Still further, “The building of the wall of it was of jasper.” Christ crucified is the defense and the bulwark of the kingdom. The atonement of Christ is the most powerful argument the Church can use and constitutes its strongest claim upon the reason and heart of men. It is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” It is Christ crucified that makes the separation between the kingdom and the circumjacent world. It is not in its ethics that the distinguishing peculiarity of Christianity lies, but in the preaching of the cross. In the opinion of John any other definition of Christianity throws down Christianity’s only wall of safety and separation.
Yet there is no exclusiveness about the kingdom. The city has three gates on each of its four sides, facing the four quarters of the globe, that all men may find ready access. “Every several gate is of one pearl”—that pearl of great price which Christ said a man should be willing to sell all that he has to buy, becoming eternally rich by the exchange.
Nor is there any narrowness. Its length and breadth and height exceed even those large measurements which Ezekiel thought to be ample enough for the ideal temple he saw. “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise”—all these things belong legitimately to the kingdom. The kings of the earth may “bring their glory and honor into it;” only that which “defileth” or “worketh abomination” or “maketh a lie” is excluded. When once a man in the center of his being is rightly adjusted to the Lamb of God, the center of all being, he may unfold all his powers and give exercise to every faculty of his renewed nature safely, wisely, completely, without fear of infringement upon any other being or of going astray from his Creator.
3. Negative Characteristics.—Not less remarkable is the negative side of the kingdom, the absence from it of many things with which we are familiar. When an ideal has been attained much that was necessary in the process of attainment falls away as obsolete; the scaffolding which is used in the erection of a building is removed when the building is completed.
There is a noticeable avoidance in the closing chapters of the Apocalypse of any reference to the sacraments, to ritual, or to such like means of grace. John saw “no temple therein; for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.” “When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” When the consummation of the kingdom has been reached the relation of the soul to its Creator shall not be through intermediate agencies, but direct and intuitive.
There is no mention made of any special priestly class, for the promise shall have its complete fulfillment to all, “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood;” and all life shall be a priestly work and service.
Nor is there any allusion to the prophetic office as a separate function. “They need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light.” “The anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you” (1 John ii, 27). The prediction of Jeremiah (Jeremiah xxxi, 34) has reached its time of fulfillment: “They shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord.”
Yet upon this point, more almost than upon any other, it is of the utmost importance that we shall “distinguish the times.” We must not assume, because these aids and appliances are not needful in the perfected state of the kingdom, that they are not essential in the formative period, and thus, at great risk and with imminent peril, neglect or depreciate those means of grace which the Creator has deemed necessary for our present condition.
4. The Fruits and Results of the Kingdom.—They in whom the kingdom rules shall have access to the tree of life, that heavenly wisdom of which Solomon says, “She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is everyone that retaineth her” (Proverbs iii, 18). “This is life eternal,” One greater than Solomon says, “that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John xvii, 3). Their lives shall abound in fruitfulness. Their ministry shall be, like the Lord’s, “for the healing of the nations,” a remedy for all the spiritual and earthly maladies of mankind.
The curse of sin shall be destroyed, “and there shall be no more curse.” “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians iii, 13). “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John i, 7). And walking “in the light, as he is in the light,” and being “pure in heart,” his followers shall “see God.” “They shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.”