In 1801, Lord Addington had led his party into power, and the new Prime Minister, he had begun to form a new cabinet. Wilberforce was rumored to be among the candidates for a cabinet post. Soon he became preoccupied with the possibility, and for days it grabbed his conscious mind. Ambition was crippling his soul. Wilberforce went to church, and God gave this Christian statesman a revelation.
Ambition is stunted.
God has a way of showing us more of Himself in extraordinary ways often when we are doing ordinary things. A second lesson we can learn is that it is when we are at our lowest that Christ often meets us there . John was in exile, he was suffering for his faith under the persecution of Domitian, and he was nearing the end of his life. It was surely a time of real struggle and perhaps depression. That is when the Lord met John and gave him this grand revelation of Himself.