Bruce Telfer - Unravelling Revelation - Part 1

Revelation is a drama in two acts. Revelation is a book that centres on worship.

Followers of God are persistent in well-doing and faithful in trial. Not content to live on the surface, they go deep into God’s Word, willing to follow wherever it leads.

In 1938, the king of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, authorised a team of American engineers to explore the trackless desert bordering the Persian Gulf, an arid landscape marked only by the occasional palm-fringed oasis. He hoped they would find water. A tribal leader with precarious finances, Ibn Saud believed
the Americans might discover places where he could refresh his warriors’ horses and camels.
But the team from Standard Oil of California had something else in mind. Geologists had discovered oil in other countries in the region and the engineers thought they would find more in Saudi Arabia. During a period of several years, they drilled more than half a dozen holes without result. They could easily have
given up in frustration. Instead, they decided to see if going deeper than normal might make a difference. So they set up their equipment again at well number 7 and dug deeper than they ever had before. They burrowed all the way to a depth of 4,727 feet and finally hit the first sign of what would turn out to be the
largest supply of crude oil in the world. A willingness to go a little d125eeper was all that stood between failure and unimaginable success.
Oddly enough, the king did not appear to appreciate the discovery at first. He ignored the news about the oil for an entire year. Finally, he and his retinue arrived in a caravan of 400 automobiles at the pumping station of Ras Tanura in time to witness the first tanker hauling away its cargo of Saudi crude oil. The
discovery would change everything.

Up until then, the primary source of income in the Saudi kingdom came from servicing pilgrims in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. But even the first shipment of oil produced wealth beyond all expectation. The lives and lifestyles of Arabian Bedouin would never be the same. This isolated country with no other exportable
product suddenly became a major factor in global politics. The Saudi royal family became powerful players on the world scene. Their wealth is a crucial factor in Middle East politics and bargaining over global energy supplies. Today, their nation is at the centre of world attention because a handful of American engineers
were not willing to be content with a surface approach to their task.
Even so, for us to obtain the wealth waiting to be found in Revelation, we must be prepared to go deep into the meaning of the book. If we do, we will be rewarded far beyond the value of any oilfields.