AP

Hi All,

I am deeply moved by, and extremely grateful for, all the kind expressions of sympathy, appreciation and prayerful support at this time.  I am trying to get to acknowledging and responding to each one, and will eventually hope to do so, the Lord helping me.  In the meantime, a blanket but heartfelt ‘thank you’ to everyone.  

Editor: Pat Christian’s funeral is on Friday 20 June 2025 at 2.00 p.m. at City Central Presbyterian Church, Wollongong.

Revelation 13   All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast – all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.  Whoever has ears, let them hear. “If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity they will go.  If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword they will be killed.”  This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.  

God knew that, as he worked out his eternal Plan of Salvation in the world he created, all those who turned to him in repentance-and-faith, puting their trust in Jesus alone as Saviour and Lord, would be faced with opposition, persecution and discouragement in various forms during their pilgrimage to heaven.

Therefore, it is very comforting for Christians in every age, and especially today, to know that all the terrible things that are happening throughout our world are not outside God’s knowledge and Plan, which has always been his Plan A.  Nothing is taking him by surprise or usurping his sovereign power.  Nearly 2,000 years ago, the risen Christ revealed to the apostle John a view of history that encompasses everything we are now seeing on our TV screens: the brutal acts of terrorism, and especially the suffering so many of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being called on to endure in the Middle East, Northern Africa and parts of Asia – and which may be coming to us in the West faster than we realise.  In 6:11 John was shown how the saints who had died for their faith in Jesus were told to “wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow-servants and brothers who were to be killed, as they had been, was completed.”

What is revealed to John in today’s verses is that, whereas it might seem to be the case that the cause of the Gospel is lost in the face of the ruthless powers of the two Beasts, even to the point that “all inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast” and bear his ‘mark’, the number ‘666’ (15-18), this is all part of God’s Plan A.  And, in fact, the central element of this Plan, and the one around which all history revolves, is “the Lamb that was slain from the Creation of the world.”  The substitutionary death of Jesus, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, is the very heart of the Gospel, and always has been since the concept of the Universe was first formed in the mind of God.

More than this, those who belong to God have had their names inscribed in “the Book of Life belonging to the Lamb” from that time as well!  This is why Paul was able to write: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).  And what is the basis of Paul’s assurance?  Not that we have chosen God, but that he has chosen us.  I used to sing in my younger days: ‘There’s a new name written down in glory, and it’s mine, O yes it’s mine!’  I realise now is that what I should have sung was: ‘I have just discovered that my name has been written down in glory (and for God’s glory) since the beginning of time!’  All I can offer to him now is my deep gratitude for what he has already done for me.  This is grace, amazing grace.

– Bruce Christian