The Puritan Vision of God # 1

The Puritan Vision of God # 1

"And I saw a great white throne" (Revelation 22:2).

The apostle is on Patmos, an island in the Aegean Sea. He is an exile, driven from his country and his work. He is a prisoner. His cell is ten miles long. The roof of it is God's great heaven and the walls of it are the waves of the encircling sea. And from his prison cell he looks out upon the world. There is darkness upon the lands, but in the darkness here and there he sees a light like the flame of a candle which a group of the followers of Jesus have kindled. And a great wind is blowing. It is a terrible world upon which the apostle looks. Cruel despotisms and ancient tyrannies lift their frightful thrones and still go on writing a story which is tragedy. All sorts of evils in divers shapes and in many forms of aggression and devastation move across the scene, squirming like serpents, devouring locusts, crunching and crushing like dragons, torturing like fiends. Above the level of the sea the spirit of rebellion lifts its hideous head like a great beast, huge, majestic, mighty, concentrating in itself the characteristic features of the brute creation. Sin with flashing crown and scarlet robe, bedazzled and spangled, moves in the midst of the nations leading men captive to her will. It is worth noting that evil to the man on Patmos is no pallid or puny thing. It is not a petty and impotent antagonist, but majestic, persuasive, alluring, mighty, magnificent, with crown and scepter and royal robes,captivating the eye with the glamour of its magnificence, and swaying the imagination by the exhibition of its power.

And against this vast and terrible hierarchy of evil another kingdom is making war. There is a tremendous struggle in the world, immeasurable forces are contending for the mastery, and the land trembles under the shock of the opposing armies. But the apostle is nothing daunted. His eye does not quail nor does his heart grow faint. Undisturbed he looks upon the great thriving picture with light upon his face, because over the arena in which the age-long war is carried on he sees the glory of the great white throne. With this throne burning in his eye he looks upon the world with a heart undismayed and a soul radiant with hope.

This vision was not peculiar to the apostle John. It was one granted to all of the apostles. It was the secret of their overmastering power. We err when we suppose that the apostles turned the world upside down because they carried in their memory the parables and the Sermon on the Mount. The words which Jesus spoke were mighty words, but not by mans of them did the apostles lift empires off their hinges and turn the stream of centuries into a new channel. The New Testament explicitly tells us that after the disciples had listened to the teaching of Jesus for three years, drinking in His parables, his discourses and His prayers, they were still impotent in the face of the world which they were sent to conquer. They had seen Jesus as a teacher teaching on the hillside and by the sea and on the corner of many a street; they had seen Him as a great physician healing men in Capernaum and Bethsada, and in the market places of old Jerusalem; they had seen Him as a reformer upsetting the tables of the money-changers and driving the desecrators of the temple in dismay into the streets; but none of these things were sufficient to brace their hearts for the great work intrusted to their hands. In spite of all of Jesus' teaching and all of Jesus' mighty deeds, the disciples after the death of their Master were limp and impotent, helpless as children, sending up a shout of triumph or a song of praise.

And then all at once a change came. They stood upon their feet like so many giants of the Lord, and began to speak words and to sing songs at which the world wondered. What wrought this transformation? A vision of Jesus on the throne! Listen to Simon Peter in that great sermon by which he broke the hearts of three thousand men, as he says to them, "He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear!" The teacher, the physician, the reformer has ascended to the throne, and from the throne He will henceforth as King rule the world.

It was with this vision flashing before their eyes that the apostles went out to convert the nations. The wildest storm that ever swept across the lands broke in their faces, but nothing could bend or melt them. A deacon by the name of Stephen was stoned, but even while the stones were crashing into his flesh his face bore no marks of agony, but rather shone like the face of an angel because he caught glimpses of the glory of the throne. James, one of the sons of thunder, lays down his head upon the executioner's block without a tremor or complaint. It had been his supreme ambition to be near Jesus on His throne, and when death comes he does not fear it but meets it gladly, saying, "I shall through death come nearer to the throne!" Saul of Tarsus travels from city to city and from country to country, everywhere hated and hounded and persecuted. He is imprisoned, he is whipped, he is stones, he is threatened with death, he is made the off-scouring of all things, a contemptible creature upon which men wiped their feet and spit their venom, but he never winces or falters, never groans or laments, but sings wherever he goes, "Now unto the King Eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever." It was this vision of the throne that inspired Paul in the writing of his Letters. He breaks into song in the midst of his very severest arguments. in his great letter to the Romans in which he climbs up one of the most splendid ladders of logic which human genius has ever framed, he pauses halfway up the ladder, shouting: "O, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory forever." The strength and peace and joy of all of the apostles came from their vision of the throne.

~Charles Jefferson~

(continued with # 2)