7 Promises from Revelation

I was reading Revelation this morning, a book that is very daunting to me as well as to others. I have had a strange relationship with the book throughout the last few years.

I know that there are immense truths hidden within, but there is also incredible ability to find lies, about God's will and about God's plan for the future. It is a book that is by no means straight forward, therefore it lends itself to crazy theories of all sorts.

In this post, I would just like to point out 7 truths/promises that are found within Chapters 2-3. These chapters consist of messages written down by John, from Jesus, to seven churches in Asia Minor (modern Turkey).

At the end of each letter, Jesus has a word of encouragement for each individual. He starts them off (in my translation) with "To those who conquer"

In order to clarify what the word "conquer" means in the greek, I decided to looked it up.

The greek word is: Nikao

1. to conquer
   1. to carry off the victory, come off victorious
      1. of Christ, victorious over all His foes
      2. of Christians, that hold fast their faith even unto death against the power of their foes, and temptations and persecutions
      3. when one is arraigned or goes to law, to win the case, maintain one's cause

For our purpose and considering the context, the second definition would seem to fit best. It isn't conquering in the sense of capturing other people's lands, but rather, conquer in the sense of prevailing against evil, etc. (for more on prevailing against sin, read some of my earlier posts).

Now that that is cleared up, I'm just going to list the scriptures and hopefully let them do the talking.

Rev 2:

7. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

11. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.

17. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.

26. The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, ²⁷and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. ²⁸And I will give him the morning star.

Rev 3

5. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.

12. The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.

21. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.


While I would love to go through and comment on all of those, it would take me far too long, and it would ruin the fun for you!

I would like to point out that the each of the promises is in somewhere related to the body of the message to each church, so to get the full context and all that, read Rev 2-3.

The one promise that I would like to discuss in brief is that of Rev 3:21: The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.

I honestly do not know what to do with this. Jesus is saying that we will sit on his throne, as the Father let Jesus sit on his throne. I don't know how to wrap any theology around this idea.

What I do know is that Jesus and the Father apparently view us far, far, far higher than we give ourselves credit for. Not to say that we should be prideful of how great we are, but rather, we should take encouragement in the fact that God has an infinitely high view of us.

Reminds me of Jeremiah 9:23-24
²³Thus says the LORD: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, ²⁴but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD."

Let us boast that we KNOW the lord, and let us live a life of glory and honor, conquering death and sickness, depression and disease, a life lived from the victory of Jesus, from this side of the cross and not that side, setting our eyes on the things above, where Christ is enthroned, knowing that if we do this, if we life a life for him, denying sin and shame in the body and living for glory and honor, eyes set on him, then indeed, it is him that we will gain, him and him alone, while (apparently) cuddling with him on his throne for all eternity.

Praise Christ Jesus, the one who was and is and is to come!