THE SON OF A DOVE by Thomas Robert Williamson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 16, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 29.

THE SON OF A DOVE.

By Thomas Robert Williamson

[This was written in a time of great physical weakness and suffering, in November, 1901. The author has since fallen asleep.]

It seems to have been the design in the first place to make individual names mean something to the persons that owned them. Names were intended to signalize some event, or to mark some trait in the character of the one named, and no doubt fathers were endowed, in many instances at least, with enough prophetic foresight to make the name conferred in infancy something of a presage or guide as to the physical or mental make-up of the future man.

Adam comes from red earth; Eve means mother of all living; Jacob is supplanter; Esau, or Edom, red or hairy man; Abraham, the father of nations; Jacob's new name, Israel, was prince of God. The sons of Jacob all had descriptive titles. Names were not, as they are now, mere arbitrary appellations, given hit or miss, and meaning nothing to the owners. They meant something, and where they were outgrown and had become, through facts of progress, no longer suitable, they were sometimes changed, as were Abram's and Jacob's names, better to fit the altered life of the wearer.

In New Testament times, new titles were made to take the place of the old as they were needed. Saul became Paul after the notable occurrence of the conversion of Sergius Paulus. Barnabas was the “Son of Consolation” from having, no doubt, in a peculiar crisis, brought consolation to the infant church at Jerusalem. James and John were re-named “Sons of Thunder” by the Lord Jesus Himself. But no name upon the whole holy list of appellatives is more peculiar, or so well fitted to be worn by all who sincerely love the Lord, as the beautiful title bestowed upon Peter on two occasions. We should all be “sons of consolation” after Barnabas. We should all be converters of new souls like Paul, but young or old, learned or unlearned, Christians need Peter's glorious name. “Blessed art thou, Simon, Bar-Jonah!” or “son of Jonas,” as it is in another place. Jonah, or Jonas, means dove. The name then is “Simon, son of a Dove,” and as the dove is a symbol always of the presence of the Holy Spirit, Peter's full title, spoken by the glorious Master Himself, is “Simon, son of the Holy Spirit.”

That is a name to live and to work for. When Peter first received it, he had just given utterance to the kingliest truth of the whole Gospel, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and swift came the answer, sparkling like a crown of jewels for Peter's brow, “Blessed art thou, Simon, son of the Holy Spirit; for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but My Father.” To be a “son of the Spirit” is to be in the line of the heavenliest revelations. It is to stand where the Word of God, the Bible, unveils its deepest significance, and where the mightiest truths beam with clearest and brightest effulgence upon the soul.

But there came a time when Peter lost his glorious title. He denied his loving Lord, and trailed his own Christian honor in the mire of blasphemy. He lost character and manhood, and would have gone down in final defeat, had it not been for the pity of Christ. Repentance and pardon were granted, and then re-instatement to name and privilege.

Again connected with divinity, Peter became a fit man to dispense Gospel food to others. “Simon, son of the Holy Spirit, lovest thou Me? Feed My lambs, feed My sheep.” Peter stood again where the blaze of revealed truth could shower upon him in splendor, and this he was to give out as food, even as the disciples had given out the provisions to the multitude upon the Galilean beach. He was made a son of God through the Holy Spirit, a partaker of the divine nature, a member of God's immediate family. “He called them gods, unto whom the Word of the Lord came, and the Scripture can not be broken.” “All of you are children of the Most High.”

There, dear fellow Christian, pilgrim over the toilsome sands of life, burdened with its sorrowful seasons and tripped and tangled with its cares, I hail you as Jesus did Peter, son, daughter of the Holy Spirit, and bid you erect your face to the glory of the name. The old Roman thought it a shame to wear the title of king, and where does earthly pride lift up a diamond coronet that gleams with a name like this that descends to us from the time of Jesus and Peter?

Now let us do what we can to show the winning luster of the name to others. Jesus says, “Feed My lambs, feed My sheep.”

THOMAS ROBERT WILLIAMSON.