Revelation The Unveiling of Jesus Christ

Excerpted from THE MASTERPIECE, A Storybook of the Book of Revelation:

The Book of Revelation is the revelation of Jesus Christ at the highest level. He, in all of His redemptive person, is the mountain peak of the book. While He and His Father are equal in all matters of the Godhead, He is the revelation of redemption for the entire universe. In the end, the Father will be all in all because Christ will deliver the kingdom to Him. There are many created beings that have a place in this book with the Son, His Father, and the Holy Spirit,—but second to the glory of our God is the glory of His saints. The four beasts are certainly glorious as His Cherubim that are always present when the Father is directing judgment and special activities on His earth. They will be called living creatures or Cherubim as the story progresses. There are other angels that participate and literally multitudes that ring the entire proceed ings with their presence, but His saints are the reason for the book.

“Christ unveiled” has often been the first description of the Book of Revelation. It is indeed “a taking off of the cover” of the glories of the Son of God, but it is more. It is the removing of the veil from Him and from His stupendous plans and prophecies of His works of redemption and judgments and the glory to follow. His total plan for His saints is almost as glorious as He is, because it is His glory that He shares with His Bride. The first chapter reveals His personal glory as the foundation to reveal all the glories of His coming revelation. Never in any one chapter of the entire Word of God has any one person been described with so many adjectives and titles.

A Name That is Above All Names

The Father has given His victorious Son a “Name above every Name” (Philippians 2:9) and this chapter of God’s masterpiece begins with a divine description. Forty-one adjectives and nouns are used to present Him to His chosen saints and His church. Every one of those descriptions was meant for His revelation to us. All the majesty that fills this book must have a divine foundation, and He is that foundation. In these titles and descriptions, He builds a superstructure of a holy house of literature in order that the words that create that house might carry us to the New Jerusalem of perfect existence and fulfillment. There is nothing about this house of words that is not divine and literal. It is all intended to be His story. Truth must flow out of Him because He is the Word of God. Chapter one is a foundational chapter, and represents the greatest display of His character, His triumph, and His glories ever revealed to humankind. It is breathtaking!

Let’s read them without comment. “… from Jesus Christ … Who is the faithful witness … the first begotten of the dead … the prince of the kings of the earth … that loved us … washed us from our sins … in His own blood … He cometh with clouds … every eye shall see Him … they also which pierced Him … all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him … I am … Alpha… Omega … the beginning… the ending … saith the Lord, … which is … which was … which is to come … the Almighty … Alpha … Omega … the first … the last … the Son of man … clothed with a garment down to the foot … girt about the paps with a golden girdle … His head and His hairs were white like wool … His eyes were as a flame of fire … His feet like unto fine brass , as if they burned in a furnace … His voice as the sound of many waters … in His right hand seven stars … out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword … His countenance was as the sun shineth in His strength … the first … the last … I am He that liveth, and was dead … behold, I am alive for evermore … Amen … and have the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:5-18). “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter” (Revelation 1:19) and send them to the churches.

No such comprehensive description of Christ is found elsewhere in the Bible. He intended that we take this Book as our battle cry and fill our world with the hope of both Him and the pattern of our future. To even consider the church, filled with joy and the Holy Ghost without Christ and His plans for our future is mindless. These are the two things this great work of literary beauty is all about. The first verse sets the purpose in stone. “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John” (Revelation 1:1).