And I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven . . . his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, he gave a great shout, like a lion roaring. And when he shouted, the seven thunders sounded.

Revelation 10:1-3

The Seven Thunders Roar

January 1997 Volume: 1 -- # one / homepage

The Prophetic Sounding
Why the Seven Thunders Must Roar
by Scott Adams
A little "scroll" of scripture - Revelation 10:1-11
And I saw another might angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He held a little scroll open in his hand. Setting his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, he gave a great shout, like a lion roaring. And when he shouted, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down." Then the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it: "There will be no more delay, but in the days when the seventh angel is to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God will be fulfilled, as he announced to his servants the prophets." Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, "Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land." So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll; and he said to me, "Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth." So I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. Then they said to me, "You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and languages and kings."
The Why answered
Life extends itself into the many things at which we are afraid to speak, unwilling to speak or do not know to speak, such that the Angel Roared and the seven thunders sounded. This is the mystery of God; the place we are challenged by prophets to unveil how we might live, how we might be comforted, and how we are demanded to pursue. Read and Revel in the Mystery of Living as the prophecies today are voiced.
This journal does not inherently deal with religious themes. On the contrary, it deals with, cultural, artistic, philosophical, economic, and religious themes as they shape and create our space for living. As the new millinium dawns it is important for all to honor the value that no one faction whether religious, political, or cultural carries with it the prophecy and answers for all society. Instead, as we listen to these prophets we must wait for the mystery of God to be revealed. We listen and as God speaks we trust in the creative ability of God to be diverse and powerful enough to help us respond according to the words we hear. As we listen the magic of truth grinds into our bones a new revelation, a prophecy of comfort and exhortation. A juxtaposition of prophecy comes to us in the maginificant unveiling through these prophets. We are comforted and exhorted. We are comforted through the peace and assurance of a living faith, despite the rage of evil and sin which surrounds our communities and lives. But Peace is not all that we find; we are exhorted and encouraged to act against injustice and evil which plagues our homes and streets. Our peace and assurance turns to a raging passion to bring about the kingdom of heaven in our lives. This is the meaning of prophecy -- to bring an end to the old ways of suffering through patient endurance then with a mighty force we learn to speak and work for a new way of living for our communities.

The Minister's Husband
A letter from the editor
X-mas! X-mas! X-mas? When I was a young Pentecostal, I once loved to carry forth the argument that X-mas was “just” an evil created by an evil society. That evil society, at the hands of and being lead by, SATAN, passionately desired to get rid of the “CHRIST” in Christmas. Of course, I said all the right things such as, “Satan created the myth of Santa Claus so that Christ could be replaced by a ‘secular’ being” or “Satan transformed the idea of gift-giving into the commercialism of a modern consumerist society.” One must give because . . . or, the bigger the present the more you must be loved. X-mas was certainly the evil that Satan had created, and Christmas was something to be found because it had been lost to the world. Thank God that only God can create! My youthful idealism that I was actually thinking and saying something new about the Christ being taken out of the X-mas is long gone now, and my Pentecostal assumption that a Satan exists which can create Chaos as well as God can create good is gone also. Certainly the evil of my extremist Pentecostal thought, like all extremist Pentacostal thought, was more damaging than we could imagine any Satan could be. But as we have said, thank God that only God can create. Without the political assumption that the world is inherently evil because of its association with the evil Satan monster, I had much more mobility to discover exactly what this X-mas was about. Why is an X used to replace the word Christ? The answer really isn’t as hard as some would like to make it sound. The Answer is that X stands for Christ. Or more appropriately “X” pronounced "k_eye"stands for Christ. The difference is subtle, but there is a difference. The “X” is the first letter in the Greek spelling of Jesus’ last name. (Although it is not preferred to say that Christ is the last name of Jesus for the moment it is easier to just admit that most people tend to think of Jesus’ last name as Christ. Of course several theologians make the point that the second name is not an identifier which family Jesus belonged to, but is an identifier of who Jesus was, is, and is to come, the Christ, the mashiach in Hebrew. Now that I made this point I might as well go on to tell you that Paul Tillich is one such theologian who discusses this in his Systematic Theology. If you ever get a few moments please read this wonderful work. It is shorter than Karl Barth’s work and has fewer footnotes. Since I am off on the subject now I might as well make a plug for The Institutes of Christian Religion. If you are old enough to remember your older English dialect or French for that matter, then I encourage you to read this theology and be quite surprised. Though I must admit I am only a Minister’s husband and know very little on the subject matter that is why I am relegated to writing on the web. Now that I am on the subject I might as well tell you that this whole little blurb is actually an infomercial for the Theologians of Yesteryear Guild. They hope that you will buy their books so that they may continue to build up treasures in heaven. A side note is that a little-known theologian is winning in the treasures in heaven department. All his works have been lost and his name has been forgotten, but he is still beating the great theologians of our times. Martin Luther, Henry Fosdik, and Billy Graham all trail by at least a couple billion talents of gold. To bad we have never seen these works otherwise this theologian might be richer that God or even Bill Gates. The Theologians of Yesteryear Guild is also a bit worried what to do about these tele-evangelist and techno-gospelogians which is spelled with one “l” much to the error of many. The Guild can’t decide whether to add up all the talents of gold that these “Christians” have gained on earth then subtract for every lie that has been told which may well put these tele-evangelist and techno-gospelogians in great debt. The guild is also considering whether to just say that tele’s and techno break even on earth then when they get to heaven a coin will be tossed whether they get to heaven or hell. The thinking here is that we live by the coin and die by the coin; everybody knows that Caesar’s head is on both sides. Well, I must end the informercial. It is funny how things change. If we were living in Karl Barth’s day this infomercial would be considered a footnote especially since it is as long as Karl Barth’s and as funny as an informercial. It is amazing to think that Karl Barth was actually the inventor of infomercials. I hope you are truly as amazed and as excited as I am about this informercial as I am :-) Where was I now? Oh yes, “X” standing for Christ’s last name. Like all good Pentecostals I assumed that the “X” was and is X. But that was not the case at all. “X” is a symbol, like the cross is a symbol or the fish is a symbol. But, like all symbols, the “X” got lost and translated “literally”. The “X” became an X. And when the “X” became an X, the symbolic meaning became a tool for political myth-making. X became an attack upon everything Pentecostalism stood for, so Pentecostals fought back with the same force with which they thought they were being attacked. Rather than searching for answers into the tradition, people are quick to assume the answer and allow the truth of the symbol to be reinvented into something it is not. This is the inherent danger of every symbol, that it might die, be lost or even transformed into an opposite meaning. As a minister’s husband who has heard many a wild assumption about what the bible says and doesn’t say, what is Christian and what is not Christian, what Jesus would do and what Jesus wouldn’t do, I must urge my readers to heed the infomercial above, and to be on-guard for two very important things (maybe three if you count the second-coming as literal). Don’t assume what you hear to be the scientific, historical, faithful truth without searching yourself and with your Christian community, and don’t assume your experiences into traditions “you think you know something about.” Sometimes you have to turn your tilt your head and see that the “X” is not a X but a cross that has been turned a little to the left or right. If we heed these two lessons, the infomercial will be funny instead of doctrine!

Roaring Back
Letters to the Editor
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