"Unveiling Or Uncovered"

“Unveiling or uncovered” Rev 1:1-4

• This book was written during some dark days for the early church.

• They were suffering terrible persecution under the iron hand of the Roman Emperors.

• This book was written to give them hope, comfort and encouragement in the struggles they faced.

• This book was also given to them to let them know how the plan of God would eventually play out.

• They are made to understand that God has a plan for the future, and that His plan includes the destruction of Satan, sin and this wicked world; and the redemption of creation and God’s Own people, and the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

1. Let’s begin with the very word revelation The name of the book, Revelation, is a translation of the title in the original New Testament Greek, Apocalypsis—the origin of the other name by which the book is now known, the Apocalypse. The Greek term denotes an unveiling or uncovering—thus, a revelation.

• Note the beginning of the book who it is revealing 1The revelation of Jesus Christ,

• It is the unveiling and uncovering also, of things that will come to pass God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place

• It is also the unveiling or uncovering of blessedness. 3Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. ). "Blessed" means much more than "happy." It describes the favorable circumstance God has put a person in. consider your favorable position your job your family you born into you are not on poverty I am a preacher you may think that would be a terrible position no no no no

2. The Book is revealing or uncovering Jesus Christ to the seven Churches or 7 regions

• First title of Jesus is “Christ”: or christos in the Greek -- a word that, as most Christians know, means Messiah.

• Jesus is Messiah To the faithful who understand the centuries-old yearning of the Jewish people for a Messiah, John is saying all such prophesies are now fulfilled.

• Jesus is the One who is, and who was, and who is to come He is saying Jesus is The Alpha the Omega the beginning and the End

• It should probably read Jesus Christos the anointed one the Messiah

3. Second title of Jesus is "faithful witness."

• This could mean Jesus witnessing to God's love. God’s love is everlasting, Gods love endures even our sins, his love remains, God loves the wicked “for God so loved the world or wickedness”. Jesus is the image of God Love.

• Or, it could mean that Jesus bears a certain testimony to the truth about the way the world truly is.

• More likely, the word means "martyr."In Greek, the words for "martyr" and "witness" are the same. What are the martyrs, after all, but faithful believers who -- by sacrificing their own lives under persecution -- demonstrate the truth of God's love and power?

Scripture states, "Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Beware, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison so that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have affliction. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life."

Believers of the day are likely to be rounded up by the Romans and put to death for their faith? "Be faithful unto death," he tells them. If they are faithful unto death, they will receive "the crown of life."

4. The next title of Jesus is John calls Jesus "ruler of the kings of the earth.

• The Romans brutalized Jesus : stripped him, beat him, threw a kingly cloak around his shoulders and jammed a crown of thorns down upon his brow. Soldiers mocked him, bowing down before him and crying, "Hail, O King!" Jesus is able to weak that he might be strong. He is able to be frail that He might be durable, He is able to be delicate that he might be sturdy.

5. Jesus is called the Christ, The Faithful Witness, The Ruler of the Kings of the Earth, and He is also called “The first Born of the Dead”Some have accused Christianity, with its central doctrine of the resurrection, as denying death. In reality, it is anything but, as Robert Farrar Capon points out:

It is by faith alone that we can lay hold of our true life out of death -- faith in him who is the resurrection and the life. All we have to do is trust Jesus and die. Everything else has already been done.

Our death, therefore, is the one "purse that will never wear out," the true "treasure in heaven that will never decrease." We are rich only in our mortality or death ; everything else may safely be sold (Luke 12:33). For our death is the only thing the world cannot take away from us. ... The astonishing graciousness of grace is that it takes the one thing you and I will never lack -- the one thing, furthermore, that no one will ever want to beg, borrow or steal from us -- and makes it the only thing any of us will ever need. It was, I think, precisely because the martyrs bore witness to this saving supremacy of death that they were the first saints commemorated by the church. Indeed, the days of their deaths were commonly referred to as their natales, their birthdays. It was one of the church's happier insights. For as in our first birth into this world we did nothing and triumphed gloriously, so in the second birth of our death we need do even less to triumph more. By Jesus' death in ours, and by our death in his, we have laughingly, uproariously, beaten the system. It is a piece of wildly Good News; what a shame we don't let the world of losers hear it more often.