THE Revelation! Then praise God it is not a closed book. God has not placed upon it lock and key. He has not sealed its wondrous mystery, its blessed truths, from His children. The Greek word Apokalypsis, means revelation, disclosure, manifestation. And the book is a revelation. Ages ago God assured us that “the secret things belong unto Jehovah our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.”
BUT, reader, we will not gather its most vital meanings by a superficial reading or study. God’s wells of living water, like Jacob’s well, are deep, and he who quaffs the coolest waters must be willing to sink his pitcher down to its crystal depths. The Comforter of God sings many songs to the despairing children of earth which are never heard by ears that are needy. They are not attuned with the song. Many a miner stops just short of the richest products of earth; he does not wish to sink his shaft deep; it costs time and labor. The soul that gathers the most precious things of God must “dig deep,” must search “as for hid treasures,” must yield himself to the harmony of the Infinite, to follow where He leads.
The book is not only a revelation; it is “the Revelation of Jesus Christ.” And who is this person? We may learn something from the names. “Jesus” means “saviour.” “Thou shalt call His name JESUS; for it is He that shall save His people from their sins.” Matt. 1:21. He is the only Saviour; for “in none other is there salvation; for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.” Acts 4:11. The meaning of “Christ” is “anointed,” the same as the Hebrew word “Messiah.” He is the Anointed of God to save all who wish to be saved. “How God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.” Acts 10:38; Luke 4:18; Isa. 61:1, 2. He is one with the Father. Before the world was He sat enthroned with God the Eternal. He was the One through whom and by whom all the worlds were created. 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16, 17. For “it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell.” Verse 19. He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last.” And the book is the revelation of Him, His personality; His character, His work, His glorious and eternal triumph with His people.
BUT it will not be a revelation of Jesus Christ to us unless He is revealed in us. That is the desire of the infinite God in giving to us this disclosure. God desires to “make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Col. 1:27. This is that which He has so longed to reveal to every soul from the time that man by sin sought to cut loose from the Continent of Heaven. The promise came to the sin-despairing pair that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. The power to triumph over the destroyer did not come from the man or the woman, for both had fallen before the tempter. It must come in a new life from above, from the incorruptible Seed of the Eternal Word, from the presence of God within the soul. “Ye must be born from above,” are the words of Jesus. John 3:7, margin. God must dwell in the flesh.
JESUS CHRIST was the revelation of this life of God in the flesh. It was said of Him, “They shall call His name Immanuel; which is, being interpreted, God with us.” Matt. 1:23. “The Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us2. . . full of grace and truth.” John 1:1-14. “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. . . . Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” 2 Cor. 5:19-21. And this was the revelation of the mystery of God to the world. What God had set forth in His Word, He set forth in Christ Jesus the personified Word, in order that we by faith might empty ourselves as did He, grasp the same “power of an endless life,” and be filled with the fulness of God. Thus Paul expresses it in his own experience: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me; and that life I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.” Gal. 2:20. Thus was the Son of God revealed in Paul (Gal. 1:16), that Paul might tell the good tidings to those who knew not the Saviour. So the Revelation of Jesus Christ must come to us, not as a mere theory, not as mere knowledge of a book, but as the very life of God in our own souls, the Cleanser from sin, the Keeper from its power, the Wisdom, the Righteousness, the Sanctification, the Redemption of God. 1 Cor. 1:30. Such He longs to be to every soul; why not grasp it now by faith.
LET us question the text of the first three verses:—
(1) “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show unto His servants, even the things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John; (2) who bare witness of the Word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, even of all things that he saw. (3) Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things that are written therein; for the time is at hand.”
Of whom is this book the Revelation?
“Of Jesus Christ.”
How did He obtain it?
It was a Revelation “which God gave Him.”
For what purpose?
“To show unto His servants, even the things which must shortly come to pass.”¹
How did He give it to them?
“He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John.”²
What did John do with it?
“Who bare witness³ of the Word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, even of all things that he saw.”
Upon whom is the benediction pronounced?
“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep⁴ the things that are written therein; for the time is at hand.”
1. “Shortly Come to Pass.”—The Revelation, even as the prophecy of Daniel, is a book for the last days. While it teaches precious truth by precept and promise, always practical, its great warning messages (Rev. 14:6-14,) against threatening dangers, against persecuting powers, against latter-day apostasy, calling God’s people back to primitive faith, purity, and obedience, are especially messages for the times just preceding Christ’s second coming. In the nature of the case it could not be understood in its comprehensiveness till these days. Now God’s Spirit is impelling to its study; for the very culmination of these prophecies which, in a measure, began to come to pass in John’s day, are soon to be fulfilled. “The time is at hand.” So Isa. 40:3 and 61:1, 2, first clause, waited 700 years for fulfilment in John the Baptist and Jesus. Then, 700 years later, John could say, “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matt. 3:2. Then Jesus could say, “To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:17-21), and “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). The second part of Isa. 61:2—“the day of vengeance of our God”—must wait 1,900 years longer till the mighty warnings of that day, in the Revelation, should go forth. That period of preparation is now; “the time is at hand.”
2. “By His Angel.”—The first two verses indicate God’s general method of giving His truth to the world. First of all God is revealed through Jesus Christ. “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” John 1:18; Matt. 11:27. Jesus sends His angel Gabriel. (See Dan. 8:15, 16; 9:21; 10:10-21, et al.) The angel reveals it to God’s human messengers and prophets; these messengers carry it to God’s people, and God’s people give it to the world. But does not God come into life-connection with every one of His children?—He certainly does. Could He not then communicate with each one?—He certainly could. Why then this round-about way of imparting truth and blessing?—Simply this; it is the divine, better way. God desires that all His servants—His heavenly messengers and earthly messengers—shall share with Him in the glorious result of a redeemed and sinless universe. He wants all to join in the song of eternal triumph. But no one can do this unless he have part in the labor, the struggle, the pain, the travail, the conflict. Too, idleness is the greatest curse next to active wickedness against God. To all His servants God gives the joy of doing something. All will be associated with Christ Jesus in the work. No work is wrought for God by one alone. No soul will be saved by one alone. In the salvation of no sinner will one rejoice alone. Both sower and reaper will “rejoice together,” and all will ascribe all honor and power to the Giver of all, while He will reward His servants for the work which He has wrought through them.
3. “Who Bare Witness.”—That is the work of the children of God, to be witnesses. The chief qualification of a witness is knowledge. He must know in order to testify. This knowledge can not come from rumor or hearsay, or second hand. There are many who know of God, but know not God; that know of the Gospel, but know not the Gospel. John “bare witness of the word of God;” for he knew God’s Word and its power in the fellowship of an indwelling Christ. 1 John 1:1-3. He knew the testimony, the witness of Jesus Christ in himself. John 3:33; 21:24. God’s character is on trial in this world. Satan, the accuser has maligned Him in every way. God has left with His Son and all His children, the precious, holy work of witnessing for Him, of His goodness, His love, His power to save from sin. “Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and I am God.” Isa. 43:12. Would God that every one of His children so knew Him as to rightly witness in word and deed to His glorious character.
4. “Blessed.”—Blessed are the readers because of the God-given opportunity; blessed are the hearers, because of God-given privilege; but all the blessing will be turned to cursing if readers and hearers are not all keepers. The word keep comes from tereo, “to keep watch upon, guard, to watch over protectively, to mark attentively, to observe practically, to store up.” The only way to keep God’s Word is to treasure it up in the heart. “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee.” Ps. 119:11. “I delight to do Thy will, O my God,” says Christ through the psalmist; “yea, Thy law is within my heart.” Ps. 40:8. There is blessing to the doer. “He that looketh unto the perfect law, the law of liberty, and so continueth, being not a hearer that forgetteth but a doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing.” He who yields himself to do for God places himself in the current of God’s great, beneficent, outflowing life. Read, then, and hear and keep the things which God reveals to you in the Revelation of Christ Jesus.
