Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of RevelationGordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Religion
Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation
Gordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Bible. Revelation -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Scholarly orthodox theologians talk learnedly about Him, but Himself as
He walked among us and as He is now, Him it would seem that they see
not, at least not enough to burn through and burn out and burn up and
send men out aflame with the Jesus-passion. Philosophies about Him that
are classed as "liberal" and put attractively, yet have nothing of the
burn in them that reveals Himself.
The more modern Church of the more western world seems to have gotten a
new lease of aggressiveness in service, a new intensity in activities so
numerous as to be a bit bewildering sometimes. The wheels whir busily
and noisily. You feel them. But Him, the unseen presence that makes you
reverently wrap your face up out of sight, and stand with awed heart to
listen, _Him_ we seem not to see.
The wondrous quiet Voice that makes your heart burn within you with a
burning that cleanses and mellows and melts down, _that_ we seem to hear
only by getting away from the noise of the whirring wheels into some
quiet corner.
There are in every Church and nation those who seem to have the close
personal touch with Himself. Their faces and daily lives show the marks.
Their lips may not say so much, for they who see most can say least of
what they see. But the marks in the life are unmistakable.
Yet even here the sight of Christ emphasizes chiefly the personal side,
what He is personally to them. And what a blessed side that is only they
who know it know. They think of Him as a personal Saviour, and the heart
glows. They see Him at the Father's right hand interceding, and
gratefully remember that He will forget no name where there is a
trusting heart. They think of the Holy Spirit, the other Jesus, Jesus'
other self, always "alongside to help," alongside _in_side. And they
practise letting Him work out the Christ-likeness within themselves.
And all this is blessed, only blessed. They see Him in His personal
relation to themselves. But there's something more than this. No one
knew more of this blessed personal part than John. But John saw more
than this on Patmos. He saw Christ _as He is now_.
This is clearly a new sight of Christ. It was new to John. It would seem
to be new to us. It is new in the pages of this book. It is something
different from any sight seen before. In the Gospels we see Jesus the
_Man_. In carpenter shop and little whitewashed stone cottage, in the
ministering life clear from the Jordan bottoms to the healing touch at
Gethsemane's gate, and in the suffering clear up to the ninth hour of
that fateful day He is the _Man_, one of ourselves, though clearly more
even in His humanity than the humanity we are.
On the Transfiguration Mount the favoured inner three, the leaders, see
the glory within shining out through the Man. So bewildered are they
that the chief impression that remains is of a blinding brightness. Yet
this is up on a high mountain far away from the crowd, and from the
haunts of men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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