We need authority

Friend, thank you for following me on my walk through Revelation. As you can tell, my reflection today, came a little late. I try to do it first thing upon waking up, and no I didn’t wake up at 2pm today. I was just rushing a project for a client and just got my hands off it.

I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her. The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to perdition; and the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will marvel to behold the beast, because it was and is not and is to come. This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; they are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he comes he must remain only a little while. As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to perdition. And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received royal power, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast. These are of one mind and give over their power and authority to the beast; they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful."

- Revelation 17:7b-14

The third installment of Revelation 17 sees the angel interpreting for John what he sees. As with the other descriptions so far, these symbols match the happenings of the fall of Jerusalem in AD70. There’s no need to make guesses about who’s who, because that seems to have been settled already, by serious Bible exegetes. More importantly, it isn’t the purpose of this journey. But there are still a couple of things I think we can take home from these next seven verses (I included part of verse 7 again to give a little bit of context).

I think it’s noteworthy that John is seeing many images and having to write down what he sees. The angel, here, interprets for him, telling him what this meant and what that represented. Without it, one could certainly risk twisting an image in more ways than one. This is the same for our faith. Reading the scriptures and interpreting the Bible is key in a good Christian life, yet it can get confusing. Here, there is another reason to be thankful for the Catholic Church to give us guidelines in interpreting scripture. We don’t simply rely on our imagination to consider a message; we don’t even rely on some smart scholar who has read the same passages a thousand times. It would be childish – not childlike – for us to say the Bible came from God, and never think about its origin on earth. God didn’t throw us a compilations of the Best of Christianity when He left us. In fact, a full 60 years after Jesus Ascension, there was not such thing as a Bible. Yet the faith community grew. We must ask ourselves why. Because the answer leads us to an even better appreciation of the Bible.

Here’s a piece of reality: when Jesus was about to ascend into Heaven, He left no book. He told His Apostles to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Mt 28:19-20). He did not write anything. He did not give a lesson plan to the Apostles. So the Apostles had to make do what they had: experience. They could not have taught Sola Scriptura, “Scripture Alone”, because there wasn’t even a Bible to begin with! And when the Bible did get put together, it didn’t just come together, complete with a Table of Content. Councils deliberated and argued over which books should be considered Sacred Scripture, and which books should not. The Bible came by the Authority of Christ’s Church. It takes a childlike person to humbly accept that the Bible came from men, inspired by God, instructed by God. It takes humility to see that Jesus gave men authority in His Church. That’s a stumbling block for many people, because many don’t like to follow what the authority says. With that humility, Augustine, one of the greatest Christian teachers ever, said, “I would not believe in the Gospels were it not for the authority of the Catholic Church.”

There’s an argument that the Fathers could have been wrong – and I agree. There have been wrong teaching all through the life of the Church. But that should not be a deterrence. In fact, it should help us realize that if those Churchmen, who were much, much closer to the source, who learned from the Apostles and the Disciples of the Apostles, if they could get it wrong, but makes Mr BibleSpeakerToday any more accurate in interpreting the Word of God? All the more we need to turn to Church teaching for guidance. No one would prefer to look at a Math Textbook to speaking with the person who compiled the textbook.

This is not the say that the Church has to interpret what every line says; it certainly does not mean that every line or every word has only one interpretation, but reading Scripture with Church teachings, go hand in hand, making Christian Living a more complete experience. For that reason,  I’m not reflecting on Revelation with the view of the end of the world. A reading of Revelation without any idea of the background of the Church and the teaching of the Church, leads to an obviously gloomy Book. But if you’re Catholic and if you’ve journeyed with me thus far, you would have realized how Revelation presents the Heavenly Liturgy. Those things that people say are old fashioned and meaningless, those are found in the Bible! We’ve got the consider: if John, one of the 12 who did everything with Jesus, needed help interpreting the signs, so do we.

We’ll on this same passage again tomorrow because there is one more thing in these verses that I think is particularly striking. In the mean time, perhaps today we should consider the value of authority. Do you take it seriously? Parents, teachers, bosses, pastors. If God gives them to us, our love for Him should motivate us to humble obedience.