Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation

by S. D. Gordon

Such expectancy has steadied every leader for God, in these old pages from first to last, young Joseph in the dungeon, Joshua in the glare of the limelight, into which he was suddenly thrust, and ruddy-faced singing David fleeing and hiding for his life from the javelin of Saul. It was the clear-seeing eye of Isaiah and Jeremiah in the homeland, and of Ezekiel and Daniel among the weeping exiles, that kept the heart of the nation warm with the vision of what was surely coming. The thrill of expectancy runs through the pages of this old Hebrew classic. Its light is never out of the eye, nor its alluring out of earshot.

When Jesus walked among men expectation ran high. When He was killed the gloom of the three days was the gloom of a bright light suddenly put out. The darkness was intensified by the light that had been shining. Then there came a new sort of expectancy, higher, finer, of the inner spirit. This Jesus was coming back, in all the glory of the old prophetic vision, made realer by the personal touch these men knew, and this new expectancy puts all the paper of the New Testament a-tremble with delight. It is the light that lighteth every page and epistle, every contested path of witness, and every hour of suffering because of faith.

[185] Acts iii. 20-21; xv. 14-18.

The Church of these New Testament pages is a watching Church. The expectancy of the Lord Jesus' return is the north star of their sky. It never swerves. All the rest revolves around it. They see everything else in relation to this. Their going into all the world and preaching to every creature was not simply for men's conversion: that surely: but beyond that, it was to bring the Christ back for the next step in His world programme. He would come and set up His kingdom, and then through the kingdom would come a yet wider, farther-reaching world evangelizing.[185] This expectancy controlled their life and activity. Through their faithful world witnessing He would come.

And as the knot is put on the end of the thread of revelation the very knotted thread seems aglow with the glory of what is coming. The Bible from end to end is a-thrill with expectancy, a hopeful watching for something, aye, for some One.

A Calendar of Events.

We have been looking a bit closely at this knot in the end, the threads composing it. Now we want to gather up all that we have been going over with the light that comes from the other pages, so as to have some sort of a simple, clear grasp of the truth. This will help our eyesight. We can watch the horizon better. Our eyes will be steadier in the glare of the lower lights, and sharper to see in the spells of darkness that get thicker now and then.

It is interesting to notice that this book of the Revelation is a calendar book. That is to say, it is not a calendar of dates but of events. It gives coming events in the order in which they will occur. Its table of contents becomes an outline of coming events. There is the Man of Fire standing among the candlesticks. Then comes an hour when He advances to the next step in His programme. Then, step by step, there follow the occurrences until the kingdom is actually here. And then the after events, when the kingdom's work is done.

It turns out that this thing of our Lord's return cuts a wider swath than we are apt to think, if we don't stop to think. That is because of Who it is that is coming. An event takes on the size of the chief person concerned. This Lord Jesus is the One through whom our world was made in the early time, when there were no calendars. So His coming naturally concerns the whole world. It concerns the system of evil in which the world is entangled, and the evil spirit world so closely interlocked with our own.

Then our Lord Jesus came amongst us as a man. He came as a Jewish man, and to the Jewish nation. So His coming concerns the Jew and the Jewish capital, Jerusalem. When He sent down His executive, the Holy Spirit, a new organization was formed, the Church. So His coming concerns the Church, and concerns it very intimately, for it is spoken of as a body of which He is the head. When Jesus came it was to die for a world and to redeem a world. And so His coming concerns the future plans of the earth and the race.