Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the three-year lectionary.
Our Epistle reading from Revelation 1:4-18 twice refers to Jesus as the one “who is and who was and who is to come.” This is a statement of the nature of God which we really need to get our heads around. As we observe the biblical view of God’s eternal nature, we begin to realize that our world is largely predictable, as it is ruled by a God whose nature is not changing. God is the same way now that he has been before, and will be in the future. His character doesn’t change. Since he is the one who has established the world and who sustains it, we can recognize there are transcendent and eternal principles at work. All this will never change.
I hope you will permit a brief illustration. I was recently in a short exchange with someone I had never met before. This person wanted badly to say that allr eligions were equal, except for a historic and orthodox Christianity, which must be wrong. It was considered wrong chiefly because it said things which others, especially in recent years, have objected to. It seemed in this discussion that the problem with Christianity was the dependence on eternal principles, from a God “who is, and who was, and who is to come.” Rather quickly I realized I was being told my only hope was rather to trust the individual who has thrown off any idea of transcendence in favor of a new and probably temporary idea. This I cannot do.
In a world full of change, the reality of a God outside of ourselves, who has been well established in factual evidence, in lucid commentary, and in generations of human history is an anchor we need. It is the way we can make sense of our world. This is exactly the Lord identified in Scripture as the true God, who is, and who was, and also is to come. Amen.
If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.