THE OPENED DOOR: AND
CREATION-SONG
Revelation 4
One may well shrink from the risk of dimming, by the
employment of any human words, the grandeur of such a passage as this. It is
a passage which brings us not only to the threshold of Heaven, but opens a
vista into Heaven itself. We also now enter on an entirely new portion of
the Apocalypse. It was the golden candlesticks with the Son of Man walking
in their midst, and the messages to the seven representative Asiatic
Churches, which hitherto engaged the attention of the Seer of Patmos. He is
now to pass within the Palace gates into the presence-chamber of the King.
The "former trumpet-voice" summons him to higher manifestations.
It is, moreover, the Future—the future of the
Church militant and then the glories of the Church triumphant—which are
henceforth to engage his thoughts, "Come up here and I will show you the
things which must be hereafter." That 'hereafter' is to occupy
the whole sequel of the Book. The present chapter and the one following
present to us in glowing coloring the scenery of Heaven. They give, as it
has been appropriately called, the description of the celestial
council-chamber—also the words of the threefold song which thrills on the
lips of its glorified inhabitants. It is the first of this triple theme of
praise which we mainly listen to in this vision.
As we might well imagine, when the privileged Disciple
gets his initial glance into that Heaven of Heavens, it is the magnificent
Throne of Deity, the focus and center of all, which arrests his gaze. And
combining the description of the chapter with others which follow, this
grandest of visions—truly a Revelation of Revelations—consists in the
manifestation of God as the God of Redemption. It is the FATHER (His
redemption-name, in His paternal covenant relation to His people) who is
seated on the Throne. The second Person in the adorable Trinity is
subsequently represented under the name and form of a LAMB—the emblem of
His mediatorial character and work. The seven lamps of Fire (flaming
torches), burning before the throne (like 'the seven spirits of God' of the
opening chapter), form the appropriate symbol of the HOLY SPIRIT in the
plenitude of His gifts to His Church, enlightening, purifying, refining—"the
Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of burning."
The Throne itself was like a jasper and a carnelian
stone, the emblems alike of purity and justice; for the jasper, whatever it
was, is spoken of in a later chapter as being "as clear as crystal." While
encircling all, was the Rainbow of emerald—the refreshing memorial of the
covenant of grace—tempering the awe which must have been felt by the
emission, ever and always, from "out of the throne" of the old Sinai symbols
of judgment, "lightnings and thunderings and voices." "Green (emerald),"
says the best of the old commentators, "is of all colors the most agreeable;
. . . and when God represents himself as the jasper and carnelian, He
exhibits Himself in His holiness and glory; . . . but the green rainbow is a
mark of the Divine condescension and forbearance. . . . We are not able to
fix our eyes on the Divine majesty and holiness—they frighten us away; but
the friendliness of God allures us and inspires us with an assured
confidence." Such were the leading features in the vision.
But there were, besides, other imposing and significant
accessories. There was before the Throne "a glassy sea like unto crystal." A
needful space thus intervened between these great and glorious
figurations and the person of the spectator; while the Sea of glass itself
suggested the calm majestic repose of the Heavenly Temple, in contrast with
the discords and disharmonies of the earthly. Strange and marvelous, too,
were other forms in immediate proximity with the throne. "Round about the
throne were twenty-four thrones" (lesser thrones), upon which twenty-four
elders were sitting in the symbols of priesthood and royalty, of endurance
and victory, arrayed in white clothing, and having on their heads crowns of
gold. These assessors were doubtless representative beings—the
representatives of a double twelve—the twelve Patriarchs or tribes of Israel
under the old, and the twelve Apostles of the new dispensation—those same
who are subsequently heard blending their voices in the twofold song
descriptive of both economies, "The Song of Moses the servant of God and the
Song of the Lamb."
Nor is this all. "In the midst of the throne—(perhaps,
rather "in front of the throne"), and round about the throne—were four
Living Creatures full of eyes before and behind," and which assumed the
fourfold similitude of a lion, a young ox, the face of a man, and an eagle.
These six-winged beings were also doubtless representative; and though other
figurative meanings, as we shall see, may be attached to them, they were
intended, in the first instance, to symbolize, not as in the case of the
twenty-four elders, the later and more glorious results of Redemption, but
all the Creatures of God, or rather, Creation itself, animate and
inanimate. They are the embodiment of creature perfection,
creation-life—Strength, Patience, Intellect, Activity—and as such they have
their assigned place and mission to celebrate the glory of the Great
Supreme. Their unresting song, struck by the key-note of the Book, is this,
"Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to
come."
But they sing not that song alone—it is an antiphonal
strain. Their ascription is immediately followed by a repeater from
the twenty-four elders, who take their blood-bought crowns and cast them
before the throne—by the expressive act disowning all claim of merit or
righteousness.
It is specially, however, to be noted, that this their
opening song, is not a Redemption-anthem; it is not even the anthem
of Providence—both of these are reserved. It is the earlier—the
anterior ascription which had been sung of old by the morning stars at
Creation's birth—"And when those living creatures give glory and honor and
thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives to the ages of the ages, the
twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and worship
Him who lives unto the ages of the ages, and cast their crowns before the
throne, saying, "You are worthy, O Lord (or, as it is in some translations,
"Our Lord"—our God in covenant—differing thus from the song of the four
living creatures), to receive glory" (or rather) "the glory, and the
honor and the power" (which these Your representative creatures have
rendered You), for You have (not redeemed, but) created all
things, and for Your pleasure they are and were created."
This rapid and superficial outline of the vision itself
will be better filled in and supplemented, as we endeavor to ascertain
its practical bearing on the case of the Apostle of Patmos and on
ourselves.
(1.) As to the special meaning and lessons it
conveyed to John. In this vision, the truths and symbols regarding
the Church on earth which were set before him in the first chapter, were, if
it may be so expressed, authenticated and countersigned in Heaven. It was
shown to him that they formed as glorious a reality in the upper, as in the
lower Sanctuary. A Jew, and familiar with the writings of the Prophets, he
could hardly fail, as he now gazed within that opened door, to call to mind
two similar pictorial revelations, unfolded at an earlier era to Seers of
kindred spirit and temperament with himself. The first of these was that
remarkable vision given to the Prophet Isaiah when just entering on his
great career. He stood, as he himself tells us, under the entrance of the
holy Temple of Jerusalem. All at once gates and inner veil seemed
mysteriously uplifted or withdrawn, and he was permitted to gaze far within,
on those awful recesses, which even no prophet was permitted to enter—the
very Holy of Holies itself. There he saw the Jehovah of Israel seated on a
throne—"seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe
filled the temple." The two bright-winged seraphim as a royal guard stood on
either side. Each had six radiant wings: with two of these the head was
covered, in token of reverence—with two the feet, in token partly of
imperfection, partly of humility—two were outstretched as if
ready for flight, in token of willing obedience.
It was a seasonable Apocalypse to the untried and
misgiving youthful messenger, at a time when the horizon was black with
storm and disaster. The Assyrian was about to make his nest in the cedars of
Lebanon, ready to swoop down on the doomed and defenseless kingdom of Judah.
And more depressing to the fervid spirit of the young Prophet was the
inveterate obstinacy of the hearts he had been called to quicken. Was
his mission to be surrendered in despair? Will he use his prophetic
foresight only to proclaim "Ichabod" (the glory has departed) in the midst
of a guilty people and a hopeless cause; and perhaps abandon his own faith
in the God of his fathers? Is the cruel tyrant who sat enthroned in the
palaces of Nineveh, henceforth to rule the earth without a rival? A glimpse
within that temple told him the reassuring truth. There was there a Living
Being mightier than the Assyrian king Sennacherib. His name was "The King,
the Lord Almighty," surrounded with ministering spirits, swift of wing in
his service, and reverentially waiting His commands. And even though, at the
very time, he was told that the cities were to be "wasted without
inhabitant, and the houses without men, and the land to be utterly
desolate"—yet the Lord being in His holy place, the children of Zion might
well be joyful in their King.
The earth would never be without its Ruler—Judah would
never be without its God. In the blinding splendors of that temple-vision,
he could exclaim in trembling transport, "My eyes have seen the King!" What
though earthly armies should be let loose on the people and the land he
loved, his ears had just heard glorious Creatures chanting the song, (and so
loud and fervid was the ascription, that post and pillar and cedar-gate
shook to their foundations,) "Holy, Holy, Holy! the whole earth is full of
His glory."
It is enough—he is nerved for more than half a century of
toil and heroic endurance, "The Lord reigns; let the people tremble—He sits
between the cherubim; let the earth be moved. The Lord is great in Zion; and
He is high above all the people. Let them praise Your great and awesome
name; for it is Holy."
The other kindred vision, which could not fail to be
familiar to John, was the still sublimer one given in a later age to the
Prophet Ezekiel. That mourning exile was located, with many of his
banished countrymen, on the banks of the river Chebar. The land of their
fathers was lying desolate—the city sitting now uninhabited, that was once
full of people. A whirlwind seemed to come from the far north, a great
cloud, and a fire infolding itself, chariot-like in motion—a series of
mighty wheels of strange complexity intersecting one another, were turned by
means of four living creatures. "Their faces looked like this: Each of the
four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a
lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an
eagle." While high over all was "the likeness of a throne, as the appearance
of a sapphire stone; and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as
the appearance of a man above upon it." This likeness of the glory of the
Lord was moreover encircled with "the appearance of the rainbow that is in
the cloud in the day of rain."
Ezekiel, like Isaiah, was filled at this time with
saddest anticipations. All around, in the land in which he was a stranger,
he beheld the visible symbols of gigantic regal power, boundless ambition,
savage cruelty. He listened to the crushing story of human tyranny and
wrong. But the vision on the Chebar revealed, in his case too, a mightier
than the mightiest of human kings and tyrants—wheels higher than these
chariot-wheels of Assyria—wheels apparently involved and in confusion,
'wheel within wheel;' but all, when understood, moving in sublime
harmony.
Glorious, mighty beings were impelling them, putting
their shoulders to their gigantic circles; while above all, was a lustrous
throne of sapphire purity and righteousness; and on that throne—not as in
the marble sculptures on which the Prophet's eye must often have gazed, the
gigantic embodiment of brute force—but "the likeness as the appearance of a
man above upon it"—with the bright emblem of grace and love—the encircling
rainbow. What did these picturings reveal to the lonely exile? What did they
tell him? But to bide his time—to fear neither the might of Babylon nor
Assyria; for there was a great Being enthroned over and above the
wheel-like complications and confusions of the lower world, and directing
them all. Himself holy and omnipotent. "Spread out above the heads of
the living creatures was what looked like a surface, sparkling and awesome
like crystal," which was beneath His feet. He had also an army of glorified
creatures doing His pleasure, who would yet vindicate His ways in the
restoration of His people, and in the evolution of good to His Church and to
mankind.
John, the later of the three Jewish Seers, needed a
similar assurance in times of similar darkness and impending woe. He had,
indeed, as we have previously seen, already received the guarantee of the
Church's safety—beholding his Lord walking amid the candlesticks, with the
two-edged sword in His mouth, and holding the stars in His hand. But these
same soul-comforting truths, viewed from the earthly standpoint, are now
further confirmed by this glimpse into the heaven of heavens. Gazing
within that opened door, he too has his apprehensions allayed. He also, like
the two ancestral Prophets, beholds in vision a glorious PERSON, a
personal God, a personal King; not as the earlier Seer did, enveloped in
whirlwind and cloud—but seated on a throne of jasper and carnelian in a
blaze of light—with the clear sea of rock-crystal before Him reflecting His
own glorious image, and angelic servants waiting upon Him, eager to do His
pleasure; while the well-known Rainbow, the Rainbow of God, spanning
the firmament—the rainbow which succeeded the deluge on the earth—was again
seen, the blessed pledge of peace and love!
John knew that the world was on the eve of great events;
that even the apparently immutable throne of the Caesars would soon rock to
its foundation. But what of that? There was one seated on the Throne he now
beheld in that unveiled Heaven, who "lives for the ages of the ages"—a King
above all human kings, a power that would outlive all human dynasties and
empires. "The Lord God Almighty" was the name by which He was adored by
these living Beings. All else might change—HE was unchangeable. Whatever
tribulations may be appointed, the Apostle and the Church will patiently
endure, because they are ordained by Him.
The complicated wheels of Ezekiel are again to
revolve but their revolutions he can now calmly and trustfully contemplate.
With the simple faith of the little child in the dark Temple of Shiloh, as
further truths are to be unfolded to him, he can say—"Speak, Lord, for Your
servant hears."
But though these were the special lessons of the time for
John, there are comforting lessons of another and more general kind, for
us also. We must not think of this vision as one, so to speak,
improvised for a particular occasion—in other words, that it is the
representation of an exceptional scene in Heaven, introductory to the
subsequent unfoldings of the Book. It is a glimpse or symbol of what Heaven
is now, and what Heaven will be to all of us who enter within
the gates into the city; its peerless element of glory and bliss
consisting in the full vision of God—God in His covenant aspect, as the
God of Salvation—His throne encompassed with the emerald rainbow.
Interesting is it to contemplate the diverse multitude
of worshipers who surround Him—the Redeemed from the earth, as well as
the other multitudes of created intelligences. The Redeemed are here
represented in their twofold character of "kings and priests." As kings,
wearing golden crowns—as priests, wearing white clothing; while the
other worshipers, who appear under the fourfold similitude, are described as
"full of eyes" (or "teeming with eyes"), and moreover, that "they rest not
day nor night." From this we may infer their wakeful vigilance, their
unceasing, untiring employment in the heavenly ministry; the
four-fold symbol further indicating, it may be, different occupations, and
different arenas for the enlistment of their immortal energies, but all
conspiring to promote the glory of the one great Object of adoration and
love.
We are further reminded, as we listen to the majestic
voice in the vision, that all events in the world's history and our own
are planned—appointed. "Come, said that voice, and I will show you
things which must be hereafter." That word must is a precious
one, considering Who utters it. The Divine Being seems to say of, and
to every actor in the subsequent chapters, as He did to Cyrus of old, "I
clothed you, though you have not known Me." The program of coming events
is in His hands! That Heaven where He reigns supreme is a world of
order. In the calm blue of these serene ethereal heights, there are no more
rolling clouds or moral hurricanes—no more darkness and gloominess. Justice
and Judgment are the habitation of His throne: Mercy and Truth go before His
face.
We may further, from this vision, draw the inference how
deep is the sympathy between the members of the Church triumphant
(the church in heaven) and the Church militant (the church still on
earth). These twenty-four elders—the representatives of the Redeemed from
the earth—form part of the worshipers of the enthroned King, and are
present during the future unfolding of the great drama. How cheering and
elevating the thought that even now, amid our struggles and trials, "the
great ones of the olden time"—the glorified dead, are interesting themselves
in us; sympathizing with us in our sorrows, desiring our welfare—waiting, it
may be; to give us welcome home!
And more solemn than all—how near this other world
is—or may be. "Heaven is in no far distant star"—no "land that is very far
off." There is but a narrow curtain separating from the true inner
sanctuary. A door is opened, and Heaven is there! Death seals our bodily
senses, as a temporary trance did John's, and we are ushered in a moment (in
the twinkling of an eye) before "God the Judge of all, and the spirits of
just men made perfect."
Oh! are we ready? Whether it be in the lonely Patmos
of a long sick-bed, or fresh from the marts of busy life, or like Isaiah, at
the threshold of the Temple, or like Ezekiel, in the Chebar of a distant
land—are we ready for John's summons, "Come up here?" Are we ready to meet
the twenty-four elders? Are we ready to put on the white robe and the golden
crown? Are we ready to take up the holy song? Are we ready to meet the Holy
God?