Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Revelation 22:12-13
About the age of 12, I discovered the author, Zane Gray, whose western books covered several feet of shelf space in old Decker’s library near my home. Long before Louis Lamour captured the hearts of western-lovers, Zane Grey was thrilling people with sagas such as The Riders of the Purple Sage and Thirty Thousand on Hoof. Now, Grey was an author who had a pretty good grasp of human nature and wrote about that age-old battle of good versus evil. Now, the plots were all rather predictable—heroes and villains and a pretty girl who eventually was rescued by the handsome young cowboy who captured her heart before he rode off into the western sunset.
More than a few times I would get into one of Zane Grey’s thrillers when my mother would announce, “Bedtime. Lights out.” No matter how I would plead, the lights got turned out. But how can you sleep without reading the last chapter, knowing whether it was the cattle rustlers who would win or the rancher whose very life was in jeopardy? That’s when I would disappear under the covers with an old silver Rayovac flashlight with batteries just strong enough to let me read the last chapter.
Sure enough, having skimmed the last chapter, then I could go to sleep satisfied.
You know, friend, life today doesn’t appear to me much different from the plots of Zane Grey’s fiction, but there is a big difference. We are not always sure that the good guy is going to win. Altogether too often we are uncertain as to whether things will really turn out okay in the end. It seems in a broken world that the good guys are often the losers.
Cancer takes the mother of three children. The businessman who doesn’t cheat or bribe other people is penalized. The high school student who doesn’t use drugs and cheat is often a social outcast.
You know, sometimes our hearts cry out, “God, where are you when I really need help?” That’s when doubts, like night-stalkers, begin to haunt us. The lights are getting turned out before we get to the end of the story.
There are times when you’ve got to go to the last chapter before you can sleep. But when it comes to the realities of life, is there a last chapter? You bet there is. You’ll find it beginning with Revelation 19 in your Bible, and it takes only a few minutes to read.
You will discover that eventually the redeemed of all ages stand in the presence of the Almighty in heaven, which is a real place. They blend their voices in a gigantic chorus of worship and praise unlike anything ever known before, as they cry, “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns! Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory!” (Revelation 19:6-7).
Then Lucifer or Satan is bound and cast into the bottomless pit. The wicked stand before God and are judged fairly and justly. Never forget, God has His payday someday. There is a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwell righteousness. Furthermore, God’s children get their rewards, too. “Behold, I am coming soon!” says Jesus Christ. “My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am Alpha and Omega,” He says, “the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:12-13).
Reading the last chapter will let you turn off the light and sleep with peace. Take it by faith, friend. It is a certain thing! As certain as the rising and the setting of the sun, something dictated by God, and He is the enabler who makes it happen.
