It’s Christmas Day as I write and we have reached that evening hour where loved ones are saying goodbye to each other, waving cars away and calling out, ‘come back soon,’ whether their heart is in that well meant sentiment or not. 

That’s the phrase Revelation finishes on as well. Come Back Soon. 

It would be a rare family departure where those words are felt as keenly as John puts them in Revelation. I am trying to imagine the parenting life as kids leave home and go off God knows where. A bit of ‘future perfect tense’ nostalgia hit me at lunch time, realising that after 18 Christmases with my eldest there is every chance she might be in another part of the world this time next year. But even then the ‘come back soon’ at the airport would be tinged with a pride and joy at seeing a much loved daughter off to do something special around the world. It’s not the ‘come back soon’ of urgency or need. 

Perhaps the airport departure gate where children and wives or husbands are saying goodbye to their warrior spouse/father/mothe holds a clue. ‘Come back soon’ we need you. Probably for a more complete analogy the left behind family would need to find themselves under some extended attack and messaging their military mother or father to come and rescue them. There are Boxing Day films aplenty with that plot. 

Revelation finishes with those words because the Dragon either needs binding, locking away and sealing in an Abyss or chucking straight into the Lake of Fire, or both (depending on how you read Chapter 23 of this book – the Millenium). Any which way John knows we have a problem and like the elders and martyrs in Revelation 5 he wants to say ‘how long’ until the Lamb comes and reigns on this earth of a new earth and heaven… He wants to say ‘come back soon.’ And he really means it. 

The churches we have explored have been under the hardest of attacks. They have tested false apostles (Ephesus), they have been slandered and are facing prison (Smyrna), they have been enticed by those caught in sexual immorality in the place where Satan lives (Pergamum), they have had evil leaders mislead them into the allure of Satan’s secrets (Thyatira), they have known the subtle traps of compromise – looking alive when they are really dead (Sardis), they have had to endure patiently (Philadelphia), they have needed to be rebuked for going lukewarm (Laodicea). Each of these churches have been challenged to ‘be victorious,’ ‘to overcome,’ ‘to endure’. It is not going to be easy to survive the ‘hour of trial that is going to come to the whole world.’ Who can keep their name ‘written in the book of life’ when false teachers, apostles, Jezebels attack from within and powerful persecutors attack from without? What a temptation to give in.  

Thankfully they had the words of Jesus in Matthew 24 to hold on to: 

“If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you ahead of time.

 “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.  Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.  “Immediately after the distress of those days

“‘the sun will be darkened,
    and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
    and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

What John is pleading for at the end of Revelation 22 is for the days to be cut short. He has seen or heard reports that each of the other original witnesses of Christ’s ministry on earth, the 12 disciples, have now died. One at his own hand after betraying Christ for 30 pieces of silver. The others crucified, burnt, beaten, beheaded, murdered in the cruelest of ways. Paul the apostle to the Gentiles had predicted ‘savage wolves’ would come into the church behind him, disguised as shepherds. Eating the sheep. John could see this happening crystal clear as he writes Revelation down from his Patmos island prison exile. The Wolves are here. The Dragon, the Beast, the False Prophet, the Prostitute are having a field day. Yes, Christ has said it all on the cross, done it all, won it all, but NO! It’s not complete yet. Not until he comes back in power to judge the living and the dead. Not until his Kingdom comes on earth as in heaven. Not until he reigns for a thousand thousand times a thousand more and keep going years. Until then he has just one prayer:

COME LORD JESUS. COME. 

He doesn’t mean come and warm the emotional fires of my heart. Not come and console me in my suffering. Nor come again as a little baby in a manger. 

He means come on a white horse. The Word of God. The King of Kings. The Lord of Lords. Come with a sword.
Exile evil. 

Displace the dragon. 

Kill the beast and all the religious powers that prop up the imperial evil systems the beast represents. Get rid of Satan the dragon’s human footmen, and their prostitute subjects. Begin the reign of the Lamb and his beautiful bride. 

It is an eschatological longing that he will sort everything out, putting wrongs right and ruling in servanthearted power. ‘Lamb that was slain,’ self-giving, loving power. But unimaginable power nevertheless. 

The Jesus who had a lamb visit him on the shoulders of a shepherd attending him in his manager bed, grew up to be the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world on the cross, and is enthroned as the Lamb who was slain, commanding heaven’s mighty armies. 

That is the Lamb revelation is telling us about. That is the Lamb John is desperately longing will ‘come quickly.’ If you listen, can you hear heaven joining in that cry? That longing? That ‘come back soon?’ 

And can you make it your cry too. 

Dear Anglican friends, 

What a church we would be if we could cry that with all our hearts. 

The Lamb Wins. And He is coming soon. 

And that is, and will be (forever),

THE END

Read More in this Series

The Lamb Wins Whole Series Catch Up : Introduction: Chp 1: Hope is Here | Chp 2: First, Love: Ephesus | Chp 3: Fear Not: Smyrna | Chp 4: I Know: Pergamum | Chp 5: Tolerate This: Thyatira | Chp 6: Wake Up: Sardis | Chp 7: Hold On: Philadelphia | Chp 8: Knock, Knock: Laodecia | Chp 9: What Must Soon Take Place | Chp 10: Holy Forever | Chp 11: Most Blessed | Chp 12: One That Was Slain | Chp 13: Come Home | Chp 14: Sun Forbear to Shine | Chp 15: 144000 | Chp 16 Sound of Silence | Chp 17: Spiralling Down | Chp 18 Two Witnesses | Chp 19 The Rapture | Chp 20 The Beast | Chp 21 False Prophet | Chp 22 Hallelujah | Chp 23 Millennium

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