"Big Brother" is watching you

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 1, Issue 48, 22 May 1984, Page 8

"Big Brother" is watching you

George Orwell's novel '1984' pictured a totalitarian state whose people lived in terror of the threat, "Big Brother is watching you." Here we are in the middle of 1984 and there is no Big Brother, not here at least. But the threat and Orwell's warning remain as valid as they were in 1948. Two books of the Bible have been similarly misunderstood. Daniel and Revelation are often used today as }f they gave detailed blueprints for our future. References are found to forces of evil, world systems and world figures of our day, but they can be seen in another way. The technical name for such books, of which these are the only two complete examples in the Bible, is apocalyptic, which simply means a revelation, a showing forth. These books offer us dreams of tfre future, often in visionary

language of allegory and mysterious symbols and strange uses of numbers. Their vi'ew of human endeavour is pessimistic. Whereas the great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Amos call upon man to work with God; the apocalyptics point us to God's work in the world, despite our evil and rebellion. Both these books, Daniel and Revelation, were written at critical times: Daniel about 164 B.C. when the Jewish people were in rebellion against the foreign tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes; Revelation about 90 A.D. when the might of the Roman Empire threatened the young Church. Both were written to proclaim the sovereignty of God and his ultimate triumph over forces of evil in times when those forces seemed overpowering. Both called to God's people, almost overwhelmed by

disasters, to take heart and be true to God whatever might befall. Neither book was concerned with foretelling far distant future events — the rise of Communism or an international socialist conspiracy or the World Council of Churches a$ Anti-Christ, or the nuclear threat — but their message is as relevant today as it was two thousand years ago. Written to give hope to God's people under persecution, they give us the inspiration to face the future with courage rather than instruction about the course of that future. No one can tell us what the future will bring in our own lives or the life of the world; God in his wisdom withholds that kind of knowledge from us. Can we enter into the future with a faith that reaches out in confidence to God whatever it may bring?

Rev

T.

Melbourne