Christ in 07 in the Revelation — Jim Flanigan

Now, I'm sort of sorry that we have come to our last evening. I'd just like to say how much we have appreciated those that have come night by night as we have considered the Lord Jesus, and we trust that we have each of us learned some little things about him now that make us appreciate him more.

We have seen him from, I suppose, most of the major sections of our Bible. We have been in the Pentateuch, we have been in the other writings of the prophets and in the Psalms and in the little song of Solomon, and we have been in every section, I suppose, of the New Testament, and we have found the Lord Jesus in all of these places.

I hope that in some little measure our experience has been a little like the experience of that to whom we walk to a mess, and that we have found Christ in all the Scriptures. At least I trust that the young believer particularly has been encouraged to keep looking for the Lord Jesus in all parts of the Bible as you read.

That, it seems to me, is the key to profitable reading of all parts of Holy Scripture, that is to read it for the Lord Jesus. That's what we've been doing these past two weeks, and now we've arrived at the last evening.

We make you very welcome again, and thank you for coming on these previous nights. Now, the Gospel meeting on Sunday, the Lord's Day at seven, and the speakers expected this Lord's Day are two Brethren, Coffield and Reynolds from the Harriville Assembly in Valomina.

Brethren Reynolds and Coffield from the Harriville Assembly. If you're a stranger with us this evening, we trust that you'll feel at home. We make you very welcome, and feel free to come back again. You'll always be made very welcome here, and this is the next meeting, actually, the Gospel meeting on Sunday, the Lord's Day.

Every Lord's Day morning, too, of course, the Saints here meet to remember the Lord Jesus, and if you have never seen them remember the Lord in this particular way, that would be interesting for you, too, to come and observe how they remember the Lord here.

I was brought up in a Christian home, but I was in my mid-teens before I saw a meeting such as is conducted here on the Lord's Day morning, and I thought that it was the most wonderful thing that I had ever seen.

Anyway, they remember the Lord in a very simple but a very precious way, and you're invited to come and observe how they remember the Lord. So feel free to come back again, and we make you very welcome in the Lord's name.

Christ in All the Scriptures

Now tonight, please, we come to the book of the Revelation, to have our final look at the Lord Jesus, the book of the Revelation, and I want to read two portions, one from chapter 10, and then from chapter 19, but first from chapter 10, please.

Chapter 10 of the book of the Revelation, and we'll read from verse 1. And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head. The rainbow was the definite article.

The rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little book open, and he set his right foot upon the sea and his left foot on the earth, and cried with a loud voice as when a lion roareth.

And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. When the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write, and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and swear by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be delay no longer.

The Lord will bless that little reading, and we go to chapter 19 now, and to try to link this with chapter 10. Chapter 19, and reading a familiar portion from verse 11, verse 11. And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse, and he that sat upon him was called faithful and true, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns, and he had a name written that no man knew but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God.

The armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

He hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. And the Lord will bless our readings. Now we have seen in these past evenings our Lord Jesus Christ from a very great variety of aspects, and we have seen quite a number of his glories.

The Future Return and Vindication of Christ

Tonight we have a look into the future, and I want to be occupied principally with that aspect of his coming which is back to earth again. We are looking, of course, beyond the rapture, we are looking beyond the days of tribulation, and we are looking right to the moment of his return, coming back again to the very same earth where once he was rejected.

Now that, of course, is principally the message of chapter 19. It has been said of chapter 19 of Revelation that it is the high watermark of the book. Someone has remarked that everything that has gone before is but an introduction, and everything that follows is but an epilogue, and chapter 19 is the high watermark of the book of Revelation.

Now I think that most of my brethren would agree with that, that we are really in the heights, and we have arrived at that point where the Lord Jesus is about to be vindicated. What I have in mind this evening is to show from chapter 19 that just as completely as he was rejected when he was here, so will God vindicate him when he comes again, and I want to labor principally to show the circumstances reversed, to see how and what he was when he was here, unrecognized as a king, and then to see how God will vindicate him and reverse those circumstances in the day of chapter 19.

Revelation 10 as a Preview of Revelation 19

The link with chapter 10 might perhaps be for some a doubtful link, but for my part I would not have any doubt, and I want to see this mighty angel of chapter 10 as being the Lord Jesus himself. Chapter 10 is of course a parenthesis.

There are several parenthetical chapters in the Revelation, and chapter 10 is one of them. What you can do with it, of course, is you can put it into brackets, you can read on without it as it were, but when you notice it in there as a parenthesis, the position of it is really very beautiful, because it becomes a little foregleam, a little glimpse into the future, a preview, if you like, and I think that in the very darkest part of the book of Revelation that God has deliberately given his people here a little glimpse of the glory that is yet to come.

One evening before we talked about the glory, we spoke of the glory as Abraham saw it, the glory as Moses saw it, and the glory as Stephen saw it, and now we find that God is still working on that same principle that a little sight of the glory will help his people.

And if a sight of the glory helps us at any time, much more so when these saints are passing through very dark and terrible days, deep waters you might say, and right in the very midst of it, because I don't know a darker part of the Revelation than between chapters nine and eleven and on into chapter thirteen, these are very, very dark parts of the book of Revelation, and right in the very center, in the very heart of all that, you get this preview of glory that is yet to come.

It looks almost, although the illustration is very weak, but it looks almost like the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is as if these people in the depths of the darkness and the heat of tribulation are seeing on to the end of it all, and a little sight of the glory is that that helps them to go on.

Now there is, of course, a little problem with regard to the identification of this mighty angel, and I know that some will believe that this is just, as it says, a mighty angel and that it is not the Lord.

I am taking the view that, in fact, the description of this mighty angel is such that it must apply to a divine person, and I am seeing this mighty angel as being the Lord, but this is not actually a prediction of something that is just about to come.

It is, as we have said, a little preview of glory that is to be, and then when you leave it behind, you get into the darkness again. But when you come to chapter 19, then what is previewed in chapter 10 becomes a fact in chapter 19.

So that, it seems to me, is the link between chapters 10 and 19. One is the preview, and the other is the actual fulfillment. Chapter 10 is a little look forward to what chapter 19 will eventually be.

The Mighty Angel and the Symbolic Language of Revelation

Now, this mighty angel, in the dark period, he appears in this vision, and he is a mighty angel, and that is the first objection to it being the Lord. Some say, of course, that if it says an angel, then it means an angel and it can't be the Lord.

I don't know that that objection carries very much weight, really, because in the book of Revelation we are in a book of symbols, and the Lord Jesus himself is presented under quite a number of symbols already in this book, even before you get to chapter 10.

You find, of course, that in an earlier chapter he is seen as a lion, and in yet another chapter he will be a lamb, and you know that in another chapter he will be seen as a warrior, as a king, he will be seen as a reaper, he will be seen as a judge, and in another chapter he is seen as a star, and I think that in quite a variety of different symbols the Lord Jesus is presented, and I don't see why he should not be presented here as an angel.

And then, of course, if you reject this symbol here as applying to the Lord and say it can't be him because it's an angel, then I think you might be in trouble when you go back to chapter 8, because there is another angel there who stands at the altar, and I don't think there would be any doubt that he who stands there at the altar and takes the prayers and the worship of the saints and makes them acceptable and puts the incense of his own person upon them and presents them to the throne, I don't think there would be any doubt that that would be the priestly ministry of the Lord Jesus, but that person again is presented as an angel.

And, of course, again you know that the angel of the Lord, that was an old way of referring to the Lord in earlier days, and I don't see any problem then that another mighty angel can very well be the Lord Jesus himself.

Now, if you look at the description and keep in mind the earlier language of the book of Revelation, then again I think we become convinced that this must be the Lord Jesus. For instance, he comes down from heaven and he is clothed with the cloud.

Now, that article and also the other one before the rainbow, we have two indefinite articles here, a cloud and a rainbow, but I think I'm right in saying that you've got to make both of them definite, and that makes a change.

He's clothed with the cloud, and he's got the rainbow upon his head, and if the definite article is used, then you must intelligently ask the question, the cloud? Which cloud is this? The rainbow? What rainbow is this?

It's obviously a rainbow that we have heard about before, and it's obviously a cloud of which we have known something before. The cloud and the rainbow upon his head, and when you answer those questions intelligently, we must see that this is a divine person.

Do you think that this is just an ordinary vapor cloud? Do you think that when the Lord Jesus comes here down clothed with a cloud or the cloud, that this is just an ordinary cloud of the skies? I don't think so personally.

When the definite article is used, it is obviously a cloud with which we have been familiar in earlier scriptures, and so the cloud, I go all the way back in the study of the cloud, a way as far back perhaps as Sinai, and you remember that the cloud came down, the thick cloud came down, and God was in the thick cloud at Sinai.

You remember too that that cloud went before them and became a pillar that led the people and became the very symbol of God's presence in the midst of his people. You remember too that in the Old Testament it is said, he maketh the cloud his chariot in the book of the Psalms, I think you'll find that, and one perhaps very important thing, when you go to the Mount of Transfiguration, you remember it is said of those men that they feared as they entered the cloud.

Do you think that was an ordinary vapor cloud, that these men should be afraid because they are entering the cloud on the Mount of Transfiguration? What is there to fear as they enter the cloud on the Mount, as they must have often done before when they climbed mountains during their lifetime?

And I suggest that this is not an ordinary vapor cloud, but that rather this is the cloud with which we have been familiar all through the Scriptures, the cloud of Ezekiel, the cloud of the days of the tabernacle, the cloud of glory that filled the tabernacle so that there was no room or occasion for the priests to stand and minister, and in a word it is what my brethren often call the Shekinah, the Shekinah cloud, the Shekinah glory.

When I was a young Christian I kept hearing that word, and we mentioned this before, and I was rather backward and shy about asking what this word meant, and I thought it was a rather majestic word when brethren talked about the Shekinah, but I couldn't find it in my Bible, and I had a bit of a concordance that I couldn't find it there either, and for a long time I did not know that they were sort of anglicizing an old Hebrew word, and still today, very interestingly, the Israeli uses this in Israel, only they pronounce it a little bit differently, and they talk about the Shekinah.

And when they talk about the Shekinah, they are speaking of that same glory cloud, and still they wait for that, and for the return of that, of the Shekinah and the presence of God amongst them again.

Well, for the young believer, of course, I just want to point out, so as to save you the trouble I had, that Shekinah is not an English word. It is, as we have said, an anglicized Hebrew word, and it comes from two other words, but mainly it comes from a word that means to dwell, to dwell, and what happened was that God actually dwelt in the midst of his people, but he could not do that in unveiled glory.

He could not dwell like that in the midst of his people, so he dwelt in what we call the Shekinah, in a word, he dwelt in the cloud in the midst of his people. And so my suggestion is that when this mighty angel comes down from heaven, we are previewing the Lord's return in power and glory, and when he is clothed with the cloud, it is himself in that old Shekinah, and he is coming back again now for a little while to dwell on this earth in glory.

The Rainbow and the Completeness of God's Promises

Now the rainbow was upon his head, and you can't just say the rainbow unless it is a reference to some particular rainbow, and so you go back to the chapters in Revelation, and when you go back to chapter four, true enough, you find the rainbow there, and in chapter four you find that the rainbow is around about the throne, and it would be interesting to talk about that rainbow, but we must leave it because it is not our purpose.

Sufficient just to say that the rainbow is round about the throne in such a fashion that we keep calling it the rainbow circle throne. Now it is a completed rainbow, that is the very important thing about it.

The rainbows that we see are interrupted by earth because we have our feet on earth, and as long as you have two feet on earth, you can't see the completed circle, the completed rainbow. All that we see is a little part, it begins on earth as it were, and it ends on earth, that is how we see it, but only because our vision is interrupted.

If we could be at the right time, in the right place, far removed from earth, and looking down as some have been privileged to be, you would actually see that the rainbow was right around this old globe, it is a completed thing, the rainbow is a completed circle, but because we have two feet on earth, our vision is interrupted and we only see a part of it.

Now the lovely lesson is of course that one day we shall be allowed to see the rainbow complete, and if today we can't see it complete, well then we shall just have to trust, and sometimes that is a very difficult thing to do, just to trust.

And just to remember always that around the throne the rainbow is complete, you must be sure of that, that the rainbow is complete. The purposes and the promises of God are absolutely complete, and one day we shall see that, but at the moment with two feet on earth we can't see that, we just have to believe his word and rest upon it, that he knows exactly what is happening, and his purposes are true, and they will be fulfilled, and all the time though we couldn't see it, the rainbow was complete around the throne.

Now when the Lord Jesus comes back in power and glory, we will see that again, the rainbow upon his head, all the purposes and the promises of the covenant keeping God, all associated with the King when he comes back again.

Judgment, the Open Book, and Christ's Dominion

Now his face was, as it were, the sun, and that takes us back to chapter 1, and we see that very same expression used in describing the Lord in chapter 1, and his feet as pillars of fire, and I think that word pillars maybe is the great word columns of fire, and these columns of fire, well I think in the symbol of the book of Revelation, here the fire speaks of judgment, and here the columns seem to speak of sort of immovability and immutability, and here is one who is ever associated with right judgment, and when the Lord comes back with his feet like columns of fire, well then of course we know, as we will see in a moment or two from chapter 19, that he is coming back to judge all right, and his feet as columns of fire.

Now he has in his hand a little book open, and you notice of course that that is a contrast to the great book that was sealed of chapter 6, and it might well be that there is a connection, and perhaps the connection is this, that the great book that was sealed in chapter 5, chapter 6, that book of course would seem to be the title deeds, the rights to earth, but there are certain conditions written in.

I think that might be true of the deeds of most properties, that there are certain conditions written in, and if those conditions are not fulfilled, very often that treaty becomes null and void, and certainly we are living in an old earth which is sadly in disrepair.

It has been neglected, it has been mortgaged, and the conditions have certainly not been fulfilled, but one is coming back again who has rights to this old earth, and when he comes there are certain conditions that are to be fulfilled.

Only he can do it, and when he comes back he will begin to open the book of chapter 5, chapter 6, and he will begin to fulfill the conditions. I suggest that maybe he will do that even during the days of tribulation, while he sits at the Father's right hand, that what he is doing actually, he is arranging, he is sorting out the conditions and the neglect and the disrepair, and then eventually of course he will come and claim the property and take it back again.

So when we arrive at this particular point here in the book of Revelation and chapter 10, it might be now that the great book of chapter 6 has become the little book open of chapter 10. At any rate, the purposes of God are here, and if this was our subject this evening, it would be interesting too to read the end part of chapter 10 and see John's appreciation of the little book.

Well now, the interesting part comes now. He cries with a loud voice as when a lion roareth, here is the lion of the tribe of Judah roaring at his return, and then an interesting, very interesting attitude or stance that the angel takes as you come further down.

He puts a foot upon the sea, and he puts a foot upon the earth. He stands on the sea, and he stands on the earth, and then in the very same verse, if he doesn't lift up his hand into the heavens, and it seems that we have three spheres brought together in the one verse and in the attitude of the angel of the Lord himself, a foot on the earth, a foot on the sea, and his hand in the heavens, and anybody who has been reading observingly, you go way back immediately to the early chapters of the book of Genesis, and you know that that is exactly the dominion that God gave to Adam.

You remember how God said to Adam, he says, Adam, the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, these are the dominion, but then Adam rebelled, disobeyed, and he lost that dominion, and as we saw the other evening, that crown of glory and honor, it fell from his head in the language of the eighth psalm.

But now the Lord Jesus, the second man, is coming back again, and he is going to take back the three spheres of the dominion that Adam has mortgaged and forfeited, and so with a foot on the sea and a foot on the earth and his hand in the heavens, he claims it all back again, and then swears by him that liveth forever and ever that there should be no more delay.

The time is running out, no more delay, and the mystery of God, God tolerating evil for all these centuries, that mystery that sometimes we find it hard to understand, that mystery now must be fulfilled, and there must be no more delay, and after a little more darkness and tribulation, then we eventually arrive at what chapter ten previews, and we come to chapter nineteen.

It is the fulfillment of what we have predicted in chapter ten. So right in the midst, in the heart of the darkness of the tribulation, these saints get a little sight of the glory, and now with the tribulation past and Babylon being judged, we come to chapter nineteen, and the heavens are opened and the King is coming.

John 19 and Revelation 19: From Shame to Glory

Now, I have often pointed out, and to me it is a very beautiful way to read Revelation nineteen, and it is to remember that the man who wrote the Revelation nineteen was the man who wrote John nineteen, the very same person, and what a lovely thing to contrast the sufferings and the shame of John nineteen with the glory of Revelation nineteen, and I think it was wondrous grace on God's part to give the Revelation nineteen to John who had seen the shame of John nineteen.

It would have been equally thrilling for us if Paul had got this revelation, but God in grace he gave it to John, and what a great encouragement it must have been for an old man exiled on the island of Patmos, rejected like the Lord, and now to look up from all that barrenness and see the glory, to look away back and remember what he writes in John nineteen, and in that very same John nineteen you can take from it a little expression and you can put it right across the Revelation nineteen, and it actually is the word of Pilate, because Pilate says in John nineteen, Behold your King, and I think that you can take that word and put it right across this chapter, Behold your King, but what a change!

God is vindicating now the man who suffered so in John nineteen. This is glory now in exchange for the shame and the sorrow, and not only that, but all that humility and humiliation of the days of the flesh of the Lord Jesus, they are all reversed now, and it seems as if all of it was so worthwhile because God now is vindicating the man who in great humility walked amongst us.

Seven Expressions of Christ's Humiliation and Their Reversal

Now, some time ago I was thinking of some of the things that God reversed, that God will reverse when the Lord Jesus comes in glory, and I went back to the Gospels and I picked out perhaps about seven little expressions that I hear my brethren use very often concerning the days of the flesh of the Lord Jesus and his humility, his meekness amongst us.

We think of his grace, we think of what he was, we think of what he suffered, and we think of those days of his ministry, and I have gathered seven little expressions that my brethren often use, and I just want to note them and then to see that they are all reversed, and God has vindicated the man of those seven expressions.

God has done that in chapter 19, he will do it in fact when the Lord comes in glory. Now, we think of these expressions, and I want very simply to call them yesterday. What the king was yesterday, and what the king will be tomorrow, of course we have in chapter 19.

And to simply compare or to contrast what the king was yesterday with what the king will be tomorrow, well I think this is a very beautiful way of reading the Revelation 19. Now, yesterday you know he lay in a manger, that was how he began.

Yesterday the king, still a king, but he lay in a manger. Not only that, but when we are tracing his footsteps we say about him also that one day he sat on a well. So this blessed one, he lay in a manger and he sat on a well.

One afternoon he slept in a boat, and how often we give thanks for that. The one, the same one who lay in the manger, who sat in the well, he slept in a boat. And at the end of his ministry, the end of his days, of course you know that he rode on a donkey.

It wasn't many days after that that he prayed in a garden. Gethsemane, and he went there and prayed in the evening of that last day he prayed in a garden. The very next day he hung on a cross, and later on that very same day he rested in the tomb.

And it seems to me that those seven expressions have gathered together the pathway, the sufferings, the humility of the Lord Jesus. I would love to sing that old hymn, Tell Me the Story of Jesus. And if someone tells me the story of Jesus, they tell me about one who lay in a manger, who sat in a well, who slept in a boat, who rode on a donkey, who prayed in a garden, who hung on a cross, and who finally rested in the tomb.

And it seems that that is the story of Jesus with which we are very familiar. Now what a change! God is going to vindicate the one who made a lowly entrance and lay in the manger. God is going to vindicate this one who in wondrous grace one day sat in a well, on a well, and talked to a Samaritan woman.

And God will completely reverse all of these circumstances, and I think we have the reversal of them all in the verses that we read from chapter 19. Now he lay in a manger. If you remember the connection is this, of course, that as he lay in the manger, says Luke, the heavens opened, the heavens opened.

And it is Luke that gives us that lovely story in the second chapter of the opening heaven and the skies filled with angels. And they announced, of course, that he had come, the King had come, the Son of David.

The Son of the Highest had arrived. He was the King. And it is to the everlasting shame, perhaps, and embarrassment of the nation of Israel that when the King came, he was not recognized. And in fact, at that very time, there was a Nedomite, a half-caste, upon the throne of Israel.

Herod the Great was a Nedomite. Herod the Great was a half-caste. Herod the Great was a puppet king. He had been put there by the Romans, by the Caesar. He was a puppet king and had absolutely no entitlement to the throne at that particular time.

But when the Savior came, when the real King came, that is why indeed it says that he was born king, not born to be king, but born king. The wise men asked it properly. They said, where is he that is born king of the Jews?

He was not born to be king, as some would say, because born to be king implies that at the moment of the birth, the throne is filled and the person is born, coming in as a prince, and then growing up and eventually inheriting the throne.

Now, that was never true of the Lord. He was actually born right into kingship for the simple reason that there was no rightful king in the throne at the time. So the Edomite is there, Herod the Great, the half-caste puppet king, is on the throne.

The heavens are open and the true king lies in a manger and the angels announce that he has come, but earth does not recognize him at all. Well, God will reverse the circumstances. And if God opened the heavens in Luke 2 and deathly him and the world did not recognize, God will now compel men to recognize this second advent of the king and he who came in lowly guise by the way of the manger will now come back in power and glory and the heavens are opened again.

I saw heaven open and the heavens are opened as they were in Luke 2. And so God has reversed the story of Luke 2 in Revelation 19 and the unrecognized king now comes out to be seen and to be recognized, although sometimes that recognition must be compulsorily drawn out of men, but nevertheless he will be recognized and the heavens are opened here as they were opened on the morning that he lay in the manger.

Grace at the Well and Judgment at Christ's Return

Now when I see this blessed one in another chapter sitting on the well, I say what wondrous grace. You know, this is all grace. I think it is one of the most beautiful stories in our Gospels, the fact of the Lord Jesus actually sitting on a well in Samaria talking to a Samaritan woman.

Indeed that woman herself was amazed as the disciples were too when they came back and what the Samaritan woman said is actually not very obvious in our authorized version, but she speaks about, she says, how is it, she says, you are talking to me, she says, and I am a Samaritan and a woman.

That is what she said. In our authorized version it is simply a woman of Samaria, but what she said was, she says, a woman and a Samaritan, a Samaritan and a woman, and it seems that in Eastern environment they were two reasons why the Lord should not have given so much time to her, but in wondrous grace he sat on the well and actually conversed with a Samaritan woman.

The Jews and the Samaritans were constant enemies, of course, because of the condition and the position and the history of Samaria and the Samaritans, there just wasn't any dealings, as John Poe tells us, between the Jews and the Samaritans.

The Samaritans were perhaps a little bit like Herod the Great. They too were half-caste in a sense, you know, and sometimes when it suited them, they said that they were the seed of Abraham, and sometimes when it didn't suit them they had nothing to do with the Jews at all.

So they seemed to just suit the circumstances, or make the circumstances suit them. But anyway, the Lord Jesus in wondrous grace actually travels through Samaria to meet this woman that is wondrous grace, and at the well in Samaria it seems to me that it's all grace.

Now, I might have told you the story before, because I keep telling it, but to me it made the story live on an occasion, and I think in fact it was my very first occasion to visit the well at Sychar. Now, I was walking across that dusty road just toward the well, and I was in the company of a Jew, who afterwards I got to know very well.

And I said to him, I said, tell me, there's a little verse I said in John 4 in our Gospel. He knew it very well of course, he had no sympathy with Christianity, but he knew the story fairly well. And I said, there's a little verse there which says that of the Lord, that he must needs go through Samaria.