What does Revelation 2:28 mean?

This continues Jesus' encouragement to the "overcomers"—those who endure and withstand persecution and hardship— in the church at Thyatira. Jesus promises to give them the morning star. The faithful in the church were surrounded by moral and spiritual darkness, but the time would come when they would experience the glorious rays of Christ, the morning star.

The reference points us to the rapture, the event that transports Christians from earth to the presence of Jesus (1 Thessalonians 4:13–17). At that time Christians will be free from trials and persecution. Our bodies will be like the body of our risen Lord (Philippians 3:20–21). They will be incapable of dying (1 Corinthians 15:50–57). Aches and pains will all be in the past, and spiritually we will be like Jesus, entirely free of sin (1 John 3:2).

At the end of the Old Testament, we learn that Israel's hope of the coming of Messiah to establish His kingdom is buoyed by the promise that the sun of righteousness shall rise (Malachi 4:2). At His second coming—His coming to earth—Jesus will appear in glory as the sun of righteousness, but before that event takes place, He will come in the air for all Christians. That is the Christian's blessed hope. This order of events is noteworthy. Before the sun appears, the morning star appears. So Jesus will appear first for Christians, in the rapture, and after a seven-year period of tribulation, He will come and establish His earthly kingdom to fulfill Israel's hope.