Prefatory Note
The following chapters, first issued in the Christian Friend and Instructor, have been carefully revised; an Introduction has been written, and a few notes added where any additional light has been received through subsequent consideration and study of the Scriptures. They are now commended to the Lord, from whom alone came the ability to write them, for His blessing, and to the careful attention of the reader. May He who closes the canon of inspiration with the announcement, “Surely I come quickly,” produce in the hearts of both reader and writer the response, “Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
Introduction
There is a great difference, carefully marked out in the Scriptures, between the ministry of John and that of Paul and Peter. That of Paul (as stated in Colossians 1), had a twofold character corresponding with the two headships of Christ; namely, that of the gospel which was preached in the whole creation under heaven, flowing from Christ’s preeminence in creation; and that of the church, the body of Christ, as connected with Him as its head. The ministry of Peter, on the other hand, was confined to the circumcision. While he touches on the church as a spiritual house, which was being built up of believers as living stones on Christ as the Living Stone, he yet, as guided by the Holy Spirit, views believers in the character of pilgrims on their way, with Christ risen as their living hope, to “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:4-5). But John holds a different place. He does not enter into dispensations; nor, though once or twice stating the fact (as in John 13:1; John 14:1-3; John 17:24; John 20:17), does he take the saint, nor even the Lord Himself, up to heaven. Jesus, for him, is a Divine Person, the Word made flesh manifesting God and His Father, eternal life come down to earth. In addition to this, another kind of ministry was committed to him, even if at the moment mysteriously, by the Lord after His resurrection, in the words addressed to Peter concerning John, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” (John 21:22). For there can scarcely be a question that the book of Revelation is the fulfillment of the mission for which he was thus designated.
It may be said, moreover, that a closer examination reveals an intimate connection between the last two chapters of his gospel and the Apocalypse. In John 20, in addition to the setting forth of the assembly as gathered with Christ Himself in the midst, there is the conversion of the Jewish remnant of a later day, typified by Thomas who believed when he saw. (See Zech. 12:10-13.) John 21 gives the gathering in of the nations in the millennium, shown in figure by the disciples letting down their net on the right side of the ship, at the command of the risen Christ, and not being able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. There are therefore three epochs in these chapters: that of the church, that of the conversion of the Jewish remnant which will take place at the Lord’s appearing, and that of the ingathering of the nations after the kingdom has been established in power. The book of Revelation contains these three epochs presented in a special way after the vision of the Son of Man recorded in Revelation 1, together with the events in heaven and the judgments upon earth, which are connected with and precede the appearing of Christ as the rightful Heir to take His power, to make good in government all that God is, as revealed in relation to the earth, and to reign until all enemies are put under His feet. The eternal state, in all its beauty and perfection, closes the subject of the book—that wondrous scene wherein God is all in all.
The Special Place of the Church
The reader will be the better prepared to study the book intelligently, if the special aspect in which the church is presented in it is considered. It was Paul’s mission to unfold the truth of the church as the body of Christ and as the habitation of God through the Spirit. (See for example Ephesians 2 and 3, in addition to Colssians 1 already cited.) “But John’s ministerial testimony, as to the assembly views it as the outward assembly on earth in its state of decay—Christ judging this—and the true assembly, the capital city and seat of God’s government over the world, at the end, but in glory and grace. It is an abode, and where God dwells and the Lamb” (Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, J. N. Darby, 5:492-3). In a word, the church as seen by John (Rev. 1-3) occupies a candlestick position, and is thus regarded as God’s light-bearer, His responsible witness in the world. It is in this character that the church is subject to judgment and rejection, as recorded in Revelation 2 and 3.
This may be a little more fully explained. Before Christianity, Judaism with Jerusalem as its expression in the kingdom was God’s candlestick, and this was symbolized by the seven-branched candlestick in the tabernacle and the temple. The prophet could therefore say to Israel, “Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 43:10); for they, and they only, were set as a testimony in the world to what God was as revealed to Israel. As the candlestick which God Himself had set up and lighted, Jerusalem was subject to judgment, and finally was publicly rejected. And there were four stages in this process of judgment and rejection. At the end of Matthew 23 the Lord passed sentence upon it, in the words, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matt. 23:38-39); and the following verse tells us that He “went out, and departed from the temple.” The cross, in the next place, demonstrated that the Jews had rejected their God. The chief priests said, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15). Still the long-suffering of God lingered; and the apostle Peter urged repentance on the nation, that their sins might be blotted out, so that the times of refreshing might come from the presence of the Lord, and that Jesus Christ might be sent back to them (Acts 3). This new dealing of God with His people continued until Stephen; and then the nation rejected the testimony of the Holy Spirit, even as they had that of Christ. It was now all over with the Jewish nation; and yet it was more than thirty years after this before God publicly, and in the face of the whole world, removed His candlestick by the destruction of Jerusalem, which was the “judicial end of Jewish history.” And the point to be observed is this: that the responsibility of Jerusalem, as God’s candlestick, remained until she was judicially and publicly removed. As another has said: “Jerusalem was the seat of God’s testimony. His candlestick had been there. I need not insist amongst Christians that the light and the presence of God were spiritually dwelling in the midst of Christians. Nevertheless, Jerusalem’s responsibility and her position before the world only ceased in her destruction by the judgment of God. After this, God’s candlestick, in a terrestrial sense, was in the professing church. Till then, Christians had been, to the eye of the world, a sect of the Jews” (Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, vol. 5).