Revelation 4:1 (part 2) 

THE RAPTURE V. 1-2

A TIME SEQUENCE V.1       After this

                      I looked, and, behold, 

  A TRESHOLD SECURED   a door was opened in heaven

A TRUMPET SOUND           and the first voice which I heard was

                                                       as it were of a trumpet talking with me

A TRIUMPHANT SUBPOENA which said, Come up hither, and I

                                       will show you things which must be hereafter

A TIME SEQUENCE V.1       After this

John is structured in recording the progression of Jesus Revelation.  “After this” is referring back to how he just had a vision of the risen Lord.  Rev.1-3.  He had seen Jesus Christ in his glory.  In Rev.1 he writes down his supernatural experiences of seeing 7 features of the glorified body of Jesus Christ.  He also saw 7 candlesticks, 7 stars and 7 churches.  Now after seeing these things he’s lifted by the Spirit into the throne room of God.

A TRUTH SEEN              I looked, and, behold,

In Acts 7:56 Stephen says: behold I see the Heavens opened.

“To look and behold” are terms of sudden unexpected surprise.  This is an exclamation of amazement and astonishment.

A TRESHOLD SECURED   a door was opened in heaven

In Ezekiel 1:1 The Heavens are opened to Ezekiel and he has unlocked to him visions of God.  Ezekiel saw visions of Heaven but he wasn’t called up to go inside Heaven.  John didn’t just have a vision through an opened door but he entered into Heaven right into the throne room of God.

In Matthew 3:16 the heavens are opened to Jesus, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:

In Genesis 7:11-12 the windows of heaven are opened. And the rain falls on the earth forty days and forty nights.

In Psalm 78:23-25 we read that God opened the doors of heaven, and rained down manna on the Israelis to eat, and gave them of the corn of heaven. It says: Man did eat angels’ food: God sent them meat to the full.

The heavens being opened in its doors or windows is figurative language to express an action of God releasing, announcing or opening up something to our view that is exceptional, incomparable and extraordinary.

To see the interior of heaven would be breath taking.  To be lifted from the view of this physical sphere into the spiritual sphere of the throne of God would be awesome.  We are allowed to participate into Heaven through the eyes of John as we read about his experience of Heaven in Revelation.

I prefer the factuality of John’s account to all the pop afterlife accounts that have been sensationalizing the bookstands.  Afterlife or embellished details of leaving and returning through some coma portal or metaphysical tunnel of light during a near death experience is fictional, theoretical, hypothetical, and conjecture.

The doors of Heaven have been opened to us in every word of the Word of God.  God’s Word is to be taken into our lives like a surgical implant, a graft.  In James 1:21 we read that we’re to “receive with meekness the engrafted Word, which is able to save our souls”.

Saving our soul means delivering our day-to-day existence from the damages of our self-life.  How do we do this?  Let Heaven in.  Let God speak to us from His throne.  He has an interesting method that He’s designed to communicate to us daily with through His written Word.  His Word is alive and powerful and this is our open door to see Heaven and hear His voice for a true-life change.

There are specific things that block His voice to us and keep us from experiencing His powerful changes in our life.  In James 1:21 there is a list of those issues that get in the way of God’s truth having an impact. “Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness” The word for “filthiness” suggests dirt, muck, and grime.  It’s obscenity, smut and morally degrading things, which makes us impure.

To lay apart just means disconnect from people and things that support or incite this contamination in our lives.   The word for “superfluity” suggests “an exceeding amount,” or something above and beyond the ordinary. The picture is of something brimming and bursting. It refers to being filled with the wrong stuff (wickedness).

The word for “naughtiness” refers to corruption in one’s disposition and desires.  Our natural temperament can be tactless and insensitive that is “naughtiness” we’re to be done with these things

We’re to lay it all away, stop it and just quit, but we may feel overcome with our natural inclinations.  Others don’t have to flood us, and inanimate things don’t really get all the blame.  It’s us, the stuff that wells up from within which is called our lower nature.

Allowing this inner feeling to be what dominates our lives can’t be the controlling dictator of who we are.  Col.3: 9-10 says we’re to “put off this old person” and “put on our new person”

To let Heaven in; is to let God speak to us from the open doors of Heaven.  This is a decision we are to consciously make all the time.  Graft the Word of God into our thinking.  To be filled with the Word of God is equal to being filled with the Spirit of God.  Let God’s truth and who we have been made as new creations in Christ be planted as the reality that controls us.

We are to “receive with meekness the engrafted word” Phillips renders this as humbly accept.  W. E. Vine points out that in the New Testament meekness is treated as an inwrought grace.  Inwrought means built in, implanted and inserted.  Meekness is our exercise to God who is our strength and source. Meekness accepts all of God’s dealings with us as good.  This is how Jesus received everything; He was “meek and lowly in heart” Matt. 11:29.

This is acceptance.  It is embracing, incorporating and implementing in our day-to-day life “the engrafted word.” The word for “engrafted” is amazing in it’s similarity to meekness.  It implies something planted, imbedded, and engrained.

The Word of God is a living power that will take hold of our life and change our behavior.  Receiving and stepping out with action to what God speaks out to us in His Word makes us more then hearers of the Word, this makes us doers. James 1:22 states; this is the only way we can be delivered from deceiving our own selves.

For us to change and grow in the Lord we need to cooperate.  There is nothing like the Word of God.  We need to have a growing love for the voice of God.

A TRUMPET SOUND      and the first voice which I heard was

                                                  as it were of a trumpet talking with me 

A trumpet talking would symbolize that the voice demanded attention.  Every word articulated in Heavens sphere is enormously important. This voice must have been penetrating, probing and piercing.

These words are written down for us and as we give them their proper attention they will penetrate and probe our heart.

Hebrews 4:11-12 (Phillips)
Let us then be eager to know this rest for ourselves, and let us beware that no one misses it through failing by a lack of faith in the Words power.  For the Word that God speaks is alive and active; it cuts more keenly than any two-edged sword: it strikes through to the place where soul and spirit meet, to the innermost intimacies of a persons being: it exposes the very thoughts and motives of a persons heart. No creature has any way of hiding from the sight of God; everything lies naked and exposed before the eyes of God.

That Word searches all motives. It is “alive, and powerful, and sharper than any double edged razor blade.  The Word pierces and penetrates, the Word stabs and slices.  It divvy’s up all the pieces between our soul and spirit, and does microsurgery on the joints and marrow.

The Word is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.  The Word differentiates, discriminates, and distinguishes things exactly as they are.  God’s Word cuts right through to the production of faith, stripping away what is just phony and natural to what is spiritual and supernatural.

The flesh profits nothing according to John 6:63-64 Jesus said “It is the Spirit that makes alive; the flesh profits nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life.
But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. 

We are to obey the Word.  This is the only way the Word is active to transform us.  We are not to just listen to the Word of God. We must do what it says.

Jesus says: “Therefore whosoever hears these sayings of mine, and does them, I will compare him to a wise person, which builds his house on a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that hears these sayings of mine, and does them not, shall be likened unto a foolish person, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it” Matt. 7:24-27 

A TRUMPET SOUND      and the first voice which I heard was

                                              as it were of a trumpet talking with me

A TRIUMPHANT SUBPOENA which said, Come up hither, and I

                                       will show you things which must be hereafter

The trumpet sounded at the giving of the law.

Exod. 19:16 And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightning’s, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled.

Exod. 19:19 And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by a voice.

The trumpet of God will sound when Jesus raptures all believers

1 Thess. 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

A trumpet will sound when Angels gather Israeli’s back to Israel for the millennial reign of Christ.  Only 1/3 of the World’s Jewish population lives in Israel now.

Matt. 24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

This trumpet in Revelation 4:1 that calls John to come up here is symbolic of the rapture of the Church preceding the tribulation.