Ancient Anglican

And at the end, the spiritual forces of evil, the wickedness that rules this world, are defeated. John’s vision is of Christ’s victory . . . John now has the vision we read about today in Chapter 21.

Beck’s point is that we cannot understand the Jesus of the Bible without also understanding the Satan of the Bible. From the Temptation Narratives in the Gospel to the Last Battle at the end of Revelation, Jesus’ identity and the church’s understanding of who Jesus is cannot be separated from Old Scratch.

Modernity is like an episode of Scooby-Doo. We begin with a supernatural evil. However, Suspicious doubt leads to investigation and reason. This reveals that the evil is not supernatural but simply a person doing bad things. Disenchantment sets in.

We must recognize the spiritual force antagonistic to the Kingdom of God is real and active in the world, and must be fought and resisted. This resistance is known as “spiritual warfare.”

Two angels appear and tell the disciples to quit staring into the sky. Their message is that the disciples are to quit looking for Jesus in the heavens and get to work preparing to be his witnesses in the world.

John describes for us what the earliest church looked like. It was a church characterized by two things – love for one another and an apocalyptic orientation.

At the tomb, the angel does not simply instruct teh women to tell others, but instructs the women as to the meaning of the Resurrection.

On the Cross, Jesus takes upon himself, each of our specific sins and transgressions. He cleanses them in his blood. He buries them in the tomb. He takes them away so that they are no more. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World.

“The Wise Thief didst Thou make worthy of Paradise, in a single moment, O Lord. By the wood of thy Cross, illumine me as well, and save me.”

In Luke’s story of Jesus’s pretrial detention, we see Jesus as the Lamb of God who has taken upon himself the sins of the world – our weakness of Peter, our violent depravity of the soldiers, and our perversion of justice of the Council.

In this last teaching, he does not give his disciples a list of theological principles to memorize, but he gives them an action to follow and a meal to share. Following after the teaching on the Apocalypse, the Last Supper is the dawn of the New Age.

The heart of the Little Apocalypse speaks to our interior preparation, regardless of the turmoil we see surrounding us in the world and despite even the threats of violence and persecution and natural disaster.