The Everlasting Gospel: A Meditation on Revelation 14 for Reformation Sunday

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven,

having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth,

and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,

Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him;

for the hour of his judgment is come:

and worship him that made heaven, and earth,

and the sea, and the fountains of waters.

 

The Apocalypse of St. John, or the Revelation given to St. John directly by Jesus while exiled on the Island of Patmos for his testimony of Jesus, is intended to be a message of encouragement and comfort.  While it has certainly been misused as an instrument of terror or manipulation into heresy (the Church of the first few centuries AD even considered not including it in the public cannon, given how many people even then misused it,) it remains an important message of God to mankind regarding how He has, is, and will interact with the world.  The True God has never been the absent watchmaker of the Deist imagination, nor the reflection of a present zeitgeist in any corner of the world.  Instead, God sends His Word into His World to address His people so that all might find reconciliation and eternal life in Him.  His Law is written into Creation and the very being of all His creatures, in addition to the Word spoken to Moses and the Prophets.  And while the Law is holy, good, and righteous as it reflects the holiness, goodness, and righteousness of God, it is overshadowed and fulfilled by the Everlasting Gospel He has spoken to the world through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.  Where the Law could not save sinners but only demand justice for our depravity, the Vicarious Atonement of Jesus for the sins of the whole world won for all people the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation in Him alone, by His grace alone, through faith in Him alone.

 

This Everlasting Gospel is what the Church has carried forth in every generation since the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, even as she preaches the Law which shows the Gospel a necessity for every soul’s redemption.  This Everlasting Gospel was hidden in the earliest ages of mankind’s history, spoken first to Eve at her fall in the Garden with Adam, and prophesied down through the ages by Hebrew Prophets moved to testify by the Holy Spirit of God.  In all those ancient centuries where the People of God were tormented and oppressed, attacked and martyred, invaded and enslaved, the Everlasting Gospel continued.  When only Noah and his family were left in the world believing the Word of God and the deluge swept all others away, the Everlasting Gospel remained.  When the Tower of Babel was destroyed by God to dilute the evil imaginations of mankind and to confuse their languages and cooperation, the Everlasting Gospel endured.  When Abraham received the covenant, when Joseph was sold into Egyptian slavery by his brothers, when the Hebrews were enslaved by Pharoah for 400 years, when Moses led the Hebrews into the wilderness for 40 years, when Joshua lead the conquest of Canaan, throughout the tumultuous centuries of the Judges, through the reign of the Kings of a united Israel, through the civil war that split Israel into north and south, through the onslaughts of Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, the Everlasting Gospel continued until it was made manifest in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

 

With Jesus’ Great Commission after His resurrection from the dead and His Ascension into heaven, the Apostles carried that Everlasting Gospel out into the pagan world, turning it upside down.  Through the persecution of Jewish and Roman authorities, the Everlasting Gospel remained.  Through the Fall of Rome and into the Dark Ages, the Everlasting Gospel continued.  Into the High Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Reformation, the Age of Exploration and colonization of distant lands, the Everlasting Gospel was preached.  Into the rise and fall of new empires, new governments, new world wars and new technologies that split the atom and sent men into space, the Everlasting Gospel remained. When large swathes of people embraced the Eternal Gospel, it remained as unchanged as when it was widely disregarded.  Faithful preachers of that Everlasting Gospel have added nothing to it, and heretical apostates have taken nothing from it, for the Word of the Lord endures forever irrespective of those who abide in or revile it.  From the dawn of time, through centuries of turmoil and stability, plague and health, war and peace, social unrest and social cohesion, the Everlasting Gospel of Justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, known most assuredly by His Word alone, has endured.

 

It may be tempting to think that our particular modernity is better or worse than those which came before us, or those which are to come—and to convince ourselves that our generation will either be the cause of sustaining the Gospel or contributing to its fall.  But the hubris of modernity, no matter in which age or geography it arises, cannot by work of creatures add to or overthrow the Word and Will of the Creator.  We may be living in a time and place where many people abandon the Word of God, or in one where many embrace it, but the unfaithfulness of men is just as inept at making God unfaithful to His Word, as the faithfulness of men can add to His glory.  The West may be experiencing a massive apostasy to the Word, chasing the ghosts of pride and greed into the fiery calamity reserved for all who reject God, preferring the deceptive and destructive words of fallen men to the life-giving Word of God, but it is men who come and go while the King of Glory abides forever.  The ridiculousness of man’s pride is shown forth in his grave, and the greed of his empires laid bare in their ruin.  And yet the Everlasting Gospel remains as a light in the darkness of man’s self-absorbed pursuits, never faltering or failing regardless of how far men might run from it.  If man seeks to escape it by running across land and sea, the Word of the Lord is there; if he runs from God into the depths of the ocean, God is there; if he flees to the moon and stars, God is there; in life or in death, the Word of the Lord remains.

 

Do not be shaken or dismayed, dear Christian, by the fiery trial that may lay before us, for the Everlasting Gospel cannot be overthrown, nor the grace of your salvation be taken from you by those who reject or ignore it.  To you has been given the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, the forgiveness of sins and eternal life, with victory over sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil, all through the Victory of Jesus Christ.  Just as you are not the creator of your own soul, you are not the author of your own salvation, and thus you need not lean upon your own understanding, your own powers, and your own meritorious good works to save you.  Rather, put your trust in the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ, abide in Him, and His grace will save you by faith in Him, that you will abide forever with Him, just as His Word abides forever.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.