Do you feel like we are living in an apocalypse?
Pandemic, polarisation and the pain of injustice of late, can all contribute to the feeling of apocalyptic living. Yet I believe that while the threat of all these things are present and real, I believe that God has something incredibly profound to teach us through the ‘apocalypse’ that we are living in brought about by COVID-19, present political brokenness and the current situation of racial injustice.
Now I don’t watch apocalyptic movies, in fact, I actively avoid them as they’re not really to my taste, yet the plot that always unfolds in these movies is the same- end of the world scenarios often following a pandemic or a chemical catastrophe of some sort- one man is left with his dog or on his own trying to survive in the shell of a world that once was- the odds are against him and we are on the edge of our seats to see how he is to cope with his new, almost impossible task of survival-
And our understanding of Apocalypse then, is cemented in that idea; that the world as we know it, has come to an end-
In the Bible, we refer to the book of Revelation as Apocalypse, and many of us read the book with that similar view- that the book of Revelation is to do with the end of the world.
However, in the Bible, the definition of the word “apocalypse” actually has nothing to do with the end of the world-
The world Apocalypse itself is a Greek word that means “to uncover, or reveal”- an apocalypse if when you “suddenly see the true nature of something that you couldn’t see before”-
Now we all develop familiar ways of seeing the world, which can limit, or blur our vision- so an apocalypse acts as a revelation!
Now in the Bible, an apocalypse is when God pulls back the curtain to show someone what’s really going on in the world from a divine perspective- and in the Bible, we see God doing this time and time again with the Prophets- Isaiah is transported into God’s divine throne room and He’s suddenly in God’s temple, which is described a s bridge between heaven and earth and from there, God gives him a divine perspective on Israel’s past, present and future so that Isaiah can bring challenge and comfort to God’s people.
And we see this again with the Apostle Paul, who was trying to stop the movement of Jesus but then he gets stopped in his tracks by a vision of the risen Jesus himself, whom He is fighting against- and he suddenly realises that he is fighting against the very thing that he has been hoping for- and it changes the course of his life.
So these apocalypse give people a heavenly perspective on their earthly situation, and they can give hope or they can challenge you or make you change everything.
Now the two examples I have given are of people in the Bible having a “revelation” or an “apocalypse” but there is whole section of the Bible, which is called “apocalyptic literature” and it is really interesting and if you want to learn more, I would highly recommend a study online by the Bible Project, which looks at this in greater depth.
But today, I want to look specifically at the apocalypse of Paul-
Paul’s letter to the Galatians, in Chapter 1, contains a bit of an autobiography of how he comes to know Jesus. Here he outlines how he used to be a Pharisee, which essentially means that he was a religious leader of his day. Paul also says lets us know that not only was he a Pharisee, but he excelled at it, a Pharisee of Pharisees as it were, descended from Pharisees and good at his job, the cream of the crop-
From verse 11 of Galatians 1, we begin to read of Paul’s own apocalypse and how God “apocalypse his son to me”, he says on verse 16.
And Paul begins to share about his Road to Damascus experience with Jesus, which we read about earlier in the book of Acts- and because Paul was a true believer in the promises of scripture, he believes in the God of Israel, He believes in God’s promise to Abraham and he, like thousands of other devoted Jewish worshippers, is waiting for the renewal of all things and the promise of a Messiah. He particularly believes that when Israel has proved its devotion to God by being hyper-devoted to the laws of the Torah, then will God finally hear them and gift to them the Messiah.
So when the Jesus movement pops up, he thinks it’s a heretical sect that’s gonna lead Israel astray from the truth and so he signs up to the team that is devoted to stomping it out- So he starts getting people arrested, and some killed and in fact, he is on the road to go and arrest some more followers of Jesus in Damascus when the risen Jesus appears to him in a vision that shines a bright light that isn’t just visible to Paul but al those who are with him too and all of a sudden, Paul says, He hears and meet the risen Jesus, saying: “you’re fighting against me!”
Yet I’m the one you’re hoping in- I represent the God of Israel- the God of love, the God of mercy, the God of justice! That’s me! You’re fighting against me!
And this stops Paul dead in his tracks and Paul, for the first time in his life, can see Jesus in a way he could never see him before. This is describing a revelation, an epiphany, an apocalypse.
What this means for Paul is that he can now see from God’s point of view. From a divine perspective, he can now see the reality of the Jesus movement and that he has been wrong all along. His current way of seeing the wold has been blinding him to the truth and reality of who Jesus is. And it took an apocalypse to reorient his imagination to the truth.
What a moment! To realise that it’s not just that you’re blind, but that my current way of seeing the world leaves whole parts of reality invisible to me- I can’t see them and I won’t be able to until there’s some kind of event often that God will allow or cause that shatters and disrupts my way of seeing and all of a sudden I can see things that I have never seen before but that were there all along.
And that is the heartbeat of the apocalypse- to reveal to us, what we have been missing all along. I wonder, could the current situation we’re facing even now, against the backdrop of a global pandemic, in fact, against the backdrop of what some might argue are two pandemics- Covid-19 and racial injustice, could this be another apocalypse?
What’s really interesting about Paul’s story is that in order for his eyes to be reopened after he is blinded by the sight of the risen Jesus, he needs the help of those who have always seen where he has been blind- in order for his sight to be restored he needs to go to Ananias to pray for him- and both men must find courage to trust each other as they carry out what Jesus is asking of them.
My prayer for us as the body of Christ is that we will, like Paul and Ananias, obey the voice of God so that eyes can be opened as Jesus intends for the sake of the gospel, in Jesus’ name.