Jasper & Sardine Stone - Revelation 4

4:1-5 - The first 3 chapters of the book of Revelation included instructions to 7 church leaders in Asia Minor. Starting with chapter 4, John gets in to another vision that he had of “things which must be hereafter.” John sees “a door was opened in heaven” and heard a voice “as it were of a trumpet talking to me.” He sees “a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.” The description of the scene set before him is unique, I’ve never heard it described like this and I don’t know exactly what it means. John describes a man sitting on the throne who looked “like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” I googled “sardine stone” and it’s a red colored stone, one article defines it as “a gem of blood-red colour.” I was surprised because I thought that it would be white. After doing some digging, I found what was important to know about this from an article about “Jasper and Sardine stone” from biblestudytools.com. According to the book of Exodus, priests who officiated in the temple were to wear breastplates with 12 different colored stones each representing a different tribe of Israel. The article comments, “The jasper and the sardine stone are the first and last of these twelve stones (representing the tribes of Israel). The jasper represented Reuben, the first of the tribes, since Reuben was the firstborn of Jacob. The sardine stone represented Benjamin, the youngest of the twelve sons of Jacob. In other words, the two stones represented the first and the last and therefore may be regarded as including all the other stones in between, that is, the whole of the covenanted people.” I love this because it’s not just an arbitrary display of various color, but there is meaning behind it, specifically that everything that happens is for the express purpose of the salvation of Israel. The rainbow that was seen, the article suggests is representative of the covenant that God made with Noah to never flood the earth again. The rainbow appeared after the flood, or the baptism of the earth, and now the earth was going to be visited by fire, the next step in its progression toward celestialization. Surrounding the throne “were four and twenty seats” upon which 24 elders sat wearing “white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.” What becomes interesting at this point is that the entire section 77 of the D&C which is devoted to specific questions about the meaning of certain aspects of chapter 4 of Revelation. In reference to the “elders” sitting on the thrones, the Lord answered that these “elders who John saw, were elders who had been faithful in the work and the ministry and were dead; who belonged to the seven churches, and were then in the paradise of God.” So it appears that this is still in reference to the leaders of the 7 churches given instructions in the previous chapters. The 24 thrones have a lot going on because there is “lightnings and thunderings and voices” coming from them. In the same area I guess there are “seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.” An important JST is here for the word “seven spirits” which changes the word “spirits” to “servants.” So the thrones are making all types of noise and in the middle, before the throne of God are the burning lamps of the seven leaders John just personally instructed. That is some pretty powerful imagery. 4:6-11 - The ground in front of the throne “was a sea of glass like unto crystal.” D&C 77 explains this as “the earth, in its sanctified, immortal, and eternal state.” Maybe this is a way of stating that this apparent gathering of some kind will happen after the earth is celestialized. In the midst of all these thrones and people, there are “four beasts full of eyes before and behind.” There is something that looks like a lion, one that looks like a calf, one with the face of a man, and a fourth like a flying eagle. Each beast has 6 wings and are full of eyes, and the “rest not day and night” praising God saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.” As these beasts are praising God, the 24 elders fall off their thrones “and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” There are a few things to point out here. It seems to me that John is describing a scene where all of God’s creations as represented by the 24 elders and the 4 beasts, are worshipping Him together at some sort of event where the earth is celestialized. That’s all I can think of, but it’s an interesting display to imagine, how it looks, who all will be there, at what point will it happen, etc. The beasts are described by the Lord in D&C 77 as “figurative expressions, used by the Revelator, John, in describing heaven, the paradise of God, and happiness of man, and of beasts, and of creeping things, and of the fowls of the air; that which is spiritual being in the likeness of that which is temporal; and that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual; the spirit of man in the likeness of his person, as also the spirit of the beast, and every other creature which God has created.” The concept of animals praising God constantly reminds me of something in a book that I read once called “Visions of Glory,” where it is described where plants, animals, and every other living thing besides humans were constantly praising Jesus, like that’s all they ever talked about, and it was constant. One of the really powerful lines in that book that just really hit me was something to the effect of, “there is nothing more powerful than the testimony of Jesus Christ borne to you by a blade a grass.” It was abstract but so similar to what is going on in this scene here, at least in my mind.