Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. – Revelation 11:7

Today's Scripture Reading (July 21, 2024): Revelation 11

An interesting question has arisen in the myriad of trials being brought against the former President, Donald Trump. The question concerns the length of time that the gag order should be kept in place. Or, when is it that the President should be allowed to speak concerning the things about which, until now, he has been forbidden to speak? What makes this interesting is that a gag order has to have an ending date, but when is not clearly defined.

Maybe it is easier to think about the concept in a case that does not involve the former President of the United States. Gag orders are essential in all kinds of trials. It is illegal to tamper with witnesses during a proceeding, but intimidation has a long shelf life, maybe longer than a gag order. In other words, a criminal may be ordered not to talk about the witnesses or the jury during the legal proceedings. Still, when the gag order is removed, and the one under indictment is once again allowed to speak his mind about the jury and witnesses, these essential cogs in our legal system, the jury and witnesses, might find themselves in the same trouble that they were before, just trouble delayed. If that sounds like a threat, it could be in the hands of the wrong person. And that is the problem.

There is a persistent teaching in Western Christianity that if you do what God wants, you will be blessed. What being blessed means to us is that good things will happen. So, our measure of whether we are doing good seems to be whether good things are happening to us. If we fulfill God's plans for our lives, we will have the things we want. If we are struggling, then God must not be happy with us.

It is a persistent teaching, but it is an incorrect one. We can be struggling yet still be in the center of God's will, as strange as that might sound to some. Our Father might own the "cattle on a thousand hills," but that does not mean our Father wants us to be rich. Many Christians live and die with enough, but no more. The story of our lives is not about us; it is and always has been other-directed.

John tells the story of the witnesses in Revelation. The witnesses come, and for a while, they are protected. God has given Satan a gag order, and nothing can overcome them. There is a significant difference between "witness" and "testimony." A witness is who we are, and it is who these two people were. Testimony is an action that a witness does. These two witnesses are doing precisely what God has intended them to do: be witnesses by giving their testimony.

For a while, the witnesses are protected. They can defend themselves against whatever comes against them. But the protection is only for a time, in this case, the time it took to testify. When the testimony is finished, the beast, introduced to the reader in Revelation 9:11, comes and kills them. It was not that the witnesses had stepped outside the bounds of the will of God but that their testimony was finished, and so the protection order God had given them was removed.

God protects his witnesses until their tasks are completed, reinstating an idea we sometimes find disturbing. If we are here, then there is still some purpose that God has for us; there is something that God needs us to do. Do you know your purpose?

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Revelation 12