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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 31. The Patmos Message
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The Patmos Message
There are two last messages from our Lord Jesus; the one from a hill top—Olivet—the second from an island—Patmos. It seems a little contradictory to speak of two last messages; one would be last, the other the next to the last. Yet it is not contradictory, but correct, and in being correct lies the reason why.
A last message by a leader to his followers has in it a keynote, command, program, and a personal plea. Such was our Lord's last message on Olivet. It sounded the keynote of witnessing, that is of taking Jesus as a Saviour to all men,—this was to be the program; it was a command; and it came to His followers with all the power of a personal plea from One who had voluntarily given His life for them, and to whom they were supremely devoted. It was His last message to them. It came with all the authority and tender, personal plea of a last, a good-bye, message.
Then there came another message. It too has proved to be a last message, the very last. Fifty or sixty years or so, has gone since the Olivet message. It is practically two generations of time. The generation to which He spoke has gone, and another is moving pretty well along its course. The silence of the upper world, to which our Lord returned, is broken; He speaks again. This is significant. What is said now will have much meaning. It may have in it a note of approval that the Olivet last-message has been so well followed. It may have reproach. It may touch some weak spot where danger lurks. It may give fresh emphasis to something needing it.
It proves to do all of these. The Olivet message is about taking the Gospel to the whole creation. The Patmos message is about the messenger who is to carry that message to all the world. The first concerns the service of the Church; the second concerns the life of the Church. It is as if a father had sent his son on an errand, and finding that he is loitering on the way with some companions, calls earnestly after him to remind him of the errand, and that he is depending upon his faithfulness.
This Patmos message is contained in the book of the Revelation of John. It is the only one of the New Testament books not yet searched in this study for teaching about our Lord's return. We want to learn now what it gives us on this. As we turn to it we remember that there are some positive and peculiar views held by our generation of Christian people regarding it. The chief one is that it is practically impossible for any one to understand its meaning. There are many precious passages and verses, but it is written in such a strangely symbolical language that it is quite impossible to get a simple, clear grasp of the book as a whole. This is the general impression, which seems sometimes to amount to an obsession.
Yet it strikes one at once in reading it as significant that there is special blessing attached, not only to reading it, but to obeying it. [Note: Rev_1:3; Rev_22:7.] And in Scripture obeying always implies something that may be understood so as to be obeyed. This would seem to suggest that the same humility, and teachableness of spirit, and diligent, open-minded reading, and reverent, earnest praying and waiting, that characterized Daniel, will open up these as all pages of this Book. But it seems necessary, first, in this case, for some of us, at least, to do a bit of thorough mental house-cleaning, and insist on turning out the secondhand book-furniture with which our minds may have been stored about this book of Revelation. Then we can bring that rare, but necessary thing,—an open mind, as well as a teachable spirit.