And the message is simply this: put to us with all the intensity of the
One who gave His very life for us, it is this,--_that we be personally
true to our Lord Jesus_ during His present absence. This comes as His
personal request, that, in sweet, stern purity of life, in full glad
obedience of spirit, in tender freshness of personal devotion, in
holding absolutely everything, of talents and position and possession,
subject to His call, and in keeping our eye ever open forward and upward
for His return, we be true to Him.

He is the Lamb slain. Only through His blood is there salvation for any
one. He is now allowing man fullest opportunity before He comes to set
things right. This is the in-between time, much lengthened out. In the
midst of formalism and subtle compromise, the tangling of ideas and
issues, and the blurring of vision within His Church, He calls to His
own blood-bought ones to be true to Himself.

There's a terrific moral storm coming. Wickedness will wax to a worst
never yet known. Evil will be so aggressive, compromise so radical,
temptations so subtle and coming with such a rush, and ideals of right
so blurred and dimmed in the glare of the lower lights, that even those
of the inner circle will be sorely tried, and many will be deceived.
Just at the bursting of the worst of the storm the crowned Christ will
appear. He will come on the clouds before all eyes, take away His own
out of the storm, then clear the storm by His own touch, and begin the
new order of things.

The test coming will be terrific. He knows it. And his knowledge makes
His plea intense that _we be true to Himself_, our beloved, crucified,
crowned Lord, utterly regardless of consequences to ourselves. So we
shall "overcome by the blood of the Lamb," and be joined with Him in
closest intimacy during His coming reign over the earth.

There is a striking thing told us at the very outset of the book;--it is
a revelation. That is, it is something revealed directly by God. It is
the only book of the Bible of which we are told plainly and directly
that it is a revelation.

It is not that the other books do not have the same inspirational
characteristic. But our attention is explicitly called to the fact that
this one is, in its entirety, a _direct_ revelation; and not only so,
but it is a revelation given directly by God to the Lord Jesus, and
given in person by Him to John. This is significant. It marks out the
message of the book as