The Theme of the Revelation, stated in its broadest terms, is Christ and the Church through Time to Eternity; the mystery of God in human life and history made manifest through the disclosure of the divine redemptive plan becoming effective and triumphant.47 The theme we assign to the Revelation will, of course, be determined largely by our view of its contents. Many interpret it to be Jerusalem, Rome, and the End, limiting its outlook to the horizon of the early church; others make it the Course of History, or the Future Path of the Church in the World; still others affirm it to be the Last Things, or the Second Coming of Christ. But the wider view is the truer one, which includes many phases of the kingdom, and the theme is properly interpreted as Christ and the Church here and hereafter, or Redemption in its present and future relation to Human Life. This theme is wrought out in prophetic vision by an evolving drama that moves forward in multiple and progressive cycles of trial and triumph, of conflict and victory, ever advancing toward the [pg 041] complete and final consummation, when righteousness shall win, sin be punished, and the redeemed be restored to the immediate presence of God; and whereby the divine plan shall be abundantly vindicated notwithstanding all apparent anomalies, and seeming contradictions, and temporary reverses, for it is confidently affirmed that the night of sin shall ultimately pass away, and the day dawn at last in which “the glory of God and of the Lamb shall be the light thereof”; and “He that sitteth on the throne shall spread his tabernacle over them ... that come out of great tribulation”. Thus the book gives answer to the deep call of the soul for some sign concerning the future that shall point the path of faith and cheer the heart for service; and the answer is abundantly satisfying, for those who interpret the theme aright. Occupied with such a subject of thought it finds its proper place at the end of the inspired volume; it forms a fitting close for the entire line of prophetic voices; and it binds the long succession of books into an unbroken unity.48 With illimitable sweep its visions look backward through time and forward into eternity, downward on earth's struggles and upward upon heaven's victory, inward to the soul's conflicts and outward to God's eternal peace, while through it all there rings out the one transcendent note, Christ reigns but to triumph.