Book of Common Prayer
Look! He is coming!
1 Revelation of Jesus the Messiah! God gave it to him to show his servants what must soon take place. He signified it by sending a message through his angel to his servant John, 2 who, by reporting all he saw, bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus the Messiah. 3 God’s blessing on the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and on those who hear them and keep what is written in it—for the time is near!
4 John, to the seven churches in Asia: grace to you and peace from He Who Is and Who Was and Who Is To Come, and from the seven spirits that are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus the Messiah, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Glory to the one who loved us, and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and father—glory and power be to him forever and ever. Amen.
7 Look! He is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall see him; yes, even those who pierced him. All the tribes of the earth shall mourn because of him. Yes! Amen.
8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, Who Is and Who Was and Who Is To Come, the Almighty.
37 On the last day of the festival, the great final celebration, Jesus stood up and shouted out, “If anybody’s thirsty, they should come to me and have a drink! 38 Anyone who believes in me will have rivers of living water flowing out of their heart, just like the Bible says!”
39 He said this about the spirit, which people who believed in him were to receive. The spirit wasn’t available yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Where does the Messiah come from?
40 When they heard these words, some people in the crowd said, “This man really is ‘the Prophet’!”
41 “He’s the Messiah!” said some others.
But some of them replied, “The Messiah doesn’t come from Galilee, does he? 42 Doesn’t the Bible say that the Messiah is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the city where David was?”
43 So there was a division in the crowd because of him. 44 Some of them wanted to arrest him, but nobody laid hands on him.
45 So the servants went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees.
“Why didn’t you get him?” they asked.
46 “No man ever spoke like this!” the servants replied.
47 “You don’t mean to say you’ve been taken in too?” answered the Pharisees. 48 “None of the rulers or the Pharisees have believed in him, have they? 49 But this rabble that doesn’t know the law—a curse on them!”
50 Nicodemus, who went to Jesus earlier, and who was one of their own number, spoke up.
51 “Our law doesn’t condemn a man, does it, unless first you hear his side of the story and find out what he’s doing?”
52 “Oh, so you’re from Galilee too, are you?” they answered him. “Check it out and see! No prophet ever rises up from Galilee!”
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.