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 that will absorb suffering rather than accommodate the powers that be. Indeed, to preach Christ by employing the same tactics as the Beast would give Rome the victory. … None of the seven letters [to the churches in Revelation] ever suggests revenge or violence as an appropriate response to the situation in which Christians find themselves. Christianity is an alternative way of life.
—Ellen T. Charry in
Interpretation
The War of the Lamb Christ judges and makes war in a totally different way than the beast and the kings of the earth do. The Lion of Judah has become the sacrificed Lamb. The blood soaking his cloak is his own and not that of his enemies. He has taken God’s judgment upon himself. The sword issuing from his mouth is his testimony which confounds the demonic powers.
—Hans-Ruedi Weber,
The Way of the Lamb: Christ in the Apocalypse
Meanwhile … The passing beauty and joys of the world point us towards another world, a New Jerusalem in which “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4). In the meantime, we must live and work in the world. Yet we do so as people who know that they are on their way home, and anticipate the joy of return and arrival.
—Alister McGrath in
The Unknown God
Get Real Real life is always misrepresented by those who wish to make it lead up to a conclusion. God alone may do that.
—Gustave Flaubert, quoted in P. T. Forsyth,
The Justification of God
And Then, the End Ultimately, when we have fought a good fight and finished our course, and even if need be suffered death for the name of Christ, we shall emerge from the great tribulation and suffer no more. The King of the universe will grant us refuge in the shelter of His throne, where we may see Him and worship Him day and night in His temple, and the lamb turned Shepherd will lead us with the rest of His sheep to fountains of living water, where we make slake our thirst for ever at the eternal springs.
—John R. W. Stott in
What Christ Thinks of the Church
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