KING CANUTE was a Danish-born ruler during the eleventh century. His empire stretched from England to Norway. Though born a pagan, he later became a devout Christian. He built many churches in England and Denmark, and he sent missionaries to evangelize the Scandinavian lands.
Because of the king’s success in battle, his people practically worshipped him. Their praise made him uncomfortable. One day, King Canute decided he’d had enough flattery, so he ordered his servants to take his throne to the seashore. His servants followed his orders and set his throne on the beach. Then Canute sat on the throne and waited for the tide to come in.
All around King Canute, his attendants and courtiers watched and waited and wondered. Had the king lost his mind? The tide rose. The waves lapped at the king’s feet. Canute raised his hands and commanded the waters to depart. Still the tide rose, and the waters came up to the king’s waist, then his chest, and finally his neck.
Finally, the king’s attendants, fearing he would drown, waded in and pulled the king and his throne back to the shore.
Then King Canute scanned the faces of those who had rescued him. “Let all men know,” he said, “how empty and worthless is the power of kings. For there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey.”1
Returning to his castle, Canute went to the crucifix on the wall and hung his own crown on the brow of the crucified Christ. The crown remained there until the king’s death—a reminder of the glory that belongs to Christ alone.
The message of Revelation is that Jesus is the King of Glory, worthy of honor and praise—the Alpha and Omega, the Lord of the Beginning and the End. The Son of God was present at the moment of creation in Genesis 1:1, and He will reign over the new heaven and the new earth at the end of Revelation.
Jesus gave John this vision to remind us that glory, honor, majesty, and praise belong to Jesus Christ alone.
While exiled on Patmos, John had a vision of the Lord Jesus. When I say “vision,” I don’t mean that Revelation is all a dream. John had a real and personal encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, and the things he saw and heard were not symbolic impressions from his unconscious mind. He saw reality. He witnessed real events. He truly heard the voice of the Lord.
Then John took pen and parchment and wrote down everything he had seen and heard, so that it would be preserved through the ages. John opens this book with a prologue, Revelation 1:1–3, and he opens his prologue with an intriguing statement: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place” (NKJV).
What does John mean by the phrase, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”? Is John saying that the book of Revelation came from Jesus—or is he saying that the book of Revelation reveals who Jesus is? Ultimately, it means both. John received this revelation directly from Jesus, and Jesus is the focal point of the book.
Of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, Revelation is the only book that promises a blessing to those who read and study it. In fact, this blessing appears twice in Revelation, once near the beginning, and once near the end, like bookends:
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. (1:3)
“Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll.” (22:7)
In Revelation 1:4, the Lord Jesus sends a blessing of “grace and peace” to the churches. There are at least fourteen places where New Testament writers use the phrase “grace and peace” as a greeting. We find it in the epistles of Paul and Peter, and in Revelation—but we never see the order reversed. It’s always “grace and peace,” never “peace and grace.” Why do grace and peace always appear in that order?
The order of these two words is important. No one can ever have the peace of God before receiving the grace of God. It is always grace first, then peace. Only the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ can give you peace through times of trouble and discouragement.
John goes on to describe Jesus as “the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5). He is the faithful witness because He came from heaven to reveal God the Father, so His testimony is true. As Jesus told Philip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
And Jesus is the firstborn from the dead because He is the first to experience resurrection in His glorified body. On three occasions, Jesus miraculously raised people from the dead—the widow’s son in the town of Nain (Luke 7), the daughter of Jairus (Luke 8), and the Lord’s friend Lazarus (John 11). Yet not one of these people was raised in an incorruptible body like the resurrected Lord. Each of them had to pass through death again.
Jesus is the first to rise from the dead, never to die again. He is the firstborn—but not the last. All who put their trust in Him, even if they die and their bodies crumble to dust, will one day live again in a glorified body like His. We will not be disembodied spirits floating among the clouds. In fact, our resurrection bodies will be so real and perfect that the bodies we inhabit now will seem insubstantial by contrast.
The Lord Jesus is also the Ruler of the kings of the earth. Think of all the powerful rulers and tyrants who have bossed empires. Every one of them, without exception, will bow their knee to Jesus. Willingly or not, they will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
John goes on to say, “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen” (Revelation 1:5–6). Most of us have sung hymns about the blood of Jesus. As believers, we have sipped from the Communion cup—and the wine is a sobering reminder of the blood of Jesus.
But consider this: the apostle John, who wrote these words, had seen that blood with his own eyes. He had seen the blood of Jesus flowing from the nail wounds, from the thorn prints in His brow, from the gashes in His flesh from the Roman whip. When John wrote that Jesus freed us by His blood, he did not have to imagine that blood. He simply remembered it. He had seen that blood as it pooled at the foot of the cross. If John lived to be a million years old, he would never be able to erase the sight of that blood from his mind.
With that vivid image in his brain, John said, in effect, “Remember—only the blood of Jesus can save you. Only the blood of Jesus can set you free. Only the blood of Jesus can break the power of sin, shame, and addiction. If you feel alone and unloved, claim the blood of Jesus. If you feel guilty and worthless, plead the blood of Jesus. If you feel weak and powerless, hold fast to the blood of Jesus. He bled to death to give you life.”
Next, John quotes two Old Testament passages. He writes in Revelation 1:7, “Look, he is coming with the clouds,” referencing Daniel 7:13. You probably picture Jesus descending from the sky amid the clouds, but that’s not what this verse means. In the Bible, clouds symbolize vast numbers of people. Hebrews 12:1 tells us that we are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses”—a reference to the myriad Christians who have gone before us. John continues:
and “every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him”;
and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.”
So shall it be! Amen. (Revelation 1:7)
Here, John refers to Zechariah 12:10. When he says that everyone will look on Jesus and see Him, even those who pierced Him, John is not talking about only the Roman soldiers who hammered the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet. He is talking about all those who pierced Jesus by rejecting Him, persecuting His saints, distorting His gospel, using His name as a swear word, taking down His cross from buildings, forbidding children to pray to Him in school, and so on.
In many ways, in many times in history, people have pierced Jesus. John, echoing Zechariah, says that those who pierced Him will grieve bitterly for having despised and rejected Him. They will mourn for all eternity because they blindly rejected Him as their Savior and Lord. They will mourn for having squandered precious opportunities to know Jesus. They will regret the choices they made—choices that cannot be undone.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to spare people from having to suffer that everlasting regret. Day and night, I feel a burden to tell people about the love of Jesus Christ. I pray for those who have not come to a saving relationship with Him. Once the day of salvation is over, once the door has been shut, there will be no more opportunities.
In Genesis 7:16, after Noah and his family entered the ark, God shut the door. That’s an interesting detail that often goes unnoticed. Noah didn’t shut the door. God shut the door and it stayed shut. Even when Noah’s ungodly neighbors pounded on the door, it stayed shut. Perhaps God thought that Noah might weaken and let the people in. But God had already given Noah’s neighbors 120 years to repent. When the time for repentance was over, God shut the door—and the time of judgment began.
A day is coming—a day John calls “the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10). When it comes, God will shut the door, all opportunities for salvation will be past, and Final Judgment will begin.
In Revelation 1:8, the Lord says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega . . . who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” The Alpha-Omega statement appears at the beginning and end of Revelation. In Revelation 22:13, the Lord says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” Jesus is saying to John—and to us—“I was here at the beginning, I am here now, and I will be here at the end. I was here at creation, and I will be here when heaven and earth are made new.”
In Revelation 1:10, John writes, “On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit.” I could write an entire book on those three words: “in the Spirit.” I think John tells us something immensely important in those few words.
John was exiled on Patmos because he had been a thorn in the emperor’s side, teaching Christians to disobey the emperor’s command. So Emperor Domitian banished John and thought he had defeated him. But John was not defeated. In his mind, he was victorious in Christ whether he was in Ephesus or in exile.
The emperor might separate John from his loved ones, but the emperor could not separate him from the love of Christ. The emperor might cut him off from Christian fellowship, but he could never separate him from the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The emperor thought he could break John’s spirit, but John was filled with the Spirit, yielded to the Spirit, led by the Spirit, and comforted by the Spirit.
That’s what it means to be “in the Spirit.” In spite of persecution, adversity, and loneliness, John was “in the Spirit” and receptive to the Spirit’s leading during his exile on Patmos. And the Lord came to John and revealed to him the mysteries of the ages.
Here is a lesson for your life and mine: If we yield to the Spirit, no matter what our circumstances, the Lord will be present with us and will give us what we need for our time of trial. Even in exile, we can be “in the Spirit”—filled with the Spirit, led by the Spirit, and comforted by the Spirit.
John was exiled on Patmos, but his location didn’t matter. Likewise, it makes no difference where you are or what your circumstances might be. You may be going through a “Patmos experience,” feeling lonely and isolated, confused and weary, and you may say, “Lord, I could be serving You in Ephesus! Why am I stranded on Patmos?”
John probably felt that way too. But the book of Revelation might not exist if not for John’s exile on Patmos. Often what seems like a trial is actually a blessing. Your Patmos experience might actually be a doorway to the greatest revelation of your life. Listen for the message God has for you. Ask the Spirit to make you sensitive to His still, small voice.
John yielded himself to the Holy Spirit and God transformed his punishment into praise, his pain into gain, and his stagnation into revelation. God swept John out of his own era and into eternity. John became a time traveler as God transported him to the Lord’s Day.
Some people mistakenly assume that when John said he was in the Spirit “on the Lord’s Day,” his vision occurred on a Sunday. But the first day of the week did not become known as the Lord’s Day until much later in Christian history. In John’s time, Sunday was simply known as the first day of the week. So when John says he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, what does he mean?
In the Bible, “the Lord’s Day” or “the Day of the Lord” always refers to the Day of Judgment. The Day of the Lord is that final day when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. We see that day referred to in the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Obadiah, and elsewhere in the Old Testament prophecies. (We will examine these prophecies in detail in chapter 5.) It is portrayed as a time of judgment, terror, darkness, and destruction for unrepentant sinners. The Lord permitted John to see that day with his own eyes.
In John 21, the final chapter of John’s gospel, there is a scene where Jesus deals gently with Peter, who is guilt-ridden after his denial of the Lord. Jesus commissions Peter to “feed my lambs” (v. 15). Then Jesus prophesies to Peter that he will one day suffer a martyr’s death (vv. 18–19).
Peter clearly doesn’t like the idea of dying as a martyr, so he points to John and says, “Lord, what about him?” (v. 21). In other words, “Lord, what are You going to do with John? Is he going to die a martyr’s death too?”
Jesus replies, in effect, “That’s none of your business, Peter.” In the original Greek, this is a very sharp rebuke. Jesus says, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me” (v. 22).
John records that the disciples who heard this were puzzled by the Lord’s words and even spread a rumor among believers that Jesus said John would not die. “But,” John records, “Jesus did not say that he [John] would not die; he only said, ‘If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?’” (v. 23).
Now, this is a curious thing for John to say. You would think that if the apostle John would remain alive until the Lord’s return, then it would naturally follow that he would not die—the Lord would take John up to heaven with him in the Rapture. How could John die yet remain alive until the Lord’s return?
Answer: Jesus would give John a vision of the Lord’s return! And that’s exactly what Jesus did. When John was in the Spirit on the island of Patmos, Jesus gave him a vision in which he was transported to the Lord’s Day, and he was allowed to see marvelous events of the future, including the Lord’s return.
The Lord’s reply to Peter contained a prophecy about John—and when we study the book of Revelation, we are reading the fulfillment of the Lord’s special promise to John. Though John did eventually die, he lived to see the Lord’s Day by being transported in a vision to the time of the Lord’s return.
While he was in the Spirit, John heard behind him a voice like a trumpet. And the voice told him, “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea” (Revelation 1:11).
Then John turned around to see who spoke. He saw seven golden lampstands, each representing one of the seven churches. And among the lampstands, John said, was someone “like a son of man” (Revelation 1:13). In Daniel 7, the phrase “son of man” is a prophetically significant term referring to the Messiah.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus refers to Himself as the Son of Man. He clearly uses that term in the same prophetic sense that Daniel used it: “The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Matthew 9:6). “For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:8). “The Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels” (Matthew 16:27). “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (John 9:35).
John, who was probably the closest to Jesus of all the Twelve, looked at the risen and glorified Jesus—and his reaction is fascinating. John didn’t say, “I saw my good friend Jesus,” or, “I saw my Lord and Savior Jesus.” He said he saw “someone like a son of man” (Revelation 1:13). Then he proceeded to describe the Lord’s appearance. The Lord was
dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. (Revelation 1:13–16)
John had walked the dusty roads and grassy hills of Palestine with Jesus, but now he describes the Son of Man in terms of awe and reverence. When he sees Jesus, he sees the high priestly robe Jesus wears—symbolizing the Lord’s sacrifice and intercession on behalf of all believers. But if you have never received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, for you His robe is not the robe of the High Priest, but of the Judge.
The golden belt around the Lord’s chest reminds us of Ephesians 6:14, where Paul tells us to buckle the “belt of truth” around us. Jesus is not merely speaking truth; He is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). There can be no truth apart from Him.
John tells us that the Lord’s hair is as white as wool, as pure as snow. These are symbols of righteousness and holiness. The Lord’s eyes blaze like fire—a gaze that penetrates deception and sees all things.
This is, after all, the same Lord Jesus who encountered the Samaritan woman. When she claimed, “I have no husband,” He told her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (John 4:17–18). His eyes of fire burned deep into her soul, exposed the secrets of her life, and transformed her from a fallen woman to an evangelist for the good news. She ran to her village and said, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” (v. 29).
John describes the feet of Jesus as glowing like molten brass, which speaks of God’s judgment against sin. And the Lord’s voice was like a rushing river, meaning that He spoke with power and authority. This is the same voice that called out to a decomposing corpse in a tomb, “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43). And the dead man rose up and walked out of the tomb. This voice spoke with the authority to forgive sins, the authority to heal the sick, the authority to cast out demons. His voice said, “Let there be light” and the universe was spoken into existence (Genesis 1:3).
Jesus holds seven stars in His right hand. What are the stars? They are the seven messengers to the seven churches (which we will examine in chapter 9). Out of the Lord’s mouth comes a sharp, double-edged sword. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the Word of God is “sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart.” The Word of God proceeds from the mouth of Jesus, and it pierces the human heart. That’s why Satan tries to keep us from reading it.
Finally, the face of Jesus shines like the sun. John had seen the face of Jesus shine with a dazzling light before. The Gospels tell us of the Transfiguration of Jesus, which was witnessed by Peter, James, and John, in which Jesus shone with a bright inner light as He spoke to the prophets Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17:1–9).2 The apostle Paul also saw the risen and glorified Jesus, shining like the sun, during his conversion experience on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3–9).3
When John walked and talked with Jesus as one of the Twelve, he couldn’t fully understand whom he was dealing with. But here, in Revelation 1, John sees Jesus glorified, magnified, transfigured—and that’s how we need to see Jesus today.
When John saw the glorified Lord Jesus, he didn’t embrace Him or lean his head on the Lord’s shoulder as he had in the Upper Room. When John saw the glorified Jesus, he was stricken with awe and dread. He realized his own sinfulness and inadequacy in the presence of Jesus. John wrote, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17).
John demonstrated the awe and reverence with which we should approach Jesus. I have heard many Christians pray as if Jesus was their pal, their roommate, a guy from the neighborhood. And I’ve heard people abuse and misuse this word awe, or its adjective form, awesome. I’ve heard people say, “This pizza is awesome!” Please don’t do that. Please don’t trivialize the word awesome. When you experience true awe and reverence for Jesus, your legs turn to Jell-O and you fall on your face as though dead.
Nothing and no one is worthy of our awe but God—God the Father, God the Spirit, and God the Son. Only the glorified Lord is truly awesome. Nothing else comes close.
One day, the English mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), was walking in the garden at Cambridge University when he saw an apple fall from a tree. He asked himself, “Why does an apple always fall perpendicularly to the ground? Why doesn’t it go sideways or even upwards?” He realized that an unknown force seemed to attract objects toward the center of the earth. That observation led him to formulate his laws of motion and gravitation, which helped shape the scientific view of the universe for the next three centuries.
Though renowned as a physicist and mathematician, Newton considered himself, first and foremost, a student of God’s Word. Some of his doctrinal views were unorthodox, but his faith was strong and his Bible knowledge was deep. In Newton’s thinking, there was no tension between science and faith. In an appendix to his Principia Mathematica, he observed, “This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. . . . The supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect.”4
Newton wrote several books about the Bible, including Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, published in 1733, six years after his death. In that book, Newton made a fascinating observation that all students of Bible prophecy should observe:
The folly of Interpreters has been to foretell times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt. . . . [God] gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men’s curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world.5
Permit me to translate Newton’s formal eighteenth-century writing style into twenty-first-century English:
It’s foolish to try to foretell future events from Bible prophecy. God never intended for us to use His Word to make reputations for ourselves as know-it-alls. People who misuse Scripture this way not only make themselves look foolish, but they bring disgrace upon the Bible. God didn’t give us the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments to gratify our curiosity or inflate our pride. He gave us these prophecies so that, after they are fulfilled, the glory and wisdom of God would be clearly shown to the entire world.
Newton reminds us that we need to be careful of our motivation for studying Bible prophecy. The book of Revelation (which Newton calls “the Apocalypse of St. John”) gives us a profoundly important vision of present and future reality—and it gives us an exalted picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. But we must resist the temptation to try to predict when prophetic events, such as the return of Christ, will take place.
In The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays, C. S. Lewis warns against trying to predict God’s prophetic timetable:
The doctrine of the Second Coming . . . has, in the past, led Christians into very great follies. Apparently many people find it difficult to believe in this great event without trying to guess its date, or even without accepting as a certainty the date that any quack or hysteric offers them. To write a history of all these exploded predictions would need a book, and a sad, sordid, tragi-comical book it would be.6
Lewis observes that the foolishness of predicting the Second Coming goes all the way back to the first century. In 2 Thessalonians 2:1–3, Paul warned about the rumors and predictions that were circulating in the church even then. Lewis also mentions the prediction of William Miller, founder of the Millerite sect, who said that the Second Coming would occur on March 21, 1843. Miller was mocked and jeered when the date passed without incident. Lewis concludes:
We must never speak to simple, excitable people about “the Day” without emphasizing again and again the utter impossibility of prediction. . . . [The Lord’s] teaching on the subject quite clearly consisted of three propositions: (1) That he will certainly return. (2) That we cannot possibly find out when. (3) And that therefore we must always be ready for him.7
There are many life-changing truths that God has revealed to us in Revelation: The same Jesus who suffered, died, and rose again will come back to earth as the King of all nations. The same Messiah who was rejected and crucified will judge the world. The same Jesus who had no place to lay His head is the One who said, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool” (Isaiah 66:1). The same Jesus who now offers salvation to all will one day shut the door—and the time of God’s favor will come to a close.
Will the Lord take His church out of the world before the Great Tribulation begins? Or will the church go through three and a half years of the Great Tribulation? Or will the church have to go through the entire seven years of Tribulation? God knows the answer to these questions, and whatever His answer may be, He will give us grace to sustain us.
If God gave me a vote in the matter (which He has not), my vote would be, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus! In fact, come early!” You see, I’m as big a coward as anybody. Not only do I not want to go through seven years or three and a half years of the Great Tribulation—I don’t want to go through one minute of it!
But the question of when the Rapture takes place is a minor matter, compared with the major themes of Revelation. Let’s not get sidetracked by minor details, because then we might miss the big picture. What are the “big picture” themes of the book of Revelation that most Bible teachers would agree on?
First, all who welcome Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior will be welcomed into heaven when He returns.
Second, Jesus will return as He promised.
Third, Jesus will sit in righteous judgment over all who have refused to accept Him as Lord and Savior during their earthly lives.
Fourth, when Jesus appears, all those who love Him will be with Him forever.
These are four indisputable truths that shout loudly and clearly from the book of Revelation. Christians of goodwill may debate the details of this prophecy, but those four principles are beyond debate.
The book of Revelation confronts each of us with a deeply personal question: If Jesus were to return today, would you be thrilled—or afraid? Do not rest until you can answer confidently, “I can’t wait to see the Lord face-to-face!” You can know you are saved eternally. I want you to have that assurance every day of your Christian life.
Are you ready for the Lord’s return? Do you live every day for Him? Do you share the good news of Jesus Christ with the people around you? Do you confess and repent of your sins on a daily basis? Do you ask for the filling of the Holy Spirit every day? Do you pray, study His Word, and seek to become more Christlike with each new day? Do you look forward to the Lord’s return at any moment? Jesus said:
Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. (Matthew 24:42–44)
If we study the book of Revelation, it will not merely increase our knowledge. It will change our lives. Because of the life-changing truths of the book of Revelation, you and I can live each day with eternity in our hearts.
In the opening chapter of Revelation, John presents an image of Jesus that crystallizes all that has been written about Jesus the Messiah in the Old and New Testaments. Through John’s eyes, we see the resurrected, glorified, and exalted Lord Jesus—the eternal God, the Alpha and Omega, the Almighty, the Creator, the Eternal Word.
And as we continue through Revelation, we discover more and more facets of our wonderful Savior. In Revelation 5–7 and 12, we see Him as the Lamb of God, the Messiah of Old Testament prophecy, and the focus of our worship. In Revelation 14, we see Him as the Righteous Judge. And in Revelation 19, we see Him as our Commander, the King of kings and Lord of lords, victorious over Satan, sin, and death.
The better we get to know Jesus, the more eager we’ll be to see Him face-to-face. I don’t know when He will return, but I often wake up thinking, Today might be the day! The thought of His return excites and comforts me. As John once wrote, “We know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:2–3).
One of my favorite theologians is a five-year-old girl I recently heard about. I don’t know her name, but I admire her love for Jesus. She went to Sunday school one day, and her teacher told her that Jesus would be coming back. So she went home and asked, “Mommy, is it true that Jesus is coming back?”
Her mother said, “Yes, honey, it’s true.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Yes, honey, I really do.”
“Could He come back this week?”
“Yes, He could come this week.”
“Could He come today?”
“Yes, He could come today.”
“Could He come at this very moment?”
“Yes, honey. He certainly could.”
“Mommy . . . Would you help me comb my hair?”
This little girl understands the core truth of Revelation better than most adults. She wants to be ready to meet the Lord. When He returns, she wants to be sure her hair is combed. That’s practical theology.
Is your hair combed—spiritually speaking? Are you ready for His appearing? That’s the urgent question confronting us on every page of the book of Revelation.