Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Revelation 10 before reading the devotional below.
I keep finding myself wondering why God showed John the specific things we read about in the book of Revelation. What was the goal? Was it to reveal Jesus’ divine nature more fully? Was it to show us what the afterlife or the final days of earth will be like? Today I am caught by John’s own personal experience of seeing and writing his vision.
In today’s chapter we see a magnificent angel crying out, to which seven “thunders” reply. These thunders must have sounded like words of some kind, but just as John is about to write down these words the angel stops him. Let that serve as a reminder to us that there is much that God has not chosen to reveal to us. Jumping to conclusions based on limited information is often dangerous. In the end, John is handed a small scroll and asked to eat it, after which he will be able to prophesy about many nations.
In my house, we often talk about being an “includer” instead of an “excluder.” No matter what you think about a task or an activity, your plan is always less important than the people around you. God chose to invite John into this vision and guide him very specifically about what to write down. He further included him in the prophetic work of sharing this with nations and he went so far as to ask him to eat a scroll. Supernatural digestion that will inject supernatural nutrients into John. It’s a hands-on demonstration. If God showed you visions and invited you to come to his kingdom and eat a scroll, what might you think about that? Is there a tension for you between the natural and the supernatural?