After two thousand years the contents of The Little Scroll is revealed below. Click on the image to get your free copy of The Little Scroll
The Little Scroll being held by the angel standing with one foot in the sea and one foot on the land in John’s apocalyptic vision is the return of the Word of God in its original form.
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God… He was with God in the beginning” suggests the original form in which the Word of God exists belongs to no person other than to the eternal Christ who is the omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent manifestation of God and the Holy Spirit in the flesh.
The Little Scroll’s appearance in the end time sequence of events points to the present age in which Christians are rediscovering that the author of their faith is not a God portrayed by sinful men but a God portrayed by His sinless self in Jesus Christ. The imagery of the angel standing across the globe holding up the Little Scroll for all to see appertains to the present age when Jesus’ words become what God intended them to be since the beginning – the original Word from God. The Angel at the end of time is not holding up a canon of texts like the Bible and the Qur’an because no Angel would hold aloft words that are not eternal.
John talks about the mystery of God being accomplished in the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet and he is invited to eat the Little Scroll. The idea of eating words is something that Jesus explained carefully when He talked about Himself as the Bread of Life, intimating that He needed to be eaten in order for His life to be experienced. When it came to the moment when He had to speak plainly about the connection between His words, i.e. the Little Scroll, and the purpose of eating them, He wasted no time,
‘I tell you the truth, unless you can eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.’
(John 6:53)
They thought He was telling them to be cannibals, eaters of human flesh, and they were understandably offended, but He was making it clear to them that only His Words give life. The original Word became flesh and dwelt among us, so by eating Jesus’ words we are, by connection, eating the Word of God in its original form, the Little Scroll from heaven. So, when Jesus said ‘eat my flesh’ He meant eat His words, the unleavened bread from heaven i.e. words not leavened by the sinful nature of man.
‘In the beginning was the Word of God and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.’
(John 1:1-2)
There are three points concerning the importance of acknowledging the Little Scroll as the original and unblemished Word of God.
1. The Old Testament people didn’t know God as they didn’t know His Son because they had never seen the Word in the flesh.
“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No-one knows the Son except the Father, and no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”
(Matthew 11:27)
They didn’t know God’s counsellor with regard to sin, righteousness and judgement until Jesus sent Him into the world.
“But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin, righteousness and judgement,”
(John 16:7-8)
2. As a consequence of these things the Old Testament people had no conscience (conviction of the Holy Spirit). It was easy for prophets and priests to purge sin from their land by killing sinners because they thought God had earmarked them for death.
Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?”
(1 Kings 17:17-18)
Her perception of a holy man was one who would kill her son for being a sinner. In the world today in both Muslim and Christian theology there are those who teach and lead the way of studying and believing in a portrayal of God given by people who didn’t know Him and who had no conscience. This entirely erroneous representation of God’s character and nature has influenced millions of people throughout the world who have inherited from previous generations serious doubts about God’s character.
This distorted view of God has become a stumbling block for many, preventing them from seeing Jesus Christ as their Saviour because they see Him as an integral part of the Old Testament.
When explaining the gospel to someone who is not too familiar with the character and nature of God have you ever wondered why they react negatively when you talk about the love of God as you share ‘For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son…..’? What do you do when they react with, “How can I believe in a God who in the Bible instructs prophets to kill people and steal their possessions?”
3. The third point is that their entire culture, their social and political value systems and their perceptions of God were constructed from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The way they portrayed God’s character and nature is like character assassination, with Jesus Christ ending up as the target.
The world sees God through the Bible and the Qur’an. They see Jesus Christ as an integral part of both, which He is most definitely not. Since the Bible is traditionally understood to be the inspired word of God, Christians have no choice but to defend what the Bible says because they think by defending it they are also defending Christ but this is sadly not borne out by the way the Old Testament further contradicts Jesus Christ as follows.
Example One
People Who Don’t Listen to Priests must be put to death
(Deuteronomy 17:12)
Would Jesus do this?
“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi’, for you only have one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father’, for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher’, for you have one Teacher, the Messiah/Christ.”
(Matt 23:8-10)
Example Two
Death for Adulterer
(Leviticus 20:10)
Would Jesus condone this? Would He cast the first stone?
When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If anyone of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”
(John 8:7)
Example Three
Kill Nonbelievers
(2 Chronicles 15:12-13 NAB)
Would Jesus kill Nonbelievers? I thought Jesus came into the World to save us, not to kill us?
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgement.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgement.”
(Matt 5:21-22)
In his vision John saw himself eating the Little Scroll as he was commanded to by the Angel and it tasted as sweet as honey but sour in his belly.
Eating Jesus’ words tastes like honey in the mouth but in the belly, where we sometimes experience a sensation of fear or sickness brought upon by a sudden horrifying thought, the sensation of sourness comes from the horrifying thought that the church for centuries has been inspired by the words and lives of a people who exhibit individually and corporately an understanding of God totally alien to the original Word from Heaven.
Furthermore, the sourness in the belly can only occur in the present age when Christians realise the horrifying reality that the historical belief in the Bible as the ‘Word of God’ has been responsible for leading the world into believing in a false God alien to Jesus Christ in the last two millennia, into putting their trust in a scripture that is not from God. For Christ Himself pointed to the contention between Himself and their beliefs when He said the following.
Example One
The Jews had no concept of God being a Father, which is a characteristic of God fundamental to knowing Him. They proclaimed Jesus was worthy of the death penalty for calling God His Father. They did this in exactly the same spirit of the murdering people whose tombs they decorated.
(Matthew 26:66)
Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at work to this very day and I too am working.” For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; (they’d tried before) not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
(John 5:17-18)
“You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendents of those who murdered the prophets.”
(Matthew 23:29-30)
Example Two
The Jews believed in ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ kind of justice because they believed this idea was inspired by God as written in their scrolls.
(Exodus 21:24)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
(Matthew 5:38-39)
Example Three
The Jews had set up an educational system that taught people at home and abroad about God’s character and form based on their narrative but Jesus refuted their teaching. Moreover Jesus claimed that no-one knew God except those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.
“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No-one knows the Son except the Father, and no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”
(Matthew 11:27)
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
(John 14:6:7)
“All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.”
(John 10:8)
“My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know Him, I know Him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His word.”
(John 8:54-55)
In all of these examples you can see why in the present age there is so much confusion around the world in people’s minds concerning the true nature and character of God. In the Middle East Muslims kill each other using suicide bombs all in the name of the Passionate One and in the Western Hemisphere Christians have been busy murdering people through crusades and inquisitions also in the name of Christ right up until the present time in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Both traditions have a documented history that has exhibited the fruit of the wrong spirit as a direct consequence of using the Old Testament model as a basis for understanding good and evil. The model has been created by a people who, according to Jesus’ Words, didn’t know God, had no conscience and whose understanding of God was rooted in the tree of knowledge as they had never eaten from the Tree of Life.
How can Christians and Muslims continue to testify to a compassionate and merciful God when they are both deceived in their thinking that Jesus Christ fits snugly into the Old Testament narrative as being ‘part of the package’?
The Little Scroll always arrives on the last day just as Jesus prophesied because the Little Scroll is eternal.
“As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him on the last day.
(John 12:47-48)
God’s testimony about Himself is fleshed out in the life and resurrection of His Son who spoke the original Word from Heaven, which clearly show that both He and Jesus are unchanging, the same yesterday, today and forever.
