Revelation Day 56 - The Last Chapter

DAY 56
The Last Chapter
Revelation 21:1-8

Have you ever been disappointed in how a movie or TV series ends?

So many popular TV shows have disappointed fans with the final episodes: Seinfeld, Lost, Heroes, Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, Gilmore Girls. We are storytelling creatures and it’s almost like there’s something hard-wired into us to have a satisfying end of the story. 

Revelation 21-22 are the end of the story. They end the book of Revelation but also end the New Testament and the whole Bible. They seem to fit all three just right. But they also focus on the end of our story, which we started on in our last message.

What does the end of the story look like? And how do we get ready for it?

Revelation ends with a kaleidoscope of pictures. Pastor John helps us imagine a bright future with five pictures that we’ll look at this week.

One of the pictures we see at the end of Revelation is a NEW CHAPTER. We tend to think of death and the return of Christ as the End - the final page of the book. But that’s not what the Bible reveals! In the NIV translation, Rev. 21:4 says, “The old order of things has passed away.” A better translation is, “The first things have passed away.”

This new chapter has two sides. On one side is for us personally. A new chapter in our life story can start today! Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ has eternal life that starts now and lasts forever. 2 Cor. 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” With the help of God’s Spirit, we change from the inside out.

On the other side, the rest of the universe gets a new beginning, too! God will recycle our world into something better and permanent. Romans 8:21 says, “The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay.”

What will a new chapter in our story look like in eternity? We only have hints, symbols, and sketches, but if you imagine eternity as you bored, wearing a white robe, playing a harp, singing all day, then I think your imagination is stunted. One of my favorite examples of this new chapter is in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle. He wrote: 

“But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” 

With Jesus, the End is chapter one. Life today is a shadow of the real life to come. And if life today is the prequel to eternity, doesn’t that put everything now into new perspective?

REFLECT
What do you think chapter one of the new creation story will be like? 

PRAY
Lord, thank you for making me new. Get me ready for your new creation! Help me to see life now as the prequel to the Great Story yet to come. Amen.