The right confession of faith is the confession that Christ will give about a person to His Father and His angels. That right confession have the overcomers. They are the ones who were ‘…strengthening the things that remain, which were about to die…’ Revelation 3:2. They are the ones that turned around. They had not soiled their clothes, but have kept themselves clean and unblemished from the world,1 as they put all their hope in Him, and not on earthly wealth.2 For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs, says Paul.3 What tremendous clothes those white robes will be—better than the most expensive fashions.
And the names of the faithful will be recorded in the Book of Life! For the books will be opened.4 That Book of Life is the most precious book that exists.
Moses spoke of it during his plea for the people after their great sin of making and idolising a golden calf. Moses said: please forgive their sins – thereby becoming the mediator of the old covenant, pointing prophetically to the great Mediator, Jesus Christ. Then Moses adds that if God is not willing to do that, then ‘blot me out of the book You have written’.5 “But now, if You will, forgive their sin—and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written!”
David also knows about this Book of Life,6 and Isaiah sees the Lord’s protection of the holy remnant—all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem.7 “Rejoice that your names are recorded in Heaven,” says the Lord Jesus.8
And Paul knows that his faithful workers, Euodia and Syntyche, who have struggled together with him in the preaching of the Gospel, together with Clemens and his other co- workers, all have their names recorded in the Book of Life.9
The good confession is being able to say what Peter said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”10 Jesus is the miracle that God gave to the world. This is the confession with which the Ethiopian eunuch, the chancellor of Candace, the Queen of the Ethiopians, went down into the water to be buried in Christ’s death, to rise again to new life from the watery grave.11 What a joy there is among the angels in Heaven over one sinner who repents.12
In the end the Book of Life will be opened. Revelation 20:12 and 15, 21:27: ‘And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds…And if anyone’s name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire…and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.’ Are you washed by the blood of the Lamb? Just like the eunuch?
• Two great waves of Ethiopian Jews came to Israel a few years ago — descendants of the tribe of Dan according to some rabbis. According to their own traditions, they have been living there since the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon, because their forefathers were said to have gone with her to Ethiopia. They had their own Torah, the five books of Moses, in their primitive living conditions—despised and persecuted—but they were unacquainted with rabbinical traditions such as the Talmud.
• ‘Operation Solomon’ was a covert Israeli military operation to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel from May 24 to May 25, 1991. Non-stop flights of 35 Israeli aircraft, including Israeli Air Force C-130s and El Al Boeing 747s, transported 14,325 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 36 hours. Operation Moses took place in 1984.
• Maybe the Ethiopian eunuch, the chancellor of Candace, was one of the black Jews in Ethiopia. He went to Jerusalem to worship and was reading Isaiah 53. Maybe he had bought that precious handwritten scroll of Isaiah in Jerusalem. Now he is returning to Ethiopia. Then a wonderful thing happens. Read Acts 8:26-40.
Bible References:
1.James 1:27; Philippians 2:15; Ephesians 5:27; Romans 16:19; 2 Peter 3:14 2.1 Timothy 6:17 3.1 Timothy 6:10 4.Revelation 20:12, 15 and 21:27 5.Exodus 32:32 6.Psalm 69:29 7.Isaiah 4:3 8.Luke 10:20 9.Philippians 4:3 10.Matthew 16:16 11.Acts 8:37 12.Luke 15:7
