The passage: John sees a book in the right hand of the One seated on the throne, written on both sides and sealed with seven seals. A strong angel asks aloud who is worthy to open it, but no one in heaven, on earth, or under the earth can open it or even look at it. John weeps because no one is found worthy. Then one of the elders tells him not to weep: the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the book and its seals. John sees, in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures and the elders, a Lamb that looks as if it had been slain, with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth. The Lamb takes the book from the One on the throne. Then the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fall down before the Lamb, each with a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, and they sing a new song: the Lamb is worthy to take the book and open its seals, because he was slain and by his blood redeemed people to God out of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, and made them kings and priests to God, and they shall reign on the earth. John then hears the voices of countless angels around the throne — ten thousand times ten thousand — saying that the Lamb who was slain is worthy to receive power, riches, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and blessing. And every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea joins in ascribing blessing, honor, glory, and power to the One on the throne and to the Lamb forever. The four living creatures say “Amen,” and the elders fall down and worship.
For a time St. John might have been glad to forget everything he had seen of conflict and disorder while he gazed at that vision of peace and order. For he knew it was real. What shifts and changes might be an illusion; this could not be. It was the solid reality lying beneath all those ups and downs. It took nothing from the beholder’s mind; instead it gave his mind steadiness. To see a throne on which sat One who was all light and no darkness, all justice and no whim, to see forms reflecting that light and rulers carrying out that justice — this must have brought great calm to a seer who a little before had been looking at the unsteady flickering of those earthly candlesticks, and at the imperfect government of angels who only partly showed the divine righteousness. But if the prophet could forget the earth while he looked at heaven, these heavenly powers could not. He who sat on the throne could not. Were the thrones on earth going to acknowledge this throne, or set up a rule of their own, independent of it and opposed to it? If they were to obey it, what would make them obey? Could a mere decree do it? Could rebel wills be made to yield that way?
I. “And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.” It matters little what we call this book. We may call it the Doomsday Book; the book that contains and interprets human history; the book that claims the kingdoms of the earth for God. Each of these names will prove fitting as we go on; the contents of the book will tell us better what it is than any guesses of ours. What St. John wants us to know at once is that the One who looked like jasper and sardine stone held it in His right hand. He knew what was in it. It was the expression of His purpose and will. The belief that there is such a book in such a hand has held up the strongest and sternest minds among men; it has let them bear the world’s despair and their own. Those who have spoken of an unbending, unstoppable, irreversible fate have sensed this truth, even when they darkened it most. They meant more than they could say or knew. There was a right hand behind their terrible abstraction; a divine will beneath what looked like the denial of all will. The stoic’s mere submission to necessity grows, in the hymn of Cleanthes, into recognition of a Providence over the deeds and thoughts of men; and in the meditations of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius it even becomes the confession of a deliverer and a friend. But these wise men thought the scroll could never be unrolled. To bear what was assigned them was their only wisdom. A deep wisdom, if only it could be known what was assigned; if it could be known what the One who assigns it was doing — so that men might not work merely as servants of a power they must give in to, but as children of a Father training them to be like Himself.
It was not the will of the One on the throne, as St. John learned, that the book should stay closed. “And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?” Often, when students on earth try to look into the puzzles they find around them, behind them, and ahead of them, we stop them with a warning against vanity and presumption. Who can look into the secrets of the All-wise? Who can wrestle with the Almighty? My friends, there may be a right meaning in such warnings; I have admitted there is. In a pagan teacher they should be welcomed with gratitude as signs of an awe he did not learn in an idol’s temple — though one would be sorry not to find in him also earnest cries for a solution to the riddle he sometimes calls insoluble. But we ought to ask ourselves seriously whether it may not be an inspiration from above, and not from below, that drives men to strike the bars of their prison and test whether there is not some hidden passage out. That cry on earth is the echo, St. John says, of a voice in heaven. A strong angel called on his own fellows to put out their strength and see whether they could break the seals.
“And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.”
Many will complain that our translators rendered oudeis as “no man” when the scene is in heaven and the ones spoken of are heavenly powers. It was a needless and willful clash with appearances, which they would have been wiser to avoid. But I believe the mistake is not serious at all. We set a vast gap between angelic and human natures — partly because the angelic is almost fantastic to us, and partly because we draw our idea of the human from the Fall. The writer of the Apocalypse, as I have said before, often seems to blend the two. God’s messenger, whether subject to death or free from it, is still called by one common name. That name names his character and function; whether he fulfills that character and function or not, he can have no higher one — except the filial name that belongs to the beggar in rags as much as to the seraphim. Everything depends on the question of whom we take to be the head of every man — the first Adam or the second.
These remarks are needed to make clear the whole passage before us, even more than this one verse. Whatever superiority angelic powers may have over mortal ones, whatever exemption heavenly powers may enjoy from earth’s calamities, that superiority and that exemption did not qualify them to open this book and look in it. The book of God must be read by someone who fully grasped the mind of God. The book of the earth’s victory must be read by one who fully grasped the earth’s conflict.
- “And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.” I spoke of the peace that vision of an ordered world must have given the prophet. Thank God, such peace was not all he wanted; if more had not been given, that peace could not have lasted. The pity and tenderness, you will say, of a child of earth showed itself in his weeping; rather, I would say, the pity and tenderness of a child of God. He could not be content until he knew more of the destinies of his own race, because the Father of that race would not let him be content. The question whether justice and truth were to reign here, and whether injustice and untruth were to be put down, concerned him most deeply, no doubt. But he learned how much it concerned him when he was in the company of those who are above the earth’s smoke, when the One who looked like jasper and sardine stone was unveiled to him. Then it became unbearable pain that no one should be worthy to open and read the book.
V. “And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.” “The Lion of the tribe of Judah! the Root of David!” What a drop! A moment ago we were hearing of the heavenly world — the throne, the rainbow, the sea of glass, the seven lamps of fire that are the seven Spirits of God. A great drop, certainly, if there is no fellowship between heaven and earth. A great drop, if we tie spiritual power to the great and not to the little. But no drop at all, if the very subject of this vision and of this book is the union of heaven and earth, the setting up of heaven’s rule over the earth. No drop, if spiritual power is made great through weakness, if its true showing is in triumph over animal bulk and vast numbers. The lion was long ago the symbol of the tribe of Judah. That tribe, standing for the nation it belonged to, was raised up to show how one man might chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight, because it held a secret of strength that Egyptian and Babylonian kings did not have. David — the youngest son, the shepherd, the stripling, the outlaw — was the proof that God had set His King on the holy hill of Zion. What name could better express the spiritual conqueror than the Lion of the tribe of Judah? What name better points to the true source and ground of all power than the Root of David? Those names belonged to all the early memories of the aged exile; they made him understand that he was never a truer Jew than when he was witnessing for the Prince of all the kings of the earth. They showed him by what divine links the records of that people — which was about to be a people no longer — were joined to the deliverance of all mankind.
- For who was the Lion of the tribe of Judah? Where lay that secret of strength that belonged to no other in heaven or on earth?
“And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne, and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.”
The Lion of the tribe of Judah is the Lamb that was slain. Here is that revelation of power made perfect in weakness, shown in submission, for which all the earlier history of mankind had been a preparation. Here is that reconciling of the highest with the lowest, of dominion with suffering, of life with death, which alone can explain the riddle of the universe, which alone can satisfy the endless doubts by which men have been and still are tormented — yes, and must be, unless they shut their eyes to facts or sink into dull indifference.
How can that absolute purity and truth, which is like jasper or sardine stone, be brought within a creature’s sight? It may be worshiped from afar; it may be seen in some of its outward doings. But that is not enough for beings made in God’s image, who themselves demand truth and purity. “In the midst of the throne is the Lamb that was slain.” Purity and truth are seen here not in some broken mirror, in scattered fragments, but fully and altogether. In that act of perfect self-sacrifice, of total offering, of surrender to death, all that the angels are seeking comes to light. It is not scaled down or adapted to their needs or their weakness; rather, in meeting that need and weakness, the full, unmeasured divine perfection and glory appear; every veil that hid them is taken away. He is also “in the midst of the elders.” Those twenty-four seats, from which go out righteous judgments upon free beings and which direct the movements of natural agents, express the mind that is in the Lamb. Throughout the whole universe the same principle of self-sacrifice, which is the law of His acts, is at work to govern and renew. “He is in the midst of the four living creatures.” The lion, the calf, the man, the eagle — the different forms of power that men had worshiped — each had its heavenly original; some aspect of the divine nature was set before each and shown in each. But these creatures have their center here; the Lamb that was slain makes each able to do its own work, makes each effective for the end they are all working toward, and binds them to that throne from which human idolatry cut them off. “He has seven horns.” Those powers which, cut off from self-sacrifice, are disordered and clashing, are brought into harmony in Him. Each has its own quality; none clashes with another; there is no sameness in their motions, but a free and living unity. He has the “seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.” That sense of an eye watching over the greatest and the smallest events in the world’s history, which leads us to speak of Providence — a noble word if we let it keep its meaning and did not turn it into a feeble substitute for the living Being who exercises it; and that sense of an eye over the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, which leads us to speak of a scrutiny and judgment none can escape — both find their full justification here. Only the language of the Apocalypse is far clearer, brighter, and truer to our actual experience than the language we usually use. We need words that tell us each king and each man is subject to a distinct Providence and a distinct judgment, and yet that it is the same for all and in all. We need words that show the eyes are not only searching and probing, but life-giving; that if they bring the evil in us to light, they also find and give a good that can drive it out. “The seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth” give us such words — if we connect them, as the Apostle does, with the One to whom they belong; if we believe that the orderer of our lives, the searcher of our hearts, is the Lamb that was slain.
Here, then, is the New Testament revelation, matching and fulfilling that Old Testament revelation of the Lion of Judah — who was to overthrow the destroying lion, the brute tyranny, of the world — and of the Root of David, who was to set up a kingdom of righteousness in place of a kingdom of self-will. The discovery that the highest Godhead is shown in self-sacrifice; that all power, angelic or human, has this ground; that all power which does not confess this ground is disorderly, rebellious, and doomed to perish — this is the gospel that the Cross of Christ preaches to mankind; and it is this doctrine, in its most sweeping and universal form, that this chapter of the Apocalypse sets before us.
- “And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne.”
He is able to unroll the book of God’s purposes; to break the seals that have kept it from being understood by men; to show what will last in the universe and what will decay; to show what men may accept and rest in, and what they are to resist to the death. He is able to make clear whether any hope that wise and brave men have ever held for the world is destined to disappointment, or whether they hoped too feebly and the fulfillment will be beyond their dream. Such is the prospect before us. The Apocalypse is going to speak of all these things. If we will attend to its own words and not put ours in their place, I believe it will give us light and satisfaction on all of them.
- But before we go on, let me lead you to think for a few moments about the passage in front of us this afternoon. It may help, I think, to correct an opinion widely spread through the Christian world, which must more or less infect us all, and which must ruin any lessons that St. John’s Revelation would teach us. The Lamb is here said to prevail to open the book of God’s purposes. We often suppose He prevailed by His sacrifice to change those purposes. We often say that God’s will, or justice, or purity demanded of man something he could not give; that he was doomed to destruction for that failure; that the Lamb stepped in to turn aside this sentence; that He paid the creature’s debt; and that so He satisfied the mind of the One on the throne. That many strands are woven into this theory which are drawn from men’s practical faith, from their experience of their own needs, and from lessons they have learned in Scripture — this I gladly admit. But I must also insist that this practical faith has suffered, and still suffers cruelly, from the speculations mixed in with it; that men’s hearts crave a satisfaction which this scheme of divinity does not give them; and that if they would listen to Scripture’s teaching, they would find that satisfaction. How naturally men who are conscious of evil wish to change the purpose of a Power they think is ready to punish that evil; how eagerly they look for mediators they imagine can bring about this change; how they may finally arrive at the idea of a Kehama, who by prayers and sacrifice can bend the gods’ will wholly to his will — the mythology of all nations proves this abundantly. Christian theology scatters such dark fancies by revealing the Highest Ruler as the All-good, showing the One on the throne as a Being like jasper and sardine stone to look upon; and by revealing the Lamb that was slain as the perfect sharer of His counsels, the perfect doer of His will, the perfect revealer of His designs to mankind, the perfect Redeemer of the world from the rule of the false, hateful, cruel gods men had imagined — gods that upheld all falsehood, hatred, and cruelty in earthly rulers — the perfect Atoner of man with the Father of Light, in whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning.
This, I think you will find, is the spirit of the song the prophet heard on his lonely island. “And when He had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests; and we shall reign on the earth.” Here we have a grand confession — from the elders who represent the law of the world, that the Lamb is the author of that law and has perfectly fulfilled it, not set it aside or changed its working in the least; and from the living creatures who represent the divine nature, that the Lamb has perfectly shown it and has in no way given it a new feeling or direction. The bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, are the cries that have gone up from all the sorrowing and suffering people on earth, praying for deliverance from their oppressors and for their true King to appear. And the song is a thanksgiving that He has appeared; that He has consented to die alongside those who were under the sentence of death; that by His own blood, poured out for them, He has freed them from their bondage; has made them kings and priests to His Father; and has given them a pledge and assurance that the earth shall be possessed by the meek and not by the proud.
- And lest we should try to limit the One in the midst of the throne to the benefits He has given the earth — to the redemption He has worked out for the fallen and the sinful — lest this natural tendency, so widespread in Christendom, should spoil the very gratitude that seems its excuse, and should again divide the creatures the Lamb has united — the ear of the prophet’s spirit is opened to take in another shout: “And I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands: saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.” That which is the highest act of love — toward whatever persons it was shown, from whatever calamities it saved them — must be the highest showing of the divine character and will; and therefore it must be the cause of delight to all creatures, fallen or unfallen. If the Revelation is true, there can be no break in the sympathies of any part of God’s free and intelligent universe. All must have one center, one object, one inspiration, so that each may do its own tasks freely and joyfully, and each may come to a higher knowledge of God’s works and of God Himself. Nor these beings only. Free, intelligent beings are but the priests of the whole Creation. The whole of it must share in the redemption; all creation must be forever rising from under the law of death; there must be signs everywhere that the wings are unfolding inside the chrysalis; all must be reaching to enter into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Not only he who has kept weary watch over man’s mortality and hoped against hope amid the wrongs of nations, the sorrows of friends, and the sins of his own heart; but also the student of nature, who finds a wonderful order and beauty throughout the universe and yet is constantly tormented by the strangest sights of death and destruction — he too takes his part in the thanksgiving: “And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever.”