- The Rightful Owner Will Take Over

The crux of the whole matter is this: our wonderful, created world will be restored to its rightful Owner. I for one look forward to that day. I want to live here when Jesus Christ owns and rules the world. Until that hour, there will be conflict, distress and war among the nations. We will hear of suffering and terror and fear and failure. But the God who has promised a better world is the God who cannot lie. He will shake loose Satan’s hold on this world and its society and systems. Our heavenly Father will put this world into the hands that were once nailed to a cross for our race of proud and alienated sinners.

It is a fact. Jesus Christ is returning to earth. The Revelation teaches it. Daniel teaches it. Isaiah teaches it. Jeremiah teaches it. Go to the Gospels written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They teach it. Read the promises in the Acts. Read them in Romans and the rest of Paul’s epistles. Find the same message in Peter’s important two letters to the churches. Jesus Christ is returning to earth! The Scriptures inform us that Jesus came once to die for our sins. He will come again to claim His redeemed people. He came once to go down under the steamroller at man’s feet. He will come again to renovate and restore the earth and to raise the righteous dead from the dust of their graves. I like Isaiah’s expression of that coming day of resurrection and glorification: But your dead will live;
their bodies will rise.
You who dwell in the dust,
wake up and shout for joy. (Isaiah 26:19)

We cannot even imagine the singing for joy and the shouts of victory when Christ comes for His own, when the righteous saints come forth in new and glorified bodies.

Surrounding the conference grounds at Glen Rocks, Ontario, are thousands and thousands of wild canaries—a part of the goldfinch family. They have always intrigued me. As long as they are feeding in large flocks, they are quiet and receive little attention. But stir them up with some kind of activity, and they all begin to sing together even as they fly away. That is my illustration—drawn from Isaiah’s imagery. It is a picture of what the saints of God are going to do o the resurrection morning.

Rise and sing, you who dwell in the dust!

I bow my head and continue to pray with the humble writer of the Revelation: “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!”

John,
To the seven churches in the province of Asia:
Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.
On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.”
Revelation 1:4-6; Revelation 1:10-11