Worship in the Book of Revealation

Paul E. Penno

I counted them—Jesus is identified in the Book of Revelation as “the Lamb” no less than 28 times! “Christ and Him crucified” is the Hero of that last Book of the Bible. None of the 66 books of the Bible so lifts up Christ and Him crucified as this last one! When Jesus explained to John the Baptist that He was “the Lamb of God” who must bear the sins of the world, and then the Baptist baptized Him, young John the disciple must have listened. All of his subsequent writings were imbued with that solemn, holy sense of wonder and appreciation for the infinite sacrifice of the Son of God.

At the beginning of his last book John marvels because He “loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood” (1:5). He cries his heart out in chapter 5 as he sees there is no one in the vast universe of God who can “open the [mysterious] book, and to loose the seals thereof. ... I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon” (you can’t understand Revelation without tears, for it was written with tears!). Then one of the 24 elders (humans in heaven!) tried to comfort him: “Behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.”

John strains to see the grand entrance on the stage of this “Lion,” but he sees instead a “Lamb as it had been slain.” He hears the 24 elders and the hosts of the redeemed sing unto Him who has “redeemed us to God by Thy blood. ... Worthy is the Lamb that was slain” (5:3-12). He sees a great multitude at last who “have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (7:14). They stand with the Lamb at last on Mt. Zion “and they sing a new sing before the throne” for “they follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth” (14:1-4). Their souls are captured for eternity by a heart-appreciation for a love “that passeth knowledge.”

You may not be musically minded; but this is a song of experience, a heart-song of identity of self-crucified with Christ on His cross, and it’s time for us to begin to “learn” that song now.

“And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth” (Revelation 14:3).

Rev. 1:13: “And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.”

Rev. 1:14: “His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;

Rev. 1:15: “And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

Rev. 1:16: “And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.”

Do you like to fight battles? Or do you like to run away from them? I meet many wonderful Christian people, members of the church, who want peace so much that they refuse to get down in the arena where battles for the Lord must be fought. To tell the truth, they’d rather watch TV than study for themselves to know the truth about the issues in the great controversy between Christ and Satan. But Paul says in 1 Tim. 6:12, “Fight the good fight of faith,” and Jude says (vs. 3) that we “should contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,” for there are “certain men crept in unawares” who seek to corrupt that faith. And Jesus tells us quite clearly, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household” (Matt. 10:34-36).