https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-pod-and-your-staff/id1510999118
https://anchor.fm/college-life-davis
I've been on about half of the episodes and we are doing one this week on what I call the "micro-epistles" in Revelation 2 and 3.
I have to confess, I enjoying podcasting more than preaching for both legitimate and (mostly) lazy reasons. But one of the downsides of podcasts is that I can't do visualizations, which may be the distinctive mark of my preaching (and teaching - Biblical and scientific).
This week I'm teaching Revelation 1 in our Zoom gathering and Peter and I are breaking down Revelation 2 in our podcast.
And I can't talk about Revelation 2 without some visualizations of the artistic conventions and structure. We will be linking to this from the podcast.
So, here they are.
The micro-epistles are deeply contextual, demonstrating the diversity of local Christian communities and the role culture can have on their thriving and blind spots. But these seven "letters" have a consistent structure with several repeated components that helps us track them:
The first element of each of those letters, is a characteristic of the Cosmic Vision of Christ, sourced from chapter 1:
The first three[1] of those characteristics (which John attributes to "one like a son of man") are, themselves sourced from the great "Son of Man" passage in Daniel 7...
...except, in the Daniel passage, they are not attributed to the Son of Man, but the being the Son of Man approaches: the Ancient of Days. John is doing varsity theology here, developing the themes that would become the orthodox doctrines of God and Christ. The Son of Man and Ancient of Days distinct without confusion but also one God.
[1] Or 3.5 depending on how similar you think shining like lightning is to shining like the midday sun
