Look and Behold

As we entered into prayer with a fellow believer, we took him to the mercy seat as if it were a surgeon’s table. God began to minister healing springs of forgiveness and bodily restoration to him, and he drifted off in his mind and was overtaken by a tremendous sound, seemingly coming from heaven, that of trumpets and other instruments. It reminded me of Revelation 14:1-3. “Then I looked, and behold—there was the Lamb standing on Mount Zion ……I heard a sound from heaven like the sound of cascading waters (some translations say like the sound of many waters; rushing waters) and like the rumbling of loud thunder. The sound I heard was also like harpists playing on their harps. And they sang a new song before the throne” (Rev.14:1-3, HCSB).

What does John in the Bible see and hear?

Either John heard two or more sounds at different times for he describes in one sentence the sound of rushing waters and a sound like the rumbling of loud thunder, and in another the playing of harps. Could it be that he heard an orchestration of musical counterpoints and dynamic louds and softs played simultaneously, the pounding sensation of timpani against the arpeggiated and fluid fingering of harps against a fast-flowing metered counterpoint of flutes playing sixteenth notes in tandem with other orchestral strings, brass and woodwinds?

It says the sound coming out of heaven is like rushing waters and the rumbling of loud thunder. Perhaps the sound of thunder is the sound of timpani and crashing cymbals and trumpets and of low brass. Perhaps it is also that of invigorated singing, cheers and shouts, clapping and stomping of hundreds of thousands of those in residence expressing their loud and joyful praise and worship to the One who sits on high on His throne.

It reminded me of Die Moldau from Ma Vlast (My Fatherland) composed in 1874 by Bedrich Smetana. Listen to an excerpt and let it stir your soul. The composition is programmatic in its musical poetry in that it depicts the course of two small springs, the Cold and the Warm Vlatva, to the unification of both streams into a single powerful current, through woods and meadows and landscapes. As the two springs converge as a single more powerful current, listen for the surge in dynamics as all the brass and percussion join in, the “roar of a waterfall and like the earsplitting sound of a thunderclap.”  Can you hear the sound of cascading waters by the flutes and harp? Can you hear the thunderous clap of orchestral instruments and percussion and applause culminating into one large river, “the water of life, flowing with water clear as crystal, continuously pouring out from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. 22:1)?

“I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things, and when I heard and saw it all, I fell facedown to worship the messenger who showed me these things.” (Rev. 22:8).     

“All the people went up after him, and the people were playing on flutes and rejoicing with great joy, so that the earth shook at their noise” (1 Kings 1:40 NASB).

Copyright 2019 by Bill Hutzel

JOIN INSPIRATION AND HOPE ON FACEBOOK BY CLICKING HERE