Rudimentary Thoughts on Revelation Chapter 4

I spent a couple of hours studying chapter 4 of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament this morning.  Here are some of my notes.

1 - John is invited into God’s home.  The door in verse 1 is (in Greek) a very large and ornate double door that would lead into a beautiful mansion.  John is asked to “come up”. The act of ascent is indicative of coming into God’s presence and partaking of God’s characteristics and glory. In some temples, where the endowment ceremony includes moving from room to room, that movement is in an upward fashion.  The Provo City Center temple is the most stark example that I know of, of upward ascent toward the presence of God.

4 - The first thing that John notices when he is invited into God’s home is that the chairs are arranged in a circle.  God does not sit at the head of a table. God sits in the center of a circle, where everyone has equal access. The chairs are filled with exalted people (pure white raiment and crowns)--perhaps symbolized by 12 male elders and 12 female elders. (Sheri Dew, Russell Ballard, Dallin Oaks, Barbara Morgan Gardner, and many others talk about how women share priesthood authority and power with men.)

5 - The lightnings and thunderings could possibly be indicative of the instantaneous comings and goings of divine messengers who were fulfilling their missions to proclaim the gospel to God’s creations or serve God in other ways.

6 - Joseph Smith taught that the sea of glass represents the earth in its sanctified and immortal state (DC 130?) God and the 24 elders had ever before them the ability to see what was going on in the earth (“Full of eyes before and behind”).  God has not only saved people, he has saved planets. The earth may at a future date be engulfed in fire, but it will be for its purification, and God and his creations will be the winners.

7 - It seems as though the 24 elders have the characteristics of 4 beasts: lion, calf/ox, human, and eagle. It seems as though these beasts would be equal in their chances for eternal progression.  Daniel 7:10, Revelation 5:11, Hebrews 11:22, and DC 138:14-16 all indicate that these 24 elders are only symbolic of the thousands upon thousands of messengers who are worthy to be a part of the Divine Council.  DC 77 teaches that God glorifies all of his creations. The four beasts depicted are representative of all of the different kinds of beasts among all of God’s creations, all of which will be saved and glorified in their independent spheres by God.

8 - How often are we affected by the missions of these messengers, who “rest not day and night”, without even knowing that they are in our presence?

9 - All of God’s creations are welcome in God’s home--in God’s presence.

10 - The 24 elders remove their crowns in deference to their heavenly parents, without whose grace, glory, and power they would never have been able to be born, let alone exalted. Abraham discusses the concept of giving glory to an intelligence that is greater than one’s own and that there will always be, in the eternity of things, an intelligence hierarchy.  (Abraham 3:19, and also verse 8 speaks of a similar hierarchy in the governance of planets.)

11 - Gods glorify themselves by sharing their glory, honor, and power with their creations.(Compare Moses 4:11)  In First Temple judaism, there existed multiple deities in the Divine Council, and among those deities there were male and female. It is likely that John saw Heavenly Mother in this vision, especially because she is symbolized in Revelation 22 as the Tree of Life, as well as in Lehi’s and Nephi’s visions depicted in 1st Nephi chapters 1, 8, and 11 in the Book of Mormon.