“Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is a faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” -Revelation 1:4-6
Read through Revelation 1 has been awesome. What I love about the doxologies of the NT is the concise nature of them and how packed they are with great things to think about. They are a 1st Century Twitter Status Update… cram in as much as possible in as few words as possible.
‘From Him who was, and is, and is to come’ (Rev. 1:4b)
This saying is a Christian derivative of Exodus 3:14, the famous name of God that Moses uses to rally the Exodus of Israel from Egypt, “I will be Who I will be” or “He who is.”
This saying of God is a Christian form of the same concept. In it, the Church is fixed into Salvation History, we are not a new idea, but a current expression of what God has been doing before us and will be doing after us.
This saying also fixes an Eternal God into human history. He isn’t a God reserved or visits the Earth in a ‘time share type’ time frame. He has always been here. During times of massive prosperity, peace, famine, and calamity, He sees and He acts.
The Pastor John frames his theology and attempts to comfort his people preparing for persecution around this idea. This God is the subject of history; He never ceases to exist. All that God has been before and all that God will be in the future collapses in the present, because He is the same.
Roman guards may beat down your doors, good friends may be taken because of their faith in Jesus, and people you know will die very grizzly deaths. But, we are a part of a story. A story of God coming down to Earth and building a new creation. Labor pains result in newborn babies. Pain accompanies healing. Let’s remember how our story ends.
One of the challenges of being Christian is reconciling how pain, disappointment, and mystery accompany our new lives in the Lord. It is hard to meditate on God’s works in the past and how this story ends when our present is littered with some much mystery. Let’s remember that our God is faithful and that His future is breaking into our present, pressing ahead until everything is finished.
