Thursday, September 26, 2024

Rev.

 Revelation is a really stirring beautiful display of God's power and preeminence.

It is ultimately a writing of promise; a culmination of the statement that He is working out all things for the well-being of His people and His glory.  It is rather disturbing in the first few chapters of prophecy, when God's wrath is being out poured, unless you assume that all of the Christians are not going to be here when it happens, which I don't see in the text anywhere, but maybe I'm just ignorant.  It will be darkest by far the closer the dawn approaches.  But dawn is approaching.

"But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved." (Matthew 24:13)

God has been gracious to all of us, and most of us, at least in the US, who haven't had any period in our lives where we were at the hands of some sadistic presence, haven't had to eat the family pet to survive a few more days, and who haven't had to debase themselves for an income, have had it rather easy.  Sure, poverty is by no means any kind of picnic and we don't always feel like going to work, and sometimes we downright hate our jobs, and get unfairly treated because of misunderstandings that could easily be cleared up if both sides tried, but how many of us have been unable to get away from insects?  One thing I dread about the possibility of homelessness is the inescapable presence of spiders.  But God will one day punish ALL of us, all of the world -- for nobody living here is truly innocent -- with an inescapable presence of locusts.  

"Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire." (Revelation 20:14)

"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death." (Revelation 2:11)

"Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,

 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

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