Revelation 10
1 I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.
2 He had a little book open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land,
3 and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roars. When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices.
4 Now when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, "Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them."
5 The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised up his hand to heaven
6 and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be delay no longer,
7 but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets.
8 Then the voice which I heard from heaven spoke to me again and said, "Go, take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the earth."
9 So I went to the angel and said to him, "Give me the little book."
And he said to me, "Take and eat it; and it will make your stomach bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth."
10 Then I took the little book out of the angel's hand and ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth. But when I had eaten it, my stomach became bitter.
11 And he said to me, "You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings."
This is message number 14 in this series on the Book of Revelation. My principles of interpretation of the Bible are viz. comparing Scripture with Scripture and insisting that the NT takes precedence over the OT compels me to follow a spiritual understanding of this Book. Revelation is a book of symbols and the key to understanding most of the symbolic language in this last NT book is found in the OT, especially the prophets Daniel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, et al.
The overall purpose of the Revelation is to give comfort to the Church and the assurance that through long ages of tribulation and testing of her faith Christ is victorious.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ [apocalypse; unveiling] was given to the Apostle John who has survived the other apostles but is now suffering in exile on the Isle of Patmos for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.
It is near the end of the first century and most of the Christians are now second generation believers.
John represents the Church as he is her “brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.” Rev. 1:9
The Lamb, who alone is worthy, opens the seventh seal and behind it there are seven trumpets sounded by angels. In chapter 9 we have the fifth and sixth trumpets which are called “woe” trumpets.
After the sixth trumpet we come to chapter 10.
The vision of Revelation 10 serves as an interlude between the sixth trumpet, called the second “woe” trumpet of chapter 9, and the third and last “woe” trumpet of chapter 11, verse 15 which brings the revelation to John to the end of the world.
Don’t be confused, the key is the number seven. Seven in the Bible stands for perfection or completion. Seven seals are opened. But the seventh seal unveils seven trumpets. The last three trumpets are called “woe” trumpets. And when we get to the seventh trumpet there will be seven vials of the wrath of God to be poured out.
The message of the vision of the “Mighty Angel and the Little Book” to the Church is that a significant period of time will pass before the last trumpet sounds.
But when the seventh trumpet sounds there will be delay no longer.
It is never the purpose of God that the end of all things should be known to man. As curious as we may be we cannot know when the Lord will return for the final judgment at the end of this present age.
Would that the prognosticators who love to sell their books to the ignorant and the simple would “hear” the words of our Lord. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Before the Lord Jesus ascended to heaven His disciples asked Him about the end of the age.
Acts 1:6-7; 9-11
6 Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, "Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"
7 And He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.
9 Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
10 And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel,
11 who also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven."
Of course the purveyors of prophecy books have read these words but they think they know more than the Lord Himself knows and what they really do know is that there are millions of dupes willing to pay good money for their always wrong predictions.
With that as a foundation regarding “time”, Chapter 10 is the prelude to several references to measurements of time. In chapter 11:2 we read that the Church will testify to the grace of God for “42 months”. The number is also given as “1260 days”[11:3] or “time, times, and half a time” [12:14].
These periods of time are a fertile playground for those who try so hard to make everything in the Bible, especially the Revelation, to be literal. Of course they too spiritualize what they must while accusing us of being “liberal”.
But these periods of time are only intended to reveal to the suffering Church that time belongs to God and that He has determined the exact length of prophetic time to run until His determined counsel has been completed.
To the Church the time is indefinite but to God it is fixed and certain.
This chapter gives us several images to consider and we are well-served to grasp the meaning of the vision as we look at the Mighty Angel, the cloud, the rainbow, the Little Book, the Angel astride the sea and the land, and finally the mystery of God.
As always the principle of interpretation of the entire Book of Revelation is given in 1:3: Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is [always] near.
The rule is continuous fulfillment. The efforts of Satan and his demons out of the bottomless pit continue to assail the Church and in the purpose of God in Christ they are continually put down.
This “Little Book” is not the seven-sealed scroll that the Lamb took from the hand of God. The “Little Book” is prophetic of the testimony of the Church from generation to generation as the “Mighty Angel” treads upon sea and earth to control the seething powers which these natural features symbolize.
The sweet taste of the Little Book becomes bitter. It is sweet to know that Christ overrules Satan but the consequences in this life may be bitter.
Some commentators deny that the Mighty Angel is Christ. William Hendriksen, e.g., says that Christ is not called an angel in the Apocalypse and says further that John does not worship this Angel as he does Christ in 1:17.
But Christ often appears as the Angel of the Lord in the OT. As to the matter of worship, in chapter 1 the vision is personal to John, and here in chapter 10 the vision is purely prophetic.
In chapter 12, we shall make the point that Michael the archangel is none other than Christ the Lord of the Angels. There is only one “archangel” mentioned in the Bible and He can only be the Son of God.
For a long time I rejected the notion that Michael the archangel was Christ because the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Michael is Christ. But the difference is that the J. W.’s also teach that Christ was the first created being of God.
In Daniel 10:21 it is “Michael, your Prince, who stands for the children of your people” who comes to comfort Daniel while he is in exile, enslaved, and oppressed by the evil power of this world. This is an exact parallel to the condition of John and the Church as recorded in the Apocalypse.
So the meaning of our chapter 10 is that the Church must continue to encounter opposition, trials, and persecutions, more bitter than any thus far experienced. But in her afflictions the Church is sustained by her Lord and her Redeemer whose figure is the Mighty Angel holding in His hand the Little Book of its Destiny until the final outcome reveals the “mystery of God”.
This “mighty angel” can be none other than Christ the Lord. He descends from heaven clothed with a cloud which dims the solar light with a glorious rainbow, under His feet the fiery judgment; with uplifted hand, we hear the voice of thunder and the stupendous proclamation:
“There shall be delay [time] no longer, but when the last angel shall begin to sound, THE MYSTERY OF GOD WILL BE FINISHED!”
THE MIGHTY ANGEL
“I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven…”, verse 1.
The Angel is mighty, not because other angels are weak, but because of His superiority beyond the rank of ordinary angels. This Angel bears the commission which no ordinary angel can fulfill. He enters into the affairs of men with their destiny in His hand and with the power to rule over sea and land.
CLOTHED WITH A CLOUD
The Mighty Angel is “clothed with a cloud.”
You need not be reminded, although this is what I am doing, that John draws his images from the OT. The cloud is frequently associated with deity. Human vision cannot penetrate this cloud. All is hidden and mysterious. A cloud cannot be reproduced in the form of an idol. The cloud floats above creation with flashes of fearful lightning and the roll of awful thunders.
Again borrowing much from Revelation Spiritually Understood by
God sets the bow of His covenant in the cloud (Genesis 9:13). He leads His people through the wilderness in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. Abraham sees the divine presence pass before him as “a smoking furnace” (Gen. 15:17).
“I will appear in the cloud on the mercyseat” declares God to Moses (Lev. 16:2).
Isaiah sees the Lord “riding upon a swift cloud” (Isa. 19:1). Ezekiel sees the glory of God in the form of “a great cloud and a fire infolding itself” (Ezek. 1:4).
At the transfiguration the apostles were enveloped in an impenetrable cloud, out of which the voice of God spoke saying, “This is my beloved Son, Hear him”
(Luke 9:34-35).
At the ascension the disciples saw the Lord being “taken up” and “a cloud received Him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). … That “cloud” was as the cloud on the Mount of Transfiguration. It was of the same order as that cloud which went before the Israelites in the wilderness. At the Ascension the Lord was enveloped in the same cloudy formation to shroud the essential glory of His Godhead to which He then and there returned.
So at the last Christ comes again in “the clouds of heaven” and every eye shall see Him (Rev. 1:7). Those who are “alive and remain” to the coming of the Lord, will be “caught up” with the resurrected saints “in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air”
(1 Thess. 4:17).
So John takes the image of the “cloud” that represents deity from the OT and so do Luke and Paul.
I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head,
THE COVENANT SIGN
“A rainbow was upon his head.” This feature alone should have warned some commentators about the identity of this “angel”. The rainbow must ever be the sign of God’s covenant with man never to abandon the human race, never to surrender the control of creation to evil forces, never in any way to diminish His Lordship over the world until all His purposes are completed and His destiny consummated. So is the meaning of the original establishment of the bow in the clouds, after the flood
(Genesis 9:8-17).
HIS FACE WAS LIKE THE SUN
On the Mount of Transfiguration, and in Rev. 1, verse 16, John has seen Christ with the divine glory outshining the sun in His countenance. Similarly Daniel sees Michael whose face was “as the appearance of lightning” (Dan. 10:6). The figure of the sun is used in Holy Scripture to symbolise perpetuity: “His name shall be continued as long as the sun” (Psalm 72:17). For His people the Lord acts as “sun and shield” (Psalm 84:11). Christ’s throne will endure “as long as the sun” (Psalm 89:36) - that is, His kingdom will have no end (Luke 1:33). …
We now understand the meaning of Isaiah when he foretells (chap. 30, verse 26): “The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound”.
The meaning is that in the Kingdom of Christ, established in the New Testament, spiritual light and knowledge and grace are increased to perfection as compared with the lesser Old Testament revelation. … It is plain that in the O.T. the people of God were taught to look forward to the day of Christ when there should be a great increase in the knowledge of God, like unto sevenfold increase in the light of the sun and moon. This took place at Christ’s first advent and is realised fully in the gospel.
Likewise, to apostate Israel the Lord says in Amos 8:9 – “In that day I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day”. Israel’s sun and moon were the favour of God which she despised, and therefore she became exposed to the judgment of darkness, ignorance and rejection. Her sun ‘going down at noon’ has a startling connection with that mysterious darkness which overspread the earth at the crucifixion of Christ. That was when Israel’s sun went down at noon, literally as well as spiritually: “And it was about the sixth hour (the Jewish noon), and there was a darkness over all the earth (margin, “land”) until the ninth hour” (Luke 23:44).
In Malachi 4:2, Christ is “the sun of righteousness who rises with healing in his wings” - a picture of the gospel day.
The Church in Rev. 12:1 appears as “a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet”. This shows her to be the same elect body which in the O.T. was illuminated by the ordinances of the Levitical Law, represented here as the light of the moon, which is the reflected light of the sun not yet risen above the horizon of time. The O.T. night being now over, she is clothed in the full glory of the knowledge of Christ (“clothed with the sun”) - the bright and full revelation of Him whose face “shineth as the sun”.
We journey to a city which has “no need of the sun” (that is, the natural sun) for the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof (Rev. 21:23).
“His feet as pillars of fire.”
The feet enter largely into the symbolism of Holy Scripture. They are often symbolic of undisputed rule or possession, as here. The fiery appearance denotes judgment. The “angel” plants his right foot upon the sea and his left foot on the earth denoting his universal and unchallenged dominion over all created things; the sovereign ruler of the nations and the arbiter of all destinies. Yet He who thus claims all creation as His own, and marches on those glorious feet through all the chapters of history, subduing all to Himself, is the same who cries in the psalms of David - “They pierced my hands and my feet”. (Psalm 22:16) . …
Nahum tells us that “the clouds are the dust of his feet” (Nahum 1:3 etc), and by this the prophet indicates the omnipotence of the Lord as He marches through history to subdue all to Himself and break the power of the wicked. At the end of the chapter Nahum sees those same terrible, marching feet in terms of utmost grace and gentleness – “Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace” (verse 15).
How graphic is that prophetic picture in Zechariah (yet how almost universally misunderstood): “His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives … 
and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west ….” (Zech. 14:4).
This is not, as usually it is taken to be, a literal event in Palestine in a day yet future, but a symbolic prophecy of the first coming of Christ when the Mount of Olives stood as a symbol for the earthly kingdom of Israel.
Zech 14:6-8
6 It shall come to pass in that day
That there will be no light;
The lights will diminish.
7 It shall be one day
Which is known to the LORD —
Neither day nor night.
But at evening time it shall happen
That it will be light.
8 And in that day it shall be
That living waters shall flow from Jerusalem,
Half of them toward the eastern sea
And half of them toward the western sea;
In both summer and winter it shall occur.
The “mount”, that is, the nation of Israel, was divided asunder by the Messiah who was rejected, and a way of escape from the doomed city of Jerusalem was opened up for those fugitives of hope by the election of grace, for those who abandoned the earthly administration (now failed and doomed), and fled for refuge to the gospel hope set before them.
The gospel day is described as “one day” which shall never end (verses 6-7) and the “living waters” of the divine Word, the gospel, go forth from the mystic Zion to those seas which represent the gentile nations (verse 8).
“Thou hast put all things under his feet” writes David in Psalm 8, verse 6 - words which are echoed by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:27 and, Ephesians 1, verse 22.
David repeats the theme in Psalm 110 - the most quoted psalm in the N.T. “Sit thou at my right hand till I make thy foes thy footstool”.
All dominions, empires, powers, whether in earth or under the earth, are His footstool upon which rest His feet. This is the divine decree, founded on the absolute merit and obedience (even unto death) of the ever blessed Son. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with that. No prerogative of man can hinder, delay or set aside the fact of it or the appointed day of the final triumph of Christ. If we did not believe that, we would have no religion, no faith, no hope, and no God.
THE LITTLE BOOK
“And he had in his hand a little book open” (verse 2).
The object of the vision has to do with this book - a small scroll lying unsealed and ready for inspection in the hand of the Mighty One. The symbolism shows that the contents of this “little book” were available then and there for those whom John represented – the Church.
That John is called upon to “eat” the book, and that it already lay open in the hand of the “angel” must surely indicate that it had an immediate fulfillment, unlike the seven thunders (verse 4) whose message John was ordered not to write because the time was not yet come.
The book was “little” because what it had to say was brief, and could be put in few words. Its message was, as we shall shortly see, that the Church must continue to bear her testimony to Christ right to the end, but the delay [time] would be long, and sweet though the testimony of Christ is to the soul of the believer, it must ever bring the church into the bitterness of the world’s enmity and cruelty.
THE LION ROARS
With “his right foot on the sea and his left upon the earth”, the mighty One “cried with a loud voice as when a lion roars: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices” (verse 3).
It is important to note that the planting of the feet on the sea and earth (and in that order) anticipates chapter 13, the emergence from sea and earth of the two mystic beasts who come forth as enemies of the kingdom of Christ. The “beast out so the sea” and the “beast out of the earth”.
Before these apparitions emerge, the dominion of Christ has already been asserted, so that the permitted evil is under the control of the Mighty One who comes down for the protection of the Church and the final victory of his kingdom.
The lion is the symbol of majesty, power and rule. The roaring of the lion spreads terror amongst those who have reason to tremble.
Amos writes: “The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The Lord hath spoken, who can but prophesy” (Amos 3:8).
Again, “The Lord will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither”
(Amos 1:2). See also Joel 3:16; Hosea 11:10; and Jeremiah 25:30-38.
The prophetical meaning of the “roar” is that judgment is threatened. In the case of John’s vision, it is a warning to the world that the Lord has “come down from heaven” to save His people and pour His judgments upon their foes. The same meaning attaches to the O.T. passages referred to above.
It pleases the Lord also to present Himself frequently under the figure of the ‘King of Beasts'”. The first occurrence of the word LION in the Bible has a direct reference to Christ. When dying Jacob blesses his sons and gives each his prophetical destiny, Judah is marked out for special Messianic association. It is of Judah’s seed that Christ came. The words are “Judah is a lion’s whelp. From the prey my son, thou art gone up.... The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet till Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be” (Genesis 49:9-12). Shiloh, of course is Christ - the first time a name was given to the coming Deliverer. The name comes from the same root as “Solomon’, and means “peace”. Jacob’s prophecy is very full and complete. There is a clear reference to this prophecy in Revelation where Christ appears as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” (chap. 5:5).
SEVEN THUNDERS
As that great cry of the mighty One echoes through all created space Seven Thunders “utter their voices”. With one exception thunder is only mentioned in the New Testament in the writings of John. The one exception, in Mark 3:17, concerns John and his brother James who (Mark records) were surnamed by the Lord, “Boanerges - sons of thunder”. These were the two brothers whose mother besought the Lord that when He came into His Kingdom her two sons should sit with Him, one on His right hand and the other on His left (Matt. 20:21).
We may be sure that the request is not recorded just to show a mother’s pride in her sons. There was a prophetic meaning in the proud mother’s plea, for there was a sense in which her request was fulfilled, but not as she could have understood then. One of the brothers, James, was the first martyr among the apostles, and the other was the last of the apostles to survive, and to him was granted the ministry of consolation to the Church in his late writings - the gospel, the three epistles, and the Apocalypse.
These writings prepared the church for her agelong struggle against the power of this world. These two great apostles were so named “Sons of Thunder” by the Lord because their ministry, especially that of John, was to have so much to do with the rolling of the divine thunders in history.
John is the only writer to record the voice of God speaking from heaven when, nearing the crucifixion, Christ cried out “Father, glorify thy name”. The voice of the Eternal replied “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again”. What Christ received as an intelligible voice, the people heard only as thunder: “The people that stood by said that it thundered” (John 12:28-29).
In Revelation John records thunderings in chap. 4:5; 6:1; 8:5; 10:3-4; 11:19; 14:2; and 19:6. So he fulfils his surname Boanerges, one of the “sons of thunder”.
The seven thunders whose intelligible voice John was forbidden at that time to write down are the seven last plagues introduced in the form of the vial judgments of chapter 16. The command not to write the message conveyed by the thunders is to be understood as a token of delay: in other words, a great interval was to elapse between the time of the vision and the time of full and final retribution.
THE OATH AND THE MYSTERY OF GOD
“And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,
And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:
But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.”
It is the voice of the Creator-Redeemer which we hear. He who made all things for Himself and for His eternal glory will finish what He has begun. The precise time is fixed and sure - as all time is, with God. There never can be any doubt that all God ever set out to do in creation will be gloriously finished. This eternal purpose of God is called here, “The mystery of God,” for so much of it at present lies beyond our human comprehension.
The “mystery of God” is His eternal and immutable wisdom. Why did He make the world? Why did He not anticipate the evil and move to prevent it? Why create man knowing man would fail and the earth be filled with violence, sin and shame? Why indeed create anything at all, including angels, seeing colossal evil manifested itself in the angelic creation first? Great mystery this, and for it there is no final answer in this world - not until the processes of the divine wisdom are fully worked out and the ‘mystery’ is finished in the perfection of the task to which the Almighty originally dedicated Himself.
Faith awaits the final answer, for faith, knowing its Lord, does not need to know the reason why [Job never knew the reason why], having for its consolation already the ultimate revelation of God in the awful event of Calvary. The Incarnation of God; why God became Man; why the humiliation, the shame, the agony, the curse, the dying, the tomb? Here lies the ultimate answer to the mystery, and faith awaits with serenity the final revealing, for already it knows its God, and loves what it knows.
In the meantime faith knows that whatever the outcome may be, the end is as sure as the throne of God - a lesson of which the Church always needs to be reminded.
The MYSTERY OF GOD is wrapped up in the Person of the Son. The Father loves the Son and gives all things into His hand (John 3:35). In that last Dedicatory Prayer of our Lord … He declares not only His own destiny, but His eternal will and purpose:
“Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the earth.” (John 17:24)
Stupendous words! Words of deepest mystery, enshrouding the eternal purpose of God to show forth His glory and the mystery of His Being, through the Person of the Incarnate Son; making Himself visible who is the invisible God, whom no eye hath seen nor can see, yet is seen and will for evermore be seen in Him who as God and Man reigns eternally on creation’s glorious throne.
The end is fixed (in terms of 1,260 prophetic “days” – see chap. 11:3) just as surely as was the beginning. Nothing can advance or retard the divine purpose. It is ‘in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound,’ that the mystery of God will be complete.
This is in conformity with the predictions of the prophets “as he hath declared to his servants and prophets”. That is, the entire burden of prophecy, in Old Testament or in New, has to do with this great event when the task of the Almighty God will be brought to its grand conclusion.
The trumpet (of the seventh angel) will sound, and the dead shall be raised, and we shall be changed.... then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory (1 Cor. 15:52-54). … “O death, where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory? .... Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55-57).
GOD SWEARS BY HIMSELF
It has been alleged that the Mighty Angel cannot be regarded as Christ because the swearing of the oath denotes inferiority. God cannot swear by God, say the objectors. But this is precisely what God does in the case of Abraham when to show the immutability of His counsel in the promise He had made concerning Abraham’s seed, God ‘confirmed it by an oath’. “And because He could swear by no greater, He sware by Himself - that by two immutable things, (the promise and the oath), we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us”. (Hebrews 6:13-18).
THE EATING OF THE BOOK
John at this stage receives a command from heaven to take the Little Book from the hand of the mighty One. The command is in the same voice which had just forbidden him to write down what the Seven Thunders had uttered (compare verses 4 and 8). Obediently John approaches the vision and asks for the book:
“And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.
And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.
And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings”.
The devouring of the book has an earlier example in the Old Testament, in the prophecy of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was sent to the rebellious house of Israel to declare the Word of God. He was warned to preach God’s message “whether they hear or whether they forbear”. The vision proceeds in Ezekiel chapter 2:8 to 3:3:
“Open thy mouth and eat that I give thee. And behold, an hand was sent unto Me, and lo, a roll of a book was therein.... So I opened my mouth and he caused me to eat that roll. And he said unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. Then did I eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.”
Ezekiel’s vision is the same as that of John. Ezekiel’s testimony was against an apostate church. To bear that testimony was sweet, for sweet is the Word of God to those who love the same, as in the case of Jeremiah, a prophet in a similar situation to that of Ezekiel: “Thy words were found and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord of hosts”. (Jer. 15:16)
Our Saviour makes all this plain in His parting counsel to His apostles in the Upper Room: “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world”.
(John 16:33)
It is significant indeed, that these words of the Redeemer are only found in John’s gospel. In the Apocalypse the beloved apostle experiences the inward truth of the Saviour’s words - and this experience is on behalf of the suffering church for whom he always stands in the Book of Revelation.
THE CLUE TO THE VISION
It is surprising that so many commentators fail to see the clue in the last verse of the chapter: “Thou must prophesy again before many peoples and nations and tongues and kings.” This can only mean that the testimony of God’s people should be extended from John’s day over an immense period of time and over a worldwide area, embracing the entire world and all history. … John’s words are for all the Church covering all time.
No one knows the duration of that time - or its brevity. The “time, times and half a time” come into play continually and none can penetrate the mystery. No age can declare, “We are the last of the ages,” nor can any say, “We are NOT the last”.
But all may say with equal assurance, “All is well”. The Lamb is in the midst of the throne. The divine oath has been sworn. There is no “delay” with God. Exactly as it has been ordained, the great time clock of history will relentlessly pursue its revolutions and when the “1,260 days” are ended the Mystery of God will be revealed and time will be no more.
“He shall come to be glorified in his saints and admired in all that believe”.
(2 Thess. 1:10)
SIGNIFICANCE FOR TODAY
We live in the age of the repudiation of Christ. If ever the people of God needed to be reinforced in their faith by so comprehensive a figure of Christ as the one now before us in this chapter, this is that time. …
The world and the church face a new thing which has never been known before, no, not since the foundation of the earth.
It is the enthronement of unbelief in the very centre and heart of the Church Visible: the setting up of the last great Baal of Rationalism in the temple of the Almighty God.
Satan is waxing bold. Not since the Garden of Eden has he been in such a paradise. He has the ear of humanity, and no lie, conceit or daring blasphemy is now withheld from a generation which in other fields beside that of religion exhibits the most alarming symptoms that humanity has lost its soul.
For over a century the Western world has been departing from the foundations of faith. What Rationalism has done for religion, Materialism has done for science and culture. We have a Creation without a Creator and a universe without meaning, purpose or plan. Atheistic evolution reigns, and there is no iniquity, blasphemy or vice which is not now brazenly uttered and publicly defended.
No-one can any longer deny that the insistence upon the evolutionary origin of man has utterly destroyed the concept of man as a moral being, answerable for his deeds to an Almighty Creator.
In this central chapter of the Apocalypse we have the answer to all the efforts of man or devil to destroy the throne of God. Faith sees Christ as John sees Him elevated far above the boasting and wrangling of foolish men who contend for the vacant throne of deity by elevating their own minds above the holy Wisdom of God incarnate. God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. When in the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching (the Cross) to bring to eternal salvation those who believe. “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called, Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”. (See 1 Cor. 1:18-31).
Worldly wisdom, or even opinion, is irrelevant to that divine wisdom which came down from heaven to redeem a world of lost sinners, destroying death by death and overcoming all evil by enduring all evil on the Cross. That the Creator and judge of all should in infinite love pay the price of redemption in the agony and blood of the Cross is something beyond science. The Seventeenth Chapter of John should be studied with rapt attention and deepest humility of all who would be wise. It answers all questions in heaven and earth, in time or eternity.
There is a fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom.
“I thank thee Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight”. (Matthew 11:25-26)
