Revelation 1:7
"Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn"

Here in the Revelation, we have the only written description of Jesus Christ. It is public, not reserved but universal, and inescapable. The same Jesus who was once hidden in the flesh, rejected, and pierced will return in open glory.

"Clothed in a robe reaching to the feet..."

"...wrapped around the chest with a golden sash."

"His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire."

"His feet were like burnished bronze when it has been heated to a glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters."

The clouds from where He comes recall Daniel 7:13 and the Son of Man receiving dominion; they also echo the cloud of the Ascension in Acts 1. Every eye; believer and unbeliever, living and those who have died, will see Him. And especially mentioned are the tribes of Israel. The scope is deliberately total, every eye.

Some in saving repentance, others in the terror of the final accountability. The “even those who pierced Him” keeps the cross in view; the same hands that drove the nails will one day face the One they rejected, now radiant in all His glory.

This is why the description that follows is so important. The Jesus who returns is the same One John sees walking among the lamp-stands (the church assemblies). And it's important to notice this detail. It is the revelation of a concept Jesus often tried to convey to his disciples while he walked among them. It is this idea that He is always with them, even when He is unseen He is there. The same exalted Christ whose return will be public, cloud-borne, and inescapable is the One who is already present with His churches.

This is the truth Jesus impressed upon the disciples while He was still with them in the flesh.

"I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).

"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18).

Revelation simply pulls back the curtain so we see what faith already knows, He has never left.

For the elect (that faithful remnant that exists in every church no matter the tradition), He is always present, but now in this vision, ALL the people of the earth are witnessing His glory. The One who has always walked among the churches is not a gentle memory or a vague spiritual influence. He is the same One whose hair is white with eternal wisdom, whose eyes burn like fire, whose feet glow with righteous judgment, and whose voice thunders like many waters. His presence is holy, searching, and powerful.

Not a spectator.

Not an option.

For the believers He is the promised One and they sing with joy. Their mourning turns to joy. They recognize the wounds, the voice, the face they have loved by faith, and they cry out with the song of the redeemed.

For those who pierced him, the ones who rejected and crucified the Lord of glory, He is judgement. The hands that drove the nails will look upon the One they rejected, now radiant, and the recognition will be unbearable.

And for the nihilists and atheists, the ones who insisted there is no meaning, no Judge, no final accounting, no God at all, He is the end of every one of their denials. The One they declared absent, irrelevant, or nonexistent stands before them in unanswerable glory. Every claim that reality is empty, that history is directionless, that the self is the final authority, collapses under the weight of those flaming eyes and that voice like many waters. Now there is no longer any place to hide the truth they spent a lifetime suppressing.

The vision leaves no neutral ground. But beyond that, visions of the exalted Christ almost never come to us as bare propositions. They come wrapped in light, in overwhelming beauty, in the sound of many waters, in harps, in new songs, in the roar of myriads crying "Worthy."

Heaven does not merely inform us of glory; it displays it and sings it. And that display and that song reach something in us that ordinary language cannot. Scripture treats beauty and music as more than human inventions. They are echoes of the original order.

When the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, Miriam answered with timbrel and dance. When David set the worship of the temple in order, he appointed skilled musicians because the beauty of holiness demanded it. And when John is caught up into the heavenly throne room, the first thing he hears is singing; unceasing, multi-layered, thunderous praise directed at the Lamb who was slain.

There's a reason we cry when a song moves our soul. There's a reason humanity sees spiritual love in a sunset. There's a reason our hearts glow with peace as we breathe the air and smell the sunshine and the rain. These ordinary moments are not random. They are residual signals of the world as it was meant to be, and as it will be again. They are the creation still testifying, still carrying the accent of its Maker.

These are the moments that destroy the emptiness of the nihilists. They are quiet, relentless contradictions of the claim that reality is empty. A nihilist can argue in the abstract that there is no meaning, no beauty that points beyond itself, no final purpose. But when a song breaks open the heart, or a sunset feels like love, or the air after rain carries a peace that has no adequate natural explanation, the argument begins to crack. Something is being recognized that the philosophy cannot account for. Beauty that feels like homesickness, music that reaches deeper than thought, ordinary sensory gifts that awaken longing for a world made whole.

Not evolutionary accidents or chemical tricks. They are the accent of the Maker still audible in a fallen order. Indeed He is always with us. And the soul keeps responding as though it has heard a language it was born to understand.

Revelation refuses to let that emptiness stand. The throne room is not silent. It is filled with song directed at the Lamb. When every eye sees Him, the residual signals will give way to the direct reality. The song that has been echoing throughout creation from the beginning will finally be joined without hindrance.

Until then, every time a song, a sunset, or the smell of rain after the storm destroys a little more of the emptiness, He is doing what He has always done, calling His people home.

And the "revelation" is this, the beauty one experiences is only a pointer. It is desirable precisely because it is unsatisfied. The longing itself is sweeter than any earthly fulfillment. Our joy was never meant to be satisfied by the beautiful things that triggered it. These are signposts, shadows of the beauty still to come.

In the same way, the Lord never ordered our ordinances. He never ordered a celebration of our Lord's birth. He never ordered our feasts celebrating his followers and the heroes of faith. He never ordered the architecture, the art, the rituals. All these things attempt with human invention to create this beauty that God's glory has already established.

C.S. Lewis said it wonderfully:

"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

From the sermon, The Weight of Glory (1941)

Nature, art, and music are not the source of glory; they are media. When we treat them as the final object, they become idols.

Amen? 🙏🏼