Straight to the Heart of Revelation

60 bite-sized insights

Phil Moore

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781854249906
• eBook ISBN: 9780857212146
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

The last book of the Bible is not primarily about weird beasts, strange allegories, or encoded detail about the final years of Planet Earth. It's a book which focuses on one great fact which trumps all others throughout the whole of AD history. It's a simple fact, but a fact which changes everything: God is on the Throne of the universe, and he is working out his strategies from the control-room of Heaven.

God inspired the Bible for a reason. He wants you to read it and let it change your life. If you are willing to take this challenge seriously, then you will love Phil Moore's devotional commentaries.

Their bite-sized chapters are punchy and relevant, yet crammed with fascinating scholarship too. Welcome to a new way of reading the Bible with fresh eyes. Welcome to the Straight to the Heart series.

Conclusion:
God is on the Throne

The twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped God, who was seated on the throne. And they cried: “Amen, Hallelujah!”

(Revelation 19:4)

When Handel’s Messiah was first performed in London in March 1743, his depiction of Jesus’ Second Coming melted the hearts of his audience. King George II was so moved when he first heard the “Hallelujah Chorus” that he famously stood to his feet in honour of the King of kings – a tradition which is still followed when the piece is sung today. Shortly after that performance, the Earl of Kinnoul visited Handel and congratulated him on having created “a noble entertainment”. Handel was mortified and quickly shot back his reply: “My lord, I should be sorry if I had only entertained them, I wished to make them better.”¹

As we draw this book to a close, my concern for you is the same as Handel’s. You have read to the end of this book, and I hope that you have enjoyed its sixty chapters, but my aim was not simply to educate or entertain you. I wish to make you better.

Therefore let me close with four things which you should sense in your heart if you have truly understood the message of Revelation.

First, you will want to worship. More than any other book of the Bible, Revelation reveals the God Who Sits on the Throne and his Son Jesus the Lamb who reigns at his side. This vision of God should stir your heart to worship, and if it doesn’t, I urge you to talk to a Christian friend who can pray for you. You owe God the praise of your heart,² and he promises to turn your heart of stone into a heart of flesh if you ask him to.³ Each of these sixty chapters sounds a different note from the pages of Revelation, but each note joins with the others to lift you up into one great song of worship: God is on the Throne.

Second, you will see the world with a different perspective. Last week I received some terrible news by email, just as I was leaving to meet with a group of Christian friends. I didn’t tell them about the email, but as we began to worship together, the presence of God fell in the room and I was convicted by a real sense of his power and his majesty. Suddenly I found that I could laugh at the news I had received, confident that God was on the Throne and that all would be well. Sure enough, as I brought the news to Jesus in prayer and told him that I was leaving it at his feet of burnished bronze, I received a second email the following day which told me that the problem had been miraculously resolved. Jesus does not just call us to display patient endurance.⁴ He also shows us the heavenly realities which enable us to do so.

Third, you will want to deal with sin and all that hinders your walk with God. No one who has truly looked Satan, the Beast and Babylon in the face through the pages of Revelation can willingly harbour sin and rebellion in their hearts. No one should read about the Seven Seals, the Seven Trumpets or the Seven Bowls without fearing God’s judgment. God is on the Throne and we are not, which means we must repent and surrender our lives to King Jesus. Anyone who reads Revelation and still clings to cherished sin runs the great risk of hearing Jesus tell them on his return that “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”⁵

Fourth, you will pour out the rest of your life into building Christ’s Church and proclaiming Christ’s Gospel. You will be gripped with the vision of chapter 7, which speaks of God saving people from every nation, ethnic group and dialect. You will be spurred on by the vision of chapter 21, which promises that God’s People will not be a tiny remnant but a vast City. You will feel like David Livingstone, the great Scottish missionary to Africa, who expressed his heart to a gathering of students after seventeen years of mission work in Africa:

For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay?… It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.⁶

The twenty-four elders see God as he really is, seated on the Throne and in complete control over the events of history, and it causes them to worship and to cast down their crowns at his feet.⁷ Revelation also helps us to see what they see, and if we have truly grasped its message, we will do the same. Take time, if you need to, to re-read John’s vision very slowly before you rush to another part of the Bible. “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.”⁸

It helps us to see that God i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Straight to the Heart Series
• Introduction: God is on the Throne
• THE VISION OF JESUS
• THE FIRST OVERVIEW OF AD HISTORY
• THE VISION OF HEAVEN
• THE SECOND OVERVIEW OF AD HISTORY
• THE THIRD OVERVIEW OF AD HISTORY
• THE FOURTH OVERVIEW OF AD HISTORY
• THE FIFTH OVERVIEW OF AD HISTORY
• THE SIXTH OVERVIEW OF AD HISTORY
• THE VISION OF THE AGE TO COME
• Conclusion: God is on the Throne