r/ChristianDevotions

John 1:1, 14
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

I've been thinking about how I might treat with the objections of the Islamists who I might meet at our "family table" during this upcoming Kairos 4 day weekend event (K13). Not searching for a debate win, that's not the environment we establish during our events. Rather to generate and then facilitate a thought experiment. The end goal being to leave a seed of truth planted in his mind that the Holy Spirit can then nurture and inspire in time.

This is a process that must be carried out carefully and thoughtfully. Not only because we're holding this thought experiment in a prison and making these assertions to a people with a proven track of violence and criminal activities, but also because our approach is always Christ-like, always full of grace. This isn't to say without conviction or without holding firmly to the sovereignty of the triune God. We always advocate for Christ never allowing our tolerance to make excuses for Christ's sovereignty as the One true God.

The goal is to find common ground when we can and challenge the thinkers to look further than their dogma currently allows.

This is how I've approached the pagan who worships the creature not the Creator. Challenge the decision to follow a created being when the obvious better covenant would be between the creature and his Creator directly, not dependent upon other outside forces or subordinates. In this same way I'd approach the Islamists objection. I'd start a thought experiment around his presumptions. Like their primary objection which has to do with the idea of the Trinity.

The primary objection. To the Islamist, oneness means solitude, and a son means a creature. If that rule is true, the Eternal Son is impossible, and you should reject Him. If that rule is too small, the objection falls by itself, and he is left holding a greater God than the one his dogma currently allows.

So we should start there, where he is already right.

He does not want a created rival beside God.

Neither do I.

That is common ground.

He already fears a second god. I tell him I fear that too. Then I'd ask him to look at what his own rule does next.

If God can only speak through a created messenger, then the man is still depending on a subordinate. A prophet is not God. A book carried by a prophet is not God. The word he trusts to bring him near is, on his own terms, a creature standing between the creature and the Creator.

So, the question is not whether God is one. The question is whether the one God is lonely, and whether He must send a servant because He cannot come Himself.

We both already refuse a second god (Mark 12:29), but what sort of oneness are we following and defending?

If oneness means God has no eternal Word, then He must speak through someone He made, and you are trusting a creature to do what only the Creator can do. But if the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1), then the Son is not a rival and not a child taken from a wife. He is God come near. Distinct, as a word is distinct from the one who speaks it. Not divided, and not a second eternal.

Now that we've asked these questions we can build upon that thought. If the word of God is the Son and the word of God is God, then the Son is God in the flesh. And His cross is where that one God bore our guilt. Where that word of God spoke about forgiveness of sin. Where the Messiah suffered and died to bear that sin in our place. And where the eternal word, the eternal Son sent by the eternal Father to testify to the truth, born in the flesh by the eternal Spirit, was slain as the perfect sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin. But even more importantly the Word, the eternal Son, did not only speak about forgiveness there. He finished it there.

So here's the ultimate truth for us to consider:

If that Word became flesh, God did not shout His pardon from a distance through a created messenger, He instead sent His only begotten Son, born in the flesh by the eternal Spirit, and slain as the perfect sacrifice. The Messiah suffering in our place. On the cross, where that one God bore our guilt, and where the eternal Word of God finished the work of forgiveness.

I'm asking you to look further into the testimony of truth than your current rule can go. To consider a God who can come. A God who can bear sin. And a God who does not leave you in the hands of a subordinate.

Why do I believe this to be Jesus the Christ?

First because he said it of Himself.

Before Abraham was, I am (John 8:58).

They picked up stones for that sentence. Yet he did not take it back. He had already said the Son gives life to whom He will, and that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father (John 5:21, 23).

Next because His resurrection seals the deal. He said, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it, and John tells us He meant His own flesh and blood body (John 2:19–21). He said no one took His life from Him. He laid it down, and He had authority to take it up again (John 10:17–18). That for me is pivotal. He's explaining to us, His creatures, that He holds the authority given to Him by The Father, the power of life and death.

Then the tomb was empty. And He stood among them.

As the apostle Paul says, He was declared the Son of God in power by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4).

A created messenger stays in the grave. This one did not.

I understand that this triune God idea is something difficult to make sense of. It's not unlike how in science and specifically regarding gravity and light, what was once thought to be fixed in Newton's laws later developed into Einstein's theory of relativity. It turned out that light can be bent, acted upon even though it does not have mass. So the laws of the universe didn't apply perfectly. There were variations that needed to be understood in a larger less narrow context.

See, it's not that Newton’s law was false inside its frame. It was just too small a frame for the light ray to be observed for what was really happening.

I know the triune God is hard to hold. So was the path of light, once. Newton’s frame was sure of itself. What has no mass goes straight, and gravity is only for weighty things. Then the light ray was measured past the sun, and it bent. Light has no resting mass, and yet still it was not outside the influence of the gravitational field.

Newton’s law was not false inside its frame. The frame was too small for the ray to be seen as it is. I am not saying Einstein proves the Son of God. I am saying you already know what it is to trust a rule that cannot completely cover the thing right in front of you.

The rule says Oneness means solitude, and a son means a creature. Look further. The Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1). Distinct, and not a second source. Not a second god.

Amen? 🙏🏼

Revelation 19:11-13
"And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many crowns; and He has a name written on Himwhich no one knows except Himself. He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God."

His eyes are a flame of fire.
Fire that is discernment. Fire that consumes what cannot stand. He knows everything there is to know. And we know Him truly by these things He has revealed, yet we do not comprehend Him exhaustively. We cannot know the name that guards the mystery of His person. Even when he walked the earth in the time when every eye saw Him, there was a depth in the Son that belongs only to the Father and the Son.

"No one knows the Son except the Father."

And likewise here in this visionary visitation the faithful know what can be known and what makes that possible is the faithfulness. And this is important because worship does not require that we possess His hidden name. It requires that we trust the One who bears it. Those to whom He now's rides toward in judgement cannot know Him, they have no discernment. They refused His name, His rule, and made war with Him.

And so He rides, knowing. He knows everything there is to know about the armies gathered against Him, about the churches that overcame, and about the ones who only seemed to. Nothing in the motives of the people on earth is dark to His gaze.

He has spoken. He has kept His word. He has given the Spirit who searches the deep things of God and declares what is freely given. And the truly faithful have been invited to the banquet because their trust is a kind of sight.

The armies of heaven do not ride to negotiate a name the people of earth rejected. Faithful and True comes to finish the war they chose.

Among the armies of heaven are clothed in fine linen, white and clean. Following the Lord of Lords as they had always been. Following Him on white horses. They are armies, and they are riders, but they are not the ones who wage the war. The verb is following. The sword that strikes the enemy nations comes out of Christ's mouth alone. The rod of iron is His. The winepress is His to tread.

The linen is not battle dress they earned on this field. It was granted to them. They are both witness and testimony in one company, present at the judgment they do not execute. Their following is the public form of the trust that brought them to the banquet. These are the first fruit of the harvest.

Not the reapers. The reaping is His. Christ is Himself the firstfruits of those who sleep, and these are the company gathered to Him, already raised in pledge, already clothed, already following. The full harvest of the earth is still His to put in, and the winepress is still His to tread. These appear ahead of the harvest as proof that the harvest belongs to God. That is why they ride in linen and not in armor. The field is already decided by the One they follow.

The first fruit in Revelation 19 is the Genesis promise come due. In Eden the promise was a seed. The serpent would bruise His heel, and He would crush the serpent’s head. That seed was not a harvest. It was the pledge that a harvest would come. Everything after Genesis 3 waits on that One offspring.

Christ is that seed of the woman, risen, the firstfruits of those who sleep. The bruising is behind Him. Now the crushing is what this ride finishes. When heaven opens and "Faithful and True" comes to judge and wage war, Genesis 3:15 is no longer a promise spoken in a garden. It is a Rider with many crowns, a robe already dipped in blood, and a sword that is His word.

So the vision says the Genesis promise was never only about one man winning a private victory. It was about a seed, then a firstfruits, then a harvest. The seed has come.

Genesis 3:15 says the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head. Revelation 19:15 says the Rider will strike the nations with the sword of His mouth, rule them with a rod of iron, and tread the winepress of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty.

A winepress is not a weapon of war, it's a harvest machine. Grapes are gathered, thrown into the press, and trampled until the juice runs. The only consideration is the ripeness of the fruit. The fruit does create the winepress, they yield to it. They do not set the hour. They don't choose the Owner, or share the treading. Ripeness is the summons. The press was already His.

And the winepress is the Word of God. The Rider’s name is the Word of God, and the sword that strikes the nations comes out of His mouth. No sword forged by men. Not even hardened or sharpened by the councils of men. He does not tread with a forged blade. He treads by speaking His words. What the councils debated, delayed, and dulled, His mouth finishes in a single utterance. No one who follows is arguing about His interpretation. The linen company does not convene to explain the press. They follow the One whose word is the press, and the argument is over because the Word has spoken.

The rod of iron is the other hand of His same rule.

The sword is His mouth.

The winepress is His word.

And the rod is how that word governs what it has been judged.

Iron does not negotiate with clay. The Son will break them with a rod of iron and shatter them like a potter’s vessel. The rod is the answer to a conspiracy. The rod appears where rulers have said, "Let us tear their fetters apart" (Psalm 2:3).

The rod is the Messiah’s inherited rule, first spoken of in the second psalm, then given to the Son (Revelation 12), then shared with those who overcome (Thyatira). So the iron is not a new weapon forged for Armageddon. And a rod in Scripture is also the shepherd’s staff. The staff that counts the flocks, guides them into the sheepfold, and strikes the beast that tries to scatter them.

Faithful and True does not borrow a rod from the kings of the earth. He brings the one the Father gave Him, and He rules with it.

Now the feasts divide.

Another cry goes out from an angel standing in the sun, to the birds in midheaven. The great feast of God has arrived, and these birds eat the flesh of kings and their hordes.

Same chapter. Two tables.

Those dressed in white linen invited to a wedding and the kings of the earth are summoned as a meal for vultures. Small and great appear in both banquets, once as bond-servants who fear Him and give praise, and once as food for the birds.

The beast and the kings of the earth and their armies are assembled to make war against Him who sat on the white horse, and against His army. We know their intent, it's clear. And there is no report from the battlefield because it was over before it began.

The next thing we hear is the beast is seized. With him the false prophet, the one who performed signs in his presence and deceived those who took the mark and worshiped the image. They're tossed into the lake of fire and brimstone, alive. Then the Word speaks. The sword from the mouth strikes. The winepress begins its work. The rod rules.

"The rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh."

How does the Word of God squish these armies? How does Satan's head get crushed by a word from God?

The nearest explanations are already in the prophets and in Paul. Isaiah says the shoot from Jesse will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. Paul says the lawless one will be brought to nothing by the appearance of His coming and slain by the breath of His mouth.

Appearance and breath.

I believe truth undoes their life. The Spirit of Truth eliminates their conspiracy. Their lies are canceled.

Their armies were never held together by iron of their own. They were held together by a word that was not God’s. By lies. By idolatrous words. The signs of the false prophet, the image that was worshiped, the mark taken so they could buy and sell, the counsel of kings who said the fetters could be torn off.

A conspiracy is a shared lie with swords in its hands. When the Word appears, the lie has nothing left to stand on. Breath cancels it. What the breath cancels cannot keep the shape of an army.

The only thing animating them at all was the life God gave them. And they continued to refuse to recognize that. Not only that they conspired against Him.

His breath was loaned to them, and they spent it denying the One whose breath it was. These armies do not create their own pulse. They turn it against the Word who sustains it.

In a word, "enough" (I believe), they are dissolved as Peter describes.

God has had enough.

It's over.

The breath that loaned them life is the breath that ends their conspiracy.

What was held together by a lie cannot survive the heat of His truth. Like a blow-back can suck the breath right out of your lungs and burn everything inside. Their last breath is literally their death. Their lies are the very thing that kills them.

A fitting and just end for sure.

Amen.