It struck me going through Revelation 18:9-20 how much weeping there is. The kings wept (verse 9), the merchants wept (verses 11, 15), and the seafaring men wept (verse 19). They wept over their loss, over the fall of their lover, Babylon “the great.”
That got me thinking about the last time we heard God’s people weeping in the Apocalypse. For many chapters of Revelation now believers have been marginalized, then persecuted, even to the point of death. They have seen the rise of the antichrist, the rise of man’s rebellion against God, and the rise of immorality all around them. Certainly many of them will grieve to the point of tears. But the emphasis in Revelation is on the weeping of the unbelievers.
The last time a believer wept was in Revelation 5 when John said, “I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it” (verse 4). But that was immediately followed by one of the elders who said to him, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals” (verse 5).
This is not to say that Christians know no heaviness or sorrow. It is to say though, that heaviness and sorrow are not the emphasis for those who conquer by the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 12:11). Those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life are headed to a weepless future.
> “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:17)
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)