Welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the book of Revelation. This will be study #14 of Revelation, chapter 1. We are currently reading verse 4 of chapter 1, where it says:

John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne;

We spent a little time looking at the 'seven,' churches which were in Asia, and now we are going to move on to the next statement: "Grace be unto you, and peace..." This is actually a fairly common introduction in the New Testament in some of the Epistles. For instance, we read in Romans, chapter 1, verse 7:

To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, "grace and peace" to you. Also, in 1Corinthians 1, and this is the only other one we will look at, although we could give other examples, in 1Corinthians 1, verse 3:

Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is a common desire from the child of God toward others: we would want and wish that 'grace' might be theirs and that the 'peace' of God might be theirs. Why? Because the Bible says in Ephesians, chapter 2, "For by grace are ye saved." So to express the desire toward someone, "Grace be unto you," is really stating the desire that they might be saved!

This is the desire of the child of God toward all. We would that God might extend His 'grace' and bestow it upon all that we know. This is one of the reasons why we share the Gospel - we shared it during the day of salvation - that the Lord might bless His word and bestow 'grace' that would save His Elect. And we share it now - that individuals would be blessed by His grace, that those that God has chosen to become saved might hear truth from His word, and they might live as individuals chosen by His 'grace.'

And we also desire that 'peace' be unto you, the peace of God, the peace that passeth understanding. And what is that 'peace?' Well, the Bible tells us also in Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 14:

For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;

In other words, the law of God which condemns us, the Lord Jesus took upon Himself our sins and suffered the wrath of an angry God (the condemnation of the law of God), for our sakes, on our behalf, and paid the penalty in full, and now there is no more enmity, no more jealous husband, no more angry God, no more law to pronounce the condemnation, because there is no more record of transgressions. All of our transgressions have been blotted out. We are clean in God's sight; it is as though we have never sinned. We have, as our own, the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ and His purity, that white robe that covers us, and so we have 'peace' with God. There is no longer any spiritual warfare raging. We are in harmony with Him due to what Christ has done for us.

This also is what we would desire for others: for our family members, for our friends, our neighbors, for our co-workers, for strangers and for our enemies. We would desire that they also know this 'peace.'

Continuing in Revelation 1, verse 4, "...grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come," that is, this grace and peace is not something that exists by itself. People often wish others well and speak good words to them: "May God bless you," or some say, "God bless you," and, yet, blessing does not reside in them, and they have no ability to grant God's blessing to anyone; only God can. We cannot impart grace. We cannot give the peace of God to anyone.

We can share the word of God and through that, if it be God's perfect will, if that person that we are sharing with is one of them predestinated to receive it before the foundation of the world, and if their name happens to be (by the decisive will of God as He determined to save them) recorded in the Lamb's Book of Life, then 'grace' and 'peace' will be theirs. It will come, not from a vacuum, not from nothing, from a Person, a Being, the Creator, the God of the Bible, the One who is and was and will be. This description of God, "Grace *be* unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come," is really a beautiful description of the eternal, infinite God that we read of in the Bible.

The God of the Bible is not the god that other religions speak of. The God of the Bible is not the god that other gospels declare. The God of the Bible is the one true God, and He exists and has His being, and reveals Himself (of course He exists everywhere and is omnipresent and all powerful) through the Scriptures, the word of God. This God is the God of the Christian, the God that the child of God worships, the One that has bestowed 'grace' and 'mercy' upon us, that has saved us and granted us eternal life.

And how could He grant us eternal life if He Himself were not eternal? How could He know we would live forever more, unless He Himself could know absolutely, without the slightest bit of doubt, that we would be with Him forever and forever without end? And He does know this, so He promises His people eternal life.

It is not just a wish or a hope, or if everything falls just right and things go according to plan, then, yes, there is a good chance you will have eternal life. No. God grants eternal life to all that He saves, and He assures us, with an oath, that the promises of His word are true and faithful. He does not lie. He knows that we will live forever because He knows everything that will take place in the whole spectrum of existence.

I know that is an incredible thing, especially to us mere mortals, us finite beings. We are very temporal and limited in our human nature. We do not know everything that transpired this very day! We cannot tell you all our of thoughts of the last week! Yet, God is far above us, and His thoughts are extremely higher than our thoughts and His ways than our ways, so we ought not to place any of our limitations upon Him. We should not limit the Holy One of Israel, the Bible warns.

The Bible indicates He has no limits - He is the One which "is." Notice how God begins there, not in the past, but He begins in the present, in this moment, that is, "He is a very present help in time of trouble," Psalm 46: 1 tells us!

God wants us to know He is not a God of old and a God of the future only, but He is a God for now and today, a God for the present moment, a God at hand and nearby, a God that hears prayers, a God that can answer them, a God that can protect us and fight against our enemies, a God that can comfort us and strengthen us by His Spirit in our inner man, in order that we can endure hardships and the difficulties that we might be going through in this life. God "is." This is what the Bible tells us. Some fail to understand this.

We read in the book of Exodus, when Moses was learning about the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Lord revealed Himself to him at the burning bush. It says in Exodus 3, in verse 2-6:

And the angel of JEHOVAH appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when JEHVOAH saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here *am* I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.

God was speaking to Moses and He revealed to him that He is the God of the ancestors of Moses, the men of faith that Moses certainly had heard of, the ones that God began the nation of Israel with, the people of God. Moses was meeting God, and this would be around 1447 B.C. Abraham was born in 2167 B.C., over 700 years earlier, and God is saying, "I am the God of thy father, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who lived in the days of those men is the One presently speaking to you, Moses." Then we read a little further on in verse 13 of the same chapter, Exodus 3:

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

What a glorious name for God! Why did God reveal Himself as "I AM?" Because He is the ever-existent One, He has always been, and always is, and always will be. There has never been a time when God was not. You can travel the whole history of this world, this short little time span of a little over 13,000 years, and you will never find a moment when God was not. God has always been, we read in the Bible, from the beginning of the creation of this world, and He has been, throughout its history, as we read the history of the Bible, God shows up again and again. And He is at the end of the history of the world, as we also read in the Bible. God reveals Himself at the end of the world.

And, yet, that is nothing! That is nothing. It is amazing to us, and it is incredible that a Being has lived and existed, without change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. "I change not," saith the Lord, and that is amazing to us.

God knows everything that has transpired in all times past of this world, everything happening today in the minds of over seven billion people, or that has ever happened in the minds of those that have ever lived upon the face of the Earth, and He knows all that will happen in the few short days of time remaining.

All of this information concerning all things of this creation is an enormous amount of data, and an enormous amount of information that it would take who-knows-how-many multitudes upon multitudes of computer to store. Yet, this is nothing to God! This is only the space of a momentary creation, which He will soon do away with.

Yet, beyond this creation lies eternity - eternity which has already been from eternity past, and which stretches into the future forever more - and that is the realm of the Kingdom of Heaven, and that is the realm in which God reigns and rules over all. He is infinite in His being, and He knows all that has occurred in all eternity past, and all that will take place in all eternity to come, and everything in between.

Now compare that to the knowledge of this short little creation of over 13,000 years, and we see this is nothing more than just a speck of information in that infinite and brilliant mind of God, the great God of the Bible. We cannot help but stand in awe. The word 'awe' and 'awesome' really ought to be reserved only for God. Certainly, it does not apply to any man, to any thousands of men, as they pale in any sort of comparison to the tremendous God of the Scriptures, when we just look at His capacity for knowledge, and that infinite, brilliant mind of God who wrote the Bible (and the Bible records the thoughts of God).

As we have Bibles in our possession, we have the "mind of Christ" it says in 1^st Corinthians 2. No wonder no one has ever plumbed its depths. No wonder there are such mysteries recorded in God's word, that after thousands of years of having this Book, we are still searching and digging in it, trying to understand truth.

And, yet, this is the God that we are coming to know in His word, and He is the God who "is." Yes, He is present now, at this point. He is in Heaven upon His throne, ruling, and He grants us little, tiny creatures, made in His image, yes, but what are we but specks of dust with feet of clay? We are one of countless numbers of His creations, yet, unlike any other of these creatures; none other, as far as we read in the Bible, are made "in His image."

So we have a special place in the eyes of God, and He permits us little, tiny, finite creatures (we who are nothing more than ants or gnats or the smallest speck you can imagine in comparison to the great God) to approach unto Him, and to beseech Him, and to cry out to Him, and to pray to Him, whatever might be ailing us, or whatever is troubling our hearts. If we are anxious for anything, He tells us, "Come to me." And if all of God's people - all 100 million, or 150 million, or 190 million - alive upon the earth today were all, with one accord, to turn to Him in the same instant and cry to Him, He would hear the prayer of each and every one of them in an intimate way, in a personal way.

What sort of God is this, that can know such things, that can deal with such numbers, as though we are just one individual and there is no other, that can speak so personally to us and know us so well? What kind of awesome Almighty God is this that the Bible reveals? And the truth is His greatness and the glory of His being is beyond our ability to comprehend. He is far too wonderful and majestic and glorious for us to understand. We can know the words of the Bible. We can know the language of the Bible, but certainly we cannnot grasp it or grab ahold of even His eternal nature - that He has always been - let alone, that He always will be. Just to think of His past existence, that it is without end, as we read in the Gospel of John in chapter 8, verse 58:

Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

That is, long ago before Abraham, God was the same God; He was ever-present then with Abraham, He was ever-present with Moses, and He is ever-present with you and I today - the Great I AM. Before Abraham was, before he was conceived in his mother's womb, "I AM." Before Adam and Eve, God could make the same statement, "I AM." Before this world was created, "I AM."

Go back in your mind's eye for as far and as deep and for as long as our little, tiny minds can carry us, unto all we can picture outside of this world and this universe. (I do not know, we do not get much of a picture.) What was there? Well, God certainly was not idle and would have been busy, as He warns against laziness and idleness and "not occupying." We can be absolutely certain God has not been unoccupied in all eternity past, but very occupied in work, and what is His work? Well, in six days He worked to create and the seventh day He rested. So the work of God is creation - that is one of the things that the Bible identifies as His work. And, certainly, He would have been working and creating other creations apart from this, outside of the realm of this - principalities and dignitities that we know nothing of.

And, yet, we may learn of them, certainly, in time to come, or in things to come. But when we look into the past, what can we see but the Almighty God? That is all. All we know is what God tells us, and He does not reveal much to us. He tells us in Psalm 90, in verses 1-2:

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

And in Psalm 93, it says in verses 1 and 2:

JEHOVAH reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; JEHOVAH is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved. Thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting.

"From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God," God is ever-present, the eternal existent One, the Being who has always been there, and is always here now, and always will be. Man will not defeat God. God is certainly victorious over the rebellious creature, and over the rebellion of Satan, the fallen angel. God is the one who triumphs and reigns supreme forever more.

We read in Isaiah 57, in verse 15:

For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy...

Think about that! "The high and lofty One," the great God of the word of God, the Bible, and where does He dwell? (The word 'inhabit' can be translated as 'dwell.') Where does God dwell? He dwells in eternity! He inhabits eternity, like you and I dwell in our home and we inhabit our home; except, of course, when we dwell in our home and we are on the first floor, we are not on the second floor; and if we are on the second floor, we are not in the basement.

That is not true of God. He is ever-present. He is everywhere present. He inhabits or dwells in the whole spectrum of existence in all eternity. You cannot go to a place or point in eternity past and find where God has not been. You cannot go a point into eternity future and find a point where God is not. He always 'is.' He is the great "I AM," and this is the enormous and the...I am running out of adjectives because they are just not sufficient to describe this God that the Bible reveals to us as the Lord Jesus Christ!