He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. -- Revelation 22:20 (KJV)
Start on a hillside outside Jerusalem, with eleven men who have run out of questions. The one they are talking to was dead and is not, and what He leaves them holding is a promise and a map. Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. Then the map: Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, the uttermost part of the earth — circles widening outward, the last one past the edge of anything they could have pictured.
They had none of that power yet when He said it. The assignment arrives before the equipment, and the equipment turns out to be a person.
What Filled the Gap
Everything between that hillside and the last page of the Bible is the promise being kept. The power came. The circles widened in the order He named them and then kept going, carried by people whose credentials were a testimony and the Spirit and not much else. Prison did not stop it. Distance did not stop it. Nothing in the record suggests it went smoothly.
By the time John writes this down he is an old man on a rock in the Aegean, which is roughly how far that sentence had traveled in one lifetime. The uttermost part of the earth turned out to include a prison island.
How It Ends
With two sentences that answer each other.
Surely I come quickly — that is Jesus, and it is the last thing He says in Scripture.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus — that is the church, and it is the last thing anyone says back to Him.
Look at what the answer is made of. Not a plan, not a prediction, not a date. A want. The same Spirit promised on that hillside is what produces it; nobody talks himself into wanting Christ back, any more than he talks himself into missing someone.
Then the closing line, and there is nothing dramatic about it: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. A book that has just spent two chapters on a remade creation signs off by asking grace for ordinary people with a Monday in front of them. That is where the quarter leaves you — the promise still in force, and a week to spend inside it.
