The book of Revelation and its simplicity can be understood by any reader. If one knows Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and sincerely seeks to understand the Book of Revelation, God will take all of the mystery out of it. Bewilderment will dissolve away into simple, clear knowledge. And there certainly is no mystery as to where Revelation came from either. It did not come from some Apocalyptic prophet or from the heart or mind of any mere mortal. We are told at the very outset of the book that it proceeded directly from the throne of the omnipotent God. These “secrets of the ages” were disclosed to any person who wants to listen to them. They came down in a chain-like manner. God first gave them to Jesus, who in turn handed them over to one of His ministers (an angel) who was instructed to deliver them to Christ’s reporter on earth, the apostle John. John’s mission was to give account of these matters just as they were given to Him and He did so under the anointing of the Holy Ghost without embellishment or change. He simply reported them as a court stenographer would record the transcript of court proceedings.

The title, Revelation, comes from the Greek word apokalupsis meaning: to be revealed. Revelation, therefore, is about the revealing or the coming day of Jesus. It shows Him in His glorified state where He sits at the right hand of the Father, as He is now after His ascension into heaven. Revelation is also the “revealing” of all that God wants the faithful to know concerning anything that is part of Jesus or pertains to Jesus. It shows us His faithful Church, His enemies, His judgments to come and His promises which reach into the Tribulation, through the Millennium, and all the way into the vast boundless expanses of eternity. The task of revealing all of this in twenty-two short chapters was monumental and could only be accomplished by a clear and orderly presentation and that is how Revelation is structured.

God organized all of The Revelation of Jesus Christ (which, by the way, is the book’s full and proper title) in a simple sequential manner often using visionary pictures and spiritual symbolism to meet mountainous needs that would otherwise have taken a thousand words to express. All of the initially “curious” symbols and scenes depicted in the book are nothing more than God’s use of the age-old method of employing pictures to speak volumes. The expression: a picture is worth a thousand words is most appropriate when applied to the Book of Revelation. Therefore it only makes sense, Revelation should be studied in the order of its presentation. When it is studied this way we learn that it is an orderly and methodical look into the ultimate destiny of man and the wonderful work of Christ’s sweet redemption. Because of the book’s scope, which had to run from the Church Age all the way to eternity, we have to be careful when studying Revelation to follow the sequence of God’s presentation; chapter by chapter, verse by verse, in order. If we don’t keep the order we would run the risk of becoming confused and disoriented as many ill-fated studies of Revelation have done. This is why it is wise to study Revelation slowly, methodically, and in the order, it was given to John.

God begins Revelation by showing us the resurrected Jesus. This is Jesus in His glorified state (ch. 1). Then we are given a complete prophetic history and summary of the spiritual condition of Christ’s Church (chs. 2&3). God then leads the reader, step by dramatic step, through the Tribulation revealing the resurrection of the dead and living and the Tribulation martyrs, the purging of the world of wicked faithless men, the repossession of the earth by Christ and His resurrected followers, the vanquishing of Christ’s foes and the ushering in of everlasting righteousness as promised by the prophets (chapters 4-19). In chapter twenty we are given a window into the Millennium, the one-thousand-year reign of Christ on earth as King, reigning along with His saints. The book is so orderly and methodical, and conforms so perfectly to the rest of the Bible, that once God reveals how simply the book is laid out it becomes hard to understand why there is so much trouble and controversy over understanding Revelation. The real mystery becomes how people cannot see the “forest for the trees”. In chapter twenty-one, we are rewarded for our determination to study and understand Revelation. Mankind is finally out of the woods now. God gives us a quick glimpse into the light of eternity and the unspeakable, unfathomable joys that lie before us. As Paul spoke to the Philippians, God’s people have now apprehended that for which also [they were] apprehended of Christ Jesus. (Phil 3.12-13) At the end of Revelation, man’s goal to return to God has been reached.

Introduction To Eternity

Welcome to eternity. God’s redemption plan is complete. The white throne judgment has signaled the end of man’s redemption story. Those that are to go into eternity will, those that are condemned to the second death are gone forever. God’s ultimate purpose to create a fellowship and dwelling place for Himself is done. Now we see the destiny of all those people of human history who turned to Him and trusted in His love. In the opening verse of chapter twenty-one, we are greeted with the knowledge that there will be no more division, all the redeemed will be in perfect harmony, as we were told in Ephesians: “And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” I Cor. 15.28 Never again will any of His people spend even a nano-second out of His loving arms. Salvation is come and the overcomers are given all things just as He promised. But those people who stood in opposition to God, those who took the Mark of the Beast during the Tribulation, those who rebelled at the end of the Millennium, will be thrown into the lake of fire and forever separated from God and His people.

No More Division

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.” Rev. 21.1

Of course, the first thing that grabs our attention about this opening verse is that everything, including the heaven and the earth, will be totally new. We shall say more about this when discussing verse four. First, we should point out that there is one thing that can easily go overlooked in this opening statement. God says there will be no more seas. Why would God announce this as something which should excite us? What a curious thing. Do not the seas provide us with much of life’s sustenance, adventure, resource, and pleasure? Why is this something good, something for us to look forward to, that there will be no more oceans or seas?

Besides showing us that all things will be new and that it will begin with the ecosystem of the world and universe (for it must be obvious to us that where there is no sea the ecology will be entirely different from the world we now know) there is also a greater spiritual implication. To understand the full ramification of the first verse we must travel all the way back to the beginning of the Bible to chapter eleven of Genesis. In it we are told that in His wisdom God split man apart at the Tower of Babel for his own good. Man had come together conspiring to control his own destiny and attain eternal life without looking to his Maker. “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” Gen. 11.6 We know that unity of man was the problem and that division of man was the solution because Genesis 11 tells us so. The power of numbers had emboldened man to shake his fist in defiance of God. When God acted to put down this horrible rebellion man was in the process of setting up a false religion by resurrecting some of the old gods and blasphemous religious rites that had been part of the wickedness in the world before the Flood. At the head of the rebellion was the infamous Nimrod, the world’s new god, so God split everyone up in a great act of division, confusing the languages and dispersing the people among the nations of the earth. Though we are only given a brief account of this monumental conspiracy we can be sure the reason for splitting man apart was this false unity and the threat it posed to man’s ultimate salvation.

So what does this have to do with the seas? Since that time God has expended a lot of his energies working to keep man apart, so He could save individuals from the wickedness of the human heart and the propensity man has for doing evil and sinning when he gathers together in force. Putting seas in between the landmasses was one of the measures God employed to keep man apart. We are told that the continents of the earth were divided by seas early after the Flood in the day of a man called Peleg (Gen. 10.25). Together with language barriers, these natural barriers (like mountains and deserts also) served God’s purpose of keeping the human race from coming together and conspiring against Him in the dangerous fashion that had been masterminded at Babel by Nimrod and his unholy followers.

The Bible’s story of redemption begins with the natural division of things brought about by the supernatural hand of God in order to correct a potential abuse of unity. Now we see at the end of the Bible that God restores things to the way He always intended they should be. There are no seas to divide mankind and His people. Seas and oceans are emblematic of division. They were imposed on man for his own good just as the curses of death, toil and childbearing were brought into play as tools to show man the truth about his sinful condition and the division it caused between himself and God. The division which God hates is the division between an individual soul and Himself and it is the unity He desires first and foremost. It is the reason He sent His Only Son to earth: to unify the individual with God. It is the reason he kept man from banding together in false security and self-confidence. Now the seas, as barriers to humanism, have no further use or purpose in this regard. No division is desirable or necessary, the way that it had been in ages past. The only gulf that will remain is the one Jesus tells us about in the parable by which the rich man and Lazarus are forever separated, that impassable gulf between the Lake of Fire and Paradise (Luke 16). But there will no longer be barriers between the redeemed. Heaven and earth are entirely new and so are all the conditions of nature and experience. The Ecumenical spirit which is trying to rush God’s Word into being is flawed because of its misunderstanding of the whole word of God and what it means to keep the faith of the prophetic word. This serves as a fine example of why we will be deceived if we do not take to heart all of the teachings that are presented in Revelation. Only at the end of the Millennium – remember there is even a rebellion at the end of the thousand years – is everything brought together in full harmony and unity. It is not God’s plan to unify all things until then. The prophecies of the Old Testament about the Millennial rule of Christ even testify to this. There will still be separate nations and ethnic groups of mankind (Zech. 14:17-18). The day is coming for unity, as we see here, but we are obliged to patiently wait for it. It will come in God’s prophetically declared time.

The Bride’s Coming Out Party

“And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”  Rev. 21.2

After the Millennium there will be no more division and the symbol of that perfect unity is the bride of Christ, the Church presented by God to Jesus Christ without spot or wrinkle. This is the Bride’s “coming out” party. The marriage supper of the Lamb and wedding of the Church will have already taken place at the end of the Tribulation, but for the entire time of the Millennium, she toils with Christ to bring the rest of her number – those born during the Millennium and needing conversion and salvation just as anyone else – into the fold. The nations will be ruled with a rod of iron and punished when they are defiant or disobedient to Christ. Many of the Bride’s duties during this thousand-year period will be distasteful and heart-wrenching. She will have to enforce the law and administer the full brunt of its deterrents to the unlawful. She will endure the burden of judging the inhabitants of the Millennial world. Her job of teaching and performing the priestly duties of the new testament saint will be fruitful for many, but certainly not to all. A sorting out of people will continue for the entire thousand years, the sifting of the “wheat from the chaff”, the separating of the “sheep from the goats” will be executed by the Holy Spirit with the same painstaking patience it is in this current age. The process will not include those who were redeemed before the Millennium began, they are forever saved and it is impossible for them to slip away to destruction, but the generations of people born during the Millennium are still making choices, choosing or rejecting Christ in their hearts. But now, with the coming-out party of the Bride, the sorting is done. The Bride is completely assembled, all her parts are in place. What she is and was always meant to be, now is. She is not only wedded to Christ but she is “wedded”, if you will, to God also. (The second half of this chapter of Revelation goes into great detail about the Bride of Christ and will be examined in depth in the upcoming chapter of this writing.)

God’s New Home

“And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.” Rev. 21.3

God always intended that the body of faithful believers of all ages would be His eternal dwelling place. This is why He formed Adam out of the clay of the earth and gave Him dominion over all of it as His possession. This is why God withstood Satan in the Garden and pronounced a curse on the Devil. It is why He promised the forlorn Eve that there would be a Savior from her seed, the one who would rectify her and Adam’s disastrous fall from grace. It is so God could have a home. This is why Jesus forsook His glory in heaven and took on the likeness of sinful flesh and did battle with sin. This is why God allowed Jesus to crawl up the hill to a place called the “Skull”, battered and bruised, beaten and bleeding, listening to the catcalls of the mockers and the shameful taunts of the scoffers, on His way to be nailed to a cross, suffocated in agony between two thieves. This is why God raised up the Church and sent His Holy Spirit to indwell the faithful believers of His Only Son. It was always to make Himself a home in which He could live in for all eternity. It has always been about making Himself a perfect dwelling place. And that dwelling place is us – the redeemed portion of mankind!!!

The indications we get in the letters to the churches from Peter calling us lively stones is a portent of this revelation. “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” I Peter 2.5 We know that God would not always dwell with the angels in a temple among the distant stars. We are to be His ark, His tabernacle, His temple, His abode, His house. Under the law God’s presence dwelt in a temple, an edifice made to the specifications of the one standing in heaven.

From that place, He administered His Word and judgment. He metes out the white throne judgment from His temple throne room, but now the vision of eternity is realized and there is no temple. He dwells among the creatures that have been redeemed from among men, those who were perfected by faith and have had their corruptible natures changed by His love into incorruptible ones. “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” I Cor. 15.53

All Things Are New

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Rev. 21.4

It is not possible for this place to be anything short of perfection and bliss. There will be no more pain, suffering, tears or distress of any sort. No fear, doubt or concern. Perfect paradise, boundless love, genuine harmony. The joy and ecstasy that the old hymns longed for have materialized. The sweet by and by, that bright and shining river, that wonderful Beulah Land, that beautiful shore, the gathered sheaves, where time will be no more, is all a rigorous bursting reality. The future now lies in God’s ever-expanding kingdom where His adventures of love will forever keep us occupied. Hope, Faith, and Love are the slogans of eternity. As we learn in Daniel, there will be no end to it (Dan. 7.27). The former things are passed away. Any heartache suffered over lost loved ones, any regret over misjudgments or past injustices are irrelevant, all dashed and shattered hopes will be swept up and replaced with new and beautiful hope, though unthinkable and unfathomable to our meager imaginations at this time. All that was lost will be replaced, as God did for Job, with greater riches. Everything that was not redeemable, that did not or could not enter into God’s eternity, will be washed away. All that remains are the streets of gold. The saint will be unburdened. No tear will ever stain the pillow, no complaint will cross his lips, no anguish will fill the soul.

Everything will be made completely new, not least of all our psyche, our memory, and all our hopes. All will be bright, new and gleaming.

This is Our Faith

“And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.” Rev. 21.5

We know all the above is true, we can count on it because God emphatically says here that He will make all things new. No distressing thing will linger on in our mind, no worn-out idea or human hope will confuse and cloud the future. No former sin or travesty of justice will plague our thoughts and influence our actions. He wants us to understand this and know that this is something we can count on with all of our faith. Thus He says: “These words are true and faithful.” It is a whole and complete new beginning for all creation. The moon, the stars, the heavens will pass away, even the natural laws of the universe will likely be wholly different. Gravity, the speed of light, radioactivity, the law of inertia and quantum mechanics, the change of the seasons, the laws of biology and of life and death may all be changed. Dimensions, time and space will be irrelevant. All things will be new. We can only know that all that we understand about the universe will be subject to change and any speculation about the new things would only be feeble speculation. We must wait to find out what this future universe will be like and what wonders will be in store for all those who live in this glorious new world.

It Is Done

“And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” Rev. 21.6

This is reassurance. Those who thirst after righteousness shall be filled. Those who are thirsty for God will be allowed to drink freely of His life and spirit. All those who have thirsted are now in His care forever. That is why God says here, “It is done”. This is the second time in Revelation that God has declared, “It is done”. The first time, was in chapter 16.17 when the final vial was poured out and the Tribulation brought to a conclusion. In that context, it meant that the prophecies of the Tribulation and the day of the Lord are complete. Christ and His saints have reclaimed the earth, the possession once given to Adam, but lost in the fall because of sin, is reclaimed. But now, near the closing verses of the Bible, we discover that the redemption plan is not entirely done until all things are made new and the Bride of Christ is revealed. Not until the Millennium is over, the white throne judgment accomplished, and every soul that ever lived brought before the judgment seat of Christ is everything finished.

“He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the  lake  which  burneth  with  fire  and  brimstone:  which  is  the  second death.” Rev. 21.7-8

Before going on to give a detailed picture of the Bride, God gives the reader of Revelation an important alert. He reminds us that there is no room for hypocrites in eternity. The Bride of Christ will not be a motley crew made up of a mixture of degenerates and perfected saints. God is not a respecter of persons (Acts 10.34-35). Just because one says he is Christ’s does not mean he is. A man must be not only a hearer of the Word but a doer also (James 1.23). The Lord told a parable to illustrate this truth.

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.” Matt 7.21-27

Salvation is for those who thirst after it and have done what Christ required of them. It is no accident that God uses the word overcomers here just as He did in all of the seven letters to the Churches when He exhorted believers to repent and overcome the temptations that would plague the Church (refer to CHS. 2 & 3 of Rev.). Those who overcome will inherit all things. Sinners be warned! Not all will enter paradise, only those who thirst for truth and to those it will be given regardless of their station in life. No money, no smarts, no power, no skin color, gender or position is needed, nor can any of that exclude you from heaven.  All that is required is a repentant heart mingled with faith and molded to love. ✞

Taken from the book Revelation Pure & Simple by Terry Myers Smith