Reading: Revelation 19:1-10.
As we
pursue our consideration of this matter of the followers
of the Lamb, we come to the part which relates to the
climax of that path, the climax of the way of the Lamb
— the climax of the Cross. But here it becomes
necessary and helpful to widen our outlook, taking in the
whole compass of things. It is a well known and often
stated fact that the book of Genesis, being the book of
beginnings, contains the first intimation of everything
which we find subsequently in the Word of God. We can
trace back what we find in all the rest of the Scriptures
to some germ in the book of Genesis: that is, the
Scriptures as a whole are the opening up and the opening
out, the development, of all the beginnings found in that
book. The book of the Revelation, being the book of
consummations, takes all that up and gathers it into
itself in a spiritual way. What we have in the book of
Genesis in an earthly and temporal and material way, in a
typical, symbolic, prophetic way, we have in the book of
the Revelation in spiritual consummation. It is therefore
of very great importance to know how to interpret the
book of the Revelation, and, although I am quite familiar
with the attitude of opposition toward what is called
spiritualizing the Scriptures, I nevertheless make bold
to affirm that the book of the Revelation has got to be
interpreted, if not altogether, almost altogether,
spiritually, and you will be entirely in a fog unless you
do so. Indeed, you will be occupied with an interminable,
impossible task. This is the book of consummations of all
things in a spiritual way.
What
do we find in the Old Testament beginning with the book
of Genesis? We find two kingdoms coming into evidence:
the kingdom of God, and a kingdom against God. As we see
the development of the kingdom of God, we are able to
discern that that kingdom is developing with a very
definite plan, and we find that before we are at the end
of the first five books it has taken very definite shape.
A cameo, a microcosm, of the kingdom of God has been
presented — yes, in imperfection, because it is only
typical, that is, it is only a type, a figure; but its
lines are capable of clear apprehension.
A
country is marked out. That country has its distinct
frontiers and is in its turn divided up, with
inter-frontiers. The whole of that country is apportioned
as an inheritance to tribes, and right at the centre
— although not literally geographically so —
but as the very heart and centre of the whole scheme is a
city, and there is a place where God is met. Some of
these parts of the kingdom, by sovereign divine
appointment, are in closer proximity to the heart of
things than others. Some are nearer to, some are farther
from, that centre, but that centre — the place where
God is — governs all. And then around that inner,
special kingdom there are many other kingdoms and
nations, and they are learning much from what is going on
inside there, deriving a very great deal — according
to their attitude, of course, whether good or evil. That
is, this kingdom of God is affecting all kingdoms. Being
an earthly kingdom, and being set in the conditions of a
disrupted world and humanity, and this other, spiritual
kingdom being also in evidence, there are both good and
evil represented: that is, there are available to the
nations that walk in the light thereof both good and
evil. That is perfectly clear at the beginning.
But
that is only a section. You pass to the next part of the
Bible, into what is called the historical section, where
kingship is introduced, kingship through priesthood, and
you find things are beginning to take another form, come
into another realm. You are passing on to a higher level
of things. You are moving away from the earth, you are
coming nearer heaven, and when you close that combination
of kingly and prophetic movements, or when you see the
close in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, you begin to
see a heavenly country. The end of the prophecies of
Ezekiel is a whole country reshaped as an inheritance,
and now in a new way it is the temple which governs
everything, and it is the ideal temple such as has never
been before or since the days of Ezekiel, a heavenly one,
a spiritual one; a heavenly temple in a heavenly city in
a heavenly country: for things have moved away from the
earth, the earthly has been forsaken; now it is heaven.
You ought to read those last chapters of Ezekiel again
and note these two things — the shaping of the
kingdom and the placing of the temple and the city, and
then the relationship to the nations around. We just
mention that — it is far too big and detailed a
matter to occupy us now.
When
you come to the book of the Revelation, you are right in
the spiritual side of that whole kingdom of God. What I
want to point out in connection with the spiritual
interpretation of the book of the Revelation is this. In
the first place, you have to recognize that the kingdom
of God is a very great dominion, but that it is divided
up into many regions. You find yourself, in different
places in the book of the Revelation, in different places
where the throne is governing. There is the earth and
there is the heaven, but you speak about earth and heaven
as though it were a duality. It is not; it is a
multiplicity. There are heavens and heaven of heavens.
Paul said he was caught up into the third heaven (2 Cor.
12:2). So heaven has various regions, departments,
sections — upper, lower, perhaps middle.
And
then you come to this remarkable thing, that the redeemed
are also divided up into sections in different places.
The Lord Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are
many abiding-places” (John 14:2). (Get rid of that
word “mansions”. There are not streets of
mansions — at any rate, that is not what He referred
to.) “In my Father’s house are MANY abiding-places”.
There is the first heaven, second heaven, third heaven,
heaven of heavens, and people are located accordingly, in
relation to the throne. There is this company right in
the throne. There is that company around the throne.
There is another company and another. The nations,
redeemed nations, on the outer circle deriving values,
now not good and evil, but deriving their good from what
is there in the centre. The kingdom of the heavens is
plural, not singular.
A Company in Closest Spiritual
Proximity to God
Now
you are wondering why all that. For this reason: that we
are occupied now with God’s fullest intention for
His people, as represented in the hundred and forty-four
thousand of chapter 14. God’s fullest intention is
to have His people as near as near can be to Himself, in
the closest spiritual proximity to Himself. This matter
of position, of disposition, of distinction and of
inheritance is a spiritual matter. Dismiss your
geographical ideas and mentality. We need not worry
ourselves to try to decide where heaven is. We could
spend the rest of our days trying to find where heaven is
and we should not get an answer. Some have tried to tell
us which of the planets is heaven, but no one has come to
tell us if they are right. But you see this is a matter
of spiritual proximity. It is just possible, just
gloriously possible, that, wherever we are, with a very
gracious visitation of the Lord, we should find ourselves
in heaven without leaving our present location, and we
would say — “This is just wonderful; nothing
could be more glorious and blessed and perfect than
this”. Perhaps you have never experienced this. It
is possible! Being rid of all that other encompassment
and embodiment and impingement that is of the kingdom of
death — we need not bother about geographical
locations — we may just have a foretaste of divine
glory, even in this scene and in these circumstances.
It is
a matter ultimately not of going somewhere but of being
something. It is not that we are not going to heaven, but
mainly and primarily it is not a matter of some PLACE,
literally, actually. It is being in a certain state
that makes heaven; and the heaven of heavens, the highest
place, the most utter place, is that where God has His
fullest satisfaction in a life. There is nothing that can
surpass the knowledge that God is as satisfied as He can
be, being God, in any life; that He has got what His
heart has been set upon; and I suggest to you that that
can be tested all along the way here, in measure. If you
and I ever have a difficulty over God the Lord having His
place or His way in relation to something very costly,
something very dear to us, something that we hold very
precious, that we very much would have and it is so
difficult to contemplate being without it, and then we
get to the Lord after much battle and conflict and
suffering and travail and we get through on that thing,
there comes in such a peace and joy and rest, such a
sense of the Lord, that it is a touch of glory. God has
got His place, and when He gets that it is glory in the
heart where He has it. Only in small ways do we prove
that now. But let that be complete, final, utter, with no
more conflicts, obstacles, struggles, questions, at all;
the thing is all over, God has reached His full, final,
consummate end: then you will sing as these people here
were singing — the hundred and forty-four thousand,
who were singing with such a voice that it sounded to the
apostle like the sound of many waters. It is the glory of
the Lord having His utter place in a people. That is the
spiritual interpretation.
So
forget henceforth the number one hundred and forty-four
thousand in the matter of so many people singing round
the throne. I am not saying that it will not be like
that, but it is what it means that is the important
thing, and it is just going to be the measure in which
the Lord gets His satisfaction which will be the measure
of our approximation to the heart of things eternally.
That means it is the measure in which the Cross has
accomplished its purpose, or, to use the other figure,
the measure in which we have “followed the LAMB whithersoever
He goeth”. That, in other words, means the measure
in which the Lamb has overcome in our natures, in our
hearts. THAT is the measure of our approximation
to the centre of things eternally, and the measure of
eternal glory, because it is the measure of the
satisfaction of God.
The Spiritual Interpretation of
the Revelation
May I
touch parenthetically upon this matter of interpreting
spiritually. You must go through the book and ask
yourself questions. I find myself, as a somewhat
questioning kind of person, up against difficulties all
the time. I see the Lamb making war and overcoming, and I
see saints with Him making war and overcoming. I have
asked many questions: what does that mean? I wonder what
your mentality is about it. Is it a Doré Bible
mentality, with pictures of all these things? You see one
picture: Christ literally, personally, coming, with a
sword literally in His hand, and a whole host of saints
behind, with swords, going literally to slay and make
devastation and spill blood all over this earth. Is that
your mentality when you read about the wars of the Lamb?
Did He do that in the first days of the church? Did He
overcome? Did He overcome the Roman Empire which set
itself to destroy Him and His testimony in the earth? Did
He come out from heaven literally with a drawn sword and
angels and shedding of blood upon the earth? How did He
do it?
Well,
how has He ever done that sort of thing? He has been
making war all through these centuries. It has been a
sorry lookout for peoples who have lifted their heads
against the Lamb. It is a sorry lookout for those nations
today who are deliberately lifting their heads against
the Lamb. Do not have any doubt about what the issue is
going to be, as to what is going to be the end of the
great red dragon. (That phrase, that term, has some
meaning now — great RED dragon.) Do not have
any doubt. “I have set my king upon my holy hill of
Zion”; “He that sitteth in the heavens shall
laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision” (Ps.
2:6,4). That is the position; it has been like that. If
we could read the spiritual history of nations and
kingdoms from Nebuchadnezzar’s day onwards, we
should see the wars of the Lamb, something working
mightily unto devastation, but unseen; a spiritual force
at work. And these wars of the Revelation are spiritual
wars. There may be an acceleration of the process, may be
sudden things happening in the collapse of these opposing
forces, but it will be, so far as you can see, a common
explanation. You may say that this and that worked to
bring it about. But you have to get to the ultimate. When
you get to the ultimate, you see it is in the wars of the
Lamb. You see what I mean. It is very important to get
your spiritual vision of this book.
Overcoming in Relation to
God’s Eternal Purpose
So we
are brought here to this matter of the differences and
distinctions on spiritual grounds. It is not a thing of a
general character, a wider nature, that I want to say.
What we have in the book of the Revelation is not
something new to the New Testament, it is not really a
new order of things at all. I have before pointed out
that when you come to the beginning of this book and you
have the messages to the seven churches in Asia, you have
the risen Lord speaking to the churches that were raised
up through the instrumentality of the apostle Paul. Paul
was used in Asia for the bringing into being of those
churches, either personally or indirectly, and it was
through Paul that the full revelation of God’s
eternal purpose was given to the churches in Asia. Look
at Ephesus, and remember that the letter to the Ephesians
was not specifically for the Ephesians, but was a
circular letter for Laodicea as well as Ephesus. This
full revelation of God’s eternal purpose in its
fullness was given to those churches, and then the risen
Lord comes back to those churches to bring them to
judgment — for what? He is standing in the midst of
the seven golden lampstands, those churches, for what
purpose?
It is
to deal with them on the basis of the full revelation of
His eternal purpose. There are plenty of things that are
less than the Lord’s purpose, and while He commends
everything that is good — He has to condemn much
that is wrong, but He commends what is good — in
effect He says, “But that is not all I revealed to
you, this is not all I have shown you; I have given you
to see My eternal counsels in fullness — read the
letters that are in your hand. Now to judgment! Not that
you are wholly and utterly bad and corrupt, not that
there are lacking all signs of goodness, not that there
is not something that is quite commendable about you
— but what about this full revelation that has been
given to you? That is the point and that is going to
determine the issue”. “He that
overcometh…”; not just he that overcometh
certain sins, faults, failures, weaknesses, but he that
overcomes everything that gets in the way of full
purpose. The hundred and forty-four thousand are the
overcomers. And what are the overcomers? They are those
who have come into the value and meaning of the whole
revelation of God’s eternal purpose, and they are
nearest to His heart. It is a spiritual matter.
The Marriage of the Lamb
Does
that impress you? If we do not see it in that light, I do
not think we have the key to the whole book. This book,
you see, stands apart. God is dealing with everything in
the light of His full revelation of eternal counsels.
Then, when we have seen that, we are ready, prepared, to
come to this matter which is the centre-most thing of the
whole book — the grand consummation, the marriage of
the Lamb. It is like a mighty climax when you come to
this — “And I heard as it were the voice of a
great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as
the voice of mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah: for the
Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth. Let us rejoice and
be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto him:
for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath
made herself ready.” The marriage of the Lamb is the
climax, there is nothing beyond that. God’s end is
reached in the marriage of the Lamb. God’s heavenly
thought about marriage is identity, such a oneness of
heart and spirit and constitution that the two are one.
“This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of
Christ and of the church” (Eph. 5:32). It is
oneness, utter oneness, with Him as the Lamb. She has
come to such identity with Himself. She is like Him, she
answers to Him in every way. When that end is reached
there will be the supreme “Hallelujah” in
heaven, for the Lord will find the satisfaction toward
which He has been working all along — “His
wife hath made herself ready”.
How? “It
was given unto her that she should array herself in fine
linen, bright and pure: for the fine linen is the
righteous acts of the saints” (Rev. 19:8). This
is something far ahead of imputed righteousness. Imputed
righteousness is for every believer. It is only another
phrase for justification by faith. But this is something
as to character, as to transformation, as to something
inwrought, the practical side of righteousness in the
life: “the righteous acts of the saints”. It is
conformity to His image. THAT is the bride, the
wife of the Lamb, and when the Lord gets that, He is
satisfied; He is satisfied indeed, and all heaven is
satisfied.
The Bride’s Love for the Lamb
There
are, as has been mentioned, approximations to that
represented by different companies in different positions
in relation to the centre and heart. This one is nearest,
that one is not so near, and the other is still less
near, and it is all a matter of the measure of Christ as
the Lamb. That is, of course, just a statement of truth.
But do note that this discrimination is not an arbitrary
one. It is not just that God sovereignly appoints that it
shall be so, and that if you are meant to be of the
hundred and forty-four thousand group you will be because
you are meant to be, and if you are not meant to be it is
no use your trying to be — you never will be. It is
not like that at all. When you come to the question of
the Lamb and His bride it is all a love matter. It
corresponds to chapter 12, the great red dragon, the
woman and the man child, the man child caught up to
heaven, and the great declaration — “And they
overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and
because of the word of their testimony; and they loved
not their life even unto death”; they loved not
their own souls unto the death. FOR HIM they loved
not their own souls unto the death. It is a love matter,
and you know you cannot force love, you cannot compel
love, you have to leave love alone, and if it is not love
you can do nothing about it. But if it is, well, it is
spontaneous and it will go all the way; it is a love
matter. And so it is here. THE BRIDE — it is
just this whole question of love for the Lord and how far
it will take us, how strong and deep that love for the
Lord is, and whether we will just follow Him to the
measure of love, unconstrained, uncompelled love,
spontaneous devotion to our Lord; self-forgetting,
self-denying, self-yielding; all of self being set aside FOR
HIM.
Do you
not feel that this is something that we must face in a
new way? We are so continually weighing things up in the
light of how they affect us. We are so governed by the
effect that situations and circumstances have upon us and
our interests. It is really the root of most of our
trouble, if not of all of it. We are so earth-bound, so
time-bound; this life does mean so very much to us, this
world does mean so very much to us. Heaven and eternity
are not as real as this world is. If only we could get
the heavenly vision and the heavenly sense! If only it
could really take hold of us that eternity is real, that
everything is as real in eternity and in heaven as it is
here, and far more so, just as spiritual things can be
more real than temporal things even now. If only we could
get the sense of that, would we not be more ready to let
go — to let go those things which take such a large
place with us here, in this life; should we not be much
more prepared to let them go? It is a matter, after all,
of heart-relationship to the Lord, and that is what the
Lord is trying to work to all the time, to get us there.
Every conflict, every battle that we come into, is really
circling round one issue, if we recognized it. Right at
the heart of everything is this question of love for the
Lord, whether we are going on with the Lord. It is like
that.
We
have said that this is not some new issue in the book of
the Revelation. We are right back in the rest of the
Bible, and we are particularly back in those letters of
Paul. At the end it is a matter of having reached those
counsels, those purposes of God from eternity which are
revealed in the letters of Paul. Then, when these have
been revealed in the first chapters of the letter to the
Ephesians, when we have been taken back there and shown
the greatness of God’s purpose concerning this elect
people, Paul goes on, not in a sense of an anticlimax
but as so much a part of the whole: “Walk worthily
of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all
lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing
one another in love”. Is not that the Lamb coming in
there? Is not that walking in the way of the Lamb in
relation to the eternal purpose? It is so clear.
“With all lowliness and meekness, with
longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.”
Now do
you see the three movements? There is the revelation of
the purpose in chapters 1, 2 and 3 of Ephesians. There is
the walk according to the Lamb. Where do you arrive at
the end of the letter? “Husbands, love your wives,
even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up
for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by
the washing of water with the word, that he might present
the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot
or wrinkle or any such thing.” “The marriage of
the Lamb is come.” That is only saying in figurative
language that God has reached that purpose in a company
who have gone the way of the Lamb, walked the way of the
Lamb, followed the Lamb, and now they are presented to
the Lamb as His bride. “The marriage of the Lamb is
come.”
And
that, may I say again, is the explanation of the
particular pains that God takes. It may sound a
frightening thing to say that the more we love the Lord
the deeper will He take us, the more utter you mean to be
for God the more utter will He require you to be. It is
like that; that is a fact: and He takes infinite pains
with those whose hearts are really set upon Him; He
spares them nothing, He works very deeply and very
intensely. He has His opportunity when we say that we
mean to be all for Him, but do not let us think that the
measure of our devotion to the Lord is going to be the
measure of His delivering us from trouble. It will work
out the other way. All through it has been like that. The
most devoted to the Lord have been the greatest
sufferers, but God is taking pains. This ought not to
discourage us; it ought to explain to us a great deal. If
the Lord really gets hold of us, He is going to do a very
deep, thorough work, and we shall have an unusual
experience of the way of the Cross, the way of the Lamb.
It will be applied at all points, but the issue —
nearness to His throne. The issue is that which satisfies
Him most and serves His interests most, for out from
that, as we may see later, is fulfilled a marvellous
vocation to all regions through eternal ages.