Eternal Truth Eternal Praise

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” ¹⁶ And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God,¹⁷ saying,

“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
    who is and who was,
for you have taken your great power
    and begun to reign.
¹⁸ The nations raged,
    but your wrath came,
    and the time for the dead to be judged,
and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints,
    and those who fear your name,
    both small and great,
and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”

– Revelation 11:15-18 [ESV]

My friend, you may recall, would say, “Eternity lasts a long, long time.” His observation was that our time here on earth is momentary. We’re here today and gone tomorrow. By the most literalistic reckoning, if the earth is less than 10,000 years old, 100 years is one one-hundredth of that time. We haven’t even scratched the surface of eternity by that measure. 

Furthermore, we tend to think of eternity in the future sense. We think in terms of time going on and on into the infinite future. And that’s not untrue. But eternity stretches both ways. As the hymn above says, 

“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
who is and who was,
for you have taken your great power
and begun to reign.”

It is clear that the eternal nature of God, stretches from before the foundations of time to beyond time’s end. And the vision here is of the beginning of God’s reign in a new way. He reigns in glory and perfect completion. 

The only thing lacking in that reign today is our realization of it, and the end of all war, sin, death, rebellion, and unbelief. There will come a time when every mouth will be silenced in awe of the majesty and glory of God. But every mouth will also be loosed in praise of God’s glorious grace.

John was given a vision of that reign. We will one day see it to…in eternity, and for eternity. The one who was and is will have come to us and we will celebrate his glory forever and ever. That is an eternal truth that will be celebrated in eternal praise of our God, our Lord, our Savior, our Redeemer and our King.