Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Revelation 1:5 calls Jesus Christ “the faithful witness.”
If I can get on my preacher’s soapbox for just a moment:
Christians have so focused on the Revelation as a map to the end-times, they routinely miss what the stated purpose of the book is. According to its opening words, it is “the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Whatever you think the proper interpretation of the book’s images may be, or what it was meant to predict, it is first and foremost a revelation, a “revealing,” of Jesus.
It’s about him, not the antichrist. Revelation’s main purpose is to teach you about Jesus, not give you a prophetic Bingo card so you can glue yourself to the news channel and mark off squares as you think things are fulfilled.
When it calls Jesus the faithful witness in verse five, it then lists six more short statements about who he is and what he has done, for a total of seven. An enterprising preacher might craft a whole week of revival sermons from that passage.
I have been freshly reminded of the importance of knowing that Christ is the faithful witness. The spiritual battle that we all face individually is primarily a conflict over truth, which is waged in our minds. What you believe to be true will absolutely determine what you do and how you live.
It was a genuine comfort during the dark days of the Covid crisis to know that, in the mass of competing and opposite truth-claims that bombarded us, Jesus was unshakably, reliably true. He claimed to be truth itself (John 14:6). He remains the one whose witness (or testimony) about what is true is unchangeable and trustworthy.
This has been brought home to me again as my wife and I have faced a pretty frightening medical diagnosis. As soon as this happens to you, you then get bombarded from all sides with advice and proposed silver-bullet cures. Some of this comes from a place of genuine love, but most of it comes from those hoping to make merchandise of you, to borrow a King James-ism.
Though the Bible is not meant to be a medical journal, nor a guide to science, it very much is meant to train its readers to spot the hucksters and unscrupulous merchants. It teaches its students to think logically. It will show you how to spot faulty arguments if you apply yourself to it.
But, pastor! (I can hear the complaint already.) Most of the Christians I know are not sound thinkers themselves. All I can say to this is, “Amen and amen.”
This is directly correlated to the fact that the vast majority of Christians are not Bible students. The book won’t help you by sitting on your shelf. They have some basic belief in Jesus, but they haven’t put forward the minimal effort to learn how to think like a believer.
It should comfort us to know that the Trinity revealed in Scripture is repeatedly linked with truth. This will not help us, though, if we throw up our hands with Pilate and say, “What is truth?”
It’s not too late to become a student. Start with a chapter a day. Start with something. Study to show yourself approved.
Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: