Daily Post: Unfurl
The “Who-done-it” genre of novels were the starting place for me when I began reading for leisure, after months and years of critical textbook and commentary studies. When I needed to engage another part of my brain, I enjoyed reading Agatha Christie’s work. One source suggests that she wrote 82 books as herself, 6 under the pen name Mary Westmacott, 2 as Christie Mallowan, as well as her autobiography, for a total of 91 books. 80 of these works were detective novels. These detective works led me to find other books in the genre by other authors. Over and over I would sit and read the classic murder mystery and write out my suspicions as to “who-done-it.” At first, I totally missed the little clues hidden in the mystery. The more I read, the better I became at seeing between the lines, connecting the dots, and knowing at least part of the answers by the end of the book.
Edgar Allen Poe also wrote detective stories, the most famous among them The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, and The Purloined Letter. His protagonist is the French detective, M. Dupin, who applied precisely the simple laws of deductive logic in solving the mysteries. Sir A. Conan Doyle credited Poe with the inspiration to create his own famous detective, Sherlock Holmes.
There is an easy way to understand “deductive logic.” Deduction rhymes with reduction, and this is the clue to the meaning. Using deductive logic you start with a set of possibilities and reduce it until a smaller subset remains. For example, in a murder mystery the detective begins with a fistful of suspects – the butler, the maid, the business partner, or the widow. At the end of the book these suspects have all been ruled out, one-by-one, until the suspects have been reduced to only one person. “The victim died in the bathtub, but was moved to the bed. Neither woman could have lifted the body, nor could the butler because of his war wound. Therefore, the business partner must have committed the crime.”
Paul describes the ancient Word of God, and the revelation of the gospel in Jesus Christ as mysteries. In Colossians 1:13-29 Paul writes about the unparalleled incomparable Christ. He also describes his own role in the process of unfurling these mysteries.
Colossians 1:25-27
Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Ephesians 3:4-7
By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me according to the working of His power.
Out of God’s grace, Jesus saved Paul – the persecutor of the early church – and used him to unfurl the mysteries of the Old Testament now fulfilled in the life of Jesus. At the end of the Bible, God uses John the Apostle to unfurl even more than the gospels did about Jesus. The arrival of Jesus in the early part of the 1st century, baffled and confused many. He was such a mysterious man, with mysterious beginnings. His life was shrouded in the power of God to feed thousands with very little food, heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out the demons, and through it all bring God the glory for these events.
John, late in the 1st century, wrote the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the last book of the Bible. The scroll containing the will of God is unfurled during those last days, and every mystery will be revealed in full. As each seal is broken, each trumpet sounded, and each cup of wrath poured out, every man, women and child living at the time will not need deductive logic to understand what is happening, or why. The will of God unfurled in the Revelation of Jesus Christ will conclusively reveal the identity of Jesus as God, Savior, Redeemer, Deliverer, and Judge.
Even the most intricately woven mystery novels, are nothing more than children’s books, when compared to God’s unveiling Jesus before the world. Is it hard to understand all the things written in Revelation? Sure, no question about it. Are all the details of the last seven years of humanity clear? Not at all. However, if you want to receive a true blessing from God today, take God’s words as literal in this statement:
Revelation 1:3
Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near.
This verse needs no deductive logic at all.
Read it, hear it, heed it, and be blessed for it.
If you need help understanding the book, get help here.
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