Day 255

Today's Reading: Revelation 17

A few times in high school, I had to fill in on the track and field team because some players were lost due to injuries and the track coach pulled athletes from other school sports. I remember being asked to run a relay. I found it intriguing how these runners crossed the finish line in a close race. They leaned forward, sticking out their heads across their chests because in that sport, milliseconds matter. And if the head crosses, the other parts of the body win too.

The Bible says in Colossians 1:18 that Jesus is the head of the body, which is His church. And as God’s children, we are the body of Christ. He’s the head, and we are the body—that’s the New Testament image. And as a runner wins the race with his head first, so it is true with us spiritually. If the head crosses, the rest of the body wins. The book of Revelation reminds us that the head of the body is crossing the finish line. And because He wins, you and I win!

Revelation 17 shows evil unleashed on the planet through the great harlot, Babylon, and the beast. This unholy trinity seems to launch on all cylinders with one target in mind: the saints of God. In fact, their hatred for the saints is so intense that John describes it as “being drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus” (verse 6).

Then we read about the head. And wherever the head is, the body goes with it: “These [the unholy trinity of the harlot, the beast, and Babylon] will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with Him are the called and chosen and faithful” (Revelation 17:14).

I grew up in the church. We used terms and terminologies so often and frequently that I never knew context or reasoning, which has the capability of watering down the power of phrases. One of those phrases is King of kings and Lord of lords. We would say this about Jesus all the time. But to see it in the Revelation 17 context reminds me, this church boy, how powerful this phrase really is. What makes King of kings and Lord of lords powerful is the word that comes before it, because.

That word because is a subordinating conjunction, which means it connects two parts of a sentence in which one (the subordinate) explains the other. Part one of verse 14 says that these will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them. How? The answer is in the subordinating conjunction, because. Because He is the Lord of lords and King of kings. That phrase, which I heard in songs and sermons, is connected to the greatest victory in all human history—the Lamb defeats hell forever. Because no king and no lord is higher than Him.

But that’s just part one of the subordinating conjunction. Without bogging us down with grammar, we get a conjunction within the subordinating conjunction. We read, “Because He is the Lord of lords and King of kings, and [because] those who are with Him are the called and chosen and faithful.”

The good news for us is that because He wins, you and I win. Because the head crosses the finish line, the body gets the reward also. Because He is the King, you and I are royalty. Because He is the Lord, you and I are protected and provided for.

I was reading the story of someone that knew the power of the words King of kings and the Lord of lords instinctively. When Queen Victoria had just ascended her throne in the mid-1800s, as was the custom of royalty, she went to hear George Frideric Handel’s Messiah, rendered by the London Royal Symphony. She had been instructed as to her conduct by those who knew the royal protocol and was told that she must not rise when the others stood during the “Hallelujah Chorus.” When that magnificent chorus started, and the singers were shouting “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth,” witnesses of the event said she sat with great difficulty. It seemed as if she would rise in spite of the custom of kings and queens but contained herself. Finally, when the oratorio came to that part of the chorus where the choir echoes the sopranos proclaiming Him “King of kings and Lord of lords,” and as it kept modulating higher and higher, suddenly the young queen could no longer contain herself. She rose and stood with bowed head as if she realized that a higher authority was being sung about and to at that moment. She realized He is the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords, and so she must rise and declare it against all tradition and protocol. And Queen Victoria was right to do it.

King of kings and Lord of lords means there is no authority higher than the Lamb, and that is why every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. You can confess that now on your own, or you will be forced to confess on the day of judgment. I choose now.

Because He Wins, I Win