Blessed is he who reads

 

Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near. – Revelation 1.3

 

For most of my Christian life I have not focused much on the book of Revelation. I did not like the old ‘headline eschatology’ so didn’t want to deal with it.

 

Recently we studied Revelation in our church Bible study. It was my first experience in doing an entire Bible Study on Zoom so it took a while to really get into it. We read about and studied this verse early on, but it never really had an impact until we got close the end.

 

We see that there is a blessing for those who will read and hear the words of this book and apply them to our lives and keep them in our hearts.

 

We think of Revelation as being kind of scary and mysterious. The visions can frighten us and make us anxious.

 

But there is no need for that. This is written to us to remind us that our King is coming and of the judgements coming on the world. The purpose is keep us active and warn others of the wrath to come that we are going to escape and to give us hope that one day this will all be over.