Notes on the book of Revelations/Preliminary Remarks
NOTES
on
THE REVELATIONS.
We cannot, I think, interpret the Divine word in the book of Revelations, with the same confined sense that the ancient prophecies carry; because the Church has the mind of Christ, and is supposed not merely to have particular facts communicated to it, but to understand the thoughts of God about, or as manifested in, those facts.
To take an example: I read in Isaiah, “Behold I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered nor brought to mind. But rejoice ye for ever in that which I create; for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.” Now here, I find this vast and blessed expectation of the new heavens and the new earth brought down to a definite joy connected with earthly associations, and resulting from known though new enjoyments and blessings; coming indeed fresh from the hand of God, and therefore, real and divine blessings, but restricted to a given and earthly sphere, and to definite facts.
Could the Church confine itself to this sphere? or, are such its apprehensions created by the testimony of a new heavens and a new earth? Clearly not. The mind of God—the glory of Christ—the deliverance of the whole groaning creation of which (in the marvellous love of God, and the power of that worthiness which makes it due to Christ, according to the counsel of grace and glory which unites them to Him) the Church is a fellow-heir with Christ—the being like Him, and seeing Him as He is, displayed in the same love of the Father in which He is, that the world may know it—the savour of that love which can delight not only in its own blessing, but, by its Divine nature, in the blessing of others—and the filling of all things with the Divine glory, first mediatorially, and then directly—these are the thoughts (with the blessing of banished sin, perfected holiness, and the restoration of all things) which would occupy the mind of the Church as having the Spirit.
Whoever, then, would set about to present the contents of the Revelations with the same confinedness of interpretation as Old Testament prophecy, at once puts the Church out of her place as the full confidante of God and the wonderful counsellor, as having the mind of Christ, and narrows the glory and the counsel to the feebleness of that state with which the Church's position is expressly contrasted (1 Cor. ii. 9, 10; see that whole passage). We may indeed know in part and prophesy in part, and so learn from time to time; but, in another sense, we have an unction from the Holy One, and we know all things, because we have the Spirit of God who formed, ordered, and reveals them. We are of one counsel with Him, and not merely the objects of that counsel, as they of old. Being children, the family interests are ours as well as His, though we may be but feeble in the detailed apprehension of them. Now the Revelations have particularly this character, because they were left for the Church (not a communication between living apostles and living men, but left for the Church), as having the Spirit, and dependent on the Spirit, and so, as having that Spirit, to use it in time to come; and so only.