EVERY Christian of spiritual intelligence must have felt more or less fully the peculiar character of the book on the study of which we now enter. “The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him.” It is evident that the Lord Jesus is viewed here, not in His place of intimacy as the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father, but in one of comparative distance. It is His revelation, but, moreover, the revelation which God gave Him Somewhat similar is that remarkable expression which has perplexed so many in the gospel of Mark (chap. 8:32), “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man: no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” He is the servant Son of God all through that gospel; and it is the perfection of a servant not to know what his lord doeth-to know, if we may so say, only what he is told. Here, Christ receives a revelation from God; for, however exalted, it is the position He took as man which comes out conspicuously in the Revelation. And what makes this the more striking is that, of all the inspired writers of the New Testament, none dwells with such fullness upon His supreme and divine glory as John in his gospel. In the Revelation, on the contrary, it is the very same John who brings out with the greatest detail His human glory.
In keeping with this, the Revelation is “to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass.” How very different is the tone of John 15:15, “Henceforth I call you not servants,” and also of John 16 speaking of the Spirit, “He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine; therefore said I that he shall take of mine and shall show it unto you.” So we see through the gospel from first to last, that the design of the Spirit is to give the disciples the title and consciousness of their sonship with and through Jesus, the Son of God in the highest sense. Thus in chap. 1. 11, 12, “He came unto his own,-and his own [people] received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” And again, after His death and resurrection, the Lord says, chap. xx. 17, “Go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and your God.” Of course they were servants also, and there is not a shade of incongruity. Still, the difference of the relationships is immense; and the Revelation clearly is addressed to the lower of these relations. The reason, I presume, is, partly because God is therein making known a certain course of earthly events with which the lower position is most in harmony (the higher one of sons being more suitable to communion with the Father and with His Son); and partly because God seems here to prepare the way for dealing with His people in the latter day, when their position as His servants will be more or less manifested, but not the enjoyment of nearness as sons-I allude to the interval after the removal of the Church.
The next words greatly confirm this; for the Lord “sent and signified [it] by His angel unto His servant John.” That is, the prophetic communication is made, not directly, but through the intervention of an angel; and John is no longer spoken of as “the disciple whom Jesus loved, which also leaned upon his breast at supper,” but as “his servant,” “who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, [and] of all things that he saw.” It has to be remarked here, that the last “and” ought to disappear, which makes no small difference in the sense. For “all things that he saw” must not be regarded as a third and additional division, but rather as explaining or limiting the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. The visions of John constituted the word and testimony spoken of, and thus the true rendering is, “Who bare record of (or testified) the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ-whatsoever things he saw.” Compare chap. xxii. 8.
Very different, again, is the revelation of God here and the testimony which Jesus bears in this book, from what we find in John's gospel. The Word of God there is the Lord Jesus Himself, who in the beginning was with God and was God; the full and personal expression of God, and that not merely as the Creator of all things, but in perfect grace. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, (the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” In the Revelation, on the contrary, even when He is spoken of as the Word of God, it is as the expression of divine judgment, because the whole book is eminently judicial. “He was clothed with a vesture clipped in blood; and his name is called the Word of God” (Rev. 19:13). So too, in the gospel, the testimony that Jesus renders is to the Father, as it is throughout the Father's joy to bear witness of the Son. Indeed, the Son Himself, towards the close of His ministry, sums up the pith and character of the testimony there in these few words, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).
All this makes the distinctive features of the Revelation to stand out in broader contrast. For throughout the book the very name of the Father occurs but rarely, and even where it does, the object is in no way the revelation of His love as Father to His family. In Rev. 1:1; 3:21, and xiv. 6, He is spoken of as such in relation to Jesus only. The grand subject is, God manifested in His judgments here below, with a view to the manifestation of the Lord Jesus, “King of kings and Lord of lords.” Even when the churches are in question, it is given about them to another, not to themselves directly.
“Blessed [is] he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time [is] at hand.” What a serious mistake in the face of such words as these for Christians to think that this book or any part of it is unprofitable, and that it may be safely set aside either as too difficult to understand, or, if understood, as having no practical bearing upon the soul! It is remarkable indeed with what special care the Lord has commended it, not only here at the commencement, but at the close, where we read, “These sayings [are] faithful and true, and the Lord God of the spirits of the prophets sent his angel to show his servants the things which must shortly come to pass. Behold I come quickly; blessed [is] he which keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.” It would seem that the Lord's prescient eye anticipated in such warnings the neglect with which the Apocalypse would be treated by His servants, and that He was thus solemnly guarding them against it by commending the book emphatically to their study and use. It is a little remarkable, by the way, that a somewhat similar admonition occurs in the close of 1 Thessalonians, which was the first of Paul's epistles, and the one which above all others develops the grand truth of the coming of the Lord. In Rev. 1:3, the Lord takes pains to encourage every possible class of people who might come in contact with the book. Not only the individual who reads is pronounced blessed, but those who hear its words and keep (or observe) what is written therein. And certain I am that the Lord does not fail to encourage His saints who count on His assured faithfulness and blessing. He has never turned aside from using it for good, and especially in times of danger, spite of all contempt or perversion.
The objection to the study of prophecy arises from a root of unbelief, sometimes deeply hidden, which supposes all blessing to depend on the measure in which a subject bears immediately on one's self or one's circumstances. Thus when some cry out, That is not essential, I would ask, Essential to what? If they mean essential to salvation, we agree. But then on what a ground do such objectors stand! The anxiety to examine only what they deem indispensable to salvation shows that they have no consciousness of salvation themselves, and that this need of their souls is the only thing they are alive to. Now all hold that not prophecy but the gospel should be put before the unconverted. The coming of Christ in glory, which is the center of unfulfilled prophecy, ought to be terror to their hearts, instead of a mere question for interesting discussion. To the believer, indeed, His coming is “that blessed hope.” We wait for the Son of God from heaven, and we await Him not only without anxiety but with joy, because we know Him to be “Jesus which delivered us from the wrath to come.” But for any man, who has not peace by faith in Him dead and risen, to occupy his mind either with this, the Church's hope, or with the events of which prophecy treats, is but a diversion of which the enemy can make fearful use, if it be not a proof of utter deadness of conscience as to his own condition before God,-though I am far from saying, that God may not make use of that truth to arouse it. On the other hand, prophecy is essential to our due appreciation of Christ's glory and of the glory that is to be revealed. To slight prophecy, therefore, is to despise unwittingly that glory and the grace which has made it known to us. It is the plainest evidence of the selfishness of our hearts, which wants every word of God to be directly about ourselves.
God takes for granted that His children love to hear whatever will exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. The result, too, is striking and serious: where Christ is the object of our hearts, all is peace; where our own happiness is the first thought, there is disappointment and uncertainty.
Another form in which this egotism meets us, and must be watched against, among those who do hear the words of this prophecy, is the assumption that its visions are about the Church-that the seals, trumpets, and vials, for instance, are of chief value and interest, because they concern ourselves (i. e. the Church) either in the past or in the future. But this is a fundamental mistake, as we may gather even from the words of the verse before us. The divine ground alleged for the importance of taking heed to this book lies not in the time being come, or our being in the circumstances described, but in their being near; “for the time is at hand.” If it could profit the saints of God in the apostle's days, who were not personally concerned in the judgments, equally at least may it avail for us. The Lord grant that we may increasingly value the place in which He has set us, peacefully “knowing these things before.”
Ver. 4-6. “John to the seven churches which are in Asia." Even the three verses already looked at give us a certain measure of insight into the peculiar features of this book, which are obviously distinct from the other parts of the New Testament. God reverts a great deal to the principles on which He had acted in Old Testament times. One can see that the positive edification of the Church is not the subject, nor the unfolding of God's special dealings in mercy. But we have judgment of evil, whether in the churches or in the world. In perfect harmony with this we have God introducing Himself to His people by a different style and title. “Grace unto you and peace from him which is, and which was, and which is to come.” It is generally what answers in the New Testament to Jehovah in the Old. There is this peculiarity, that He is here revealed as first He that is, then He that was, and He that is to come. The “I am” takes precedence, but He was before, and is the coming One. God of old revealed Himself to Israel as the unchangeable One, “the same yesterday, to-day and forever.” But now God speaks in the language of the Gentiles, and, by these words— “Him which is, and which was, and which is to come,” translates as it were that name of Jehovah, never before so communicated to them. He is going to return to His ancient people Israel; but before He does so, there must necessarily be a sweeping judgment upon the professing mass that calls itself by the name of the Church. But when God has set Christendom aside, He will bring in Israel again-no longer on the ground of law, but of grace. The law executed death on sinful man, but the grace of God executed it on the person of the Son of God. In Heb. 2:9 we have it said “that He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man.” As God, in the death of the Lord Jesus, has given a stronger expression of His hatred of sin than in any other dealing, so in proportion, and as an answer to His death, does grace now flow out to the very worst. In that day Israel will know this for themselves.
The style in which the Holy Ghost is here introduced is as strikingly characteristic of the book as the way in which the Lord Jesus Himself was spoken of. “Grace [be] unto you and peace.... from the seven Spirits which are before his throne.” Of course, the same Holy Ghost, known as the “One Spirit” in other parts of God's word, is here mentioned as “the seven Spirits which are before His throne.” He is spoken of as the “One Spirit,” where it is a question of the one body, the Church, as in Eph. 4:4. But here it is the “seven Spirits;” because, when God has finished His present work in the Church, He will infallibly cut off the faithless Gentile, and will no longer gather Jews and Gentiles into one body on the earth. On the contrary, Israel is to be put above the Gentiles. It will be a different state of things altogether; and the Holy Ghost, therefore, is regarded in His various fullness of operations (as He is in connection with Messiah in Isa. 11), and not in His heavenly unity. It is added, “which are before his throne,” because the main subject of this book is the government of God; first, providentially and preparatorily in the seals, trumpets, and vials; next, personally at Christ's appearing till the kingdom be given up and God be all in all.
In general, when we have “grace be unto you and peace,” it is “from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” But in this place the order is different: first, it is “from him which is, which was, and which is to come,” i.e., from Jehovah; then, “from the seven Spirits,” &c.; and, lastly, “from Jesus Christ,” &c. I think this departure from the usual order is because Jesus is here spoken of, not so much as our Lord, neither in His divine glory as Son of God, but in special reference to the earth and His rightful claims over the world. He is “the faithful witness.” All other witnesses had been unfaithful. He alone had been the faithful witness for God on this earth. But, besides this, He was “the first-begotten of the dead” —the first person who bad entered into resurrection-life in that wonderful way, so that corruption can never touch it. “Being raised from the dead, he dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.” Moreover, He is “the prince of the kings of the earth.” Yet all these things are connected with what He was, is, and will be as man. It is Jesus viewed in His earthly connections. His intermediate relation to the Church (as its Head, and as the great High-priest) disappears, as not falling in with the design.
But mark the beauty of what follows. The moment Jesus is presented to the Church, and is announced as “the faithful witness, the first-begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth,” she can contain herself no longer. The saints interrupt, if we may so say, the message of John, and break forth into a song of praise— “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father.” He satisfies the affections by His love, He has cleared the conscience by His blood, and has put us in such glorious relationships as He stands in Himself to His God and Father.
There is a little alteration that should be made in this verse, which, to my mind, greatly adds to the sweetness of it. In the correct text it is “Unto him that loveth us,” not “that loved us.” It is quite true that “Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it.” Eph. 5 shows us this;-equally true this He “loved me and gave himself for me,” as in Gal. 2 But the first of Revelation shows us the present love of Jesus. It is not that He is always washing us from our sins: He has washed us with His own blood once for all, and does not require so to wash us again. There is, however, the practical cleansing day by day-the washing of water by the word; but this is not what is spoken of here, but in His blood a finished work, and one that lasts all through to His praise. But how blessed it is to know, while this is the very book that unfolds to us the ways and means by which God was about to put aside His unfaithful people, and to judge the evil of the world,-that in the midst of all this, we can look up in the full confidence of His present abiding love, and say— “Unto him that loveth us, and washed us from our sins in his blood, to him be glory and dominion unto the ages of the ages. Amen.”
Verse 7. After the salutation, “Grace be to you and peace,” &c., we had an interruption. It was the voice of the heavenly saints breaking forth into a strain of praise. Now we have (ver. 7) those solemn but blessed words, “Behold, he cometh with the clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.” This is not a part of the song, but a testimony quite distinct from it. And we often find these two things: that which forms the communion of a saint of God, and also that which is or should be his testimony.
The communion of each other is a happy thing; but it is the presentation of Christ and the knowledge of our portion in Him which calls out worship. Besides this, the believer is acquainted by God with what is coming upon the world. And this is a part of our testimony, but not the theme with which the heart should be most filled. With a person who merely dwells upon prophecy, you will never find much fellowship. It would be very wrong to despise prophecy, and he who does will be sure to fall into some snare or other. But if the Christian is always occupied with the details of prophecy, there never will be power for heavenly worship; nor does it necessarily deliver a man from the ways of the world. A person may be able to talk well enough about the Jews, about the judgments on the beast, &c., and yet may go on walking with the world. But when the heart is occupied with Christ, and these things come in as a sort of background, then we shall find that the Holy Spirit will show us “things to come.” So, in 2 Peter 1:19, it is said, speaking of the word of prophecy, “Whereunto ye do dwell that ye take heed.” It is important that I should see what is coming, and that I should not indulge myself in an easy path here below. To know that the Lord is coming to judge the habitable world, ought never to be a comfort to those who are swimming with its current. But there is something else that should be the delight of the soul. When does the day-light dawn and the day-star arise in our hearts? Peter does not here speak of the day coming on the world, but affirms that the word of prophecy is an admirable lamp until you get heavenly light, and the day-star arises in your heart-the hope of the coming of the Lord Jesus as the Church's proper portion. This is never presented in scripture as a bare prophetic event. Christ waited for and known as One who may come at any time to gather us together to Himself-such is the form taken by our blessed hope. It is the apostle Paul who specially brings out the hope of the Church. John, too, looks at Christ as the Bridegroom-at what He is for the heart.
When the Lord comes to receive us, He is not said to come “with the clouds.” When He ascended, a cloud received Him Even so will it be with us: we shall be caught up together in clouds to meet Him. But here He is manifested for judgment of the world, and especially of the Jews. “Behold, he cometh with the clouds.” This is a revelation known and testified by the heavenly saints, but not their own joy in communion. “Even so, Amen.”
In Colossians we have the association of the saints with Christ very fully brought out (Chaps. ii. iii.) He is my life, and I am one with Him. Thus, when I find Christ my Savior is dead to the world, in Him I become dead to the world also. I find not only my treasure there, but the very religion of the world judged, because Christ was cast out by the world's religion. When He comes with the clouds, every eye shall see Him But this will not be the case when He comes to fetch His Church. God is gathering the friends of Christ round the name of Christ now. The Church is a body that is called while Christ is not seen, and the Christian, having his portion in Him now, is hidden with Him. “Your life is hid with Christ in God.”
In this verse, then, it is not the Lord coming to meet His own and gather them to Himself in the air; but “every eye shall see him... and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.” When the Lord comes to take the Church, it will be far otherwise. God has joined us to the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven, according to all the efficacy of His death and resurrection. As far as the spirit is concerned, this is true now, and it will be true of the body itself when Christ comes. The resurrection of Christ calls me to live thoroughly to God, as the death of Christ makes me as truly dead in principle to the world as if I were already buried. In practice alas! we have to own sad falling short. Still, says the apostle, “your life is hid,” &c. It is the life of Christ you have received. As long as Christ is hidden, you are hidden also. But the time is coming when this will no longer be the case. “When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” When Christ comes to receive the Church, no eye will see Him but those for whom Christ comes. When the world sees Christ, it will be when He comes in glory, bringing His saints with Him-revealed from heaven with the angels of His power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God (the Gentiles), and on them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Jews.) If the world were to see Christ coming alone in glory before the Church is caught up to Him, it would not be true that “when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” The world can never see Christ coming to receive the saints, because then they must have seen Him without them and before them; whereas the same moment of His appearing is to be the epoch of our appearing with Him. And this does not merely rest upon a word: it is the doctrine of the whole passage. And the same truth is shown and confirmed by other proofs throughout the New Testament.
In Christ's death we are dead to the world; in His resurrection we are risen, and are therefore to have our hearts set upon heavenly things before we see them. And more than that. Christ is not always to be hidden: He is about to be manifested, and when He is, we, too, shall be manifested along with Him It is plain that Christ and the Church must have been together before they are manifested to the world, if they are to appear together. In Rev. 19:11 we have this taught beyond all doubt. “I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse, and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True,” &c. “And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.” The horse is an emblem of power, the white horse of prosperous or victorious power. It is the Lord Jesus coming in judgment, which will be the time when He comes in the clouds of heaven. These armies that are seen following Him out of heaven, clothed in fine linen, are not angels. The text says that the fine linen (βύσσινον) is the righteousness of saints. And the remarkable thing is that, although angels are described in chap. xv. as being “clothed in pure and white linen,” a different word (λινον) is used. It is the heavenly saints who are described in chapter xix. as the armies of heaven, &c. They were in heaven, therefore, before the way was opened for Christ to come out in judgment; and they follow Him from heaven when He comes. I doubt not that angels are in His train also, as appears from other texts; but they do not seem spoken of here.
There are thus two important and different stages of the Lord's second coming. First of all, He will come to receive His people to Himself, and the Church ought always to be waiting for this. In the next place, He will come to judge the world, when He has already taken up the heavenly saints, and wickedness rises to its head apace. Then, suddenly, the heavens will open, and Christ the Lord Jesus will come and the Church with Him, appearing together in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Is it asked howl Israel was not told how they were to be delivered out of Egypt. The Lord was going to deliver them; but He did not explain it before it came to pass. And the Lord is going to bring the Church to heaven by His coming Besides this, He will judge the wickedness of the world, and then the Church will come with Him.
Verse 8. Here, it seems to me, that we have God, as such, rather than the Lord Jesus, uttering the titles of His various glory, as a sort of seal of the foregoing and an introductory basis for what follows, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God that is, and that was, and that is to come, the Almighty.” The first is evidently a name most suited to the book which so admirably closes the written communications of God. This, and all the rest of His characters here announced, would be deeply necessary for the saints to remember, whether for us before the trial, or for those who shall be called on to pass through it.
Verse 9 is not quite correctly given. “I, John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation.” The word “also” is left out in the best copies. And what follows should be read thus: “your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience in Christ.” They all went together. He purposely speaks of himself, not as a member of the body of Christ, but as their brother and companion in tribulation (perhaps because, after the Church is taken away, there will still be saints on earth and our brethren). John puts himself along with them. The Holy Ghost loves us, whatever specialties of privilege may come in, as much as possible to take our place along with the saints of God at all times. The book of Revelation Was written for the Church, just when it was drifting into a state of ruin. In chap. vi. we have some of these companions in tribulation. But what they say proves that they do not belong to the Church. “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood....?” We find a proper Christian appeal to God in the case of Stephen- “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” The Christian is always called to suffer in the world. These Apocalyptic saints will understand that the Lord is about to judge, and they will ask Him to do so. It would be wrong now to ask this, for it is the day of grace still. Faith habitually takes its language from what God is doing, and God is dealing in grace and not in judgment now. We are called to retire from the way of the world, and our hearts should be connected with all that is glorious and heavenly, for this is the present object of Christ. The white robes given to these sufferers, in chapter vi., are an evident mark of God's approbation. They were to rest till their brethren who should be killed as they were should be fulfilled. Judgment must then take its course.
“In the tribulation and kingdom and patience.” It will be the kingdom of Christ in power when the tribulation and patience are all over. But now the circumstances of that kingdom involve tribulation. The kingdom of heaven, as presented in Daniel, &c., was not a mystery. It means the reign of heaven on (or over) the earth. Christ, instead of getting His rightful place as Messiah when He came, was rejected, and went up to heaven; and thus it is that the mysteries of the kingdom come in. Hence it is that there must now be suffering and endurance even in the kingdom of Christ. When Christ appears in glory, all this will be at an end. Then will come the kingdom and power. (See Rev. 12) It is the “kingdom and patience in Christ” now. That word “patience” is to be weighed well. We have communion with Jesus in this patient expectation; we wait for what He waits. A man that is born anew now is not in the kingdom and power, but in the kingdom and patience in Christ Jesus. Hence suffering here below naturally follows. So here the apostle John was thrown into the isle of Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus.
Thus, the ground on which John addresses the churches is not expressly as an apostle, but as their brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience in Christ Jesus. One remarkable trait which Christianity has brought out is, that God has opened to us another kingdom of an order differing from the earthly or Jewish one-a kingdom in which there is tribulation, as far as natural circumstances are concerned, and patient hope the corresponding and distinguishing grace. But the Church has slipped out of its place of suffering and endurance; it has sought and taken the place of power in the world-the place that had belonged only to the Jews of right, and to the Gentile empires in divine sovereignty because of Israel's sins. In the presence of failure and of evil it becomes no one to be high-minded; where there is real separation from evil, there will not be this. Wherever it is a question of ceasing to do evil, there is great need of looking to the Lord, lest one should say, “this is what I have done, and what others have not done.” Say rather it is all of the Lord's grace. But those Christians who desire to stand aloof from the evil around them are in evident danger of giving themselves a little bit of credit for doing something that other people are not doing. In the presence of evil that we have left, the effects of which we have still to judge in ourselves, it is not a time to indulge in great thoughts of ourselves.
When God is executing His purposes towards the earth, His people will have fellowship with what He is doing, as in the land of Egypt, in the wilderness, and in Canaan. But when we look at Christianity, it is not a question of earthly purposes, but of Jesus crucified through weakness, and of power put forth to raise Him again from the dead. There will be again a most solemn dealing on God's part when Christ will judge not only the living but the dead. But for us the fire of God's wrath has fallen upon Christ; His judgment was upon the head of His beloved Son. And now God is imprinting on the hearts of His people heavenly glory. He is forming their character by these two great facts which meet in Christ; the one is the cross, and the other is the glory into which He ascended. What God has thus done in Christ is what He wants us to have communion with. As the Israelites had the law engraven on stones, so by the Spirit should Christ be written on our hearts and ways. The life of a creature may be lost, but what the believer has is the life of Christ; and can the life of Christ ever perish? Christ went through death in order that He might give a character of life that death could not touch. When the Lord God made man, He made him out of the dust of the field, but He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and therefore is it that the soul is immortal. He got this life direct from the breath of the Lord God. Sin, however, may touch it, and the second death-eternal misery in the lake of fire for soul and body. But that which Christ breathed after He rose from the dead (John 20:22) was a life which death never could conquer, nor even assail more, over which nothing had a claim; and such is the life of every believer.
And yet there are those who fancy that the life of a believer may be lost I can only say that God does not deal with those who so think according to their thoughts of Him The life is as strong in the Arminian as in the Calvinist, because it is the life of Christ. When a man is conscious that he has failed and sinned against God, he is in great danger of thinking that his blessing is gone. But no; you have gone against the life, and against Him who is the source of it; but the life itself is there still, and cannot be touched; it is eternal. Again, where a person is occupied in looking at the spiritual life within him, he will never have comfort. The proof that I am a Christian is, that I have received the testimony of God's love to me in Jesus.
Ver. 10. “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day.” The “Lord's day” is not at all the same thing as the “day of the Lord.” The same expression (κνριακὀς) was used with regard to the Lord's supper, because it was not a common meal, but a holy and divinely instituted memorial of the Lord. So the Lord's day is not a common day, but one specially set apart, not as a command, but as the expression of the highest privilege, for the worship of the Lord. The sabbath was the last day which Jehovah claimed out of man's week; the Lord's day is the first day of God's week, and in a sense, we may say, of His eternity. The Christian begins with the Lord's day, that this may, as it were, give a character to all the days of the week. In spirit, the Christian is risen, and every day belongs to the Lord. Therefore is he to bring up the standard of each day that follows in the week to that blessed beginning, the Lord's day. To bring down the Lord's day to the level of another day only shows how gladly the heart drinks in anything that takes away somewhat from Christ. The man who only obeys Christ because he must do so has not got the spirit of obedience at all. We are sanctified not only to the blood of sprinkling, but to the obedience, of Jesus Christ-to the obedience of sons under grace, not to that of mere servants under law. The lawlessness that despises the Lord's day is hateful; but that is no reason why Christians should destroy its character, by confounding the Lord's day, the new creation-day, with the sabbath of nature or of the law.
On that day, then, bright visions of glory passed before the prophet's eye. First, John tells us what he saw on that occasion: this is what we have in the rest of the first chapter. (Verses 12-20.) It was the vision of the glory of Christ's person, in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. “The things which are” (ver. 1 9) we have in chapters ii. iii., which describe the condition of the churches at that time. The third division of the Revelation consists of “the things which shall be after these.” The version “hereafter” is vague, for it might mean thousands of years after. “After these” expresses the sense of the phrase much better. It means what was about to happen immediately after “the things which are” now-i.e. after the Church-condition. These we have from chapter iv. to the end of the book. The “things which are” continue still (in the most important application of the book). And what next? “What is about to happen after these things,” when the Church has ceased to subsist on earth.
Let us look a little at what the apostle saw. First of all, he hears behind him “a loud voice, as of a trumpet, saying, What thou seest write in a book (or roll), and send to the seven churches: unto Ephesus,” cite. (Ver. 11.) “And I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And being turned I saw seven golden candlesticks” (or lamp-stands).
These were evidently derived from the light of the tabernacle. Only in this case the lamp-stands were separate, so that the Lord could walk between them. They were golden, as in divine righteousness set here to give light. In the midst of the seven candlesticks he sees not exactly the Son of man, but “one like unto [the or a] Son of man.” He is really God, but He is thus seen here. From John 5 we may learn the force of this, and why it is, in this instance, Son of man, and not Son of God. The Son of God is the one who quickens, because He is a divine person; He quickens in communion with the Father. Thus, giving life, He is called the Son of God; but as Son of man, He executes judgment, because God will have Him honored in the very nature in which man outraged Him. This at once shows us the bearing of what we have in the Revelation. It is as Son of man on the earth that Christ is here presented; and as such He is about to execute judgment upon the seven churches, as well as by and by upon the world.
The garment down to the foot,” with which He was clothed, shows not activity of work, but rather dignified priestly judgment. The “gold” of the girdle was the symbol of divine righteousness, as linen is the symbol of what is displayed before men. “His head and his hairs were white as white wool, Is snow.” So that, besides being the Son of man, and being seen in the garb arid place of priestly discrimination, there are the emblems too of divine glory, as appears by comparing this passage with Dan. 7 What is said of the Ancient of days by Daniel is applied to the Son of man by John-the Ancient of days being the eternal God. John sees here that the Son of man is Himself the Ancient of days. The same who wrote “The Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and “the Word was made flesh,” &c., sees also now in prophetic vision the combination of humanity with the emblems proper to Deity in the person of the Son of man. The head and hairs, being “white as white wool, as snow,” show fullness of divine wisdom.
“His eyes like a flame of fire” set forth the penetration that marked Him in judgment. “His feet are like brass,” &c. They could not contract any defilement, and are unbending in judicial strength among men. (Verses 12-15.) His voice expressed resistless power and majesty outside the control of men.
Such He is personally. Relative description follows in verse 16. “And he had in his right hand seven stars,” the emblem of the angels, or representative rulers, of the seven churches. The word of judgment went out of His mouth; because in the Lord Jesus Christ to speak the word is at once to strike the blow. “He spake, and it was done.” “His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.” Such He was officially. The churches' angels were represented as “stars” only, as being, of course, subordinate to the Lord.