Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
Those seven lamps were burning long before the apostle John got to write Revelation 4:5. So we don't need to reconcile Paul's "there is one God and one Spirit" with John's vision of seven burning spirits. When Paul wrote to the Ephesians there were already seven lamps burning. And they were indeed one -- look at what their orientation: "so that they light the space in front of it". They corporately look toward their source. The seven lamps shine as one...
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Suppose one day I'm reading the Bible and I receive a vision from "Him who is and who was and who is to come, and the seven spirits burning before the throne, and Jesus Christ the Faithful Witness and Firstborn from the dead"... and spiritually I do the same thing John did: I fall down as dead. The vision is so great that I;m overwhelmed, and become disoriented and intellectually non-functional. Gradually, though, I'm roused, and begin to re-orient myself. But that orientation has shifted because of the greatness of the vision. Now I look through the Biblical text and instinctively keep referencing this vision. Interestingly, when I keep coming back to the original it, the initial power endures; it continually renders me, and all my conceptual arrangements, as though "to fall down as dead".
And gradually a new hermeneutic emerges, allowing and even integrating something previously unrecognized, like seven spirits burning before the throne. For example, when Moses and Aaron and the seventy elders go up to the mountain, to eat and drink and gaze upon God, and look across the pavement of sapphire, I wonder; did they also see seven spirits burning there, in front of God's throne? Because Moses later made the seven-branched candlestick "according to the vision which you have seen on the heavenly mountain". Perhaps, anyway... the power of the vision in Revelation 1:4 at least causes me to re-consider this in Exodus 24 & 25.
If my experience from Revelation chapter 1 doesn't dovetail with that of everyone else, I'm fine with that; I neither have to abandon its visceral impact, nor force my vision upon the flock as though it were God's present speaking. As I said, Paul didn't require John's submission, nor did John attempt to subdue Paul. Paul was faithful to his heavenly vision, as was John. "Spirit" and "spirit" and "spirits" are rather subjective experiences. The contents of our visions will be fully unveiled on "that day", and to what extent we were faithful.