I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven Churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter; the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven Churches.—Rev. i. 9-20.
Whether we adopt or reject the ordinary opinion that St. John had already survived his brother Apostles, the language at the opening of this passage is very remarkable. He dwelt commonly at Ephesus, in the midst of the Christians of Asia Minor. They turned to him afterwards, with the profoundest reverence, as the last depositary of the words which Christ had spoken on earth. And he describes himself as “your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.” No assertion of his apostolical authority, of his grand traditions, of his difference from those whom he is addressing. He is one of them, their fellow-worker and fellow-sufferer.
I do not allude to this mode of speaking that I may draw any inference from it respecting the peculiar humility of this Divine teacher. St. Paul, it seems to me, was just as humble when he was asserting strongly his claims to be an Apostle, and was denouncing those Judaisers who tried to degrade him below the original twelve. Self-assertion may be as great a duty as self-depreciation; both are evil so far as they are in the least degree affected; one may involve as much sense of individual feebleness as the other. They may have the same origin; they may in different circumstances lead to the same result. Had St. Paul forborne to put forth a boast of his apostolical title and character, he would have sanctioned the conclusion that his Lord, when He ceased to be visible, ceased to exercise His government over His Church; ceased to call out men to do His work. The man who declared that he trusted not in his wisdom of words when he went forth declaring the testimony of God, would have been trusting in that wisdom, not in his calling, not in the Spirit that helped his infirmities. Had St. John spoken to the Churches in Asia Minor of the voice that bade him leave his father’s nets, he might have led them to suppose that that voice was silent then, or could not reach them. Had he talked of his apostolical commission, or of his own special place amongst the Apostles, he might have led them to think that when he left the world they would be bare of the Divine Presence: that only an oral or written tradition of it would remain. Exactly the opposite lesson to this was that which he was appointed to teach his own generation, and all subsequent generations; therefore it was fitting that he should describe himself, not by titles which set him apart from other men, but as their brother and companion.
1. That he was an exile in the Isle of Patmos, he tells us. Whether the local authorities of Ephesus had sent him there, or whether it was a solemn deportation by the act of the Emperor, we cannot learn from his words. Nor does this passage help us to settle the question which has been raised whether his banishment was so early as the reign of Claudius, so late as the reign of Domitian, or at some time intermediate between the two. On the cause of his banishment he throws more light. By far the majority of St. Paul’s persecutions were stirred up by Jews; the two memorable exceptions were at Philippi, where he provoked the hatred of those who traded in magic, and at Ephesus, where a true instinct led Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen to think that he was injuring their gains, though he had not denounced their goddess. But the charge by which the Jews stirred up the mob of Thessalonica was to be at last the effective one. These men do contrary to the decrees of Cæsar, saying that there is another King, one Jesus. That charge could not be permanently effective till it was combined with the one on which the rulers of the Sanhedrim had convicted our Lord of blasphemy. He maketh himself the Son of God. St. John proclaiming the Word of God, who was before all worlds, who had been made flesh and dwelt among men, who was the King of kings and Lord of lords, struck a blow at the worship as well as the polity of the Roman Empire. He opposed the God-man to the man-God. The best emperors, who were trying to disguise by reverence for laws, by merciful acts, by philosophy, the rotten foundation of their power, had as much reason to dislike this testimony as the worst, who were embodying the false principle in themselves.
2. St. John does not tell us what objects he chiefly contemplated in that island, what sounds besides the roar of the Ægean waves came to him from the outer world. He says that on the Lord’s day, the Resurrection day, he “was in the Spirit;” withdrawn from the forms of which the senses take account; seeking his eternal and substantial home. Then came a voice to his heart, a voice like the sound of a trumpet such as wakes the dead, saying “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.” Like that name, the I AM, which had been spoken centuries before to the shepherd in the desert, it was a witness to him that there is a living Personal ground; which was before temples, cities, earth, sea, and sky; which will last whatever becomes of them. Like the message to Moses, it was not for himself. “What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches of Asia.” Those Churches were to learn the meaning of their own existence; what they had to do; how they were related to Him who is the First and the Last.
3. “And I turned to see the voice that spake with me.” The voice comes from no creature about me. It is not the echo of my own thoughts. It comes as a command to my spirit from the Ruler of my spirit.
4. “And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks.” Our first thought is that now we are entering into a region of symbols. Are not these candlesticks like the one of pure gold which Moses was bidden to place in the Tabernacle; like that somewhat different one which Solomon caused to be worked when he built a house for the Lord God of Israel? Like these assuredly; dear to the Apostle for the resemblance; intended to remind Israelites, and those of the Church who were not Israelites, of a sacred past; of a worship that was soon to cease. But intended also, as we shall presently see, to raise them out of symbols; to translate signs into their signification; to show them in the midst of what practical realities they were dwelling. No greater testimony, I think, could be given than is given here that symbols would always have a worth for human beings; but that the world’s babyhood was over; that the truths were now to throw light on the parables rather than the parables on the truths; that men were to study the visions of an earlier day by the revelations of that later day.
5. For “in the midst of the seven candlesticks was one like unto the Son of Man.” That the candlestick pointed to the communication of light; that the light must be dispersed, yet one; that it was set in the Tabernacle to denote Him who was worshipped there as the Source of Light, the worshippers as the instruments of sending it abroad; this was a lesson which it required no skill to bring out; it must have gone home to a number of hearts which would not have understood it if it had been put into words. But the more it went home, the more questions it will have excited. Only those on whom it produced no impression will have been content either to look at the candlestick or to hear the Scribe’s interpretation of it. “How may this light reach me? How may I show it forth? Is it indeed a light for all Israel? Is all Israel to be a lamp to mankind? How can this be? Are we not often ministers of darkness? And does God really desire that His light should go forth everywhere? Is it not meant to be confined to His chosen people?” Such thoughts the symbol will have awakened in those for whom it did its work. Nothing they saw satisfied them. It led them to seek for light, and they who sought found more than they dreamed of, though never enough. They found more and more indications of a Light that was near them; more and more of a Light that lightened every man. They rejoiced in what was given. But they waited to hear that what they felt must be true, was true; that God’s Light was indeed man’s Light; that there was One in whom all scattered rays of light were gathered up; from whom they could be received; by whose power they might be diffused.
To see the Son of Man walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks was at once to proclaim that these candlesticks had an actual signification, and that they had no more a merely limited Jewish signification. They were no longer any part of the furniture of the Tabernacle or of the Temple. The one candlestick, with its six and its ten branches, had been lighted long enough in Jerusalem. The flame there had burnt itself out. He who had kindled it to be a witness of Himself and His own presence with men, was indeed present. The Son of Man, and not some other, some secondary substitute for Him—some formal image of Him—was dispensing light to the sons of men.
6. Such a Revelation must have been just what a Jew, mourning bitterly over the present condition of his countrymen, and looking to their more dismal prospects, must have needed for his consolation; just what he must have desired that all should share with him. But it would have been most imperfect if only the golden candlestick in the Jewish Temple had been rendered into its true meaning, and raised to its highest power. Things were not chiefly important in the ritual of that Temple; the persons who ministered were far more sacred. What was the holy of the holies itself to the high priest who entered it once every year?
It is this high priest who is at once recalled to us by the first part of the description of the Son of Man. He was “clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.” That this is the sacerdotal vesture there can be no doubt. Enough is said to indicate that the Son of Man claims and fulfils the office which was assigned to the children of Aaron; that He blesses the people in God’s name; that He stands as their Representative before His Father. The Alpha and Omega takes the place of him whose work was well-nigh over; who had ceased to be any witness for God or for man; who was rather a barrier between them.
But the seer passes rapidly from the clothing of the priest, from that which is merely official, to Himself. “His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow.” What St. John saw for a few moments on Mount Tabor, when the face of the Man of Sorrows “did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light,” was presented to Him now as an abiding glory. “His eyes were as a flame of fire;” looking into the heart and spirit, discovering whatever is false; burning it with their love. The feet have the signs of endurance and suffering. They have walked over the earth and been scorched and sanctified by it. They are “like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace.” The roar of the sea is in the ears of the lonely man in Patmos. Its strange and various notes are blended in the voice of the Son of Man, which is “as the sound of many waters.”
8. From the robes which denote the priest we have passed to the form of the Divine Man; a form expressing purity, conflict, victory, calm and reconciling power; but never suggesting mere qualities or attributes apart from a Person in whom they dwell. Then we return to the thought from which we started. This Son of Man is walking in the midst of the candlesticks; He is the centre of light. It is a heavenly light; not belonging to earth; though penetrating to the farthest corners of the earth. The light is not now in the Tabernacle or the Temple. “He had in his right hand seven stars.” The Persian night-worshipper, the Greek worshipper of Apollo, may still see in the forms of nature the witnesses of the true King. “And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword.” The forms of nature, beautiful and true as they are, must do homage to the word which speaks to man. Out of the mouth goes forth that which distinguishes soul and spirit, joints and marrow; that which severs between the good and the evil, the false and the true. How essential this feature is to the picture of the Son of Man we shall feel more and more. Its effect when it is combined with the former, is to change the images of night into those of day. The stars were in His hand, but His “countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.”
9. “And when I saw him I fell at his feet as dead.” Years of familiarity with the contemplation of the Son of Man have not abated the awe of the old disciple, but deepened it. Mere power does not make him tremble. Before the form of the Divine Goodness, before the eyes that are as a flame of fire, he is weak as a child. The moments even of lower revelations must be moments of terror. The first glimpse of a natural discovery, if it sometimes causes the shout of εὕρηκα, as often crushes him to whom it comes with a sense of his own insignificance, and with a wonder at what may be behind. To be assured that he was before Him who is the First and the Last, was not this enough to cause that a poor exile, though the most favoured of the Apostles, should fall at His feet as dead?
10. And what are the words that raise him? Are they “Fear not, I am He whom thou knewest in Cana or on Tabor; I am He that placed thee nearest to Myself”? No! but, “Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.” It could not console or revive St. John to be told of what had been done for him; how he had been singled out from the rest of his race. It did restore him to be assured that the countenance which he could not bear to look on was His who had been under the power of that death and of that grave which are appointed for every malefactor, as well as for every apostle; and that He had risen the Conqueror of these, the Conqueror for men. Yes! to hear these words ringing in his ears, “I have the keys of hell and of death;” of all that thou fearest, of all that man fears, of all that sin has caused him to fear; to be convinced that these are the words of the Son of Man; this must be a comfort to every apostle and martyr, such as the thought of the life he had lived, and the witness he had borne, and the death he was dying, would be utterly unable to give. When all these recollections are drowned in the recollections of evils committed and of evils present; when death and hell look as if they might be worse abysses for him than for any poor vagabond who had never thought of them; then this belief in One who has dived into them because He is the Son of Man, and has found what is deeper than they, and has the keys of that kingdom as well as of the kingdom of heaven; this message meets him as perfectly satisfying, because it overthrows every selfish confidence, and obliges him to rest on the Redeemer and King and Lover of the universe.
11. And since it is so, he is raised up to do a work for his fellows; only if he does that, will he be able to hold fast his own trust. “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.” The things which he has seen are not some special illuminations for him. They are facts which concern all men; the principles of human life and fellowship. The Son of Man is not for that moment walking in the midst of the candlesticks. He is so always. St. John must write of the things that were, in order that he might write of the things which were to be hereafter. He can be of use as an interpreter to countries he never saw, to times of trouble which should be after he had entered into rest, by faithfully interpreting the condition of the people with whom he was most closely in contact, of those who were his contemporaries and companions.
12. And how is he to fulfil this task? He is told at once to tear off the veil from those outward images which he had been contemplating, from those which seemed as if they were to replace the images of the other dispensation. They are not to replace these images; the things which these images represent are to replace them. The mystery, or inner meaning of the candlesticks, or seven stars, is to be declared. “The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.” And so this verse rises naturally out of the previous one. The prophet is to write things which he has seen, and which are, and which shall be hereafter. He has seen the candlesticks and Him with the stars in His right hand. These Churches were then, and were to be afterwards. They were then distinct from each other, under distinct ministers. Each of these ministers was an angel or messenger of God. Though distinct, they formed one whole. There was one Church amidst many Churches. The whole body was sent into the world to diffuse light through it. Each of the distinct bodies was to diffuse light over a sphere of its own. Each of the ministers was to be a star of light to the body which he served. Each was to understand that his light came not from himself, but from the Centre of light. Each would fail in his function if, under one temptation or another, he forgot this condition of his existence. Each by failing in his function would injure the society which he was to enlighten, would infect it with his own evil. These things were. The hereafter would be determined by the now; in principle they would be the same. These Churches were formed, not for a day or a year, but for an everrenewing life. They were to last on when one star after another disappeared; for the Son of Man was walking in the midst of them. The Church would last, even though particular Churches ceased to be; for the Son of Man was in the midst of it. If all perished, He would not perish. These were not revelations only for the apostolical era; this revelation was especially to prepare the way for the termination of that era; that none might suppose that the Church depended for its stability or vitality upon those who had been the first pillars of it; that none might suppose that any one of them was the centre of it. The mystery of the seven candlesticks and of the seven stars is, then, a mystery which the struggles of that time were to evolve; which the struggles of all subsequent generations were to elucidate. By the sins of particular angels or ministers, by the sins of one and another Church, no less than by the light which one or another was able to diffuse, would each aspect of this mystery be brought into fuller manifestation. More and more it would be seen that a Church which does not diffuse light, must increase darkness; must gather darkness into itself. More and more it would be known what temptation each Church has to become a minister of darkness, and how great that darkness is. More and more it would be seen what judgments awaken Churches out of their torpor, and what are the notes of their doom.
13. This is but a part, and a small part, of the Revelation. But if we open our hearts to take it in, many of the doubts which embarrass us in considering the later parts of the book will be cleared away. We shall be far less tormented with the question, “If these words concerned Jerusalem or Rome in the days of Galba or Vespasian, how can they concern London in the days of Queen Victoria?” The mystery of the seven golden candlesticks must relate to both if it relates to either. Supposing Churches still to exist; supposing the Bible to be the book from which we are to derive our knowledge of the end for which they exist, of the methods in which they may promote that end, of the sins by which they may frustrate it; we need not doubt that we shall find as many lessons about Mediæval Churches and Reformed Churches, about the relation of particular Churches to the Catholic Church, about Imperial and Papal domination, as the commentators who have shaped the whole Apocalypse into a testimony concerning them have been able to work out. We shall find these lessons, not by changing present tenses for future, but by observing that the present tenses are tenses of continuance; that the principles which were developed at one moment must govern all succeeding moments. We shall find them when we are not looking for them: they will force themselves upon us most, when we are the least trying to make them square with events of history, or events of history with them. Above all, we shall understand them best and be most capable of using them to connect different events and epochs in the records of mankind, when we allow them to bear with the most direct force upon ourselves.
Primitive Churches, Mediæval Churches, Continental Churches, seats of Papacy and of Empire—yes, it is well to know what we can know of them. But are not you a Church, a body of men from whom light is meant to go forth? Does it go forth from you? Are there not ministers in the Church of England? Will not the Son of Man, who walks in the midst of the candlesticks, ask each of them, “Art thou uttering thy own dreary traditional common-places; art thou pouring forth thine own dreams and speculations; art thou strutting thy little hour as the actor on a stage, as the oracle of a school; or art thou caring to be a messenger of My purpose, a star in My right hand?”