Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation

by S. D. Gordon

The outstanding features in the Old Testament of this great experience are terrible persecution of the Jew, deliverance at the very worst pitch of extremity, by a visitation of judgment on their enemies, and by Jehovah coming in person for their deliverance; and then the great Kingdom following.

The outstanding features spoken of by our Lord Jesus in His Olivet talk agree with this, but go much more into detail, especially about the tribulation. The tribulation will be preceded by wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, and persecution. There will be many false religious teachers, many Christians untrue to their faith, and a great increase of wickedness. This is a sort of foreshadowing.

The tribulation itself will find all this enormously intensified. It will begin with some astonishing act of blasphemy in the temple in Jerusalem, run its terrible course, and close with a series of judgment-events, earthquake, heavens shaken, and great distress, ending in the visible appearance of the Lord Jesus Himself, out of heaven on the clouds. And this will be a signal for great penitential mourning among the people on the earth.

This, then, is the simple, broad outline with which the thoughtful reader of God's Word would naturally be familiar as he turns to this prophetic book at the end to get our Lord's last message to His followers.

Getting a Broad, Clear Outlook.

As we turn now again to the book of Revelation it will help us to remember the general plan followed in its writing. It is like a series of dissolving views of the same scene, each of which lets us see the same thing from a different point of view.

This is a simple teaching rule for getting a clear grasp of what is being taught. We are familiar with it in the Bible. The story of creation is told in the first chapter of Genesis, and then told again in the second chapter with details not given in the first, the two together presenting the complete story. The historical books of Chronicles present one view of the kingdom of Israel, the official. The books of the Kings give another look at the same period; and the prophetic books a wholly different view as seen by these rarely spiritually minded men of God. Daniel is shown four visions of future events, all covering the same general stretch of events, but with a fuller description, here of one part and there of another. The four Gospels are a familiar illustration of the same principle in teaching and story-telling. This is the plan followed here.

I was impressed anew with the practical value of this method one day in St. Petersburg. We had gone to look at the panorama of the siege of Sebastopol, then on exhibition in a huge, round building. It will be remembered that the British and French allied themselves with Turkey and Sardinia in an attempt to restrain the encroachments of Russia on Turkish territory. The famous charge of Balaklava, immortalized by Tennyson, is remembered as the most stirring event of that war. Its chief event was the siege of Sebastopol on the Crimea peninsula, in the Black Sea.

At the panorama we stood as though on a high central point in the city of Sebastopol, with the view spreading out in all directions. To the north lay the harbour with the Russian ships securely bottled in by the attacking fleets. To the west a body of French soldiers were retreating, hotly pursued by Russian troops, while in the distance British troops are hurrying to the relief of the French.

Then we looked east, where the fighting was going on at close range, the wounded being carried away and the reserves hastening up to take their places. And again we turned to the south, where the battle raged fiercest. The face of the commanding officer stood out so vividly. And we almost shrank from the fierceness of the fire. And the smell of powder almost seemed stifling.