Before we finish the series on Revelation's Reassurances, I'd like to spend a few days in ch.21&22. I'll explain why later... (How's that for creating suspense?!?)
I love the sea. I love swimming in it and I love watching it when it roars and thunders. I love the smells and sounds and the salt spray on my face.
So I was surprised and, quite frankly, disappointed when I read that the New Jerusalem has no sea...
But we need to understand the context... The Israelites were not a sea-faring nation. The only seas they were willing to deal with were Galilee and the Dead Sea. (The Galilee sea is not much bigger than the Vaal Dam and the Dead Sea is... well, dead.) As far as the real sea was concerned, they saw it as a place of uncertainty and sea-monsters. In the mindset of the Israelites, the sea was unpredictable, dark, perilous and untameable.
It came to represent evil in all its uncertainty, ferocious and unpredictable. The sea represented their fears of rampant and frightening creatures. (Stories like Jonah's Big Fish would just reinforce this notion!)
So the reassurance that John's vision offers us, is that there will be a time when rampant, unpredictable and ferocious evil that seems way bigger than us will no longer be there - at all!
Today you and I still face this kind of darkness and evil, but it is comforting to know that even if evil seems as big and uncontrollable as the oceans, (think of what a tsunami can do) there will be a time that God will deal with it completely! It just won't be there!
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
