Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIVMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIV
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. John -- Commentaries
Now what beauty and power it gives to the word of my text, if we take
in this allusion to the Jewish festival! The great multitude bearing
the palms are keeping the feast, memorial of past wilderness
wanderings; and 'He that sitteth on the throne shall spread His
tabernacle above them,' as the word might be here rendered. That is to
say, He Himself shall build and be the tent in which they dwell; He
Himself shall dwell with them in it. He Himself, in closer union than
can be conceived of here, shall keep them company during that feast.
What a thought of that condition—the condition as I believe represented
in this vision—of the spirits of the just made perfect, 'who wait for
the adoption, to wit, the resurrection of the body,' is given us if we
take this point of view to interpret the whole lovely symbolism. It is
all a time of glad, grateful remembrance of the wilderness march. It is
all a time in which festal joys shall be theirs, and the memory of the
trials and the weariness and the sorrow and the solitude that are past
shall deepen to a more exquisite poignancy of delight, the rest and the
fellowship and the felicity of that calm Presence, and God Himself
shall spread His tent above them, lodge with them, and they with Him.
And so, dear brethren, rest in that assurance, that though we know so
little of that state, we know this: 'Absent from the body, present with
the Lord,' and that the happy company who bear the palms shall dwell in
God, and God in them.
III. And now, lastly, look at that final vision which we have in these
texts, which we may call the Tabernacle for the renewed earth.
I do not pretend to interpret the scenery and the setting of these
Apocalyptic visions with dogmatic confidence, but it seems to me as if
the emblems of this final vision coincide with dim hints in many other
portions of Scripture; to the effect that some cosmical change having
passed upon this material world in which we dwell, it, in some
regenerated form, shall be the final abode of a regenerated and
redeemed humanity. That, I think, is the natural interpretation of a
great deal of Scriptural teaching.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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