We have been addressing the elements or characteristics that make up the greatest Christian life. Of course, this is from my perspective, and others may have different ones. That is the beauty of the body of Christ—we all “know in part,” so to get the whole picture, we must put what we have together with what others have. I would count that as another characteristic of a great Christian life—the humility to be open and teachable so we can learn from others.   

     A friend of mine is a chemist, and when he heard about the chemicals that were being used to disperse the oil in the Gulf after the BP oil disaster, he thought that the dispersants were more toxic than the oil and probably were being used to make the oil disappear from sight. He said this would ultimately do more damage than the oil to the Gulf ecosystem. Just a few weeks ago, they discovered a huge plume of oil sitting on the bottom that was over six hundred feet high, over a mile wide, and over twenty-two miles long!

     As I write this Word for the Week for the 50th week of the year, I thought about how 50 is the number of freedom, the Jubilee. In the biblical Jubilee, all debts were canceled and all slaves were freed. Why can’t we ask God for a Jubilee now? The world is burdened with unprecedented and unsustainable debt, and even worse, it is burdened by unprecedented sin. As great as this sin and debt is, it is not beyond the power of the cross.

     I know people who were directed to move to a place by a revelation, angelic visitation, or other supernatural way, and then refused to leave it until they received another such revelation. In some of these cases, it was obvious they had stayed much longer than they should have, but they insisted on waiting for another supernatural revelation to lead them. Where does it say that if we receive a revelation to go somewhere that we must have another one to leave?

The four living beings, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME" (Revelation 4:8).

     Last week we studied Revelation 1:12-16, the description John gave of one of the most spectacular visions of the Lord that a man was given to see. Jesus stood in the midst of the seven lampstands that verse 20 says are the seven churches. Here we will focus on the last part:  

        and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength.

         In the summer of 2014, I had an experience with the Lord in which He said I was no longer a servant, but a friend. It was like being born again, again. I have had the most wonderful times with the Lord ever since, but in some ways this has been much harder for me than learning to be a servant. Even so, everything I learned being a disciple and a bondservant was necessary for this next level of relationship with the Lord.

And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth... (Revelation 13:11).

As we covered last week, Cain was “a tiller of the ground” (Genesis 4:2), which speaks of the earthly mindedness of the seed of Cain. Here we see that the beast comes up “out of the earth,” which is the result of the earthly mindedness of fallen mankind. Let us read the last part of this chapter, verses 16-18, where we see the ultimate result of this earthly mindedness: