21:8
“But the ...”. This is also part of the gospel! And it is a part that Jesus was not shy to talk about. There is a wonderful and terrible choice to be made, a wonderful and terrible division. If we repent and follow Christ there is a fantastic life, both starting now and in the future. But to persist in rebellion brings a terrible price. When society persecutes the church there are always those who give in, who go along with the world. In the West we witness this with the sin-affirming parts of the church. They are adopting a very foolish road. By the way, “cowardly” is the correct translation here, KJV has “fearful”, that can give a very wrong impression of what it is saying. We need to realise how high the stakes are. Following Christ or not is a matter of avoiding the second death, or not.
21:9
The angel who will show John “the bride, the wife of the Lamb” is identified as one of the angels who had the seven bowls full of the last seven plagues. We so often see the wrath of God and the love of God as being opposites, somehow contradictory. This is not true and is not a Biblical picture. The wrath and the love go together. The sin of the world is utterly destructive, harming many people, ruining and destroying any lives. This sin has to be destroyed. People have a choice, they can either repent, in which case we receive mercy. Or we can persist in our rebellion, in which case we receive judgement.
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