Revelation: Our Glorious Elevation
GUEST BLOGGER: DENNIS BISHOP
I just finished reading through the Book of Revelation. I felt with what is happening in the world and our country, I needed to remember the end of the story.
God rarely reveals the future to us. In the Old Testament, He occasionally showed a few prophets what was behind the curtain of the future. He showed us in Isaiah the coming of the Messiah. To the apostle John, He pulled back the curtain to reveal the final revelation of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. The King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
To many people the Book of Revelation is both terrifying and filled with hope. And it should be. Terrible things happen to those who do not repent and turn from their rejection of God. Many of the same plagues that were poured out on the Egyptians will be poured out again and people will still not repent.
Psalm 7:11-16 “God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. If a man does not repent, God will sharpen his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. Behold the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends.”
I cannot even imagine the indignation the Father feels right now as we seem bent on destroying ourselves. Oh, how we need to fall on our faces and ask God to forgive us, to heal us and to give us his wisdom and strength to march forward in these days. The thing is, the Book of Revelation reveals just how wicked human kind truly is. Jesus is going to rule and reign on this earth for 1000 years while Satan is chained up. It will be a time of peace and righteousness. Yet when Satan is released he will convince man to again rebel against God after living in Jesus’ peace for 1000 years. This is the depravity of man.
But this does not mean that we should abandon our fellow man. It should cause us to work harder to love our fellow man, to work for peace and justice, but most importantly to bring them into God’s Kingdom.
While terrifying, the Book of Revelation is the ultimate glorious hope for the believers of Jesus Christ. When Jesus is revealed in all his glory He is going to put on quite a show.
1 Thessalonians 4 tells us, “He is going to come down as he left on the clouds in the sky with a commanding shout, with the call of the archangel, and the trumpet call of God. First all, the Christians who have died will rise from their graves. Then, together with them, those who are still alive and remain on earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and remain with Him forever. So comfort and encourage each other with these words.”
Let us comfort and encourage one another because this happens to us before all the judgments begin.
This is our glorious elevation. We will forever be with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God revealed His Son in this Book so we will have the hope and assurance that Jesus is who he says he is and will truly conquer death and evil. That we will live in perfect peace and harmony with him for all eternity. There will be no more sickness, no more wars or riots, no more injustice, just peace, perfect peace in a new heaven and a new earth in the glorious presence of our Savior. It will be more than we can even imagine!