Everyone who has faith in Jesus and His sacrifice as the atonement for their sin is redeemed and has the sure promise of eternal life. We can look forward to an eternity that will be far more wonderful than even the greatest earthly life. For this reason, we should consider every believer, regardless of spiritual maturity, to be a brother or sister in Christ with whom we will spend eternity. We should also consider unbelievers as potential brothers and sisters, as the Lord loves all and died for all.
There are many mysteries in the Scriptures that will remain mysteries until the Lord returns, regardless of people’s attempts to explain them. So, we do not want to speculate beyond what is revealed. A wise man once told me, “Most heresy is the result of people trying to carry to logical conclusions that which God only revealed in part.” So, we need to accept what He has only revealed in part, trusting that He has given us the knowledge that we need for this life and kept from us what might be a distraction at this time.
We see in Scripture that the resurrection will be on different levels of authority in His kingdom. The “overcomers” addressed in the seven churches in Revelation seem to be those who attain the “better resurrection,” which is their divine nature as sons and daughters of God. These also seem to be the main ones He spoke to and taught throughout His ministry on earth when speaking to His disciples. He explained much more to His closest followers—His disciples—than He did the multitudes. He told His disciples that the multitudes could not understand all they did. Even so, He was calling all to grow in their relationships to Him and their understanding of Him.
There was great benefit to the teachings given to the multitudes even if they did not understand it all, but He was obviously preparing His disciples for much more. He explained to them things that He did not explain to the multitudes. Is it not like this today? The great multitude of Christians today are content to know just enough what they need for salvation, and their main devotion remains navigating through this life. Only a small percentage of His followers were disciples when He walked the earth; so it is today.
Disciples live to become like their Master and to do the works of their Master. This is their primary thought and devotion, and the things of this world and this life only have as much of their attention as they need to give them. True disciples—those who are as Jesus described them—are still very rare. The Great Commission was not just to make converts but disciples (see Matthew 28:19-20). If we do this, we will likely make many more converts, but this age is mostly about training for those who are going to reign with Him.
“For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). By what is written, we know that all who come to Him and believe in Him for redemption can become disciples. In fact, there is no limit to what any follower of Christ can become. It seems from the weight of all of His teachings that the only limit we have is our own devotion. We are all as close to the Lord as we want to be.
Even if you are not a disciple, for you to be reading something like this indicates that you are being drawn to discipleship. So, I am addressing this to disciples who can see and understand what others do not. This is not to judge others as inferior or ourselves as superior. These positions can change, but it is the teaching of Scripture that those who seek Him will find Him. Those who are as serious about knowing Him, as disciples must be, will find more than those who are not.
The next level in our relationship to the Lord for a disciple is to become a bond-servant. The Lord said this Revelation of Jesus Christ was given to Him to give to His bond-servants (see Revelation 1:1). To get the full message of Revelation, we will first dig into what it means to be a bond-servant of Christ.
Walking in truth means more than just understanding the truth; it means living it. This is what the book of Revelation will challenge us to do.
