REVELATION 1
This part of the Holy Scriptures has a peculiar and touching claim on the attention of every Christian. No other part of Scripture comes to us in quite the same way. It is the “Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him”. God gave this revelation to the glorious anointed Man at His own right hand; it is His revelation. It treats of matters which are thus manifestly of interest to God and to Jesus Christ, and which therefore cannot fail to be of profound interest to His servants. For it is in the character of servants, or bondmen, that we are here shewn “what must shortly take place”. This book is for saints viewed as in responsible service, caring for the interests of their Lord.
This may well raise the question with each one as to how far we are truly in this character. The indisposition of many to consider this book is probably traceable to the fact that we are so little in the true attitude and spirit of bondmen. There is a tendency with us all to seek our own things, not the things of Jesus Christ, and when this is so we are hardly true bondmen.
John refers to himself here, not as an apostle, but as a bondman and a brother. He was one of a suffering company: “your brother and fellow-partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and patience, in Jesus”. It was to a man suffering for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus that this revelation was communicated, and he made it known to those who were partakers — at any rate, in measure — of the same kind of suffering. If there were more fidelity there would be more suffering, and this book would be more appreciated. It has been observed that in periods of the church’s history when there have been special pressures or persecutions, as in times of martyrdom, the saints have turned with peculiar interest to this book, and have derived distinct comfort and support from it.
Where there is a desire to connect Christianity with this world, and to think that things here are improving, one can understand there would be a lack of interest in this Revelation. Persons having such desires would not care to face the fact that the world system is coming under judgment. The whole course of things here is wrong, and must be set aside to make room for something else. The churches (assemblies) have failed, and departed from the character in which they would have been true light-bearers, in suffering witness to a rejected Christ; and the world in every phase is a scene of moral disorder. This is the true character of things here, and it is clearly set forth, with all its consequences, in this book. To look at such things in the fear of God involves serious exercises, which many are reluctant to face, and this may be one reason why this book has been so neglected.
But, in truth, it is a most encouraging book for all who fear God and who love our Lord Jesus Christ. For it shews the ultimate triumph of God over every [p. 3] form of the power of evil. It shews the character of that power, and all that it will issue in, but it shews it broken and set aside to make room for “the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ” (Revelation 12: 10). Its scope is very wide, for it shews how all things in the moral universe are to be dealt with so as to establish eternally the glory of God, and the full blessing of man, recovered through redemption — whether it be the church or other families of the redeemed.
In this book we are taken into the divine confidence at a peculiar moment. Christ has been manifested in flesh; He has been to the cross to accomplish redemption; and now as a risen Man He has gone back to heaven. The church — left here to be His witness in the time of His rejection — has failed. Now what will happen? We are told here “what must shortly take place”, and if we aspire to be confidential servants we shall take the deepest interest in the communications. Hearts touched by the love of Jesus Christ, and by the way that love expressed itself in death, and by the consciousness of the wonderful position in which that love has set us as priests to His God and Father, must take a deep and intelligent interest in all that He has to communicate.
“The time is near”. We are apt to put these things off in our minds to a somewhat distant future, but the Lord would have them near, and in reading this book the Spirit brings them near to us. Then the reading and hearing the words of this prophecy are in view of the things written in it being kept. The things written are of great value and are to be treasured; they are not matters for idle curiosity. Special blessing is attached to reading, hearing, and [p. 4] keeping them. And for those who find themselves, as we do, in the conditions of the last days it is essential that we should have the serious exercise which such a book produces, and also the comfort and establishment which it affords. These are days when nothing but a good and divine foundation will preserve us from being shaken. Amidst the insecurity of things here, this book would connect our faith with the stability of the throne in heaven and of Him who sits upon it, the One “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty”. This gives security from perturbation of mind in the midst of all the tremblings and shakings here.
One important object of this book is to preserve saints from becoming earth-dwellers by connecting all their hopes and expectations with heaven, and by leading them there in spirit even now. There is much here for the heart as well as the conscience. What could be more encouraging than to see the possibility of being an overcomer even in the midst of assembly failure and departure? And then, as we pass on through the book, to see different families of saints coming into view, called by divine grace and sustained in divine witness amidst terrible and appalling conditions, is most stimulating to faith and love.
John is very interesting as a representative man. The Lord said of him, “If I will that he tarry till I come”, and he represents what remains to the end. The first phase of the church’s history stood connected with Jerusalem and Peter’s ministry; the second phase was connected with the results of Paul’s labours and ministry; and the third with John’s. In the early chapters of the Acts Jerusalem was the centre, but the seventh chapter brings into view what has been called “the new metropolis”. Jesus was at the right hand of God, and from thence He called another apostle and gave him a distinctive mission, and the result of Paul’s ministry was that local assemblies were formed far and wide in the Gentile world. What this phase of things resulted in historically we may see in the second epistle to Timothy, and in Revelation 2, Revelation 3, we also see the failure of the assemblies as set here in local responsibility. But after all the failure John looks up with undimmed freshness of affection at the end, and says, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus”. He shews how the Spirit and the bride say, “Come”, and how the heavenly city will descend having the glory of God. He represents those holy and living affections which can be sustained all through in spite of church failure, and which can be found at the end in full response to the love of Christ — the Coming One. I trust we cherish the thought of being found here in such affections. They will not secure us a great place in this world; instead of expanding here we shall probably get more and more circumscribed. We may have to be content with a Patmos, but we shall be happy there if, like John, we have clear vision of all that is shortly to be brought in by our Lord Jesus Christ.
This book is addressed to “the seven assemblies which are in Asia”, and those assemblies are seen as seven golden lamps in the midst of which “one like the Son of man” walks. These assemblies are viewed as representing all the assemblies, seven being a number suggestive of completeness. But it is the assemblies viewed in their responsibility as light-bearers, and as subject to the scrutiny of the One who is seen and heard as taking account of their moral [p. 6] state, commending all that of which He can approve, and expressing His judgment of that which is displeasing to Him.
In the first chapter we have conditions which, if maintained, would have preserved the assemblies from failure. Keeping the things written would have marked true bondmen. Every needed divine support and consolation would have been found in the rich supply of grace and peace from the eternally existing One upon the throne, and from the seven Spirits, and from Jesus Christ. The dependent affections of the saints would have been connected with divine fulness of resource, and engaged with a supremely worthy and blessed Object. One, too, who awakens by the sense of what He has done for us in love the responsive affections and praises of every heart that knows Him. “To him who loves us, and has washed us from our sins in his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father: to him be the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen”.
It may be noted that the Spirit is not seen here as the one Spirit in relation to the one body, but as “seven Spirits”; that is, He is presented in the diversity and completeness of His actings for the effectuation of God’s sovereign will.
The vision of the One in the midst of the lamps was such that it caused John to fall at His feet as dead. In the service of such an One there could be no power or ability of any kind save what came from the strengthening touch of His right hand. All else had to find itself in the place of death. There would then be material suited for divine witness. The seven lamps are “golden”, which suggests what is divine in character — the fruit of divine grace and [p. 7] working; no other kind of material would be suited to sustain divine light in witness here. Then to realize the nearness of the Lord as walking in the midst of the seven lamps, with His eye constantly upon them, would preserve the holy sense of responsibility to Him who, though unseen, is near to take account at every moment of how that responsibility is being carried out. Had these things been maintained in power in the souls of the saints they would have been preserved from the elements of defection.
The Lord Himself is seen as “the faithful witness” in verse 5. There could be no true thought of witness save as seeing it first in Him, and we see it there without flaw or failure. How perfectly did He witness to all that God was in grace to man, and to all that Man was as entirely according to the mind and pleasure of God! Now He is “the first-born from the dead” — the Risen One, outside everything here. And He will soon be manifested as “the prince of the kings of the earth”. We confess Him as “King and Sovereign even now”; we confess His title while He is still the rejected One.
The moment this great and glorious Person is mentioned it calls forth an outburst of praise from every heart that knows Him. “To him who loves us”, etc. There is an overflow of praise to Him, and then a solemn testimony about Him. “Behold, he comes with the clouds”, etc. The world has not done with Him; they may think they have got rid of Him, and act as if they had, but they have not. “God ... now enjoins men that they shall all everywhere repent, because he has set a day in which he is going to judge the habitable earth in righteousness by the man whom he has appointed, giving the proof of it [p. 8] to all in having raised him from among the dead” (Acts 17: 30, 31).
The position in which John was found is very suggestive of the place in which true testimony is found at the present time — that is, during the church period. He was a prisoner in a bleak and sterile island “for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus”. The testimony of Jesus is found in suffering and reproach, and in an outwardly restricted place. We may see the same thing in the case of Paul; his most mature years were spent in prison, and it was when there that the testimony came out most distinctively, and the ministry was richest. Both Paul and John were very much restricted outwardly. If things are popular it is a pretty sure sign that there is a large proportion of the human element in them. It is wholesome for us to consider this. And opposition to the testimony, and reproach in connection with it, are now found within; that is, from those who bear the name of Christians. Those who do not value, and move with, light which God may give, become adversaries to it, and there is a good deal of opposition of a subtle character.
But in the restricted place John got compensation in the way of divine communications, and we should be exercised not to miss these. It is through conflict and difficulty that the truth is brought out; every spiritual gain has to be fought for and suffered for. Everything that has been recovered in the church has been won through conflict and suffering. Take the Reformation: we have the fruit of it now, but it was a great battle. And the truth of Christ and the assembly, which was restored during the last century, came out in the face of tremendous [p. 9] opposition. The truth has always to be bought; and when bought there is the danger that it may be sold for something much less valuable.
The kingdom is marked at the present time by tribulation and the exercise of patience. Those who will live godly in Christ Jesus suffer persecution. By-and-by we shall serve God in a scene of glory, but now we are called to serve Him in tribulation and patience. We cannot expect to avoid suffering if we realize that the whole tide of things here is opposed to the character and rule of the kingdom in which we are partakers. When saints are bright they get tribulation in some way, and it tends to make them brighter still. The more you rub good metal the brighter it shines, and opposition and difficulty bring out the reality of divine witness in saints.
John “became in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”. He was entirely abstracted from what was merely natural, or of the mind and thought of man, and absorbed in a special way with spiritual things. It is interesting to see that, though he was alone so far as we know, the Lord’s day was marked by this abstraction, which would imply some peculiar enjoyment of spiritual privilege. The Lord’s day here spoken of is the first day of the week — a very special day in Christianity. The week is a divinely marked period of time; it goes back to creation, and has its place in all dispensations; it is part of the original divine ordering of things. The sabbath was the last day of the week; God blessed it and hallowed it, because that on it He rested from all the work of creation, and He would have it hallowed by His people; one great controversy which He had with them was that they did not keep it. But the [p. 10] hallowed day now is the first day of the week; that day has been marked off from all the other days as the one on which the Lord rose from the dead, and He claims it for Himself. Hence we find that on two succeeding first days of the week the disciples came together, and the Lord came into their midst (John 20), and at a later period the saints came together to break bread on that day (Acts 20: 7). It is a day peculiarly characteristic of Christianity, and marked by special spiritual privilege, and its being the first day suggests that it is intended to give character to the six days that follow.
Though John was probably isolated from his brethren he was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”, and engaged with spiritual realities outside the whole course of things here. But while in this state of abstraction he heard behind him “a great voice as of a trumpet”. He was called back, as it were, for a time from the peculiar spiritual privileges which lie in the Spirit, and which would normally be in his thoughts as connected with “the first day of the week”. He was called back from these things to view the assemblies as set here in responsibility to give light for God. And to see in their midst One who was taking account of their state, and expressing His judgment as to it.
The light would shine as God was really known in grace, and as the saints were in the shining of Christ. Their relations with one another as walking together in truth and love and holiness and unity, in complete separation from the world, would be such as to support the testimony of divine grace, and to preserve true witness to a rejected Christ. And the Lord is in the midst of the lamps to see how this character [p. 11] is maintained or in what it is departed from. How solemn is the thought! He is seen in judgment — judgment in the sense of discernment — discerning everything according to God. He is “girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle”; His affections are under restraint; they cannot flow freely in nourishing and cherishing, for much that is under His eye calls for rebuke and discipline. He is considering what is due to Himself and to God. “His head and hair white like white wool, as snow”, suggests maturity in judgment. “His eyes as a flame of fire”, speak of penetrating discernment; nothing in the inmost depths of our being can escape the scrutiny of those eyes. “His feet like fine brass, as burning in a furnace”; wherever He treads, as He walks in the midst of the golden lamps, everything is tested according to what “our God” is as “a consuming fire”. How searching the heat of that holy fire! Who can abide such a test? “His voice as the voice of many waters”; a voice, indeed, “full of majesty”. “And having in his right hand seven stars”; He asserts His title and ability to hold every responsible element in the assemblies in His right hand; only as being there can it be rightly directed or sustained. “Out of his mouth a sharp two-edged sword going forth”; every convicting word in prophetic ministry which brings home to us our true condition is the action of that sword. “His countenance as the sun shines in its power”; the full revelation of God, effulgent in Him, is the light in which the church is blessed, as viewed on the line of privilege. But it is also the light by which the assemblies are judged on the line of their responsibility. The effulgence of God has shone forth in the Son, and the church’s privilege is to be “filled even to all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3: 19), so as to set Him forth adequately here. And if the Lord takes the place of judging amidst the assemblies He must judge according to the full divine thought of the assembly, and what it is here for.
It would be well for every Christian to see the Lord in this character. John had known Him in other ways; in the attractiveness of His walk as the Lamb of God; in all the varied blessedness of the ministry in word and deed which flowed out of that fulness of grace and truth which resided in Him; in the service of His love when He had stooped to wash His disciples’ feet; and in those intimacies of holy affection which made him so conscious that he was “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. He had known what it was to lean on the breast of Jesus. But when he saw Him in the midst of the golden lamps he fell at His feet as dead.
I think this is an experience which, if all had gone through it, would have preserved the assemblies from defection; it is what each individual needs to pass through in order to be an overcomer. It is the learning in His presence that all that is of the flesh, and according to man after the flesh, is brought to the nothingness of death there. We then realize that everything that is of ourselves has to be rebuked and refused, and that we can only be for the Lord as under the strengthening of His right hand. We have to learn that “without me ye can do nothing”. We may learn this in nearness to the Lord, in the searching light of His presence, or we may learn it through practical failure or inward declension. It is happier, and the lesson is more deeply learned, if we learn it [p. 13] with Him. If I have to fall at His feet as dead, it is that He may become practically to me the first and the last, and the living One.
“He laid his right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the living one: and I became dead, and behold, I am living to the ages of ages, and have the keys of death and of hades”. It is as much as to say to the one who is at His feet as dead, “All that I am is for you; I became dead because that was your place, and I took it in grace for you; but now I am alive to be your strength and the Source of everything for you”.
We have to learn death on all that is of ourselves that He may be all to us. Have we learned that there is not a bit of anything that has divine value save as we derive from Christ? That is how proper material for the candlestick comes in. Paul had the consciousness of utter weakness in himself, but he boasted in it that the power of Christ might tabernacle over him. The right hand of Christ speaks of His power, which becomes available to us through the Spirit given. It is only as we are under the touch of His right hand that we can be overcomers. We see the effect of being there in John and in the other apostles. None of them departed from first love; they were sustained in freshness and spiritual energy to the very end of their responsible course. The letters of John and Peter and Paul, near the end of the course of each, shew them with undiminished affection and energy, strengthened and sustained by the right hand of Christ’s power. The same power was available for others, and if it had been utilized there would have been no breakdown in responsibility. Thank God it is still available for all who call on the [p. 14] Lord out of a pure heart, so that such may be found overcomers even in a day of general defection.
The importance of verse 19 has often been dwelt upon as giving a clear division into three parts of what John was to write. “What thou hast seen”, is recorded in chapter 1: “the things that are” are the assemblies on earth — the church period — as addressed in chapters 2 and 3: “the things that are about to be after these” are things to take place when the assemblies are no longer found here; these things follow from chapter 4 onward.
Finally, we are told that “the seven stars are angels of the seven assemblies; and the seven lamps are seven assemblies”. The angels of the assemblies represent that in each which can be addressed as having responsibility. It is not any special individual in each assembly, for Scripture gives no hint of one individual being put in charge of an assembly. Elders, bishops, or overseers, are always, I believe, when mentioned in relation to an assembly, spoken of in the plural. There is no suggestion of one bishop in any assembly. The angel of the assembly would appear to be a symbolical person representing the responsible element; for what is written to the angel does not refer to the works or state of any one individual. Though the personal pronouns “thy” and “thou” and “thee” are used, the references throughout are clearly to the works and state of the assembly.
“Stars” are heavenly luminaries, and in this there may be a suggestion of those who are set in the assemblies to give light. If we view them thus it is important to see that their place is in the right hand of the Lord. He alone is entitled to hold them, and to dispose of them as He will. But if we view the [p. 15] stars as representing symbolically those who are in the place of light-givers it involves a very serious consideration. It would shew that those who take the place of giving light become, in a sense, responsible for the moral state of the assemblies. The thought of this would make all ministry a very serious thing, for it is really a bringing to bear of divine light in view of a moral result in those who are ministered to. In a general way the state of the assemblies would be the product of the character of the ministry. A legal ministry would produce a legal state; a carnal ministry could only produce fruit after its kind; a spiritual ministry of Christ would produce spiritual results. The general state more or less takes character from the ministry. The thought of purity was very prominent in connection with the candlestick in the tabernacle. It was called “the pure candlestick”, and it was to be made of “pure gold”, and the oil was to be “pure oil olive”. The enemy’s effort all along has been to bring in elements contrary to this holy purity, and to lower the tone of the church’s testimony by introducing in ministry what was of the mind of man and not of the Spirit of God and not after Christ. Responsibility attaches to the assemblies as a whole, but it attaches in a special way to those who take the place of having light, and of bringing it to bear upon others. It is a blessed thing to bring an influence to bear upon others which is spiritual and of God, and in keeping with the purity of the candlestick. But it is an intensely solemn thing to be influencing others in a way that tends to departure from Christ, and to the lowering and corrupting of what is of God in the souls of His people. A serious exercise as to this would have had a preservative [p. 16] effect, and it was probably with a view to producing such exercises that responsibility for the moral state of the assemblies is seen to attach in each case to the angel. The angel represents the responsible element, and there can be no doubt that this is found chiefly with those who influence others.