True & Beautiful Things About the Bible--New Testamentનમૂનો

Revelation: The Greatest Love Story

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. . . .But before that, before He created space and time, God created the angels.

We can’t be sure when that was. We only know that when He created people and put Adam and Eve in the garden, angels already existed. They have a whole “before” story that doesn’t include us.

In heaven, angels surrounded God’s throne with worship (Job 38:4-7). But when we first meet Satan in the Garden of Eden, when he propositioned Eve (Genesis 3), there had already been a war in heaven. Satan, the adversary and the leader of the rebellion, had been kicked out. He had lost his high position, and one-third of the army of angels chose to jump off the cliff with him.

Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18), and in Revelation 9:1, Satan is seen as “a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth.”

That was the first chapter of their story.

The book of Revelation describes their last chapter.

“Revelation” means apocalypse, or the unveiling. Revelation reveals the whole truth about Jesus Christ.

We first met Jesus, a teacher walking the shores of a lake in northern Israel (Mark 4). We witnessed His death for us on a cross (Romans 5:8) and were amazed when He rose from the dead (John 20). Since then, He’s been our High Priest, defending us before God’s throne (1 John 2:1).

In Revelation, Jesus is now directing everything. He’s the only One worthy to explain this book to us (Revelation 5). He’s the only One worthy to execute God's will on the earth as He breaks the seals, out of which flow all the judgments of the Great Tribulation. Out of the seals come the trumpets, out of the trumpets come the cast of characters, and out of the cast come the bowls of wrath. Yes, it gets dark.

But when it looks like evil is winning, Jesus is revealed and takes the story to the end game—to His victory over evil and His re-creation of the world for those He redeemed. God’s purposes will not be thwarted, even against all odds. He will do what He promised.

Ultimately, the book of Revelation—and the world—ends in a way more beautiful and better than you ever hoped it could be. What looked like a horror story turns out to be history’s greatest love story.

And the truth is, it will only have just begun.

Next: Now what?