[AI translation] Since time immemorial, three questions have been on people's minds. One is what do I know, another is what should I do, and the third is what should I hope for? It would be well if all three questions occupied us in proportion, and if from our preoccupation with one we radiated strength and blessing to the others. Of these three, it is the third that we believers tend to neglect most, and the others even more. The question, what shall I hope for? Today's man is very concerned with knowledge. He takes pride in his knowledge and diligently multiplies his knowledge. One is also very concerned with the question of one's actions: how should I organise my life, what standards should I follow? But he is less concerned with the question, "What should I hope for? And yet it is not only religiously, biblically, but also simply humanly, psychologically: one cannot be without hope. The less clear the hopes, the more erroneous and uncertain human life becomes. The more definite one's hopes are, the more definite, the more vigorous, the more purposeful one's life. So I broaden the theme to the point that hope is not just a religious need, it is a universal human need, and whoever has lost his hope has lost his tomorrow, and in essence, with his tomorrow, he has lost his today. It is no accident that people who have lost hope are very close to suicide.So hope is a universal human need. To use a weak analogy: you cannot drive a car at night without a headlight. In order to drive unhindered, you have to have a light ahead, otherwise you run into a ditch, a tree or another vehicle. Just as you cannot drive at night without a headlight ahead, you cannot live a human life without hope in the dark spiritual something that surrounds us. But this analogy is a limp. I have deliberately chosen this simile first, so that I can contrast it with another simile that more accurately represents the biblical idea. You know, the car and the projected spotlight, it suggests that I have the light within me and I project the light forward. There is also this idea of hope, that one produces some hope oneself and then moves towards the projected hope that one produces. There is such a thing. And even these self-produced projected hopes have a helping power. But the Bible does not talk about the hopes that arise in our hearts, it communicates promises to us and teaches us to connect those hopes to the promises that come to us.
Another analogy, then, I will make in contrast to the previous one. The great ships approach the harbour at night, and the light of the watchtower adjusts the manoeuvring of the ships to enter the harbour. In ancient times, huge lighthouses of this kind were built, on which huge bonfires were built, and by their light navigators could find their way around the sea. Let's think of this picture, which is more like the biblical reality. We are sick at sea, among the perils of the cliffs, shipwrecked, threatened with disaster. We have the desire: how good it would be to arrive in port! And it is not with our own spotlights that we feel the waves, but with a watchtower, where the light is still projected, and to which we are aligned, we arrive safely in port. Applied to our lives, this means that the lights from God are the ones to guide our lives, and the promises of God are the beacons that guide the ship of our lives over the cliffs so that we can truly arrive in the peace of God. This Bible passage that I have read today is such a promise from God, a light, and it is God's offer to us today to orient our lives to it.
There are small hopes and there are ultimate, great hopes. We all have small hopes: that I can still raise my child, that I can still do this task in good health. These small human hopes are good. They are especially good if they can be included in the final great hope, and within that hope we hope and pray, "God, I still want this, I believe that you sent me to do this, give me the strength to do it! But now I am not talking about these, but about the great beam of light into which we must be incorporated with our little hopes. And in the biblical passage that we read, these great hopes - oh, it would be better to say them in the singular, because then we say even more: the great hope is spoken.
And here I am about to offer the Brethren a change of formula. I myself have recently become aware of the need for this. Let us change a formula! Those who deal with the Book of Revelation, with the idea of hope, usually use this formula: the end is coming! There are alarming sermons like this: 'Man, come back urgently, for the end is here! The end of the world is coming soon! That's what they call it: doomsday. We have become accustomed to such a formula: the end is coming. God has reminded us that if we want to be biblical, if we want to adjust our thoughts to the fact of revelation, we must stop talking like this and instead practice this other formula: the beginning is coming! What has been and is now is really a prelude to the great divine symphony. The real beginning is approaching. Let us think of God creating a new heaven and a new earth. Well, this is not the end, this is a beginning. In big experimental factories, they used to do this, a trial run. They experiment, and then they put it through all kinds of stresses and tests, and if it holds up, then the real production begins. So we are allowed to think that everything that has happened and is happening is an experimentation of the beginning, and the beginning of the real world is coming.
There is a very essential truth in this - I have accepted it for myself - that I am allowed to speak of my own life in this way: the real beginning of my life is approaching. Not the end is coming, but the beginning of my life really unfolding as God intended. And what is true for us is true for the whole world: the beginning of Life is coming, the beginning of the life of humanity is coming, the beginning of man becoming man is coming, and this world will be a world, not a hell. The beginning is coming. I would recommend to my Brethren that they reflect on this, and if they accept the truth in the proposition, let us set our minds on the idea that the beginning is coming, the beginning of the real world, the beginning of the new world, and let us not talk so much about the old. For in fact God is closing up the old, but this is not done to bring an end to man and everything, but in fact then the real can begin. So the book of Revelation is not talking about the end of the world, but rather the beginning of the new world. Let us set our minds on the threshold of a new world. Breaking this down to our individual destinies, let us also see our own lives as approaching the threshold of fulfilment as we approach death. Let us not be bewitched by death and the end of the world, but see it as a painful threshold, a black line that we have to cross, and the world has to cross, but the point is that the beginning of a new world is coming.
Let us now look at this passage of scripture and understand some great gospel messages in this way. First of all, I would like to point out that this is the first time in the whole book - we are at chapter 21 - that God himself speaks. There were powerful angels speaking, different messengers, thunders, elders, all kinds of voices, but God Himself was silent all this time. Here for the first time it is said, "He who sits on the throne says. I have already said that this is a Jewish description of God. The Jewish man dared not speak the name of God directly. Now God finally speaks, for the first time in this book, and the more powerful is the resounding message that God Himself speaks. And this is the word of God: 'Behold, I make all things new'. This is a powerful gospel. You can almost say that now we really understand God, now we really see into the heart of God, now God reveals his plans in these few words, "Behold, I make all things new." So I am not only renewing the Church, not only moving the chosen army of believers to some happier star, but I am also renewing the whole universe.
Here we have to learn to fit back into the strange old thinking that comes up at every turn in this book. Here is a strange phrase: "and the sea was no more". How should we interpret this strange sentence? If one thinks primitively, he says: so the new world will be a great continent. Now more than two thirds of the surface of the earth is covered with water, and then it will all be one big land. That is not what the writer means. Here we see that we must first put ourselves back into their minds. The sea was not simply an element, a natural reality, for the ancient man, but the sea had a spiritual content. And if we want to understand this spiritual reality, we have to think of the primordial myth that goes beyond the Bible, that is found in the Bible itself, in the sense that God is Lord over the myth-gods. These ancient pre-Biblical Babylonian and Egyptian archetypes speak of the element of the chaos god being the sea. This is how it is to be understood when the Bible speaks of God taking the sea and enclosing the land. The sea is constantly besieging the land. Anyone who has been to the shore of the sea knows the roaring waves that besiege the land. The old man looked on in horror, and perceived that God, the merciful God, had set apart a piece of land and created order, a way of life, security there, but the ancient dragon god, the chaos god, would not be satisfied: he was besieging and seeking to wash away the land. So they thought of the sea as a hostile element, they feared the sea. Think of the fragile ships they were travelling in. The most destructive thing was to travel by sea.
So if we want to understand this saying that there will be no more sea, then we have to reflect on this ancient mythical thinking, and then we will understand the gospel, the spiritual message of this. There will be no more sea, this means that this demonic power will be no more, the powers of chaos will be finally taken by God. I would like this concept of the sea to be cast in its spiritual content as an element of restlessness, of unpredictability, of a world of siege over our strength, of storms, where we humans will be little nobody matches if the sea rises up against us. For even today, when we have wonderful technical skills, a tidal wave is launched and twenty to thirty metre high waves crash against each other. Then all technical superiority is in vain, cities and people are swept away. How horrified the more defenceless ancient man was! When in this vision the phrase 'there will be no more sea' appeared, it meant that the subversive, destructive, anti-life forces that still rage in this world today would be no more. "Behold, I will make all things new", I will bind these demonic forces. In fact, if we translate the spiritual content of this Gospel, we could say that there will finally be peace in the world. The overwhelming tide of hatred will be stilled. Peace, tranquillity, order in the world at last. The first great light of this message is that God is making all things new.
The second thought I would like to express is that the work of God will be on a cosmic scale. God is creating a new heaven and a new earth. We need to make this point here because believers are constantly threatened by a spiritual danger, a false spirituality that has much more Greek philosophy than Christian truth. There is a threat that salvation is to fly out of here, and that if there is a new world, it will be something glorious, heavenly, spiritual, beyond the clouds. And here is the Bible speaking so ironically and so materialistically that God is creating a new heaven and a new earth. God is also remaking the material world. What this material world will be like, we do not know. It would be a waste of effort, and unnecessary, because if I could explain what it is like, it is not new: I explain it with the things at hand. It will be new. A new heaven and a new earth. Matter takes on some new quality. The more astronomy and physics develop, the more realistic our ideas are that not only is there this idea of matter, as there is now, but there is now, for example, antimatter. All sorts of exciting things are being taught, but even more radical and newer things are being taught. Here really the intellect must rest quietly, and hope, faith, must say that the mighty God, Who created the universe from above, will abolish this universe, create a new heaven and a new earth. Let us hope that this new heaven and new earth will be more beautiful, more glorious, more rich than this one, although we can hardly measure its richness and beauty. So when the ray of hope, or promise, comes from God and becomes hope in us, the promise is unheard of. Not only for me, not only for my heavenly dwelling, but such an unheard of perspective, a new heaven and a new earth and all mankind.
Then the Word speaks of the fact that in this new heaven and new earth there will be a qualified place for God's martyred people. This is said here in Old Testament terms in the Scriptures. Let us consider some of them. First of all, the Old Testament criticises the image that "the tabernacle of God is with men". Remember: the holy tabernacle was placed in the centre of the people on pilgrimage in the wilderness, surrounded by the pilgrim people. Thus they wandered in the wilderness. This is what the image refers to, that in the new world the tabernacle of God will be with the people. But here again we are not stuck with the image of the tabernacle. The tabernacle in the wilderness could mean at least these two things: first, that God had accepted that people as his own, as he says here that he would be their God. In the new world, too, God will receive as his own those who have stood the test of faithfulness. God is gathering His people, His faithful, witnessing martyrs, around Himself, and they will have a special ministry, I say, a position in this new world. The other idea is also expressed in the tabernacle, that the tabernacle is the tent of meeting. So the special nearness of God will work God-encounters in this world.
Consider this other promise: "And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall mourning nor crying nor pain be any more, for the former things are passed away". It is almost a little too apt to say that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. It can be a little jarring. How? Does God himself wipe away the tears from our eyes? But let's not look at how close to human this image is, how humanized God is, but in the beautiful sense of the word, how close to human this image is, that God carries us one by one, that he wipes away every tear from our eyes. One theologian boldly adds this explanation, that we forget our torments here. One may wonder whether this is true or not. I wouldn't be too angry if God made me so new in that new world that I didn't remember backwards to what it was like then. For we can remember through our tears how much suffering there was, but if the remembering is true, we also remember our shame, our sins, and we must remember. The facts show that we have suffered, we have been deprived, we have been humiliated, but if we remember in the light of God, our own shame is there beside us, and it is better that our tears with our shame be sealed by God and made new. I don't claim that this is the certain truth, but it is a touching thought, that it wipes away our tears, and that means it also wipes away the memory of our suffering and shame. Will it be a great loss if God wipes away our tears and opens our lives to a whole new way of experiencing? We don't know, for these are groping notions and thoughts, but it is certain that God will be more merciful than ever before, than any experience, and will gather His people around Himself in this way.
There is a fearful threat in this passage beside the promise. It is very interesting that the German Evangelical Church has designated this passage as a mandatory sermon for one Sunday of the year. It is debated among experts whether to read it in church up to verse 7 or verse 8. Either way, evangelical ministers do it. Verse 7 ends, "He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." But there are those who say that if the Greek text is parsed in a meaningful way, verse 8 should be included. But it is not as pleasant as verse seven, which was very timely at the time of the Christian persecution of the Emperor Domitian, when this book was written. Verse 8 goes on to say, 'But for the cowardly, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their portion shall be in the lake burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death'. It is understandable that this was taken out by those ministers who wanted to speak of the beautiful, the pleasant, and the lovely. But I tell you, the Greek text has the idea ending here, at the end of verse 8. So there is promise and a stern warning here. And when we hear it side by side, our hearts do tremble a little bit: my God, will I be among the victors? And especially, if a really trying time comes, a time like Diocletian's, when it's not so easy to be a Christian, will I stand the test? And if I don't stand the test? What are the promises worth if my part is in the brimstone lake of fire? In this duality, let our hearts tremble, who is victorious and who is a coward! And if this dichotomy has truly brought us to our knees, there is one more gospel in this passage that I would like to conclude with. I've thought it through, I've shaken it over, and this is how I say it to you. I wish you could shake it all over, and wipe it all over.
So there is one more gospel in this Bible passage that is read. As if God also wants to give truth and encouragement to His people who are prone to be faithful, or rather unfaithful. Notice this phrase: "I will give freely to the thirsty from the fountain of the water of life". A mighty gospel shines forth in this word: freely. To the thirsty. And again, it is not physical thirst that is meant here. To him who thirsts for life, holiness, victory, faithfulness, a share in the heavenly world, God gives freely. I cannot express the gospel of this word, but perhaps the Holy Spirit will stir your heart to what this word means: freely. So, in the end, it is the gift nature that comes out. Faithfulness and unfaithfulness are mixed in all of us, we all want to be faithful, we are all carried away by this world, we become unfaithful again and again. In this great flux, the word free is a great strength and security. It is no longer a question of performance, but of gift. Who is the gift for? To those who thirst. In the end it boils down to: are you thirsty, brother? Then do not make such a great vow that I will be faithful. Let us not say such things. But you can say, 'God, I thirst for life, for purity, for victory, for a new beginning, and to him who thirsts, God will give freely.
With this powerful Gospel we conclude our reflection tonight. Ultimately, ask yourself, are you thirsting for the new world, the new world within, and the new world that is pouring out into the whole cosmos? Are you thirsting, for God gives freely, blessed be His name!
Amen
Date: 3 October 1968 (Thursday, Bible Class).