The Christian’s view of the future is not a spectacular dreamed up by science or the brainstorm of secular historians. He gets it from an old, old book written by a solitary exile on a lonely rock in a restless sea. The Apocalypse is laughed at by this world and discredited even by some churchmen but it is precious to all strangers in modern Babylon who are looking for the City that’s soon coming down. Its strange, mysterious characters make more sense every day as the seven-sealed book opens the meaning of God’s history within history and the stage is set for the last chapters in the drama of this age. He does not argue with the wise-acres of this world, for that would be casting pearls before swine. Blind eyes cannot see this vision nor can dead men understand Scripture until they are born again. God goes His quiet way and lets the panels discuss and symposiums debate current events in all their learned ignorance. Headlines mean something entirely different to Him and newscasts tell another story to His ears. Blessed is the man whose vantage point is Patmos!
Author: Vance Havner
Devotion of the Day
“IT” OR “HIM”?
I am the resurrection and the life.
John 11:25
Martha believed in the resurrection, but Jesus moved her from the doctrinal to the personal: “I am the resurrection.” The resurrection is not an “It” – “I am the resurrection.” The resurrection is not an “It” – “I am the resurrection.” We stop too often with “It.” We get an idea, a theory, a doctrine in our heads, but we do not get Him in our hearts. We go in for sanctification, the victorious life, the second coming, and we believe and preach them with a vengeance, but we do not find our hearts warmed – we have “It,” not Him. We seek this blessing and that, we join this group and that, we think, “Now I have found it,” but all that is true and all that we need is in Him. We can even major on prayer and faith and not get through to Him. We can search the Scriptures and not come to Him that we might have life.
There is no life in any It, however good. He is our life In Him all things – including all the “Its” – consist.