The other book

Twenty weeks on the Book. The last thread is about a different one.

It is first mentioned by a man offering to be removed from it.

Israel has made the calf. Moses goes back up the mountain and says: these people have committed a great sin; they have made themselves gods of gold.

Blot me out of the book You have written.

That is the first reference in Scripture to a book God keeps, and it comes from a man volunteering to be struck from it in exchange for a nation.

The thread runs quietly after that. A psalmist asks that his enemies be blotted out of the book of life and not listed with the righteous. Another says all his days were written in God’s book before one of them came to be. Daniel says everyone whose name is found written in the book will be delivered.

And Malachi describes something being kept in a room where people were talking.

A scroll of remembrance was written in His presence. Written down — because people who feared the LORD were talking with each other, and He listened.

That is a startling picture in a book about writing. Somewhere a record is being kept of ordinary conversations between people who feared God.

Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

And the thread lands in the last courtroom in Scripture.

Books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from what was written in the books.

Two kinds of record, in one scene. Books of deeds, and a book of names.

Which is where a volume about the Word of God has to end its threads, because it is the only place the two books meet. The reader has spent twenty weeks on a book he can hold. The verse says there is one he cannot, with his name either in it or not.

And the thread carries a mercy that is easy to miss in a courtroom scene. The book of life is described as the Lamb’s — and it is said to have been written from the foundation of the world. Whatever the debates about the passage, the names in it were not added late and were not earned on the day the books were opened.

And the New Jerusalem admits only those written in the Lamb’s book of life — the Lamb from Week Two, the city from Week Ten, and a book, at the end.

Trace it: Exodus 32:32–33; Psalm 56:8; 69:28; 139:16; Isaiah 4:3; Daniel 7:10; 12:1; Malachi 3:16; Luke 10:20; Philippians 4:3; Hebrews 12:23; Revelation 3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:11–15; 21:27.

Registers of citizens were kept in ancient cities, and a name could be struck from the roll. The image behind the book of life is civic before it is theological, which is why Philippians 4:3 can speak of fellow workers whose names are in the book of life as naturally as of people on a list.

Revelation 3:5 is the one verse in the thread that has generated the longest debate: I will never blot out his name from the book of life. Readers differ over whether the promise implies the possibility of erasure or emphatically denies it, and the Greek construction supports strong denial. The disagreement is old and honest.

Psalm 56:8 belongs in the thread and is the tenderest verse in it: You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book? A record of a man’s sleepless nights is described in the same vocabulary as the register of the redeemed.

Hebrews 12:23 places the readers among the assembly of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven, in the same paragraph as the mountain thread from Week Twelve. The book with the names in it is part of what the writer says they have already come to.

Look it upH5612 סֵפֶר sepher, book, scroll · H4283 מִזָּכרוֹן zikkaron, remembrance, memorial · H4229 מָחָה machah, to wipe out, blot out · G976 βίβλος biblos, book, scroll

Where this touchesExodus 32:30–33 · Psalm 56:8; 139:16 · Daniel 12:1 · Malachi 3:16–18 · Luke 10:20 · Revelation 20:11–15; 21:27 · Revelation 5:1–10 (Week Nine, Day Three). The nineteen earlier threads were the seed, lamb, blood, tree, bread, water, the Name, the dwelling, the Shepherd, the city, the marriage, the mountain, the light, the vine, the exodus, the priesthood, rest, the covenant and the Spirit.