Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. – Ezekiel 1:10

 Today's Scripture Reading (June 9, 2023): Ezekiel 1

A quick read of John's Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, reveals a lot of images that are simply weird and hard to understand. I have often wondered if John was seeing some things that might be inventions of the future that John did not have the background to understand. How would you describe a helicopter if you lived in a society without mechanization in any form, where people walked from place to place, and ships only moved across the seas with the help of the wind or the oar? It might be that the best we could come up with was a dragon or a flying Leviathan.

Possible? Maybe. But some descriptions in the prophetic books of the Bible don't even lend to that kind of description. Consider this statement from John as he looks at the throne of God. Someone was sitting on a throne in the center of John's vision, and this central throne was surrounded by twenty-four other thrones containing the twenty-four elders of Israel. Possibly the men sitting on those thrones were the sons of Jacob and the apostles of Jesus. From the throne at the center came lightning and thunder, and the seven spirits of God and a sea of glass, and then John adds this;

In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying:

"'Holy, holy, holy

is the Lord God Almighty,'

who was, and is, and is to come" (Revelation 4:6b-8).

What is fascinating about the creatures around the throne in John's vision is that the faces on each of the four creatures in Revelation are the same faces described in Ezekiel, except in Revelation, each creature has one of the faces, while in Ezekiel, each creature has all four faces. It is enough to test our imagination, trying to envision whatever it was that Ezekiel saw. Some scholars have wondered if maybe the creatures John saw were Ezekiel's creatures, each seen from a different angle revealing each of the faces. But a more likely explanation is that the faces denote the four pinnacles of creation. According to Jewish teachers, man is the pinnacle of all creatures, and the eagle is exalted among the birds, the ox is lifted up among domestic animals, and the lion rules over the wild animals. In both Revelation and Ezekiel, the message might be the same: that this prophecy concerns all of the earth, not just the nation of Israel.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 2