Bible Thoughts and Themes: Volume 5

The Revelation

The title of this last and most wondrous of inspired books is ‘the revelation (uncovering, unveiling) of Jesus Christ.’ It is He who ‘unveils,’ and it is He who is here UNVEILED to us, and who shines out with transfiguration-brightness before the Church’s eye. The spirit and sum of this book is ‘testimony to Jesus’ (ch. 19:10). He is its Alpha and its Omega. We find Him everywhere,—in description, in song, in symbol, in prediction; in things past, present, and to come. Here Christ is all and in all. This last book completes the ‘unveiling’ which was begun in the Gospels and carried on through the Epistles. The last fragment of the veil is here taken from His face. We see Him as He is, on the Father’s right hand, on the throne, through the rent veil. The heavens are opened, and we see Him (as Stephen did) in His present glory and in the glory of His second coming.

Which God gave unto Him.—This unveiling is given to Him by the Father that He may give it to us; for even on the throne is He subject to the Father (1 Cor. 15:28), waiting on His will and doing it. This revelation is God’s gift to Him, and it is His gift to us; becoming thus doubly precious, as a gift worthy of God,—worthy to be given to Him, and worthy to be given by Him to us.

To show unto His servants.—‘Show’ is the word used in the case of Moses,—‘the pattern showed to thee in the mount’ (Ex. 25:40; Heb. 8:5); and is almost always used in reference to things submitted to the eye. They are sons, yet servants also; both of these names of honour belonging to Him who was both the Son and the Servant of the Father (Rom. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Rev. 7:3, 22:3). This book, then, consists of the things shown by Christ to His servants.

The things that must shortly come to pass.—He had said, ‘This generation shall not pass away till all these things be.’ The word is the same, signifying, not to be fulfilled, but to be or begin to be. (John 13:2: not ‘supper being ended,’ but ‘supper being brought in.’) So here it is the things that must shortly (or quickly) be,—the things just about to be, that the Lord shows to His servants. And what He has shown to us it becomes us to study. These things are the unveiling of Christ, and of earth’s future, in connection with Him, both in grace and glory, both in love and wrath. These are some of the things which the angels desire to look into, and in carrying out which they are specially ‘ministering spirits;’ and it does not become us, whom they chiefly concern, to slight them. Seeing that God has revealed them, we may conclude that they are neither too high nor too low for us, but worthy of most earnest thought. The tendency of the present age is to set aside prophecy as specially belonging to the supernatural, and therefore the incredible and impossible. Let us stand aloof from this incredulity, and welcome the prophetic word as all the more precious because supernatural and specially divine.