Of Revelation and The Lord of the Rings

Image via Abnormal Anabaptist

As most of you know, Greg has been preaching a sermon series on the book of Revelation. He’s got a very different take on this book than the popular Christian culture that sprouted the Left Behind series. Greg argues that John takes all of the violent images of his day and turns them on their head to reveal Jesus as the Lamb of God who conquers with his own death rather than the death of his enemies. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to them, it would be well worth your time.

Robert Martin wrote a reflection on how this series is changing the way he thinks about this topic. Robert is a big fan of The Lord of the Rings, and he uses this story as a way to illustrate his change in thinking. Brilliant and inspiring.

Here’s a little snippet of his blog post, but you’ll want to check out the entire post to fully get his point.

For those in Middle-Earth who stop looking to the past and look, instead, towards this future, the strivings take on a different tone.  No longer are they striving to regain the past.  Instead, they are aiming to capture a little bit of that future in the present.  There is a hope that they have that comes, not from attempting to regain something lost, but from trying to attain something that is yet to gain.  And it is that “not yet” that causes them to make amazing sacrifices.

This is captured in probably one of the more poignant scenes in the movie.  The actual words take place a lot earlier in the novels, but Gandalf and Pippin, faced with imminent death, faced with a hopelessness of “why bother if this is the end”, have a moment where Gandalf describes the hope, a hope that he, actually, has seen.  Watch this: