“I am coming soon,” declares Jesus at the end of the book of Revelation, which was written about two thousand years ago. How is that ‘soon’? The great battle portrayed in the book of Revelation was something that Christians were experiencing very obviously at the time and therefore there was an immediate relevance to these predictions; they were already being fulfilled and so these things were ‘the beginning of the end’. We live in the ‘end times’ in the sense that this is the final age of world history. It is in this age that Jesus is establishing his Kingdom on earth which will conclude with his return. The present in-breaking of Jesus’ Kingdom is all part of one great end-time event. Certainly, from the perspective of heaven (and that is the perspective John gained through these visions) the return of Jesus is ‘soon’ in that it is the next and final step in God’s great plan of salvation. Peter, however, predicts the issue and explains that with God a thousand years is like a day. He explains that the delay is due to God’s desire to save as many as possible (2 Peter 3). God is gathering the population for the new creation and, when the full number is gathered in, then Jesus will return. So, it’s happening now, and the predictions of the book are unfolding. We must live our lives always with our minds on what is unfolding and what is about to come. Don’t forget that everything around you is about to change dramatically.
Reflect on your priorities in the light of what is, and what is about to happen.
Read Revelation 22:6-11.
