his ways. Thus, the people, in a foolish fit of human reason, demanded to have a king set over them like all the other nations. The Lord gave them over to their request. A throne was established and a king was set upon it.

This arrangement of rule did not make life better for Israel. The kings proved to be all too human. The majority of them governed with selfish ambition. Their ways are recorded in histories that relate a nation plagued by ups and tremendous downs.

And yet God kept sending His Word through people who chose to fear Him and hear Him.

Most prophets wound up like Jeremiah. He preached consistent and true words, but those words were dismissed and mocked. He suffered much and sang out sad laments as the nation and its royal city Jerusalem slid into deep judgment and heathen occupation.

Jeremiah told of the faithful Lord, the One whose mercies never end and are ever new. He delivered the promise of the new and living Covenant to come. This “expected end” would satisfy and replenish every weary soul as the Word would be written upon hearts rather than tablets of stone. “And I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” said the Lord (see Jeremiah 31:31-34).

To understand all of this and how it came to be, we have to read the book of Hebrews. In these pages, we get a clear presentation of who Christ is in His fulfillment of Old Testament truth.

The Throne Claimed

At last, the Son was sent. He did more than talk. He lived out the sentences written from eternity past. And He lived them out as one of us. He fulfilled all the Law of the Lord in word, thought, and deed.

Christ entered into Creation, His Creation, with all of its definition and decrees and limitations. Yes, God took on a body of flesh. He lived in this body according to the leading of the Spirit. The radiance of His glory was seen only briefly and by just three – Peter, James, and John – on the Mount of Transfiguration (see Matthew 17:1-2). Jesus lived within the confines of the universe He formed and upholds by the Word of His power, to the letter.

Why? He came to be the Man of all men to die the death for all men. And by His death He “by Himself purged our sins” (Hebrews 1:3).

After He finished this work of His, He ascended to take His seat at “the right hand of the Majesty on high.” We read of how the disciples watched Jesus rise through the clouds in Luke 24 and Acts 1. Here, in Hebrews 1, we are told where He went.

The Son of Man became superior to angels through all of this, according to this passage. The royal order of the universe was now restored because of Jesus’ accomplishment as the last Adam (see 1 Corinthians 15:45).

The first Adam’s failure disturbed the original order established. Man was meant to exercise dominion through operating in the image of God as Heaven’s designated leaders of life on earth.

To reclaim the kingly position first assigned to man, Jesus became Man. God the Son redeemed all things and regained man’s superiority above the angels. Psalm 8 reveals that man was designed to be crowned with glory and honor and given “dominion over the works” of God’s hands (see Psalm 8:5-6). This status had been forfeited by the fall at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The Son became a fellow of ours. He experienced humanity to the full, even unto death.

Reestablishing the Order

More than raising us into right standing with God, Christ’s obedience and offering of Himself also put the angelic realm back into its proper place.

The rebellion of Lucifer, referred to Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, spawned division. This bright, wise, beautiful being sought an exalted status; he lusted for the worship due only to the One Most High. Others sided with him and became demonic affiliates with this fallen prince who possessed power over the world system and its kingdoms, a point noted by Satan to Jesus in the wilderness temptation (see Matthew 4, Luke 4).

Hell lost. The devil was defeated.

Jesus the Son conquered the grave; the curse of death could not corrupt His perfection. As the fully resurrected Man, as a true Son of David, He inherited the Throne of Majesty.

Jesus came from Heaven and situated Himself underneath the cosmic realm of the air. He ambushed Hell and triumphed over the power it possessed by taking all wrath and rage as penalty for sin upon His Person. The fear of death that once imprisoned us was crushed.

All authority belongs to Him. And since we’ve been made one with Him, His authority is ours also.

What of the angels and their power? What are they to us? They are our servants as stated rhetorically in Hebrews 1:14: “Are not [angels} all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?”

Yes, the angels are our ministers, as they were always meant to be. They serve God and because we are His joy, these beings are all around us. Let us therefore be wise, watchful, and kind according to this instruction: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2).

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The Scene of Sovereignty