So you're always at odds with yourself. I do care about the state of my soul. But there this great movie playing down the street or there's a football game I want to watch. And we are constantly bombarded with this seduction of the senses. (p.128) Madonna has taken up a study of Kabbalah in order to develop a spiritual life. She sees the need to change her life from being a rebel and an exhibitionist. She recognizes that she wasn't thinking responsibly when she became a mother. I had to stop and think: What am I going to teach my daughter? What do I believe in? I don't even know what I believe in, and if I don't know, how am I going to teach my daughter anything? What have I been put on this earth for? What the whole point of life? What important and what isn't important? Is there life beyond this physical world we live in?

The book of Revelation gives us a vision of life beyond the physical world we live in. The apostle John, in exile on Patmos, is given a vision of the spiritual realities that influence this world for good or ill. If we ask questions of the same order as Madonna, and seek for answers, we are led to some authoritative source. For Christians, that is the Bible. The last book in the Bible, the Revelation, pulls back the curtain on the history of the world, and shows us the invisible conflict raging between the kingdom of heaven and the forces of evil.

John is in the Spirit when there is revealed to him that behind all the terrible things that happen in the world to the people of God there is a battle being waged. The book of Revelation is given so that we can see beyond our five senses to the spiritual reality that exists through and beyond us. This conflict, invisible to secular eyes, but visible to the eyes of faith, is between Christ and the AntiChrist, between the Lamb and the Dragon, between the holy city Jerusalem (which is the Church), and the great city Babylon (which is the unbelieving world). The believer is attacked from several directions. The first conflict is experienced on the physical level. The dragon employs the beast from the sea (Rev.13:1) to do his work. This beast symbolizes the Roman Empire, which in John day was the embodiment of the AntiChrist, a world power in opposition to the reign of Christ. It persecuted the Christians and martyred thousands in its quest for total domination. This beast represents any misuse of power that physically harms people. It foments physical and emotional abuse, exploitation, and enslaves people to its goals. This kind of ceaseless striving for domination contributes to and causes the judgments of the four horses: the white horse of war, the red horse of civil strife, the black horse of famine, and the pale horse of plague (Rev.6:48)

The second conflict is experienced on the intellectual level. The dragon uses the beast from the earth (Rev. 13:11) to deceive the nations. He looks like Christ, but he spoke like Satan. This beast symbolizes the false teaching communicated by ideologies, religions, nationalisms and other belief systems. He acts on behalf of the first beast to persuade the world to follow its lead. And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down to earth from heaven in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. The intellectual battle is a battle of ideas that have consequences. It is a battle for hearts and minds. It is a battle for the truth. That is why Christians are called to be witnesses to the truth like Jesus.

The third conflict is experienced on the moral level. The dragon uses the city Babylon which symbolizes the grandeur that was Rome: the source and fountainhead of all seductive luxury and vice, living in voluptuous materialism and selfishness. She is described as a whore among cities, the courtesan of the world that corrupts the nations with her impurities (Rev.17). The fall of Rome is prophetically described in Rev. 18 from the perspective of those who had grown powerful and rich through their involvement with the city and its economic system. Babylon is a symbol of the idolatry any nation commits when it elevates material abundance, technological sophistication and any other glorification of the creature over the Creator. It speaks to the seductive nature of self indulgence that corrupts our behavior, our values, our relationships, our marriage and family lives.

This is what Madonna said about herself: Sometimes I was being overtly sexual for the sake of showing off, when I didn't need to be. One minute I was saying believe in yourself, and the next I was saying just be sexually provocative for the sake of being sexually provocative85. I was just a person who was not thinking. I let myself be tricked by the physical world, knowing I was getting attention, letting it pump up my ego. Aren't I great, they're writing about me, my picture on the cover of every magazine, I'm so fabulous. I wasn't saying those things out loud, but deep down in side, they were there.

The Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire in the 4th century from Rome in Italy to Byzantium on the Bosphorus, which took his name. Rome was sacked by invaders several times. But Constantinople, the new Rome, which grew as rich and corrupt as the old Rome, was also sacked by Crusaders, in the 13th century, and then, weakened, it was conquered by the Turks in 1453. When John was writing these words, Rome was at its pinnacle of power and influence. His words must have seemed farfetched to those who read them and sought comfort in their promises. Yet his prophecies were fulfilled. We must take them seriously as descriptions of the nature of the conflicts of our day and their outcome.

How are we to deal with the conflict we see in the world and experience in our lives? St. John warns us to expect physical attacks, whether they be through the violent exercise of power, or sickness, disease, or other forms of death. But death is not defeat. Death is not the worst thing that can be done to us. This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints. (Rev.13:10) We are to meet physical attack with the patient endurance of the sufferings and sacrifice of Christ, knowing that there is a greater reward to come.

He also urges us to respond to the intellectual conflict with wisdom by calculating the number of the beast, for it is a man number. His number is 666. (Rev.13:18) St. John calls us to exercise the wisdom of spiritual discernment, by penetrating the deceitfulness of the arguments of false teaching by hard, critical thinking. The land beast is, more than anything else, religious. It has a Christlike quality; it is like a lamb (Rev.14:11), but it is a parody, not a derivation, of Christ. In order to subvert our religious life, it uses religious means with all the trappings of the miraculous. When a person or movement is religious, appears to be on good terms with the supernatural, and urges us to engage in religious acts, we let our guard down. There is something seemingly incompatible, on the surface anyway, between a skeptical mind and religious faith. For people whose habit is faith, whose disposition in matters of God and the supernatural is towards acceptance, it is easy to be deceived by religious leaders. There is, in fact, no part of life in which deceit is more prevalent than in religion (just as there is no part of life in which violence is more prevalent than in the state). Organized behavior is prone to violence; organized belief is prone to deceit.

How do we protect ourselves from organized deceit? St. John is blunt; use your heads. Figure out what is going on. Most of the conspicuous religion that is in vogue at any one time in the country drives from the land beast. Expose those religious pretensions. This religion has nothing to do with God. Get its number: it a human number. This is not a divine mystery, but confidence man' patter: it a religion that makes a show, religion that vaunts itself. (Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder, pp.125,126) This is true for any arguments of intellectual pretension that oppose Christ and his Word.

Finally, we are to protect ourselves from immoral behavior, and the battle over the seduction of the senses, by participating in the worship of creation and heaven (Rev.19). Instead of being corrupted by self-indulgence we are to rejoice in being invited to the wedding of the Lamb and his Bride, the Church. Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb. (Rev.19:9) This is anticipated in the regular worship of the Church, and the fellowship of believers.

Madonna said, now I know why there's chaos and suffering and pain in the world, and I actually can do something about it, and the world doesn't revolve around me. I think about everything I do, how is this going to affect people? What will they get out of this? Am I adding to the chaos of the world am I part of the problem, or the solution?

What would you say now that you know the message of Revelation? It is a key to understanding the conflict we find in life. It is a call to do something about it in Christ. It is the realization that there is an ultimate solution in the purposes of God. It is a reassurance that the promises and prophecies of God are true and can be trusted. We are called to read it, study it, and be strengthened by its message.

Jesus calls us to live with him in patient endurance, faithfulness, wisdom and rejoicing that we are invited to his wedding celebration in heaven.

Amelia Plantation Chapel,
Amelia Island