2006-07-27 - The Door of Heaven is Open

Rev 4:1 After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things." (NASB)

The time is around 70AD. The Apostle John is in the middle of receiving a vision on the Island of Patmos. It is a small rock in the Mediterranean Sea that is basically a big quarry run by the Roman Empire as a penal camp. There is no hope of escape, and little hope of pardon. The prisoners are the workers in the quarry and the guards are their tormentors. I doubt that John stopped speaking to those around him about his Savior. He was a prisoner. What else could they do to him? Kill him? Then he would be freed from this life and ushered into the presence of his Lord and friend through the door standing open in Heaven.

The voice like the sound of a trumpet is almost certainly Jesus. The Master is going to show John things that "must take place" in the future. At work and with friends I joke that my crystal ball is broken and the order hasn't gone through for the replacement yet. However, this vision is no mystical maybe. John is literally given a look into the future by the Author of Time. Some of the things he will see may have been beyond him. Some say the stars falling from the sky in John's later descriptions might be nuclear warheads coming in on reentry from space. I suppose it is possible. But John would have no framework to understand this - if that is actually what he is seeing. But these stars, be they meteors or missiles, will fall from the sky. That much is a fixed certainty.

But this revelation to John and John's unwavering faith and witness to those around him, and to us, all took place because Jesus Christ came to live a perfect sinless life and die in the place of each of us - to open the door in Heaven. The door had been closed when Adam and Eve sinned and fell from innocence. The penalty for sin was satisfied by the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross. His sinless life paid the price that was demanded. And the power of death was shattered by His resurrection on the third day.

Because of this, a door is standing open in Heaven. To all who will come and turn from their sins, and we all have them, and walk with Jesus asking for the new life He offers, the door is standing open.

Selah - think on these things.

Grace & Peace,
Mike

mike.hoskins@cfdevotionals.org
http://www.cfdevotionals.org