{"id":1713,"date":"2018-05-26T14:44:48","date_gmt":"2018-05-26T06:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/?p=1713"},"modified":"2018-05-25T17:40:36","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T09:40:36","slug":"the-four-living-creatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/2018\/05\/26\/the-four-living-creatures\/","title":{"rendered":"Creatures of Praise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Revelation 4:6b-8\u00a0<em><span class=\"text Rev-4-6\">In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back.<\/span> <span class=\"text Rev-4-7\">The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle.<\/span><span class=\"text Rev-4-7\">\u00a0<\/span><span id=\"en-NIV-30777\" class=\"text Rev-4-8\">Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying:\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"text Rev-4-8\">\u201c\u2018Holy, holy, holy i<\/span><span class=\"text Rev-4-8\">s the Lord God Almighty,\u2019\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"text Rev-4-8\">who was, and is, and is to come.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The strangeness of John&#8217;s vision continues. He sees four living creatures. These are strange creatures that can see in all directions. They see what is happening. Nothing escapes their gaze. The four animals may be symbolic. Interpreters have debated about the meaning of these but they represent the fearsome and ferocious lion, the hardworking ox, the intelligent man, and the all seeing eagle. Their wings allow them to go in any direction. All of these attributes only serve to praise God by recognizing his holiness, power, and eternality. It seems that these creatures were designed for this very purpose. Their attributes describe different aspects of human life and symbolize how we should give all our praise to God. We too were created to praise God with the freedom to love God. We fulfill the purpose of our creation when we do what these four creatures do.<\/p>\n<p>For older posts, click\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/blog\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Revelation 4:6b-8\u00a0In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle.\u00a0Each of the four living [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1713"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1726,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions\/1726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}