Reading:
Ezekiel 1
"Above
the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness
of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone; and
upon the likeness of the throne was a likeness as the
appearance of a man upon it above" (Ezekiel
1:26).
"That
working of the strength of His
might which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from
the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the
heavenlies, far above all rule, and authority, and power,
and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in
this age, but also in that which is to come: and He put
all things in subjection under His feet" (Ephesians
1:19-22).
"We
behold Him Who hath been made a little lower than the
angels, even Jesus... crowned with glory and honour"
(Hebrews 2:9).
Let us
focus, for the moment, upon the twenty-eighth verse of
Ezekiel 1:
"As
the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day
of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness
roundabout. This was THE APPEARANCE OF THE LIKENESS
OF THE GLORY OF THE LORD."
That
fragment seems to me to sum up all these prophecies. Not
only does it apply to the first chapter in particular,
but it can be taken all the way through; for everything
in these prophecies is being governed by THE GLORY OF
THE LORD.
There is
a very practical and immediate relationship between this
word and ourselves. I am quite sure that most of us have
a deep and strong sense of the need for the Lord to do a
new thing. I believe that is felt very widely. What that
new thing is may be given different interpretations. In
the evangelical world there is much prayer and talk about
'revival'; that is perhaps only another way of expressing
this sense of a need for the Lord to move in, in a new
way, and do a new thing. Others would put it in other
ways. But it is there amongst Christians everywhere: the
Lord must do a new thing; the Lord must take a fresh
step.
God's End Is Glory
We need
to be very intelligent and understanding about this
matter. The Lord has His ways and His means, and we need
to know something about them if we are going to be in
line with the Lord in any movement that He purposes to
take. This word is therefore very appropriate to the
situation. For whenever God has moved in a new and
further step in His Divine purpose, He has prefaced that
movement by bringing, first, an instrument, and then,
through such an instrument, His people, to a fresh
apprehension of His glory.
That is
a statement which will bear investigation and
confirmation. GOD'S ONE END IN ALL THINGS IS GLORY.
Make no mistake about that. If you want to know what God
is after, what He is moving toward, in all things - and
that compasses countless details in every realm; in
personal life and corporate life; in the nations - the
answer is that God's end is GLORY. That being
so, it is to be noted that He always establishes that
principle at the outset of every movement. He sets it
there as the thing which is going to govern the step, or
movement, or whatever it is, that He is about to
undertake: it is going to be governed by the end which He
has in view, in this as in every new beginning. That may
sound a little difficult for the moment. But let us take
some instances.
Some Examples From The Old Testament
(a) Abraham
We would
all agree that, when God called Abraham out of Ur of the
Chaldees, and separated him to Himself, that was a new
movement of God. There is no doubt about that. It was a
clear-cut and defined breaking-in to human history on the
part of God, with a further stage in the Divine programme
in view. Now Stephen tells us that "THE GOD OF
GLORY appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was
in Mesopotamia" (Acts 7:2). Why the God of GLORY?
The end toward which God was moving was GLORY -
His own glory in a people, to be manifested among the
nations. And so, as the God of glory He appeared to
Abraham. He put the glory there as the principle, the
law, the basis upon which He was taking that step, and
upon which He was going to follow it through.
(b) Moses
Some
centuries later (revealed to Abraham even to the very
period: see Genesis 15:13,16; Acts 7:6), the Lord had
that people out of Egypt. He brought them to Sinai; and
there He changed them from a rabble crowd, an
unconstituted and unorganized multitude, into a corporate
nation. That was the new move at Sinai. By the law and
the testimony and the revelation given in the mount, the
people were constituted a nation. And it was done in GLORY.
Moses went into the mount, and saw the God of Glory, and
came down with that glory on his face. Again God had put
the principle at the beginning of His new move: He was
moving on the pathway of glory.
(c) David And Solomon
A
further step in the Divine plan was reached in the days
of David and Solomon. The temple was indeed a development
of the Divine thought in representation; and it is all in
GLORY. The issue there is GLORY:
"the glory of the Lord filled the house of the
Lord" (1 Kings 8:11, etc.). It was a glorious time;
it was a glorious place. It was all just enunciating and
preserving this principle: God is moving all the time
with this thought governing - GLORY!
(d) Ezekiel
But we
are told that the day came when the glory departed from
Jerusalem. We know why. And that brings us to the
prophets of recovery, and to this prophet Ezekiel in
particular. Here, at the opening of these prophecies, in
the day when the glory is eclipsed amongst the Lord's
people, as lifted up and departed from Jerusalem
(9:3,11:23), the Lord of Glory appeared to Ezekiel: 'This
was the appearance of the likeness of the GLORY
of the Lord.' It is impressive that that comes right at
the beginning of the prophecies, is it not? Now
everything that follows is going to be but the outworking
of that law of glory. God is more concerned, and in these
various ways He is showing His concern, for the end of GLORY
to be reached.
Some Examples From The New Testament
(a) The Incarnation
So much
for the Old Testament. When we come to the New, we shall
all agree that the Incarnation - the birth of the Lord
Jesus into this world - is a new movement of God. That is
indeed a great step forward in the Divine programme. And
therefore it is accompanied with glory - heavenly glory:
'Glory to God in High Heaven!' (Luke 2:14). We sing it in
our Christmas hymn. There is glory again at the inception
of this new, mighty movement of God, because the end of
that thing is indeed going to be glory: He has come for
the recovery of the glory of God in this earth. That is
Heaven's psalm.
(b) Pentecost
We move
on still, and again we will all agree that the Day of
Pentecost is another great step forward in the plan of
God. God is moving on, and this is a clear mark of that
progress of God through the ages. The Day of Pentecost
was a step of God from Heaven. And what glory! John tells
us quite clearly that the coming of the Holy Spirit was
upon the basis of Jesus being glorified. He said: 'The
Spirit was not given; because Jesus was not yet
glorified' (John 7:39) - implying that when the Spirit
was given Jesus was glorified. It was on that ground. God
is moving on this basis all the way along.
(c) Peter
And so
we could go on. We think of the individual instruments of
God's new movement. We will agree that a new movement was
in hand through Peter. There is no doubt about it. It is
a real new movement. Though Paul was the apostle to the
Gentiles, we must remember that Peter opened the door for
the new dispensation both to Jew and to Gentile, in
Jerusalem, and in Caesarea. It is a mighty new movement.
But Peter had his ministry set in this glory. He tells us
that he was with Jesus in the Holy Mount, and beheld His
glory (2 Peter 1:16-18). That had undoubtedly been a
tremendously dynamic thing in Peter's life. The Holy
Spirit interpreted everything to him on the Day of
Pentecost. He got a new Bible, because he had got a new
Lord, and an opened Heaven! It was this great principle
of glory which accounted for Peter's ministry, and
Peter's work, and Peter's endurance to the end.
(d) John
That is
clear, too, in the case of John, who was with him for so
long as his co-worker and fellow-apostle, in Jerusalem at
least. When we come to the beginning of the Book of
Revelation, we once again recognize that we are in the
presence of a new movement - a new movement for the
recovery of the GLORY, which has become so
limited and obscured in the churches. The Lord comes to
John in vision in Patmos; but it is such a glorious
thing, and the visions are so glorious, that more than
once John is down in utter prostration before the Lord,
and has to be lifted up, helped to rise, because of the
overwhelming impact of the vision of the glory (1:17;
19:10; 22:8).
(c) Paul
And what
shall we say of Paul? That wonderful ministry, so full,
so rich, so glorious, was all born in the day when he saw
the GLORY on the Damascus road.
The
point is this. The Lord displayed the glory upon every
occasion when He was going to move again with some new
step in His purpose. All these things that I have
mentioned were steps onward of God in His age-long
purpose, and every one of them was based upon a new
apprehension of the glory of the Lord by those who were
concerned. So that, in the case of the prophets and
apostles, their ministry was a ministry of the greatness
and the glory of the Lord; and as those to whom they
ministered saw that, they became a people with a very
great significance in this world. It was this
apprehension of the glory of Christ that gave character
and meaning and power and value to their being here in
this world. All this, then, has but one meaning: God's
end and God's object is GLORY, and everything
that He does is governed by that.
This is
something that must really take hold of us, and of which
we must take hold: that God intends that all things - ALL
things, to the minutest detail of our life, should work
out, under His hand, for glory; that God, in everything,
is working with glory in view. Do you believe that? No
doubt you believe it as a statement and a truth; perhaps
you believe it in your heart; but it is not always easy
to believe that, because we just do not see how it can
be. Indeed, what we do see convinces us that anything but
glory will come out of this! Oh that the Lord would just
grip us with this - grip me, grip you - individually, and
as companies of His people where we are: that what He is
doing, what He is allowing, is under the control of this
one law and principle - He intends it to be for His
glory. That is what He has in mind, and what He will do,
for He will not be finally thwarted in His purpose.
Ezekiel And The Glory
True,
everything may seem to contradict this. We come to the
prophecies of Ezekiel, and there is plenty that seems to
contradict this glory. But you cannot get away from the
fact that the glory is disclosed in the very first
chapter. It is not reserved to the end, so that you have
to wade through all the wearisome tale of judgments and
woe, and then at last find that God comes out with things
in His own hands - so to speak just manages to survive.
You are told right at the very beginning that everything
is governed by GLORY. In everything that is
going to happen, everything that is going to be said,
right on to the end, the governing thing is THE GLORY
OF GOD; it is there as the very foundation of
everything. We must take note of that. What is God's end?
Paul has seen it, and has given it to us in a matchless
fragment: "Unto Him be the glory in the church and
in Christ Jesus unto all the generations of the age of
the ages" (Eph. 3:21). You cannot get beyond that!
That is finality; that is the end - 'unto the age of the
ages, GLORY in the Church and in Christ Jesus'.
We come
then to Ezekiel. There is much here to help us as to
God's own concern for His glory. WE may have a
concern for the Lord's glory, the Lord has a far greater
concern for His glory than we have. This book is a book
just full of God's own concern for His own glory. Notice
how precise Ezekiel is, even to the year, and the month,
and the day of the month. "The word of the Lord came
expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of
Buzi..." (1:3) - where he was, when he was, how he
was. It is like the Lord, moving so exactly, so
meticulously, in this matter, and laying hold of this
man. Remember, it had to be a laying hold of him, because
it resulted in a complete change in his whole vocation.
Ezekiel was a trained priest; he belonged to the
priesthood; he was a young man, who was expecting that
through his life he would fulfil the ministry of a
priest. This broke in and upset his whole career and his
whole vocation: he had to change his whole manner and
method of life, from priesthood to prophet. It was
something very strong in this man's case. It is
interesting to notice that his name, Ezeki-el, means
'God will strengthen'. For the glory of God that is very
necessary, especially in conditions such as those in
which Ezekiel lived.
Ezekiel,
thus, as a young man, was carried away with the captives
to Babylon, and was 'among the captives by the river
Chebar', he tells us (1:1,3); and, from what we know, and
what we read, it was a pretty hopeless situation. We know
something of the conditions in Jerusalem from the
prophecies and ministry of Jeremiah: it was pretty bad
there; poor Jeremiah had his heart broken, as he had
ministered in Jerusalem. But there are reasons for saying
that, whatever it was like in Jerusalem, it was even more
difficult in Babylon - that is, so far as the people were
concerned to whom Ezekiel ministered. They were a
difficult, recalcitrant people. Read these early
chapters; see Ezekiel's encounter with them, and the
measures to which he had to resort.
An Unpopular Man
I do not
want to stay with too much detail, but it is very
necessary, for our encouragement, that we should get the
setting of the glory of the Lord. Here he is with these
captives. Now, a man who has to bring home to a people
the reasons for their condition and for the judgments of
God; to speak faithfully in the name of the Lord, without
compromising on any principle; who will put his own very
life and future in the balances of his ministry and be
thoroughly faithful. He will not condone any wrong. He
will not compromise on any principle in order to preserve
their favour and his own position. The man who really has
the glory of God at heart at any cost is a very unpopular
man.
And
Ezekiel was an unpopular man among the exiles - so
unpopular that he had to resort to all sorts of seeming
tricks in order to gain their attention, to get a
hearing. Look at the things to which he resorted, and had
to do - spectacular things; unusual things; unnatural
things. Sometimes he seemed to act the fool to draw
attention, so that people should look in his direction.
It was a hard time to get a hearing, to have any
attention at all; he was the most unpopular man, perhaps,
in the country. It was a desperately difficult situation
that he was in amongst his own people there.
The Heavens Opened In Difficult
Situations
In the
midst of such a situation - which I do not think I
exaggerate; indeed, I could add much more to it from
these very chapters - in the midst of such a difficult
and, for the time being, seemingly hopeless situation, he
tells us that the heavens were opened, and he saw visions
of God! There is no situation so hopeless as to make it
impossible for the glory of God to break in; no situation
that can shut God out and be too impossible for a fresh
manifestation of His glory. Do you not take heart from
that, if it is true? Well, here it is! It is an amazing
thing when you take the whole setting, and the whole
circumstances, and the whole provision. You could say,
Well, that is altogether beyond any hope; that has broken
Jeremiah's heart; that has brought the wrath of God -
destroyed Jerusalem and sent the people far away: what
can you hope for in such a situation? And, right in the
midst of that, Ezekiel says: 'I saw the heavens open, and
visions of God.' And he sums it all up: "This
was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the
Lord."
Now,
difficult as it is for us to take hold of that, really to
believe it, this may be a message to us. Perhaps we are
sometimes very near to despair over the whole situation.
Let it come to us as a message from the Lord. In our own
lives, or in the place where we are, perhaps as a company
of the Lord's people, things create such difficulty that
sometimes we get near to giving it all up. Ezekiel might
well have done that, for he had far more occasion for
doing it than you or I have; but right in there - THERE
- "This was the appearance of the
likeness of the glory of the Lord". "The
heavens were opened!"
We have
thought and said much about an 'open Heaven'. All we will
say about that, for the present, is that, if there is any
indication at all that the Heavens are open, that is
always the most hopeful thing in any situation. You may
be having some difficult times in your company of the
Lord's people; perhaps you have some difficult people -
well, Ezekiel had some difficult people; you may be
having much discouragement; there may be things which you
feel to be very wrong, and so on. And yet, when you come
together and give yourselves to the worship of the Lord,
there is a wonderful sense of unction. You just become
occupied with the Lord! For the time being, at any rate,
you let the other go, and the Lord becomes your Centre -
the Heavens are opened! While that lasts, there is every
hope for your assembly; there is every hope for the
future. There is nothing more hopeless than a closed
Heaven.
Look at
Calvary: 'There was darkness over the whole earth... and
Jesus cried with a loud voice, My God, My God, why has
Thou forsaken Me?' (Matt. 27:45-46). Heaven was closed,
because of what He was doing there - taking the sin of
the whole world. Heaven was closed down, was shut; there
was no way through. That is the most hopeless situation
that could ever possibly be. The hopelessness of that
situation killed Him. That was the final stroke to bring
about His death. It was not the nails; it was not the
thorns; it was not the action of men: it was the broken
heart, because He had lived all His earthly life with a
clear way through to the Father - with an open Heaven.
All His days He had been in communication with Heaven,
with the Father; He had never known until then one moment
when He could not instantly get through. Here that all
ended: there was no way through; no response; no
answering voice: a closed Heaven. That is hope-less.
If you
and I have any answer to prayer, any little indication or
token that the Lord has not forsaken, given up, shut down
on us; if we have anything like that, then Heaven is
still open, and that is very hopeful for the future. Let
us cherish the open Heaven in our times of worship. Many
dark things may be about; many difficult things;
situations, like Ezekiel's, may be full of evil, or
perplexities, or problems, or difficulties, or
sufferings. Yet when we come together, and focus upon the
Lord, we sense His presence: that is our open Heaven; and
an open Heaven is always a sign that there is hope yet;
there is still a future for glory!
The Lord
forbid that we should ever come to the time when we are
closed down by Heaven, and cannot get through. 'I saw the
heavens opened...', and that meant God had not finished
with things yet; God had not closed down yet. There may
be judgments; as the following chapters show. There may
have to be judgments; there may have to be discipline;
there may have to be chastening; there may be much yet to
be done. But whatever it is that has to be cleared up -
perhaps by the jealous wrath of God for His glory;
whatever hard things, sufferings, afflictions, have to be
gone through, because of the wrong; nevertheless, it is
all governed by this: A HOPE OF GLORY - a hope of GLORY
- if the Heavens still remain open.
The Supremacy Of The Lord On The Throne
"I
saw visions of God" - that is, visions given by God.
What did Ezekiel see? What was it that comprised those
visions of God? Well, as we have seen in chapter 1, he
saw a throne; and then he saw "a likeness as the
appearance of a MAN" upon the throne above
(1:26). And then he saw a two-fold symbolic medium of the
administration of that throne - the cherubim and the
wheels. (We shall hope to return to these things later).
Then, as we know, he saw a 'house' - THE House
- which he was commanded to show to the people of Israel
(43:10). He saw the House in later glory. He saw the
river coming from under the threshold, circling the
altar, passing through the court, and away down,
broadening and deepening, and making everything live
whithersoever it came (47:1-9). Then he saw the land and
the inheritance possessed (47:13-48:29). And finally he
saw the City, and the name of the City: "The Lord
is there" (48:30-35). That is the end of it all
- the Lord is there!
What I
want to emphasize and stress particularly is that all
that we see in this book is the result and the expression
of that throne, and of the 'Man upon it above'. Of course
that is very simple to understand: everything emanates
and results from the great, inclusive fact that there is
One in the place of supreme government and authority. And
for us, and for them, and for all time, by the eternal
appointment of God, that One is the Lord Jesus, the Son
of God. He has been exalted to the 'right hand of the
Majesty in the heavens' (Heb. 1:3; 8:1). 'We see Jesus
crowned with glory and honour' (Heb. 2:9). 'God raised
Him and set Him at His own right hand, far above all rule
and authority, dominion and power, and every name that is
named' (Eph. 1:20-21). Everything comes out of that. If
that is true, then everything is all right; it will be
all right in the end.
Now,
this is very up-to-date, is it not? We have spoken of the
conditions in which Ezekiel spent his life and fulfilled
his ministry - the time and place and the state of
things. Yes, he had a very difficult situation. But the
Church has got a pretty difficult situation now; things
are far from easy today. There is now, as then, very much
that is wrong, and much that is evil. Who will say today
that the GLORY of God pervades His people?
Ezekiel's was a difficult time; but it was at that time,
and in those circumstances, that this instrument, under
the government of the throne, was brought in for a new
movement of God. Or we might say, that this apprehension,
on the part of an instrument, of the supremacy of the
Throne and of the Man upon it led to the wonderful result
that, in time, the whole situation was changed, and God
had something for His glory.
The Vision Of The Glory Saves From
Despair
That
vision - the opened Heaven; the throne, and the Man upon
it above - had a tremendous effect upon Ezekiel. It saved
him, in his day, from despair; it saved his ministry; it
saved his testimony; it saved his life. And it is only
that that will save us; only that CAN save us.
Perhaps that sounds a little pessimistic. I do not want
to be a pessimist; but you cannot be acquainted with the
state of things on this earth today, even amongst what is
called Christian, or Christianity, without sometimes
feeling fairly hopeless about it. Is it possible that the
great revelation given to us of the Church, as we have it
in the New Testament, can in any way be realized in our
time? Look at the divisions; look at the quarrels; feel
this awful atmosphere that has grown up and spread. In
the United States, for instance, some 35 years ago, there
seemed to be such an open, clear way for something new of
the Lord: the atmosphere seemed so clear, and hearts
seemed so open. But in that land today, everybody is
suspecting everybody else; the spirit of criticism has
got into the most devoted Christians, both about other
Christians and about Christian things. You cannot have
half-an-hour's conversation even with those who are most
devoted to the Lord, without somebody being lashed,
somebody being mentioned for warning, as suspect. It is
like an awful miasma, or fog, that has crept in amongst
Christians over the whole world. You cannot go into your
religious bookshops without seeing line upon line of
pamphlets and books that are occupied with denouncing
something. Men are giving their whole lives to this
horrible work of trying to expose what they think to be
error.
That is
strong language, but it is not too strong. It is the
state of things, and you might despair of the realization
of that which you have seen to be God's purpose. And yet
you cannot; the Lord will not let you. If you really have
seen the Lord, you just cannot give it up. You may say,
like Jeremiah, that you will not speak in this way any
more. He resolved that he would never speak again of the
Lord. But then - "If I say, I will not... speak any
more in His name, then there is... a burning fire shut up
in my bones... and I cannot contain" (Jer. 20:9).
You and
I may have often decided that we should just have to stop
talking about it, and give it up, because it does not
seem to work; things seem to go from bad to worse, and
worse to awful! And yet we are still here. We cannot help
ourselves; we are back again in full view of God's
declared purpose. The Spirit will not give it up, and
will not let us give it up, however bad the situation is.
The Heaven is not closed yet; the Man on the throne has
not evacuated the throne yet; there is still hope. We
have got to have the mastery of that great reality that
He is still there, where God put Him. And if this is
true, difficult as it sometimes is to believe it, or at
any rate to see it, - then He IS 'far above all
rule and authority, and dominion, and power, and every
name' - world dictators or anybody else - 'that is named,
in this age or in the ages to come.' Only as that gets
hold of us, and we take hold of it in turn, will there be
any prospect at all; but that is the prospect.
Strategic Revelations Of The Glory
To
reveal the glory is always a strategic movement of God in
a difficult and unpromising day and situation. I think
that was the meaning of the Transfiguration. It was a
difficult day; things were closing in on the Lord and His
little band of men; the atmosphere was impregnated with
hatred; and the Cross was there immediately before. How
will they meet it? How will they survive it? The strategy
was the Transfiguration - they 'saw His glory'. And
although for a time afterward it seemed to be eclipsed,
nevertheless, when He was risen from the dead, they
understood all things. In the light of the resurrection
the Transfiguration took on its full meaning.
Things
were going very hardly for the church in Jerusalem on the
day that that wonderful young man, Stephen, was dragged
outside and stoned to death, with that so vicious hatred
of the Lord Jesus. But Stephen saw the Heavens opened,
and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God
(Acts 7:56). It saved the situation for him, and I think
it had a much farther reach than just himself; I think it
handed on something. At any rate, one man there became a
very potent factor in the Church for all time. He was
tremendously affected by what he saw in the face of
Stephen, and heard through the lips of Stephen; he never
got over it. And he never forgave himself. He confessed
afterwards: 'And I, I was standing by and giving my vote,
my consent!' (Acts 22:20). The seeing of the glory was a
saving thing in a dark and difficult day.
Paul is
in prison; he is nearing the end of his long, full life
and ministry. He thinks of all those many churches - far
more than we have tabulated by letters addressed to them
- which he had been used to bring into being; of all his
many converts, and of the many who owed everything
spiritually to him and his ministry. Now he is in prison,
shut up, and he cannot go to them; the churches are in a
state of decline; many are turning against him and away
from him as he is there. He is a lonely man - 'only Luke
is with me'; a man in difficulty, if ever a man was,
speaking naturally. What a situation, what an end, for a
man like that! What saves him?
It is
astoundingly impressive, that, in the midst of all that,
knowing it all - knowing his own position, knowing his
own prospects, which were pretty poor for this life;
knowing the state of things far away in the churches;
getting news of these secessions; faced with the seeming
breakdown of his work; disappointed with believers and
with churches - I say that it is an amazing thing that
with all that, out of that, in the midst of that, enough
to crush a man in despair, he has an open Heaven, and
says: 'To Him be the glory unto the ages of the ages!'
(2 Tim. 4:18). He is saved by the glory; he is delivered
by the glory. What a different end it might have been but
for this apprehension of the glory!
Here he
writes then, that this One, this Man, is in the glory on
the Throne above, far above all rule and authority.
Caesar may be there next door, governing the whole world,
bringing it under his mighty and evil heel, and seeming
to be able to carry out all his fell designs against the
Church of Jesus Christ. Paul, right along side of Caesar
and Caesar's city and stronghold, says: 'He hath set HIM
far above all rule and authority, and every name - Caesar
or any other - in this age, or in any other age... hath
put all things in subjection under His feet...' That is a
saving vision of the glory.
It was
that that saved John in his difficult and desperate
situation in Patmos, for it was indeed something to break
a man's heart and send him deep down in dark despair.
John was the one lonely survivor of the whole apostolic
band. They have all gone, he is cut off from his beloved
church; alone; isolated; exiled; with all the conditions
which must have accompanied that exile. That is enough to
make a man despair, to feel that he has lived his life in
vain, and that there really is no hope at all. But he had
an opened Heaven, and saw a vision - and what visions he
saw! It was the opened Heaven that saved him. The Lord
give us that, and a new apprehension of the Throne and of
the Man upon it.