The Revelation may truly be called the book of results. In it, though Christ's faithfulness to His own abides, declension marks the churches. Sin receives its eternal wages. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, are seen in full bloom, and pass away forever. False religion is judged, its blazing glory extinguished, and the smoke of the torment of the unchaste woman rises up forever and ever. Man living in rebellion is crushed under the feet of Jesus, and the dead are banished from His presence forever. The antichrist and his associates meet their just and most terrible abasement and misery. Satan is everlastingly consigned to the lake of fire. The created heave ns and earth are cleared of evil, Christ's powerfully known, and His worth fully owned. The Church is seen in glory, in uncreated light and beauty, and the new heavens and the new earth speak to us only of righteousness and blessing from God to man. It is emphatically a book of judgment upon things on earth, prophetic, of course, in its character.
Unlike the epistles, we do not find the believer's calling or relationship with the Father considered in the Revelation. We only have the Father referred to about four times, twice as "His Father" and "My Father," and always referring to God as the Father of the Lord Jesus. In this book we see God preparing the earth for His Son, the rightful Heir, under whose feet all enemies will be put.
There appear to be three great hindrances to saints having a clear apprehension of at least the outline of this blessed book. First, the false and unbelieving feeling, long cherished by many, that the Revelation is full of mysteries which no one can understand. Secondly, the erroneous idea that the main scope of the book is a prophetic statement of events while the Church is on earth, and that we are now perhaps in the midst of the outpouring of some of the vials. The consequence is, that it is approached with wrong thoughts, so that the book becomes at once so perplexing that it is quickly laid aside. Thirdly, the chief difficulty perhaps is having false ideas of what the Church of God really is, not seeing its special and unique character, which is defined in Scripture to be the body of Christ, "the fullness of Him that filleth all in all." Eph. 1:21-2321Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: 22And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 23Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. (Ephesians 1:21‑23). When the believer clearly sees that the Lord abolished in His flesh the law of commandments in ordinances, in order to create (not apart from Himself, but) "in Himself" one new man, he gets at once something new before his mind, very distinct from what had ever gone before, or, as I believe, will follow. It was to this the Lord referred when He said to Peter, "Upon this rock I will build My church." Matt. 16:1818And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18). Believers now know union with Christ, and are partakers of the heavenly calling are quickened together, raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This very distinctive truth the book of Revelation does not enter into, for it is, as we have said, a book of judgment, and especially of things in relation to the earth. We do get in the Revelation, the Lord judging the assemblies on earth professedly gathered to His name, but the Church in her special and unique character as the body of Christ, as before observed, is not dealt with there. She is, however, seen coming down from heaven as the Bride, the Lamb's wife, in manifested glory, to take her place in the glories of the kingdom, and she is also seen afterward as the Bride in the eternal state, when the Son shall have delivered up the kingdom to the Father. H.H. Snell