THE SOUL COMES FIRST

The Bible follows the human perspective as Spirit attempted to guide us to maturity. It was proven in Christ that we can master selfishness and become spiritual surgeons, but it is still as a subordinate participant. We have no window on the spiritual Realm, and so, the work that awaits us there seems less pressing than— oh, washing the dishes, for example.

The testimony of Ezekiel and Daniel, Jesus’s immediate precursors, is full of spiritual encounters. What is clear from those stories is how difficult it is for Humanity to communicate with heavenly personalities. So before we start with the book of Revelation, we need to understand why the difficulty arises.

Spirit is composed of ideas, the strongest of which are principles that organize lesser ideas. These ideas reach down from heaven (the sky above us), attempting to couple to our minds. Most often, we fail to grasp them until we have an experience that fits the pattern of the principle. A mother’s love can connect us to Unconditional Love. Being given truth by somebody can connect us to the principle of integrity.

It’s important to understand that the spiritual idea is not the words “Unconditional Love”. It is something far more flexible; it is a form of relation that can exist between sun and tree, for example, as well as between people.

So when John is invited in Revelation 4 through the door to heaven, he entered into direct relationship with ideas. So how was he to apprehend their relationships and development? Well, only by describing them in the terms of his experience. The ideas reached into his soul, and through the soul transmitted energy into his brain, and his brain jogged his memory and produced experiences that reflected the influence of the ideas. So John didn’t report that the twenty-four principles of heaven honored Unconditional Love in order to preserve its presence among them, instead he wrote:

“Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever.” (NIV Rev. 4:9-11)

And they worship because if Unconditional Love doesn’t survive, the principles will evaporate—so it better go on for ever and ever! Ideas need faith, too!