John's Revelation

"John, loved Him as a dear friend and saw Him as the Lamb of God sacrificed and the Lamb of God resurrected."

THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED, who laid on His breast in the room at Passover, the same one whom Jesus called his mother’s son while He hung on the cross, fell at His feet in Revelation, overcome. This disciple, John, didn’t climb out of the boat during the height of the storm. He was also in the upper room at Pentecost, but he wasn’t the one who spoke to the crowd. Those were both Peter. The apostle Paul wrote most of the New Testament, including, it is said, Hebrews. Yet, John was given the vision of Jesus Christ.

“This is the revelation of Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King: an account of visions and a heavenly journey.” (Revelation 1:1 VOICE)

John has penned in John 1 and 1 John 1 two of the most beautiful descriptions of our Savior. There He is the Word of God made flesh and the Word of life which “our hands have handled.” In Revelation, John wrote He is “the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.” This last one interests me in that it speaks of Jesus’ human ancestry written in Matthew 1. He is seen there as a king from a line of Davidic kings. He has many other names and titles throughout the Bible, King of Israel, King of the Jews, the Good Shepherd, the Door of the sheep. Yet, when Jesus speaks to John in Revelation 1, He is the Alpha and Omega, Greek letter extremes, and similarly, the beginning and the ending.

John said of Jesus in this same chapter, that He is “He which is, and which was, and which is to come.” People always misquote this, putting the verbs into the order of past, present, and future, but that is not what is said. We must know who He is in order to understand who He was and who He will be. They are in that order for a reason. It was Jesus who is to come who stood before John in Revelation, Jesus covered with the glory of God, clothed in the Spirit’s beauty, and it is this vision that caused John to fall down. He knew Jesus on the earth yet fell before Him when He was seen as God.

This doesn’t dissolve their love for each other. Jesus gave His mother to John. He laid His hand on Him here and bid him not to fear. He then described Himself as “he that liveth, and was dead.” John saw Him die, saw Him hang on the cross. He saw Him after He’d risen from death. How much this moment must have meant to him, for here stood “the light that shineth in darkness,” the light the darkness couldn’t put out. Here was the eternal life of the Father which had been manifested unto them.

Here was Jesus, his Friend, his King, his God.

In John 17, Jesus prayed to the Father that it was time for Him to return to the glory He once had. He knew what He’d come to do, had described His upcoming death and the trial it would cause to these men who followed Him, giving them reassurance of His Resurrection and of their joy which was to come. He knew who He was when He spoke to the devil in the wilderness, for that matter. He not only quoted Scripture to refute the devil’s arguments, but He quoted Scripture about Himself. He stood in the synagogue afterward and quoted Isaiah’s words as the fulfillment of who He was to them. And described Himself as “meek and lowly of heart (Matthew 11:29).”

“And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.” (Luke 4:14-15)

What’s my point? That Jesus is God, yet He is man. That a man, John, loved Him as a dear friend and saw Him as the Lamb of God sacrificed and the Lamb of God resurrected. That all that Jesus was to John, He is to us, and will do for us. I want to strive to become close like John, that the Savior of the world would trust me with something as dear as His mother, that He would trust me with something as important as His Revelation. We see ourselves as small and unimportant, when nothing is further from the truth. Jesus died to make us important, He rose to make us living epistles, our lives read by others. He will return to show Himself as the King of Kings, and John says in Revelation that all will wail (Revelation 1:7). This is a curious term to use. Not that just those who reject Him will wail, but all people will wail. Jesus is both the fear of God, the holiness of God manifested to us, and the love of God in word and action. What doesn’t seem compatible is compatible in us, where He lives and speaks and guides us through His Spirit.

Kinda makes our petty differences unimportant.

“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14)

“And the superscription of his accusation was written over, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” (Mark 15:26)

“Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.” (Luke 3:38)

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6)

Image by DONGHWAN KIM from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com