Many say “I am a Christian.” while avoiding passages that require greater obedience than their own concerns allow. Consider a passage from Revelation 20:1-4, 11-21:2:
“I, John, saw an angel come down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the abyss and a heavy chain. He seized the dragon, the ancient serpent, which is the Devil or Satan, and tied it up for a thousand years and threw it into the abyss, which he locked over it and sealed, so that it could no longer lead the nations astray until the thousand years are completed. After this, it is to be released for a short time.”
What is the “thousand years”? Some view the “thousand years” as that period roughly between 500 and 1,500 AD. In that time, Europe went from many, many pagan religions to Catholicism. The Ten Tribes, deported into the North 1,200 years before, had spread out and coalesced into the Nations of Europe.
They retained many Jewish thoughts and doctrines as they took Europe from the Stone, Copper, and Bronze Ages into the Iron Age. The transition to Catholicism was less difficult for them than for many of the nations to the East.
Then, after that thousand years of establishing The Church ended, schisms were allowed to take root. The Church, having done its job of guiding Europe into complete access to Catholic teaching, withdrew somewhat from temporal power. People were freer than ever. Many chose to leave The Church Jesus Founded. They preferred the “new, modern” religions that fragmented the power of Roman Catholicism. Many Catholic peoples and properties were ravaged by various, and often vicious, manifestations of anti-Catholicism.
Why did God allow Europe to sink into state-sponsored apostasies? The next passage explains:
“Then I saw thrones; those who sat on them were entrusted with judgment. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or its image nor had accepted its mark on their foreheads or hands. They came to life and they reigned with Christ for a thousand years.”
What was the point of this? The concluding passage makes everything clear.
“Next I saw a large white throne and the one who was sitting on it. The earth and the sky fled from his presence
and there was no place for them. I saw the dead, the great and the lowly, standing before the throne, and scrolls were opened. Then another scroll was opened, the book of life. The dead were judged according to their deeds, by what was written in the scrolls. The sea gave up its dead; then Death and Hades gave up their dead. All the dead were judged according to their deeds. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the pool of fire. (This pool of fire is the second death.) Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the pool of fire.”
The last line of that passage may be the most incredibly incredibly important sentence in All Creation.
Any rational person must conclude that “life” means “life” and that Jesus knew what the meaning of “life” was when He said, in, and following, John 6: 53, “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.”
The next step is a short one to this conclusion: “We can only have our names written in The Book of Life if we have “life” in us. The only way we can do that is to receive His Body and Blood. The only place that’s available? In The Only Church Jesus Founded, saying clearly and directly “Thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church. . .”
