Transcript
A rookie police officer pulled a biker over for speeding and had the following exchange: Officer: May I see your driver’s license? Biker: I don’t have one. I had it suspended when I got my 5th DUI.
Officer: May I see the registration for this vehicle? Biker: It’s not my bike. I stole it.
Officer: The motorcycle is stolen? Biker: That’s right. But come to think of it, I think I saw the registration in the tool bag when I was putting my gun in there.
Officer: There’s a gun in the tool bag? Biker: Yes sir. That’s where I put it after I shot the dude who owns this bike and stuffed his drugs in the saddle bags. Officer: There’s drugs in the saddle bags too?!?!? Biker: Yes, sir.
Hearing this, the rookie immediately called his captain. The biker was quickly surrounded by police, and the captain approached the biker to handle the tense situation, and had the following exchange.
Captain: Sir, can I see your license? Biker: Sure. Here it is. It’s valid. Captain: Who’s motorcycle is this? Biker: It’s mine, officer. Here’s the registration.
Captain: Could you slowly open your tool bag so I can see if there’s a gun in it? Biker: Yes, sir, but there’s no gun in it. Sure enough, the captain checked and there was nothing in the tool bag.
Captain: Would you mind opening your saddle bags? I was told you said there’s drugs in them. Biker: No problem. The saddle bags were opened and inspected; no drugs.
Captain: I don’t understand it. The officer who stopped you said you told him you didn’t have a license, stole this motorcycle, had a gun in the tool bag, and that there were drugs in the saddle bags. Biker: Yeah, and I’ll bet he told you I was speeding, too.
We can’t always trust people’s words. But we can always trust God’s words. God’s words are true and faithful and they will be fulfilled exactly as He has said in His Word.
Revelation 21:5: “And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.”
A great voice of an angel speaks the words of verses 3 and 4. A new voice speaks in verse 5 and, for just the second time in Revelation, it is the Lord Himself speaking (1:8).
“He that sat upon the throne” is the Lord Jesus Christ. The throne being referred to and that He sat upon, in the immediate context, is the Great White Throne.
With the removal and casting of all unbelieving sinners into the Lake of Fire to suffer for their sins forever, and with the old earth and old heavens of sin passed away, the Lord declares, “Behold, I make all things new” (21:5).
The announcement in verse 5 is introduced with the word, “Behold!” The Greek word translated as “Behold” means look or see. The Lord told John to behold, to look and see how He had made all things new.
The things John “saw” in this chapter were “a NEW heaven and a NEW earth” (v. 1), and “the NEW Jerusalem” (v. 2).
John was to observe these things with the understanding that all these things had been made new by the Lord Jesus Christ.
And it’s a truth about Christ also, that Christ makes all things new. This is talking about all things new in the eternal state. But Christ does this for people too.
He makes people new people in Him. He gives us new life and a new hope when we trust Him as our Savior. We are new creations in Him.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature [creation]: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
Next, the Lord commands John to write it all down. These new things that John was seeing were sources of hope and joy for God’s people, the nation Israel.
He needed to record what he saw. These new things are for Israel’s eternal blessing: for her to live in the new earth with the curse of sin removed and God’s presence dwelling on the earth with them in the new Jerusalem.
Out of God’s love and care for believing Israel, Christ wanted a written record for her to read and know about her eternal hope.
John needed to write about what he saw AND what he heard. He was to make a record of the “words” that the Lord spoke about making all things new and the words that He was about to say in verses 6-8. These words are “true and faithful.”
At the Lord’s Second Coming, John records that “I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He that sat upon him was called FAITHFUL and TRUE” (19:11).
Christ is Faithful and True, and the words that He speaks are “TRUE and FAITHFUL” (Rev. 21:5). His words are God’s words, because He is God. They are established in truth, worthy to be believed, and can be completely trusted.
All who read the words that John wrote are given strong confirmation that the Lord will accomplish His purposes and promises.
God in His nature is faithful and true. 1 Corinthians 1:9 says, “God is FAITHFUL.” Romans 3:4 says, “let God be TRUE, but every man a liar.”
Like the God who inspired it and revealed it, the Bible, the Word of God also is faithful and true. Psalm 119:138 reads, “Thy testimonies that Thou has commanded are righteous and very FAITHFUL.” John 17:17 says, “Thy Word is TRUTH.”
God will keep and fulfill every promise He has made to the nation Israel regarding her eternal hope on the earth. And God will keep and fulfill every promise He has made to the Church, the Body of Christ, regarding our eternal hope in the heavenlies.
God’s words must be fulfilled. They are tied to His very nature of faithfulness and truth. So when He speaks they must and they will be carried out to the letter.
As believers in Christ, we have much to be thankful for and look forward to because God is faithful and true to His Word. Everything will come to pass just as God has said and revealed in His Word.
As Jeremiah wrote, “His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him” (Lam. 3:22-24).
Revelation 21:6: “And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.”
The Lord said to John, “It is done.” This implies absolute finality. Again, Christ is faithful and true. And He “calleth those things which be not as though they were” (Rom. 4:17). So He can say, “It is done,” before it is done, because it will happen exactly as He says.
The Lord is pointing forward to a new, permanent condition that will arrive, because He said that it will.
The One on the throne Who is speaking claims the names of God: “I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.” The Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal I AM. He is fully God.
He is infinitely qualified as God to declare the end of something and the beginning of something new. God started history and He will end it. And Christ as God will initiate the eternal state.
Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. This title for the Lord teaches that He is everything of goodness and perfection that can be expressed by every letter of the alphabet, arranged in every possible combination in all possible words.
From beginning to end, He exhausts the vocabulary of excellence and greatness.
Of the Beginning and the End, it is stated that He “[Declares] the END from the BEGINNING, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure” (Isa. 46:10).
As the old saying goes regarding the future in our day-to-day experience, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future!”
The Lord holds the future. He is in control. We can draw great comfort in our lives in knowing this is true and trusting Him.
We can rest in the God of all our tomorrows, knowing that He is with us each step of the way. And as it’s been said, “Our past is redeemed, our present makes sense, and our future is secure.” Our future is secure in the One who is true and faithful to His Word.
The Lord next says that He “will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” This water speaks spiritually of life eternal, God’s life, renewing, and the Holy Spirit. Physical water gives and maintains physical life, the spiritual water Christ gives, gives spiritual, eternal life. The source of eternal life is from God.
In Jeremiah 2:13, Jehovah God said to Israel, “For My people have forsaken Me the fountain of living waters.” God is the “fountain of living waters.”
During His earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus Christ said something very similar as Revelation 21:6 to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:14:
“But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).
Later in His earthly ministry, in Jerusalem, the Lord taught in the temple, “saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive…)” (John 7:37-39).
Referring to the Spirit, the water Christ gives to those who believe becomes a fountain of water springing up within, providing a perpetual inner source of spiritual, everlasting life.
John likely remembered these words he wrote in his Gospel record of Christ’s life.
Salvation and life eternal is beautifully portrayed by the Lord as His giving life-giving water freely to those who are in need and who thirst. Our spiritual need, our spiritual thirst is fully satisfied by Christ.
Those who do not receive the provision of God’s salvation by faith during their lifetimes will thirst eternally. Unbelievers will first thirst in hades (Luke 16:24) in the center of the earth, and then they will thirst eternally in the Lake of Fire.
As our Substitute upon the Cross of Calvary, the Lord faced tormenting thirst for us. In his agony spiritually and physically, He cried out, “I thirst” from the Cross.
He thirsted so that we may never thirst spiritually or physically in hell, and never thirst for God by being separated from the Father.
As the Lord said, “I am the Bread of life: he that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).
The “water of life” in Revelation 21:6 is BOTH symbolic and literal. It is symbolic of the Holy Spirit and eternal life that is given to all who trusted Christ and God’s provision of salvation under Israel’s program.
It is also literal water of life that will flow from the throne in the new Jerusalem during the eternal state on the new earth. As Revelation 22:1 sates, “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”
This literal water of life will also be given freely to those who inhabit the new earth for eternity.
Revelation 21:7: “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”
The true and faithful words of the Lord continue as He makes a blessed promise to “he that overcometh.” Revelation will be directly applicable after the Rapture of the Church, the Body of Christ, and during the Tribulation. Those who believe in that day, if they can stay alive, will need to overcome to the end of the Tribulation.
In 1914, Ernest Shackleton and a team of explorers set out from England to do something that no one before had accomplished—cross Antarctica from one side to the other across the South Pole. Disaster struck when the team’s ship, Endurance, became entrapped in ice and eventually sank after her hull was crushed.
Marooned on nearby Elephant Island, there seemed little hope for their survival. In a desperate effort to get help, Shackleton and five others set out in a twenty-foot lifeboat across some of the most dangerous and storm-filled waters in the world.
It was an eight hundred-mile journey to South Georgia Island where help could be found. For fifteen days the men battled the treacherous seas and massive storms with waves of up to one hundred feet.
Using only a compass and a sextant, Frank Worsley (who had captained the Endurance) navigated their course until they safely reached land and found help. Shackleton procured another ship and returned to rescue all of his men. He became a national hero in England for his courage, determination, and persistence.
With courage, determination, and persistence, believers in the Tribulation will need to overcome and endure to the end of those 7 years to be saved by Christ’s Second Coming.
We are not called to overcome and endure to the end to be saved in this age of grace. We just believe on Christ to life everlasting as 1 Timothy 1:16 says. But there is a similarity between the overcomers of the Tribulation and us today.
Ever since the first sin in the Garden of Eden, mankind has struggled to make wise decisions about an uncertain future.
Though the world will be extraordinarily stormy after the Rapture, every single person is making their way through a stormy world. The only way to ensure that we do not go astray is to have an objective source of truth that will guide us.
Just as a compass can guide sailors through dark and uncharted waters, God’s Word can guide us through uncertain and difficult circumstances.
We must simply trust it, over our feelings, over our own wisdom, and over contrary advice others may give us. Because the Bible is inspired by God, it is without error, it is true and faithful, and we can always trust it.
This is what the overcomers in the Tribulation must do. They must trust God’s Word, the Book of Revelation in particular, over their feelings, their own thinking and the contrary advice others give. They must keep their focus on Christ to overcome in that day.
And really it’s no different for us. We must do the same as we navigate this life. We must allow the truth of God’s Word to guide our lives, and we must do so with courage, determination, and persistence.
The Apostle John reveals for us in his epistles that the overcomers are those who are born again: those who believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
1 John 5:4-5 reads, “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?”
The overcomers are those who are saved under the gospel of the kingdom, believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
The overcomers are those who will overcome Satan during the Tribulation. They will overcome Satan’s powerful coercion to take the mark of the Beast to be able to buy and sell. The overcomers are those who overcome the world and its majority and strong social and cult-like pressure to follow and worship the Antichrist.
They are those who will abide in Christ and overcome the hatred of their persecutors and of Satan with the love of Christ.
The overcomers will remain loyal to Christ either to the end of their life in martyrdom or to the end of the seven-year Tribulation.
Promises were made to the overcomers of each of the seven churches of Revelation 1:20, as we see in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, rich promises and blessings, such as no second death, to be clothed in white raiment, to sit with Christ in His throne, to have their name confessed by Christ to the Father, the right to eat of the tree of life, etc.
In fulfillment of His promises to them, the One Who is faithful and true tells them that, in the eternal state, “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”
They will inherit everything that Christ had promised them. He will be their God forever. They will be His sons forever. In that eternal position as sons, they are heirs. Thus, they receive an inheritance.
And person receives an inheritance from someone who has died. And it is a rich inheritance when you receive an inheritance from “He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold,” is “alive for evermore” (Rev. 1:18).
Revelation 21:8: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
In contrast to the blessings of eternal life, joys, and inheritance in the new Jerusalem among believers, we find the unbelieving in the Lake of Fire, those excluded from the new heaven and new earth in the eternal state. They have no inheritance.
God will not be their God. They will not be His sons. They are forever in the presence of sin, darkness, and evil, experiencing the torments of the Lake of Fire and the second death.
The unforgiven are listed by the sins that marked their lives on earth. And it’s as a result of their sins that all these souls will experience the second death.
The “Fearful”: the cowardly unsaved, those who were more fearful of the disapproval of people than of God, and were afraid to trust Christ or God’s Word.
“Unbelieving”: all the unsaved who never trusted God’s provision for salvation in their lifetimes. They were faithless toward God’s Word. “But without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Heb. 11:6). They have displeased God forever because they never placed their faith in Him or His Word when they had the opportunity.
“Abominable”: the unsaved who practice abominations; vile, detestable people who are completely caught up in wickedness and evil of all sorts.
“Murderers”: the unsaved who knowingly and purposely kill; malicious and savage killers. John 8:44 says they “are of [their] father the devil, and the lusts of [their] father [they] will do. He was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).
“Whoremongers”: the unsaved who practice fornication and other forms of sexual sins; the sexually immoral. As Ephesians 5:5-6 reads,
“For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.”
“Sorcerers”: the unsaved who traffic with evil spirits, who are involved with witchcraft, people of the occult and satanism. Galatians 5:19-21 says,
“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”
“Idolaters”: the multitudes of unsaved whose worship has been directed toward a material object which represents to them some spiritual reality or higher power. The Apostle Paul wrote that “covetousness is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). Even the adoration of material possessions and giving them a place ahead of God is considered idolatry.
“Liars”: unsaved people who are compulsive deceivers, false witnesses, false teachers; those who practice deception for gain. John 8:44 continues,
They “are of [their] father the devil, and the lusts of [their] father [they] will do. He abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44).
The second death, eternal death, will be pronounced on all these unbelievers at the Great White Throne (Rev. 20:14,15), because they have died in Adam and in their sins: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (I Cor. 15:22).
Again, the Book of Revelation will be used in the future Tribulation period. It reminds the reader in that day of the certain consequences of not believing in Christ. Universal salvation is not taught in God’s Word.
But as we see in this chapter of this Book for people in the Tribulation, there remains a universal invitation for all who thirst to drink the water of life.
In that future day, after the Rapture, the gospel of the kingdom will be what saves their souls. If they will trust the gospel of the kingdom and repent, confess their sins, be water baptized, overcome, sell all they have, and believe that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God”, they will be saved from their sins and hell and be given eternal life.
If they do not respond to Christ’s invitation in verses 6 and 7, the final destiny of all unforgiven, unbelieving people from all the ages is what verse 8 says, “the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
And God’s Word is true and faithful to what it promises BOTH believers and unbelievers. The Bible clearly teaches that all the unbelieving unsaved will be punished for their sins and tormented in the Lake of Fire forever and ever.
There is fire and water in these verses. Have you received the living water of eternal life so you will not face the fire of hell? If you have never trusted Christ as your personal Savior, we beg you to do so before it is eternally too late.
Under the present dispensation of grace, you are saved from your sins and the Lake of Fire by just trusting the gospel of the grace of God, that Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again the third day. The moment you trust this good news, by faith alone, you have the free gift of salvation, a home in heaven, and eternal life in Christ.