There is a warmth surrounding Christmas few other days in the life of the Church can reproduce. We know the songs before the first note is played, recognize the words before Luke finishes telling the story, and carry memories of Christmases stretching backward through our lives. Some include children who have grown, churches we once attended, parents and grandparents whose voices we can almost hear singing beside us, and people we still expect to see in familiar places before remembering they are gone. Church leaders see another side as well, with months of preparation, additional services, unfamiliar faces filling familiar rows, and an opportunity to tell people who may rarely enter a church about the night God entered our world. Christmas somehow allows memory and anticipation to occupy the same room, as we look backward with affection while preparing our hearts to celebrate an arrival we already know has happened.
Part of what makes Christmas so powerful is our willingness to anticipate something we already know has happened. We know where the story is going, but we still wait for the familiar words, the songs, the candlelight, and the moment when something we have celebrated many times becomes present to us again. We remember the anticipation of generations waiting for a Messiah, hear the angels announce His arrival, and celebrate the promise fulfilled in Bethlehem. Christmas teaches our hearts to look toward His arrival.
Easter carries a different emotion. Christmas gives us the warmth of His coming, while Easter gives us the hope of knowing death could not hold Him. The sanctuary fills again, familiar hymns return, and the words we have heard countless times still carry the power to move us: He is not here. He has risen. We celebrate an empty tomb because everything we believe rests upon what happened there, and every grave we have stood beside looks different because Jesus walked out of His.
But the empty tomb was never the final place Scripture intended our eyes to rest. Jesus walked from the grave, appeared to His disciples, ascended before them, and left behind a promise carrying the Church forward ever since. The Christ who came would come again. Easter gives us more than hope for life beyond death; it gives us confidence the One we are waiting for is alive. Christmas tells us He came. Easter declares He lives. Together they give us every reason to look toward the day when He comes again. This is the day the Church needs to talk about more.
We prepare months for Christmas and Easter because we understand their importance, and we should. We invite our communities, add services, preach toward them, expand outreach, and measure their impact by attendance, visitors, baptisms, engagement, and lives changed. We celebrate when our churches are full because every person represents someone with another opportunity to encounter Christ. But even the greatest Christmas Eve or Easter morning any of us has experienced pales beside the gathering still ahead. The greatest day for the Church will not be remembered by how many people came to see us. It will be remembered as the day we finally see Him.
John was given a glimpse of what we are waiting for when a door opens into heaven and suddenly the scale changes. A throne stands at the center, surrounded by brilliance almost beyond description, as lightning flashes, thunder rolls, and a sea like crystal stretches before it. Living creatures unlike anything on earth continually proclaim the holiness of God, while twenty-four elders clothed in white sit upon thrones wearing crowns of gold. Every direction offers something extraordinary, and if greatness could be measured by the magnificence of the setting, the importance of those gathered, or the power of the experience, nothing any church has ever created could come close. Even with all this splendor surrounding him, John keeps drawing our eyes toward something greater.
The elders rise from their thrones, fall before the One seated above them, and cast their crowns at His feet. Their crowns have value because they represent something received, something entrusted, something worthy of reward, but John shows us honored people discovering the highest purpose for everything they have been given. Standing before the throne, their crowns become something they can give back, and everything capable of drawing attention toward them becomes another way of directing attention toward Him.
Nothing in heaven competes for attention. Everything revolves around the throne.
The clearer we see Christ, the more we begin to understand one of the great ironies of faith: nothing else matters, and everything matters more. Nothing we build, accomplish, lead, preach, grow, or carry can compete with the splendor of Christ. No church we create will ever be as magnificent as the heaven John saw, and no church leader will ever possess more honor than elders already seated on thrones wearing crowns of gold. If greatness alone deserved our attention, Revelation gives us greatness beyond anything we could imagine and then shows all of it bowing before Someone greater. Somehow, in the bowing, everything surrounding the throne becomes more meaningful rather than less.
The person walking through our doors matters because Christ loves them, the sermon matters because Scripture can reveal Him, worship matters because our voices can proclaim Him, small groups matter because people can grow in Him, and outreach matters because someone can encounter Him. Giving, leadership, excellence, influence, accomplishment, and every other gift entrusted to the Church find their proper meaning when they direct attention toward Christ. Even the crowns matter because there must be something of value in our hands before placing it at His feet means anything. Seeing Christ clearly does not make the rest of life meaningless; it gives everything else its proper meaning.
We do not need smaller dreams, weaker ministries, less excellence, or fewer people reached so Christ can appear greater by comparison. Heaven itself is not made ordinary so the throne can look extraordinary. John shows us unimaginable splendor willingly turning toward something greater still, where every gift, position, voice, and crown finds its proper place because Christ is at the center. Our churches can do the same, pouring ourselves into Christmas, proclaiming the resurrection at Easter, building ministries, developing leaders, teaching Scripture, caring for families, reaching communities, and giving God our very best without allowing any of it to become the destination.
From there Revelation carries John deeper into the scene, where a scroll rests in the hand of the One seated upon the throne and a mighty angel sends a question across creation: Who is worthy to open it? Among all the greatness surrounding the throne, no elder, angel, king, prophet, apostle, leader, or hero of faith can take what rests in the hand of God, and John begins to weep because no one has been found worthy. In a place filled with more glory than we can imagine, every measure of greatness has reached its limit because the search was never for the most accomplished person in heaven or on earth, but for the One who alone was worthy.
John is told to stop weeping because the Lion of Judah has conquered, and when he turns expecting the Lion, he sees a Lamb standing as though slain. In this unexpected image, everything we celebrate at Christmas and Easter comes together as the child who entered the world in humility becomes the Savior who gave Himself upon the cross, and the One placed in the grave now stands in the throne room bearing the marks of what He endured. The wounds remain, but death does not, and the hope proclaimed every Easter morning has become the living Christ standing before John, while the promise beginning with His first arrival carries us toward the glory of another still to come.
When the Lamb steps forward and takes the scroll, heaven responds as the elders fall before Him, the prayers of the saints rise, and a song begins around the throne before spreading outward through thousands upon thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand voices declaring the worthiness of Christ. Praise continues widening until every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea joins what has become the declaration of all Creation. Everything John has seen, from the magnificence of the throne room to the elders and the crowns they carried, has been drawing his attention toward the same place.
We spend considerable time helping people understand what Christ can mean for their lives today. We tell them how He can bring hope in disappointment, peace in uncertainty, strength through suffering, direction when life becomes confusing, forgiveness for the past, and confidence for whatever lies ahead. All of it is true, all of it matters, and all of it gives us reason to know Him more deeply. But somewhere in our desire to help people understand everything Christ can bring into their lives, we can lose sight of the greater promise of simply being with Him. Scripture gives us more than a Christ who meets us where we are. It gives us a vision of the Christ we are one day going to see.
The challenge for the Church may be how rarely we talk about this day with the same anticipation we bring to Christmas, the same hope we proclaim at Easter, or even the same enthusiasm we bring to the next capital raise, ministry, program, campaign, or opportunity. John gives us a vision of where all of it is going, and it deserves more than an occasional mention of Christ’s return. This is a vision worth sharing with even greater passion, moving people beyond simply believing He will return toward an anticipation far more personal.
When we too can clearly see the Christ all Creation has always known.
About the Author
Dan Ellsworth has spent more than 30 years serving as a lay leader in small-group Bible studies, studying Scripture alongside other believers and seeing firsthand both the challenges and possibilities of biblical discipleship. His professional career has included decades in animal health and agriculture, and he remains connected to agriculture as a small cattle producer in eastern Colorado. In recent years, he began putting into writing many of the questions and convictions shaped through decades of studying Scripture with others. His Scripture-centered studies focus on biblical literacy, discipleship, and helping Christians see Jesus more clearly through God’s Word. His books and small-group resources are available at getbacktothebible.com.
