I just keep coming back to this.
I have for weeks since I read the words. Oh. I had read them before – numerous times. But, until then, they hadn’t impressed me with the richness of deep hope imbedded within them, not only for the one who they were spoken to, but for all of us. I’ve since used them in my prayer for people who need freedom from fear. I’ve spoken them out also in gratitude to my God, my Creator.
Fear not.
Simple words, yet immeasurably powerful when spoken by the one who can actually take all fear away.
My friends and I meet consistently every other Tuesday. We take some breaks here and there, obviously for life. Since the beginning of this current year, during our gathering, we have been walking through a study on the biblical book of Revelation. While that book can be daunting, controversial and even to some pointless, I have found this book to be so hopeful. Apocalyptic literature doesn’t usually invoke hope in most of its readers. However, my mind has been changed throughout the study, away from fear and more toward hope – away from confusion and more toward deeper knowledge of my God.
I encourage you to look beyond only scenes of wrath and plagues and God’s judgement and see what else is strewn throughout. God’s message that begins in the first book, stays the same from Genesis to Revelation. All sixty-six biblical books have one major story arch, under which everything within its pages is framed. Just like any good piece of literature, that message is the foundation. It’s interwoven into the fabric of the stories. The bible isn’t just any work of literature though. It has power unlike any other. This message is also the same in the book of Revelation. But you have to look to see that:
God created sinful man. Men rebel against their very own Creator. Our penalty for that rebellion and all our sin is death. Instead of paying that debt of spiritual death and being separated from him forever, there was always a plan and a coming sacrifice that would be offered for us, paying the death wage we earned. Jesus paid it. He died in our place. His death was the final sacrifice for sin. All sin. We must believe this in faith, call him our Lord and turn away intentionally from sin and all that is unlike him in repentance. It’s a new life of not being the “god” of own lives, and instead surrendering to Him, the only good and true God.
That is the message.
In Revelation, we see a continuation of the message. It is a revelation given directly to this man, John. Something super important is revealed. Like a vision that no other man had yet to see, John’s eyes were opened to see all that he wrote about, and it was for a purpose. Jesus said, “write what you see and send it to the seven churches…” Those seven churches were actual churches existing in first century Asia Minor. However, the message that Jesus gave to John was not only for them, but for the global church of all time.
It was on the sabbath, the Lord’s Day when the message came. John was in prison on a little island in the Aegean Sea; his crime had been preaching and teaching about Jesus, spreading influence that was helping to build the churches with new believers. While behind lock and key under the Roman Emperor Domitian, John gets this other wordly vision from his God. Two thousand years later, that vision still captivates the reader and those who believe in its words.
John first hears this really loud voice, like a trumpet, resounding behind him. The very first thing he sees when he turns around is a man that’s walking in between seven golden candelabras. Can you see the fire flickering from the candles atop each of these lamp-stands? The man he sees as he gets closer to where he is standing is the Son of Man – it’s Jesus. John’s description that follows of Jesus is both terrifying and beautiful all at once; supernatural and unknown, yet very real and known.
His hair was as bright white as snow. His eyes were like flames of fire – a piercing glow – staring back at John, his face as bright as the sun. I imagine John squinting as he looked upon him, even trying to shield his eyes in the crook of his bent elbow. His heart must have been thudding loudly, racing erratically, maybe his breath rate off the charts, on the verge of sheer panic. As awesome as it was, I can see him wanting to look away from such an incredibly spiritual scene, in the unknown of it all. Perhaps in an instant, he felt like he was outside of his own body, during this moment in this foreign world – in the midst of the vision. Beautiful, exceedingly majestic on a level unknown to any man before him, radiant colors and sights all around, and yet, terrifyingly unfolding as a reality, where he must have drifted in between the mystical and the tangible. Jesus’ feet appeared as burnished bronze that had just come through a furnace – the brilliance of refined metal, pure and lustrous. When John’s ears heard his words as he spoke to him, they echoed through heaven like mighty waters of the ocean roaring.
John, in the intensity that had teleported him all at once from a damp island prison cell into this vision in heaven, just fell down. He fell down right there as if he were dead.
I think I would have fallen face down also.
And then…
And THEN…
The very next moment, those very next words – these are the ones that arrested me when they jumped off the page, when I read them as if it were the very first time. I sat back in my chair and processed this whole scene, with it playing like a movie reel in my mind.
Jesus laid his right hand on John.
He reached down from the heights of his majesty, in the brilliance of all his glory, brilliantly displaying his true, holy nature in a way that John hadn’t previously seen when Jesus was in his human form. John had years before lived life with him, had quiet conversations, sat in awe under his teaching, ate dinners with him and all of his followers in between the miracles that Jesus spoke into existence during their years of ministry.
The sweetness of that moment just pierced my heart.
Can you see John take a deep breath in as he started to stand up, while a wash of relief and comfort rushed in? In place of the panic and fear, his heart started slowing down, his breathing becoming deeper and less rapid. When he felt Jesus’ hand on his shoulder, it was the touch of the God he already knew, but now in a whole new way.
Jesus had at one time stooped down in front of John, down on his knees, probably on a dusty floor, lifting each of John’s feet one-by-one from a dirty, clouded basin of water and washed them for him. Washed away the debris and dust and dirt from between his toes, off the bottom of his soles, that had collected while walking on the dirt and rocky roads during their day. Jesus sat lower than John, humbled down like a servant in front of him. He washed his feet, a custom then of hospitality and humility and necessity in the arid climate where they lived and due to the miles of foot traffic they traveled. But now, in this moment, after Jesus had died in front of John and then come back to life, and had left them all for heaven nearly sixty years prior, all John could do now before his Creator, was fall down in humble fear of this being, this God, His Lord.
And then…
Jesus said, “fear not.”
Don’t be afraid, John. It’s me. You know me. I am the first and the last. I am LIVING – the living one who you saw killed before. I am ALIVE forever.
Before any other words, before any further instruction, prior to giving him the words to write down, before all the details of the trials to come, Jesus first lovingly put his hand on his child and said, don’t be scared. It’s me.
He reached down to him; he let him feel his presence. Jesus knew. He knew that first look on his presence would be more than John in his humanity could take in that moment. It was so surreal, so other worldly, so spiritual, so HOLY. Jesus knew John needed to know it was okay.
The great significance has captured me since. In all that follows in this revelation that Jesus allowed John to see, in order to share with all of us, it opens with our Lord doing what he always has. Reaching down to man, coming down to where we are, giving assurance of presence and protection and salvation.
That is our God. And when I see the great mercy he displayed to his servant, John, just a guy who was just like you and me, a real human being, flawed, sinful, yet transformed because of Jesus, I am reminded of his great mercy to me too, his daughter. When I am tempted to be scared of what is coming tomorrow, I have this deep, deep-in-my-core assurance, that is stamped into my DNA, the very essence of who I am. It reminds me that he is here, he’ll be there, wherever there is – for forever.
Do you have that too? The soul peace? Oh! I so hope you do. I really hope every single one who reads these words knows this kind of knowing that courses through the veins of those who are his children, who know him. It is truly a peace that is soul-level. It is supernatural.
In John’s own words, “he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. All the tribes of the earth will mourn him.”
He will come back, in his true holy form, and one day we will all see him, the way John did. I hope you can also hear his words to your heart specifically, “don’t be scared. It’s me. Come to me. I’m here.”
Note to the Reader – Read Revelation Chapter 1 for the passage that this is taken from. This post is an interpretation of what I can *imagine* may have been felt from a general human perspective. The details from scripture do not give a clear emotional description of John’s perspective, as the one who experienced this event and vision. Creative license was taken to relate to the human experience as it can be imagined.
The link below is the study my Tuesday night Bible Study has been walking through. I highly recommend! Revelation by Jenn Wilkin @jennwilkin
https://www.lifeway.com/en/product/revelation-bible-study-book-with-video-access-P005840612
Mining Beneath the Ordinary 