Having spent the last two weeks discussing the messages to the seven churches, we now return to more lofty matters—in Revelation 4 and 5, we rejoin John in a heavenly vision.

Just in case you need more of the number seven, don’t worry. It appears seven times in these two chapters! But there are other digits to deliberate: four and twenty-four both make prominent appearances. And there are “myriads” to mesmerize.

Speaking of being mesmerized… In our accompanying book, Breaking the Code by Bruce Metzger, he gives us a nugget of wisdom. “It may seem paradoxical,” he notes, “to say that the description does not mean what it says; it means what it means.” (26) For example, in 5:6, when John sees a lamb “having seven horns and seven eyes,” we shouldn’t focus on what such a thing looks like, but what that means. Simply turning that into a picture makes Revelation seem almost cartoonish. (Still, having said that, I must admit that I don’t know the thought process of the artist whose image I borrowed.)

We can find much more value in asking questions like, “What does this mean for John and his hearers?” That helps greatly in the question, “What does this mean for us?”