12 Here [comes in a call for] the steadfastness of the saints [the patience, the endurance of the people of God], those who [habitually] keep God's commandments and [their] faith in Jesus.
13 Then I heard further [perceiving the distinct words of] a voice from heaven, saying, Write this: Blessed (happy, to be envied) are the dead from now on who die in the Lord! Yes, blessed (happy, to be envied indeed), says the Spirit, [in] that they may rest from their labors, for their works (deeds) do follow (attend, accompany) them!
People will be seeing our Father’s Truth preached during the end times as they never have before. The Bible teaches us that we are crucified with Christ and nevertheless we live, yet it is not us who lives, it is Christ within us Who lives, Galatians 2:20. We are dead and our lives are hid with Christ in God, Colossians 3:3. So the voice from Heaven is saying blessed are those who are empowered to accept and believe during this time. Remember the parable of the workers that Jesus showed us of in Matthew 20. Jesus told us that even those who are called during the last hour will receive the same pay as those who worked all day!
The Truth is that if we are required to be martyred for being used to testify of Jesus, it is a great thing. It means that our Father has empowered us to be a true force of the Truth. And the reality is that if we are called and chosen to be alive during the Great Tribulation, it will mean that we will have been empowered as no generation in Christ has been. If we are required to be martyred during the Great Tribulation, we will have truly been empowered with the Holy Spirit, and with Him comes great blessings! Remember, Jesus taught us to morn at a person’s birth, and to rejoice at their death, so everyone who dies in the Lord is blessed. This is not telling us to rejoice because we escaped the wrath, but rather to rejoice at how we were used by our Father.
Think of how today we glory over Stephen for how he died. Think of how we praise God for how Peter and Paul were persecuted and killed for testifying about Jesus. Think of how we glorify God for Jesus at the Cross. This is how those who are asked to be martyred during the Great Tribulation will be thought of. Why do so many want to be gone for all of this preaching and power? They do because their focus is on themselves and not on others. So they grasp at scriptures that feed their own egos and fears and they try to make the Word say things that it doesn’t.
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