And how was your Independence Day? I feel like I spent the whole long weekend watching that bloody Vikings series, and I sympathize with the Dark Age Christians who are supposed to have prayed (there’s some controversy about this) “A furore normannorum, libera nos Domine” (From the fury of the Northmen, deliver us, O Lord”).

I mean, will the cursed thing never end? I finally finished Season Four, which turned out to be a double season – twenty episodes. And Season Five apparently has the same number. I grow grateful that they compressed the timeline – an accurate chronology might kill me off. Yet another martyr of Viking atrocities.

The more I watch, the more I’m impressed that the writers and producers simply had no interest in real Vikings at all. They invented some fantasy barbarians, in fantasy outfits and haircuts, and injected them into a fast-forward early medieval chronology. Here and there they throw in an authentic (or semi-authentic) artifact to make it look good, but basically they’re just spitballing – probably under the influence of drugs.

Well, enough of my problems. Let’s turn to something inspirational. Here’s part of what I read in my devotions this morning, from Revelation 21:22-27:

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

This is part of the big triumph scene in Revelation. God’s enemies have been conquered and disposed of in the Lake of Fire along with the devil and his angels. God’s eternal Kingdom has been revealed – it’s a huge city, perfectly square in shape. (I take this as a contrast with the earlier statement that the sea will be no more. The sea in Scripture symbolizes chaos and disorder, the unruly things God bridled at Creation, and which have now been abolished forever. Instead we now have the City Foursquare, solid, flawless, unshakeable. All the wrong and injustice of the world is gone. No longer will anyone complain that life makes no sense. In the Kingdom, it does make sense. Life is fair at last.)

And I was struck by these verses: “The kings of the earth will bring their glory into it….They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”

What does that mean? I can’t make pronouncements, being neither a theologian nor a Greek scholar, but what struck me immediately was that the glory and honor of the nations had formerly been outside the Kingdom, and will now be brought into it.

To me that suggests cultural and intellectual glory and honor. The art and philosophy of Athens. The wisdom of China. The strength of Rome. The subtle delicacy of Japan. The courage and honor of Native Americans. The creativity of Africans. No beautiful thing will be lost – they’ll be taken as spoils by the true Kingdom and brought into the City, to the glory of God and for the delight of His elect.

It’s like a backwards missionary effort – even the old heathen things will be christened. As Chesterton wrote in “The Ballad of the White Horse”: “Because it is only Christian men, Guard even heathen things.”

I took that (perhaps in arrogance) as a possible benison on my Viking books.