Clothed in blood - the defeat of evil

Revelation 19:11&13

And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is scalled Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war...He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called the Word of God.

This chapter of Revelation is chock full of clothing imagery, begun in the last posting. Here we transfer from the bride being presented to the groom, to the groom going out to wage the final battle against the beast and the kings of the earth. If you thought politicians (kings) were corrupt, well, here you go. They have set themselves and their countries against all things godly and true. The earth has reached the point of no return. Jesus is getting the armies of heaven together to wipe out evil once and for all.

And He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood. Thankfully, there are those who have researched this, and again the continuity of scripture makes my heart sing! Isaiah 63:2-3 describes this whole thing in the Old Testament! Wow...

Jesus comes, having found no man righteous to help Him defeat evil, so He does it Himself, trampling Babylon as the grapes of wrath and staining His clothes with their blood. Next He will take on Satan, not bothering to change into clean clothes since they, too, will become stained with the blood of the nations. Powerful stuff.

So, as cloth lovers and women (most likely those who are reading this are women), how do we look at such gore? If you are like me, when the battle scenes in movies start up, I turn away. Seeing the slaughter, even of the evil, is more than I can stomach. When I do catch snatches, the images stay with me for days, haunting me in their gastliness. And yet we know wars must be waged. If we had not sent men to fight in WWII, Hitler and Stalin would have taken over the world, killing more innocent people than live in our own country. When we do not quench evil, it grows, slowly, cunningly, until it overwhelms us. If you would have told the Germans where Hitler was going when he first starting rising to power, they would have called him a madman and never gotten sucked in to his trap. But lures are cunning substitutes for the truth. We see them looking like good food, and when we take the bait, we are trapped. If we had realized it was a lure and not the real thing, we would not have found it appealing.

So blood-soaked garments indicated in that day victory over the enemy. You are still standing, and they are not. They have been taken out. It was a prize to be won, in a sense. In the next passage He does enlist the help of the armies of heaven, but He had to conquer first without them. Then the Word of His mouth will strike down the nations who refused to live by it.

This is symbolic of His victory over sin in our lives. No one else could wage that war, and He did it with His own blood. He let Satan defeat Him, in a sense, but at the same time, that defeat led Him to victory. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Hebrews 9:22. The sacrifice had to be made, and it had to be the perfect sacrifice. He was it. Then, rising from the dead, He defeated death. Then He recruits heavenly hosts to wipe out the enemies of God that persist in not accepting the salvation He offers. We are saved, evil is vanquished, and He becomes our eternal light, glowing radiantly in heaven so there is no need of another sun. But until that day comes, He still shines victorious in the robe of blood. He is prepared to go to war for my soul and yours. He is the King leading the righteous armies to war. Generals are not seen as evil for warring against an evil enemy...they are seen as leaders in a cause. The cause of Jesus is to ransom captives from the prison camps of sin and have them join Him in wiping out those who would imprison others. To sit in the prison camp when you are offered freedom would be foolish and insane. Let the blood of Jesus ransom you, and then join the fight in freeing others. It is a fight worth fighting. The victory is guaranteed. Wouldn't you want to win a battle you knew you couldn't lose? Wouldn't you want to bring others to a place of warmth, nourishment, and purpose instead of leaving them to languish, half-starved and tortured in body and soul? Jesus didn't see it as an option for me, and so I will storm the gates to free you by giving you His Word. Let's break free and fight the good fight.