Revelation 4:8 Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.”
There are some strange creatures in this world. I saw an article recently about some deep sea creatures that were just discovered, very strange looking. You would think that we would have found and categorized all the life on our small planet already, but no we haven’t.
There is still so much to discover about our world, so much we don’t know. And we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to prove God doesn’t exist, by trying to find life outside our planet. If life existed out there, then God is no longer needed, or so the argument goes.
We already have a glimpse of some creatures that exist outside of our world! And they are strange. Our text recounts what John saw in a vision of heaven’s throne. He was some creatures, unlike anything we have here on Earth.
The difficult thing about trying to describe these heavenly creatures is that John only has earthly words to use. He has to use the known to describe the unknown. This is a very difficult task, limited in its best application.
Imagine for a moment trying to describe a cell phone to someone from the turn of the 18th century. They would have no vocabulary or even concepts to adapt to try to understand a cell phone and how it works. If they want to talk to someone, they have to do it within yelling distance, or by letter.
So John is seeing something in heaven and only has earthly words and pictures that he can apply to describe what he is seeing. I wonder how many drafts he had to make before he was satisfied with how he described what he saw. I am sure his words still fell short of completely accurate.
John sees four creatures. OK, I’ve got that part. And these four creatures had six wings. Birds have two. Insects sometimes have four. What is he describing? This is not like any creature he has seen.
But this isn’t all that is different or strange from his perspective. These creatures are covered with eyes all over their bodies. Most creatures John would have come across in his life had two eyes. Flies have two eyes with thousands of individual lenses. So what is it that John sees covering their bodies that reminded him of eyes? We don’t know!
Thankfully the point of what John sees is not the composition of these creatures, but what they are conveying to the occupants of heaven. They from a part of the heavenly choir. Their job is to proclaim the holiness of God, constantly, day and night.
Now we might think this was a boring job. But we have never seen what he saw, and never been in God’s presence as these creatures have. Their cry must seem to them to be the best response to what they know about God.
They don’t cry, “Powerful, powerful, powerful.” This would also be true. But they do proclaim something else in addition to God’s holiness. They proclaim His eternal nature.
“Who was, and is, and is to come.” The LORD is in all timezones. He never goes out of date. He is always on time. He never forgets an appointment. Nothing takes Him by surprise.
We can trust Him with our past, our present and our future. He is already there. He has been with us, is with us now, and will be with us when the future becomes the present and then the past.
The Arnold Journey 