I Am He That Liveth, and Was Dead

John knew Him.

That is the fact to hold before reading Revelation 1:12-18, or the passage does not land at all. This is the man who leaned on Him at supper. Who watched Him cook fish on a beach. Who stood at the cross with His mother. Of all the people who ever lived, John had the least reason to be startled by the sight of Jesus.

He is on Patmos when this happens, in exile, and he turns round to see the voice that has been speaking to him.

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. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.Revelation 1:13-15, King James Version

And then verse seventeen.

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.Revelation 1:17, King James Version

The man who leaned on His chest hit the floor.

What the right hand did

Now here is the sentence I want you to have, and it is the rest of verse seventeen.

And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermoreRevelation 1:17-18, King James Version

He laid his right hand upon me.

Read what happens to the imagery there. Two verses earlier that same right hand was holding seven stars. It is the hand in the vision, the hand of the figure whose eyes are flame and whose voice is many waters.

And He puts it on a man lying on the ground.

The vision does not stop being enormous. Nothing shrinks. What happens is that the enormity reaches down and touches somebody on the floor, and the first two words out of its mouth are fear not.

You are not looking at somebody manageable. Revelation 1:17 has a hand that had been holding stars laid on a man face down, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps both of those in one sentence rather than letting either one shrink the other.

Now I want to name what has happened to your picture, because I do not think it happened through unbelief.

It happened through familiarity, and through comfort, and through hearing Him described in the same four adjectives for thirty years. Gentle. Kind. Loving. Patient. Every one of them true, and all four together, repeated long enough without anything else beside them, produce somebody you would like rather than somebody you would fall down in front of.

And a person you merely like is very hard to bring an emergency to.

You have been handed four true adjectives and not the whole face, and Revelation 1 supplies the rest. The written word gives flame and brass and many waters in one paragraph, and the same Spirit who preserved that description is the reason a small picture is not the accurate one.

Then the self-description, and I want to take it in the order He says it, because the order is astonishing.

I am he that liveth. Present.

And was dead. Past.

And, behold, I am alive for evermore. Future without end.

He puts the death in the middle. Not first, as a thing overcome and left behind. In the middle of a sentence about being alive, with living on both sides of it.

You have a Christ who keeps the dying inside the sentence rather than behind it. Revelation 1:18 puts was dead between two statements of life, and it is His Spirit who is the reason the wounds are not something He got past.

And then the last clause, which is the reason this chapter is not frightening.

And have the keys of hell and of death.

Keys are not weapons. A key is what a person holds who has the authority to open and to shut. The scene ends with the terrifying figure explaining that the two things everybody is most afraid of are things He has the keys to.

You are in front of somebody holding keys rather than somebody holding a verdict. Revelation 1:18 names the keys of hell and of death, and the same Spirit who put that at the end of the paragraph is the reason John gets up rather than staying on the floor.