20th November 2025

In the closing chapter of Revelation, the exiled apostle John is given the encouraging and comforting news that, despite the present, relentless suffering of the persecuted church, Jesus’s second coming is imminent and the steadfast, patient endurance of the saints is fully recognised, confessed in heaven, and will be justly rewarded (Revelation 22:12-14). 

Two thousand years of church history and faithful Christian witness in no sense diminishes these words of imminence, but, rather, they connect the time during which the apostolic witness was laid down to our time now (1 Corinthians 10:11), so that all who presently suffer persecution, or find themselves in chains for the sake of the gospel, may have the same assurance.

In this closing book of scripture, the apostle’s language is necessarily broad and hurried, as he seeks to capture all that he sees and hears, but the revelatory truth contained in the hurried words scratched onto the scroll are of divine origin (Revelation 22:6). John is instructed not to seal the book (v.10), for this heartening revelation of the Lord Jesus is for our time as much as it is for the time of the apostle. Despite the corporate nature of the body of Christ, there is a personal accounting (Romans 14:12) that must be given at the judgement seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10). In conjunction with this is the substantially greater collective corporate assize, often called ‘the great white throne judgement’, that will greet the world at large at the close of human history (Revelation 20:11). For Christian believers, however, our eternal destiny is not the issue of the coming judgement, but eternal blessing, reward and authority within Jesus’s consummated Kingdom.

When the apostle Paul rehearses the history of God’s redemptive work, from the time of Abraham to the establishment of the Davidic Kingdom, he announces the good news that, in Jesus, all the promises made to the patriarchs and to David are fulfilled (Acts 13:26-37).  It is Jesus, the Lamb of God, who is enthroned, ‘…the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star’ (Revelation 22:16). The Holy Spirit joins with the persecuted church in its yearning for Jesus’s return and the hungering, urgent cry of ‘Come’ is heard in heaven, and all who hear the words of this prophecy have a new word of wondrous hope on their lips to take to a despairing world. The beckoning cry of ‘Come’ is expressed as a sweet evangelistic invitation (v.17). 

The whole of the prophecy is to be gracefully received, including all of the fearful  apocalyptic imagery, as God’s final end-time message to his church. The warning is given that to those who would haughtily add to the words of the book, the plagues described therein will be added; to maliciously remove any word or phrase of the book is to deny to oneself the promises of blessing (vv.18-19). But the prophecy is certain and sure, and the one whose personal testimony this word of prophecy is, reconfirms the assurance and the imminence of his coming (v.20). The closing benediction upholds the priority and everlasting superiority of the grace of God revealed in the Lord Jesus (v.21).

Local congregation:
Grace Communion Peterborough
Farcet Village Hall                             
Main Street
Farcet
Peterborough
PE7 3AN

Meeting time:
Sunday 11.00 am

Local congregational contact:
Richard Dempsey
Email:  richard.dempsey@btinternet.com
Local church website: GRACE COMMUNION CHURCH PETERBOROUGH – Landing Page

Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church