Consider Revelation 3:15-18 which says the following: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.”
There is a confrontation of sorts here, but who is involved? Who goes with God and who doesn’t? At first glance you might say that the person, or city, talking is not of God since they seem obsessed with their riches and God isn’t mentioned, whereas the person being talked to is poor and wretched, and didn’t Jesus say in his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven?”
But we are implored not to pick and choose parts from the Bible while ignoring the rest, since 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “ALL Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” So what is going on here? Who is really with God and who isn’t?
God in Genesis gives His first commandment to Adam and Eve, in Genesis 1:28, to “be fruitful.” Well, the person speaking seems to be fruitful since they’ve prospered and are rich. The person being spoken to is poor, but in what way? He is poor in that, in the context of the Bible, he has not seen the Light of God and is therefore blind with ignorance. In the Revelation passage, it seems evident by the way the rich person is talking to him that the poor person believes that if he had riches like the rich person, he would be complete, not realizing that he would not be complete under God.
For God may have told us to be fruitful, but He also tells us, as Jesus said, to love Him with all one’s heart, soul and mind. But to do so means to perform good works to that end and to have faith in Him. Jesus also told his disciples to spread the Word of God, that whoever believes in Him will be saved. For the poor man in Revelation, he believes it is only enough that he be materially rich, since he is unaware of the riches associated with one’s faith in God.
So it appears that the person in revelation is mocking the poor man, saying, ‘You want to be like me, then fine, strive for fine things so you may be rich like me,’ knowing that the person will still be poor since he is ignorant of God. And it may be assumed that the person in Revelation knows that inasmuch as a rich person will not see God, that person will dispose of his riches before his time comes to leave the earth. Those riches could be given to the poor man being spoken to, but that doesn’t bring the poor man any closer to God in that sense.
That poor man may not be “poor in spirit,” since he aspires to be rich without any real efforts of his own, and he seems to do so out of arrogance. His attitude may very well be, if he even knew of God, ‘Fine, if God exists and He said that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor, then am I not poor, and so am I not deserving of the Kingdom of Heaven? For this, GOD OWES ME.”
The conversation between the person and the poor man in Revelation could very well be between Cain and Abel. Abel prospered, inasmuch as he raised sheep. In that sense, he was fruitful. Cain, on the other hand, was not fruitful. He pulled out of the ground a plant which happened to be there, had already existed, and wasn’t the result of Cain’s efforts to raise it. Cain in his ignorance didn’t realize that his ambition of merely possessing things that already existed did not make him a better person than Adam in the Eyes of God. Cain would have been better off raising something, working by the sweat of his brow than to merely take something that originally belonged to someone else, in this case, to God.
You may walk along a busy street, wearing fine clothes that you obtained as the result of your own efforts to prosper by the sweat of your brow, and you may be confronted by a homeless person who has rags for clothes. The homeless person may say, ‘I would like to be rich like you,’ not realizing that under God, riches are obtained not by asking for them but by one’s own efforts. They may not realize that under God, the poor who will possess the Kingdom of Heaven are not those who purposely do nothing for themselves; the poor that Jesus spoke of in his Sermon on the Mount are those who cannot help themselves because of things beyond their control and so would need help from others. Those are the poor under God.
There is a confrontation of sorts here, but who is involved? Who goes with God and who doesn’t? At first glance you might say that the person, or city, talking is not of God since they seem obsessed with their riches and God isn’t mentioned, whereas the person being talked to is poor and wretched, and didn’t Jesus say in his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven?”
But we are implored not to pick and choose parts from the Bible while ignoring the rest, since 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “ALL Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” So what is going on here? Who is really with God and who isn’t?
God in Genesis gives His first commandment to Adam and Eve, in Genesis 1:28, to “be fruitful.” Well, the person speaking seems to be fruitful since they’ve prospered and are rich. The person being spoken to is poor, but in what way? He is poor in that, in the context of the Bible, he has not seen the Light of God and is therefore blind with ignorance. In the Revelation passage, it seems evident by the way the rich person is talking to him that the poor person believes that if he had riches like the rich person, he would be complete, not realizing that he would not be complete under God.
For God may have told us to be fruitful, but He also tells us, as Jesus said, to love Him with all one’s heart, soul and mind. But to do so means to perform good works to that end and to have faith in Him. Jesus also told his disciples to spread the Word of God, that whoever believes in Him will be saved. For the poor man in Revelation, he believes it is only enough that he be materially rich, since he is unaware of the riches associated with one’s faith in God.
So it appears that the person in revelation is mocking the poor man, saying, ‘You want to be like me, then fine, strive for fine things so you may be rich like me,’ knowing that the person will still be poor since he is ignorant of God. And it may be assumed that the person in Revelation knows that inasmuch as a rich person will not see God, that person will dispose of his riches before his time comes to leave the earth. Those riches could be given to the poor man being spoken to, but that doesn’t bring the poor man any closer to God in that sense.
That poor man may not be “poor in spirit,” since he aspires to be rich without any real efforts of his own, and he seems to do so out of arrogance. His attitude may very well be, if he even knew of God, ‘Fine, if God exists and He said that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor, then am I not poor, and so am I not deserving of the Kingdom of Heaven? For this, GOD OWES ME.”
The conversation between the person and the poor man in Revelation could very well be between Cain and Abel. Abel prospered, inasmuch as he raised sheep. In that sense, he was fruitful. Cain, on the other hand, was not fruitful. He pulled out of the ground a plant which happened to be there, had already existed, and wasn’t the result of Cain’s efforts to raise it. Cain in his ignorance didn’t realize that his ambition of merely possessing things that already existed did not make him a better person than Adam in the Eyes of God. Cain would have been better off raising something, working by the sweat of his brow than to merely take something that originally belonged to someone else, in this case, to God.
You may walk along a busy street, wearing fine clothes that you obtained as the result of your own efforts to prosper by the sweat of your brow, and you may be confronted by a homeless person who has rags for clothes. The homeless person may say, ‘I would like to be rich like you,’ not realizing that under God, riches are obtained not by asking for them but by one’s own efforts. They may not realize that under God, the poor who will possess the Kingdom of Heaven are not those who purposely do nothing for themselves; the poor that Jesus spoke of in his Sermon on the Mount are those who cannot help themselves because of things beyond their control and so would need help from others. Those are the poor under God.
