Open Doors

Revelation 4:1 After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”

There is a witches’ brew bubbling in our world, especially at the southern border of the United States. We see it in places like New York City and Chicago. We see it in stores as they are looted, cars that are carjacked and homes that are ransacked by squatters. Where does one space end and the other begin? Who has the right to stop these boundaries being crossed?

This might seem like a moot question, the answer being so obvious. But if the answer is so obvious, why haven’t these boundary crossings of all types been halted! Why haven’t the doors been shut and locked! When will the lawlessness end?

One of the fundamental understandings of Western civilization was the rule of law, the right of the governed people to determine the set of rules under which they would live. But for much of history those laws have been unspoken, part and parcel of the cultural landscape that supported life. In that West, that fabric was the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian writings.

But this very fabric has been systematically unwoven over the previous two to three generations. Slowly but surely the warp and weave threads have been cut and pulled out over time. The damage hasn’t been evident to the casual observer, but when just a little bit of pressure is placed on the fabric, the tears appear. This is where we now stand.

Doors are wonderful things. They clearly define where one space begins and ends. There is no ambiguity about that boundary line. When you walk up to a door and want to enter, your knuckles must come in contact with the boundary in order to request the attention of the resident on the other side of the door. You don’t knock on thin air. You knock on the door.

There is boundary between humanity and divinity. We aren’t holy, He is. We aren’t eternal, He is. We have limited knowledge; His is unlimited. We have limited space over which we are stewards, while He is owner of it all and has no limits on Him.

So when our text tells us that there is an open door in heaven, we ought to jump at the chance of getting a peek inside His resident throne room. He is the one who said he holds the key to David’s door, the door of Messianic lineage, and that he stands at our door and requests permission to enter our domain. And now the text tells us that His door is open to our entry.

And the writer of the text entered Heaven’s realm. But not only that, he recorded enough information about what he saw and experienced that we can journey along with him and get a glimpse through his eyes. We can learn what he thought was important, the key points that were revealed to him about the unveiling of Jesus. The curtain was pulled back and this is what he saw and heard.

But remember, as you read this book, we are only sitting in the audience, not on the stage itself. We have a ticket to the unveiling, but we aren’t yet participating in the on-stage activity. The door to the auditorium is open, but the backstage door is still locked to us.

But one of these days, that backstage door will be open for us. We will freely walk in and look around and experience all that heaven has to offer. And the new heaven and new earth will be ours to explore and participate in subduing. There will be no locked doors, no barriers to access. We will live with God and he with us, just like it was planned from the beginning.