When most people think about the Bible’s last book, Revelation, they do not think about God’s grace. When they consider God’s last-day message, their thoughts often turn immediately to frightening beasts, mystic symbols, and strange images. The book of Revelation scares as many people as it reassures, which is unfortunate because it is, indeed, saturated with grace and filled with hope. That is, even amid the scary beasts and warnings of persecution and the hard times ahead, God still gives us reasons to rejoice in His salvation.
Read Revelation 1:1-3 and Revelation 14:6. How do these verses together tell us about not just the book of Revelation but about the “everlasting gospel,” as well?
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Revelation is all about Jesus. It is His message to His people and is especially applicable to His church in the last days. It is a grace-filled message of our end-time hope. Throughout the book, Christ is described as the slain Lamb, and a blessing is promised to those who read, under-stand, and act on the truths revealed.
According to Revelation 1:5-6, Jesus is the one who “loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father” (NKJV). In Christ we are forgiven. Grace pardons our past, empowers our present, and provides hope for our future. That is, in Christ we are delivered from sin’s penalty and power, and one day soon we will be delivered from sin’s presence. This is the message of the Bible’s last book, Revelation.
And it is also an urgent message, first pictured as an angel flying swiftly in midheaven having the “everlasting gospel.”
The gospel? Salvation by faith in Christ? Christ’s atoning death for us? The promise of eternal life, not because of what we can do but because of what Christ has done for us? All this is at the beginning of the three angels’ messages? Exactly!
No wonder, then, that they are grace-filled messages full of hope and promise for us as broken and suffering beings.
| Though it’s easy to focus on the beasts and warnings of the last days, as depicted in Revelation, how can we learn to balance all these out with what is, undeniably, the most important message of Revelation: Christ’s self-sacrificing death in our behalf? |
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