Inside the Rainbow — A.W. Tozer

I thought of the various names you have called out so joyously that belong to our Lord, that it should be taken by this congregation who should be king of the world, I know it would be. I know that you would elect.

I wrote along with you on that, king of kings and lord of lords. I have a request, a few sermons from the book of Romans, but I am skipping two letters to the seven churches. I couldn't very well telescope them in, and they are really prophetic.

John's Vision of the Open Door in Heaven

So I am jumping from the first chapter to the fourth, to the churches of Asia, somebody else to develop when he has more time. You read from the fourth chapter of Revelation,. After this I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was, as it were, of a trumpet talking with me, which said, Show thee things which must be hereafter.

And immediately I was in the Spirit, and behold, in heaven. He that sat was to look upon me like a jasper, and a shard of stone sight like unto an emerald. Round about the throne there were four and twenty, and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment, with lightning and thunderings and voices.

There was a fire burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God. Before the throne there was a cinder crystal, four beasts full of eyes, before the first beast was like a lion, the second beast like a calf, the third beast had the face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

The four beasts had each of them six wings about them, and they were full of eyes within, day and night, saying, Holy is and is to come. Let the four beasts give glory and honor and thanks to him that sat on the throne who liveth forever.

Let the four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne and worship him that liveth forever and ever, and cast their crowns before him, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord. The four beasts received glory and honor and thanks for all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were.

The Throne as the Answer to Earthly Calamity

Between what was and what was to come, John, seeing a door opened in heaven, heard a voice as it were of a trumpet, and he saw John sitting on the throne, ceasing, never dying, worshiping the Lord. He had just heard these seven letters in the two chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation.

He just had seen the labors and the patience and the service and the poverty and the tribulation and the sword and the death and the stumbling blocks and the idolaters and the backsliders and the false prophets and the liars and the external riches along with internal poverty and the blindness and the nakedness and the danger to the crown and to the reward, he had overcome the sin of John's sensitivity to take this, except by great suffering.

Then before his mind there appeared the four horsemen riding forth, and they saw the opening of the seals and the trumpet and saw the uncapping of the bottomless pit, the scorpions and the coming of the great red dragon, the mark of the beast and Armageddon, and the Last Judgment.

In the middle of this, he couldn't escape it. He was caught between what was and what would be, and there was burdened in it, the most present woes and approaching calamities, stay sane, entertainment or liquor or dope, high-keyed play from which we relax and collapse before we go out to work the next day.

Unless we do that and create that, then how can we stay optimistic and how can we keep sound minds? I hear insanity, that is, they don't use that word anymore, that's an old word, but it's mental illnesses, but while I deplore it and I'm sorry for it, I don't wonder at it.

I wonder that anybody can keep it right. I think we only do it by putting our heads in the sand, that is, humanity only does it by not thinking about it. If you don't think about it, it will go away. And so people just don't think, and in order that they might not think, they think to keep them busy, like the twist, for instance.

Looking Through the Open Door

And now John, thank God, in the middle of all this, John's heart was about as heavy as hearts can get and still not burst their seams, John beheld in heaven, as much as to say, John, don't let them fool you, there's no all this down here.

If you want to keep sane, look through that open door and see a throne and one on that, you can keep calm. Now let's be sure of one thing, no matter who you send to Washington, whether it's John Kennedy, Dick Nixon, Barry Goldwater, or Jackie Kennedy, remember one, all failure.

And it's not because they're Democrats or Republicans, but it's because they're people, they'll fail you. And remember, for all this riding forth of the horsemen and the opening of the bottomless pit and the scorpions and the dragon and the mark of the beast and the Armageddon and the last judgment in general, hell, there isn't any solution to all for it down here on this earth.

And that is not to speak slightingly about great men. We have great men, I have some great men in the world. Maybe they're not always the one that the voters think they are, but there are some great men.

But no matter where you put them, they can't help you, they do the best they can, but they're all dumb, only they're dumb in different ways. All added together, they couldn't help us, the rulers can't help us, who take counsel together and the diplomat, according to the rules of Emily Post, nor the agreements that are made to be broken, nor the laws, so-called international, are broken whenever it suits some law of the lawmakers, nor the soldiers, nor the weapons, however developed, talks, Will Rogers used to say, you know, that he knew the cure for war, it was to abolish peace conferences.

Science can't help you, and cultural influences can't help you. If somebody drops a bomb on you, you'll just be as dead as if you talked with an Oxford accent, either way or vice versa. It doesn't help you when you've been killed or stashed or burnt or shot down or hewed to pieces, or kicked into a quick line, it doesn't help you, and you know my tool.

So let's remember that you'll never get any help except from that open door. And John said before, an open door was opened in heaven, and a set throne, there was a set throne. Now what does that throne proclaim?

Certainty and authority and sovereignty, and certainty is something nobody has outside of Jesus Christ. You might as well, we might as well face up. I heard of a permanent wave one time, said guaranteed to last thirty days.

Now if that's what permanent lasts thirty days, then I wonder what impermanent could possibly mean. And we don't build automobiles, not build them to shine, and do it silently and smoothly, and then you can get a new one the year after next.

Buildings, they used to build buildings in England that would stand, and other parts of Europe that would stand, and are still standing after a thousand years, and wouldn't be caught dead in the building over forty years old now, anywhere.

We did nothing permanent. Don't imagine you're permanent, how healthy you are, but you're not permanent, I'm telling you. You may be just as good looking as Roger, but old Mother Nature and Father Time are doing a little jig on your countenance, and one of these days the hook marks are going to show up, and you're going to be like the rest of us.

I get around places like this and I meet people. I had lunch today noon with a Presbyterian preacher I had for years, and I apologized for the way I looked, and he said, Well, look at me, and I did. We aren't permanent, nobody is permanent, but when we look at the throne there is a place of permanence, and certainty, and sovereignty, and universal dominion.

You know, somebody asked Cal Coolidge how he liked it, he came around the house, and he said, How do you like living in the White House, Cal? He said, The trouble with it is you can't get permanent occupancy.

That is the problem always, everywhere you can't get permanent occupancy. And he added, and furthermore, there's no chance for it, and there's no place to go, you know, no place to hide. But if we see that throne, now here's that blissful center, you've sung all most of your life about that blissful center, fixed on that blissful center of rest.

Sometimes when you're not in a hurry to do it, I like to take a hymn apart and ask the congregation what the various phrases mean. Nobody knows the rules. You know, we just sing because we like the music.

We don't know what we're singing, like we sing, I dare not trust the sweetest frame, I ask the whole congregation what the sweetest frame was, and no one, one of them knew. And yet they've been singing about it since they were little.

And then we rest on that blissful center of rest. What is the blissful center? I don't suppose very many would know, they hadn't thought about it, they don't need her. But the blissful center is nobody else than God, the center of the universe, the throne of God around which we rest.

The Permanence and Sovereignty of God's Throne

Now, here I say of sanity, and you can keep out of the booby hatch if you'll keep on the throne, and remember that there's one throne that doesn't change. We just went through a period of rattlings all over the world, there were the tumblings of thrones, and you could hear the rending of cloth, it was the terrible cold, and you could hear something rolling like a hoop down the sidewalk in every town in Europe, and it was crowns from unkinging the walls.

There weren't any kings around there. Mark Twain said there was a time in Europe when there were so many little countries that the king, when he lay down at night, couldn't stretch out without a passport.

And we had kings and rulers of everywhere. You don't have them anymore, we've got two or three of them left over there, but mostly we don't have kings. But if you want to keep sanity and with certainty and assurance, you'll remember, look at the throne.

Then one sat on the throne. Now, he's not identified, he's sent the word, one. He's not identified, but there in the center of all the world, he doesn't need to be identified. The Bible is a beautifully written book, probably the most beautiful piece of literature in the entire world.

But you know that even the Bible sometimes laughs at school marms and grammarians, and the text of the grammatical construction goes all awry. For instance, here is where this man Paul says, I know whom I have believed and am sure that he can keep that which I have committed unto against that day.

You ever think that those three, that's one of the most messed up sentences I ever saw over New York. But it stands pretty well down the centuries anyhow. I know whom I have believed, but he didn't say who the whom.

But then if you knew Paul, you didn't have to have him identify the whom, because everybody knew who his whom was. Everybody knew who it was that Paul loved beyond all the blood in his veins and the nerves in his body and the balls.

He knew who it was that he loved. They knew who it was that he loved more than he loved life or property or money, anything. It was none other than the one you've named this afternoon, the lily of the valley and the rose of Sharon and the son Jacob.

So he didn't have to. He was an old man now, and he still had his head, but shortly after he wrote those beautiful words, the only time in his life that he lost his head, and he lost it for a little while.

They rolled it down over the flagstones of that prison, but his soul's where it had long wanted to be, with the one that he didn't name. But that everybody knew, well then he said, I know whom I have believed and that he is able to keep that.

Now that, it stands for something else, but there's no antecedent there. What is it, Paul? What are you talking about? What have you turned over for Jesus? That, that, he didn't say. But everybody knew that Paul had turned over life and death and heaven above, turned over his soul and his past and his present and his future and his body and his spirit and his mind.

It was Paul who had been turned over to Jesus Christ, and God could pass his hand around the old man, Paul, and touch nothing, it was all on the old man's side at all. He didn't have to spend half a page telling people what it was that he had turned over to the Lord.

Everybody that knew Paul, knew. So there are some people, you don't have to ask where they are Wednesday nights, and you don't have to ask what they're doing at a given time, they're still both. They'll be prayer meeting Wednesday night, of course.

There are some fellows, they're deacons in churches, but if you ask where they'll be Wednesday night, say so. But there are other people, you'll know where they are, they'll be at the prayer meeting. And there are some things that don't have to be explained, particularly when a man with a bald head and a gray beard and a faraway look in his eyes says something, you don't have to say, Now explain it, Reverend, oh, shut up, keep your mouth down.

The old holy man is talking, let him talk, he says, God's keeping the light, now don't ask him what that is, he knows, against that day. What day are you talking about, Paul? When you retire? Are you looking forward to superannuation?

You know, one, what was his name, Dr. Godbee said he got sanctified so he wouldn't have to get superannuated. And what was Paul looking forward to? Oh, that day, that day when righteousness should triumph, that day when all evil out of the world, that day when the fires of judgment should burn that which is sinful, and all that is good should rise like Atlantis out of the sea of time, and Jesus Christ should be King of kings and Lord of lords, and worship him from the river to the ends of the earth, and every man should sit under his own vine and fig tree, and no man should be afraid.

That's the day, and Paul knew, Paul had been talking about that for a long time, all over the world, everywhere they listened to him, that wonderful man that was coming in the hour of his triumph. So he wrote his little testimony.

You see, he broke up the English, but he got his idea across, and that's what I like. Well, here we have it again now, that was what the preachers called a digression there. But we'll get back to John now.

The Many Biblical Names of the One on the Throne

It says here, "'One sat on the throne,' and he isn't identified, but he's in the center of all worlds, and you don't know him. Ask Melchizedek, who it was, Melchizedek the king of Salem, and he'd say, Most high God-possessor of heaven.

Ask Abraham, and he'd say, El Shaddai, the Almighty God, Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord that provideth. Ask Moses, and he would say, That is he, I am that I am, and that is his memorial for all generations.

Ask Isaiah, he's the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. And ask Paul, and he would say, He is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting.

And ask the fathers, and they would say, That he is God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible. They knew, you and I ought to know, that there was one who sat on the throne.

The Limits of Human Language in Describing God

Now I ask you to note that one that sat on the throne. He looked upon, he said, and then he raced off into figures of speech in an effort to explain what he looked like. One problem was God's, and the other was John's.

God's problem was to disclose himself to John, for that which is uncreated disclosed itself to that which is created. How can the infinite disclose itself to the finite? God had that. And then, having done it, John had a job.

And his problem was how he could describe what God had disclosed. So that's usually the trouble in almost any testimony. I never heard a testimony yet that I thought did justice to what I've tried to give testimonies in my time, a little here and there, and I've never yet been able to do it justice.

You get a feeling that you have just tasted of the milk and honey out of the holy land and walked with God in the cool of the day. I'm going to write that. I'm going to get that down. But any time you get it down, it's lost all its juice, and there isn't anything left.

Words won't do it. Don't you think ever for a split second that you can get your teeth and tongue and lips and by a little conference get them working together and express what God is. You can't. All they can do is mutter and mumble and hope for the best.

So always remember that when you're testifying, if you sit down and you have, but you've done your best, and that's all God or angels can want you to do. Do the best you can. You never can tell it the way, but do the best you can, that's all.

When Charles Wesley wrote, Jesus, lover of my soul, or love divine, all love is excelling, he didn't think it was in his heart. And when he wrote that, that, how is it, oh, love divine, how sweet thou art, when shall I find my willings up with thee, I thirst, I faint, I die to prove the greatness of redeeming love, the love of Christ to me.

That sounds insane, but when Charles wrote it, he shoved it aside and said, that's nothing. Just nothing, because if I could tell it the way he's done it, will he? So we have this always, these two problems.

One is to understand God, and the other is to tell people what we've understood. Do both so imperfectly. There are the two substances you know, that which is God, spiritual, unique, uncreated, unapproachable, and the whole other super-sensible dwelling in light that no man can approach unto.

And then there's that which is not God, created, that's you and me, around about us, Pittsburgh's hills and rivers, and all the rest. But God likes to shine forth and tell us what he's in. And here he is now on the throne, there's a rainbow around about the throne.

The Rainbow as a Sign of Divine Covenant

I heard, I never looked this up to check it, but it's just one of those delightful little things you like to remember. He said it only goes halfway around, you know, it starts over here, makes a half-circle, stops over here.

But here was a rainbow that went all around the throne, as if God were saying to the whole universe, my rainbow of peace, my promise of protection, my covenant, circles the whole throne of God. Noah's rainbow went halfway around, and John's rainbow went all the way.

And then here in the middle of it all were 24 elders. I want to whisper something to you, and again, I'll break down if you can't say what you feel. But there was a time when I worried a little bit about dying, even when I knew I was converted and had the eternal life of people, couldn't lose it, you know, and all.

We're very nice, but you know something? Sometimes I used to be a little afraid to get in, I wasn't scared, but I didn't like it. And if I wasn't as comfortable, I used to be behind the horse and buggy, or behind the horse and the buggy.

But I caught myself a few times lately thinking, maybe today she'll curse, and I was told as a boy before Christmas. Then I think of the others. I'll save them all, and I won't let this happen to these poor people, most of whom are converted.

But it's for myself. I'd like to be with the four elders and the beasts and all the rest, and I don't want anybody running after me with a Greek lexicon, trying to tell me that doesn't mean beasts. You can't understand what it means anyhow, not all the linguists in the world can help you in it.

You've got 24 elders there, some of them out looking as if he had just stepped out of a tomb after 14 centuries in tombing with his Greek New Testament, and starts to read what the 24 elders mean. I don't know what they mean, but I know they're there, and they're inside that glorious, gorgeous circle by the emerald rainbow, and that's where I want to be, by the grace of God.

I'll find myself there, you know. Everybody will. You get up there first, you won't know a beast from an elder, and you won't know an angel from a seraphim, but you'll find yourself after a while. And the one in the midst, you'll know him, because in Jesus Christ you do know him.

Judgment, Worship, and the Four Living Creatures

And then there's the lightning. The lightnings are the rulers of Israel and the rulers of the Church, I suppose. But if it isn't that, don't look at me, I didn't say that, I suppose it was. But the lightnings and thunders and voices and the seven fires, what about them?

Well, God's throne is here, unchanged, and a cup of iniquity on earth is filled up. And the purposes of God are moving on and his plans are being fulfilled. And now this becomes a throne of judgment. That is an awful time, an awful time.

A throne of grace becomes a throne of judgment. Then the thunders begin, and the verve begins after the 5th chapter of Bracket. The 6th chapter opens up and then begins the fury of God upon a world that's cursed.

The creatures round about the throne, they show forth the glory of the eternal sun. They had eyes. They had eyes inside and outside, and they had eyes before and behind them. They could see. They saw not only in earth, they saw in heaven.

They saw not only, but they saw through. Then one of them had a face like a lion, or they all had, and there was the King of Beasts, they tell me. Oh, I know what they say, they say that a lion gets scared and runs sometimes.

But I still like to think of a lion as the King of Beasts. There isn't any more beautiful sight in this world, and I suppose in the world, than a full-grown tawny lion, with a mop of a tail that he shakes, standing straight up and stretching his neck out, that great bearded neck of his, and strikes whatever that is he hits.

And everything in the whole zoo trembles when that great fellow roars, and he isn't afraid of anything. He's the King of the jungle. And here we have him in the very glory of God, the kingship of Jesus Christ our Lord.

But what's this calf doing here, poor little old calf, what's he doing here? He had the face of a lion, and that cat, that ox, was obedient unto death, you know. You know, the Baptists have a saying for their missionary outlet, it shows an ox, and then it shows an alder and a plow, and it says, ready for either or for both.

And that's what he's saying here. This calf, Jesus Christ our Lord, did not die and gave himself as an ox to die for the sins of men. And then there's the man and the flying eagle, the deity of Jesus, worship increases.

I noticed here that even the elders and beasts get blessed more sometimes than they do with others. There was a little lion, and then the beasts give glory and honor and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth forever and ever.

And that sparked off the elders, and suddenly they fall down before him that sat on the throne and worship him that liveth forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne. They are working together up there, the beasts and the elders, the uncreated beasts, I mean the unredeemed beasts, the unfallen ones, and the elders who had been redeemed.

Worship as the Chief End of Humanity

Now comes the inscription of praise to the Father, and with that I am through. The inscription of praise to the Father, this is so beautiful, says, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor, for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

I believe that this is the truth. I pity people. I don't like to snarl at men who believe that we crawled up out of the colloidal ooze and that our ancestors once lived in caves and had long tails, which they say with straight faith that they wore off by sitting on them.

And that's why we don't have them now, because we are the descendants of those fellows who sat around some tails. Well, bless them. I'd at least thank them for that, I'd be embarrassed if they hadn't worn them.

But I pity the people who believe that's where we came from. I believe we came down from above by a trajemorous fall, not that we crawled up from below by a long and praiseworthy parade out of the mud, that when it's all over we'll be back where we started, only infinitely above where we started.

We'll be as much above where we was above Adam or as heaven is above the Garden of Eden. I'm not looking to go back to the Garden of Eden, I have no wish to go back to the Garden of Eden. I don't want to crawl back into the loins of Adam and be an unfallen man.

I'll settle for a fallen by the blood of the Lamb and made like unto Jesus by the miracle and wonder of his sanctifying grace. You think it all happens at once, and I answer, no, it doesn't all happen at once any more than a full-grown man when the baby is born.

You just get the beginnings when the baby is born, and if he's healthy and keeps on behaving himself until he's thirty, he's a mature, full-grown man. So when the Holy Ghost fills you in sanctifying grace, he doesn't finish the day's tools down and mark finished.

No, no. If he did, we'd be what Browning calls finished and finite clods. But he brings us out and we grow and continue to mature and become like him and I. So I believe that we are created in order that we might worship God.

I'm going to write a book one of these days, I think I'll borrow it from the Presbyterians and call it, The Chief End of Man, and it will be on worship. And my thesis will be that the intellectual has a reason for everything, has to have, and that there is nothing without a reason, though we don't know what a reason is.

And that when God made man, he wasn't just doodling, he made man with a purpose, that we might glorify God and enjoy him forever. I believe that. That's why I'm here, that's why I'm here, that I might glorify God.

I believe that worship is the chief end of man, that it's the purpose that made him to be born and caused him to be born, that he might worship. Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor, for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Living Calmly Under the Sovereignty of God

This is what John saw. I can read the headlines tonight with a whole lot more calm than if I didn't know. And I can face up to the summit conferences, and they always fail, never been one succeeded yet.

It's up to all that's out there, calmly, because I see a throne and one on a throne and a rainbow around the throne, inside the holy, eternal, charmed and protected circle, there are representatives of all, the redeemed of all colors and tribes and tongues around the world.

I see sitting on that throne one who is not named, who is described, and before whom all the intelligent and moral creation falls down and says, O God, brethren, I've suffered a lot in my day, and I suffer a little yet.

Thank God for the privilege. And I wouldn't want to be anybody else than what I am, and I wouldn't want to go back into non-existence and cease to be. I don't want to crawl back out of something into nothing.

I thank God I am something, but made in the image of God, fallen and redeemed to be restored to the image of God again, so with beasts and elders I'll go and cast my little crown at his feet. Now, that's what we live for, brethren, that's what we live for.

A scholar wrote to me a few years ago, and he said, on one of the editorials, I think, he said that we evangelicals are inclined to swat mosquitoes all the time. But he said, instead, he said, you leave the lions and the leopards untouched.

He was a liberal. And I'm very nice about it, but I said to him, dear brother, I noticed that your liberal friends claim that we evangelicals swat mosquitoes and leave them untouched. I said, I had always noticed that the liberals thought they were great leopard hunters, but I hadn't noticed it on their church doors.

But I said, on the other hand, I think the evangelical church back to Pentecost has a good record for leopard tails. We've gotten them, we've mowed them down all around the leopard ears in and thrown them down at the feet of Jesus.

I'm still an evangelical, I'm still an old-fashioned believer. I can look through an open door and see a throne and one on a throne and believe what I see. Are you with me? Amen.