God from the very earliest time in man’s history brings in what the Book of Revelation calls the “everlasting gospel.” How remarkable a phrase is this! Many a man has read and cited these words in Revelation 14; many have thought of them, and some have explained the thought unwisely, no doubt. The phrase never occurs except in this one place. Why is it called the “everlasting gospel”? There is always a propriety and a force in every word of Scripture.
In the last book of the New Testament the Spirit of God recalls the first revelation of Christ in the Old Testament. In the garden of Eden, in the paradise that was blighted and lost by sin, God did not fail to point to the Seed of the woman — the bruised Seed of the woman — that was to bruise the serpent’s head. Is not this gospel? Has it not been blessed gospel from the very first? Is it not also the gospel to the very last — “everlasting gospel”? There is as yet no allusion to His being sacrificed for us. This could not be until offering or sacrifices distinctly came in. Nor was there yet a revelation of Him as Saviour of His people from their sins. His people, of course, had to be called first, and their ruin shown first and last, salvation being fitly explained afterwards. It is not the notion of priesthood. It is not the figure of a captain. Still less is it the truth of the head of the church. All these things were revealed in their due season. But the last book in the New Testament sends you back to the first book of the Old, and thus you hear the blessed voice of Christ, as it were, reverberating through all Scripture an “everlasting gospel.” And why so? Because God always takes pleasure in saving souls, and, in order to save sinners, there must always be an “everlasting gospel.”
W. Kelly