Revelation 1:1
“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants…”
What is the key to renewing our spiritual life when it is at a low ebb? How does the Lord meet the need in difficult times? What is God’s answer when reformation and recovery are needed in His Body? How does He fortify us inwardly and cause our hearts to remain steadfast in hope through tribulation, persecution, or difficulties? How does the Lord reverse spiritual decline and our reverting back to human strength and natural abilities? Is it by revival, renewal, or conferences?
The Lord’s answer, His one and only answer, which has always been successful and is the only one which will be transforming no matter the time or the challenge, is a new, greater, and deeper unveiling of Jesus Christ, the eternal Lamb.
It might be easy for us all to verbally and mentally agree to this statement, but transformation comes only in the actual revelation itself. Our test will always be the necessary humbling of ourselves unto the sole purpose of seeking and seeing His face and His alone. Let us now, today, turn from our distractions, traditions, religion, substitutions, and man-solutions and intentionally ask the Lord for a fresh and greater revelation of Jesus Christ both in and among us, so that we might behold in a fresh way, by revelation, his unveiled greatness, for only then will lasting inward transformation begin. Oh, the problems that would be solved, the questions that would be answered, the needs that would be met! But most importantly how all of these could be brought down unto proper measure, by a more full measure of Christ in revelation. How many of our issues would be overwhelmed by His appearing in His magnificence.
Let us ask that this unveiling be as great and life-changing as Revelation 1:17-18 was to John.
When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, 18 and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.
May our inner beings be equally as shaken by His revealing of Himself in glory. May He become our focus, our desire, our source, our confidence, and our restored vision. May He become our alpha and omega, the living one within us, and deliver us from a simple, natural knowledge of Himself. Deliver us from knowing about the historic Jesus alone to the knowing of Him in intimacy by revelation. John had known the historic Jesus, but Christ in glory was unveiled to him on Patmos. When John beheld Christ in greater revelation as the beginning, the end, the I Am, he was paralyzed with holy awe at Christ’s eternal greatness and glory. I write this because once again we are dwelling too much on a historic Jesus and not beholding the eternal Son of God in resurrection glory as a Lamb seated on the throne. Revelation, the unveiling of Christ, will determine what measure of His life is being manifested from us. We must know Him as He is, and in fact, that is the only Jesus we can and should know.
Let us not forget that the men who wrote the four gospels didn’t write them until the risen Christ of glory has been revealed unto and in them! They wrote under the Spirit’s inspiration and revelation so that the Jesus veiled in flesh which they had naturally known was unveiled to be the eternal Son and Lamb of God! They knew through the intimacy of eternal union what they had never known in the historic days of his flesh. I’m not trying to take away from the purpose or reality of His becoming a man, this was absolutely necessary, but we must absolutely know Him by revelation and that is as the Lamb upon the throne. It was this very revelation in what we call the book of Revelation which was unveiled to John and which he writes about. John declares the Lamb over 20 times in the book of Revelation and the Lamb, His person and nature, are enthroned eternally in the Heavens.
So the stories the writers tell in the gospels concerning Jesus are so that the world will know He is the eternal Lord of Heaven. Thus, their proclamation was one the eternal one who was now truly and clearly revealed or unveiled to them. This is the only way to preach the written gospels if the true Gospel is to be made known. We must preach the Gospel from the written gospels. We must behold Him who is the risen One, so that He might come to have the supremacy in all our hearts, minds, and spirits. May this heavenly vision become greater than our earthly concerns and fears. May the unveiling of Jesus Christ become our unshakable foundation in this time and at all times. Amen.
Remember:
2 Corinthians 3:18
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 4:6
For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.