God Will Prevail
The apocalyptic vision is meant to give us the hope that, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, in the end it is good that will prevail. At the end of the Revelation to John we find justice restored, and a God who comes to be with those who have suffered the most in a cruel, unjust, and violent world. A God who does not roar and strut like the ultimate dictator but who gently "wipes away all tears from their eyes" (Rev. 21:4).

—Kathleen Norris in
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith

A Different Bottom Line
At bottom, everything depends upon the presence or absence of one single element in the soul—hope. All the activity of man, all his efforts and all his enterprises, presuppose a hope in him of attaining an end. Once kill this hope and his movements become senseless, spasmodic and convulsive, like those of someone falling from a height.

—Henri Frederic Amielin
Amiel's Journal

A Better Hope
The Christian hope is the hope which has seen everything and endured everything, and has still not despaired, because it believes in God. The Christian hope is not hope in the human spirit, in human goodness, in human endurance, in human achievement; the Christian hope is hope in the power of God.

—William Barclay,
The Letter to the Romans

Gripping Fact
We must never cease being shocked at the revelation that the only figure in history who is worthy to unveil the workings of history is a slaughtered lamb—the slaughtered Lamb. We should not only be shocked by this revelation, but also gripped by its power and the hope such a revelation gives.

—Loren L. Johns,
"Facing Revelation's Beasts"

Get Militant—Peacefully According to the Apocalypse, Christ desires a militant church ...