(A glimpse into the book of Revelation)
Very good week to all. Welcome to the “front porch.”
Well, friends, we have come to the end – oh,no, not that final “end,” at least, not that we know. But after four years of travelling steadily through the Word of God – both Old and New Testaments – we have come to the last book, God’s final revelation for all time which, of course, is the book of Revelation itself.
Of the millions and millions of pages in the world’s libraries – shelves reaching as if up to the sky for miles and miles – I do not believe there is a single page to which you or I could turn in any of those books that is more awe-inspiring than the pages of the book of Revelation. If the readings in this final inspired message from our God do not make us realize that we have come to holy ground, I am absolutely sure that nothing will.
So, we open the book together, and the images and scenes are stunning.
We see John – the aged and great apostle – exiled on an island called Patmos, some 25 miles off of the shore of Asia Minor. It is the Lord’s Day, and, suddenly, he hears a great noise behind him, a blast as powerful as a trumpet. Turning, he sees the Lord Himself, his Lord and Jesus. He sees Him for the first time since he had watched Him ascend up to heaven from the historic Mount of Olives half a century before. But he doesn’t see Jesus as he saw Him then, because His face is like the sun shining at noon, and His feet like brass burning in a furnace.
John immediately falls on his face as if he were dead – but His Lord speaks to Him in the same gentle tone he had spoken on the stormy Sea of Galilee many years before, and with the same comforting words, “Fear not!”
The Lord Jesus – in His brilliant, gloried state – reaches His right hand to comfort the disciple whom He loved, and He follows with this command: Write, my faithful servant – write everything you are about to see into a book, just as you have written your gospel and epistles. So, John, obediently, takes his pen in his hand and awaits the heavenly message. What he sees are the most amazing scenes any man on this earth has witnessed.
Having seen His Master before, He now watches as He walks among seven glowing candlesticks, those candlesticks being the seven churches that worshipped faithfully not far to the east of where John was on Patmos.
Then a door opens in heaven, and the Spirit transports John up to that door, all the way to the throne of God. John witnesses – and he writes of – the august scenes around God’s throne: There are heavenly creatures, some angelic, some the redeemed who had walked as John walks on the earth. And there, amazingly, is God Himself sitting on his throne, and seeing Him is like looking upon the brightness of a jasper stone or a fiery sardius. A rainbow, also, surrounds God’s majestic throne.
John sees a book in God’s right hand, a book sealed securely with seven seals. The book is so sacred that there is not a man – neither in heaven nor on the earth – who is worthy to take the book from God’s hand and open it. John – overwhelmed in his spirit – cries at the scene, for he longs to see the contents of the book.
But one of the redeemed – one of 24 saved ones whom he had seen around God’s throne – steps forward to comfort John, and he assures him that there is someone who can open that book.
Then John looks again right into the midst of the throne of God, and John sees the One – the One and only One who would dare even touch that book or open it …
John’s powerful visions continue, and they become more and more brilliant with each step. Stay tuned, please – stay with us here on the “front porch” in the weeks ahead – and as we open this book of Revelation we also will see the opening and the contents of that powerful book that is in the hand of the One to Whom the hosts of heaven are bowing, saying, “Holy, holy, holy.”
-Coach Bowen (coachbowen1984@gmail.com)
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