The Accuser Cast Down

Where does that voice come from, the one that reads your record back to you when you cannot sleep, every failure in order, with dates?

Revelation gives that voice a job title: "the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night." Day and night describes a full-time job. The picture is a courtroom. The charges are specific, and the prosecution never rests.

Then comes the verdict, and notice that nobody argues with the facts. "They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb." The case fell apart because the debt had been paid, even though the charges were true. Paul stands in the same courtroom and asks the questions it exists to answer: "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?" And John names the One who stands beside us: "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." An advocate is someone who speaks for you in court.

The other two parts of the verse need to be read honestly, because people sometimes turn them into a technique. "By the word of their testimony" means they said out loud whose they were. "They loved not their lives unto the death" means these people died for it. John is describing martyrs, and if we turn the verse into a trick for getting through a hard week, we empty it.

So the next time the reading starts, do not argue the facts. They are mostly accurate, and you will lose. Answer with the short line the passage gives you, out loud if you are alone: "the blood of the Lamb." The voice may not stop at once, but that answer stays true while it carries on. You were never the one asked to build your own defence. Jesus Christ the righteous speaks for you, and the accuser has already been cast down.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 274 is Freely Loved (Hosea 14:4).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two