Revelation 10:6 And swore by him that lives for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth… The angel... sware... that there should be time no longer. This word of the angel is capable of being rendered, and has been rendered, in three different ways. Take it as meaning - I. THE TIME IS NOT YET COME. It is easy to believe that the persecuted people of St. John's day, as often since, might have thought that the judgments which they witnessed and the distresses they endured could not but be the beginning of the end. Our Lord knew that they would think so, and hence (Matthew 24.) warned them that they should see and suffer much; but "the end" was "not yet." They had asked what should be the sign of his coming, and of "the end of the age." They were eagerly expecting it. At his ascension they asked the like question again. The apostolic Epistles are full of evidence that the second coming of our Lord was expected as near at hand. St. Paul wrote his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians to dispel this idea, or at any rate to moderate its effects. And when Jerusalem fell, and when the Roman empire fell, it was confidently believed that the end of all things was close at hand. And had we lived in those awful days, it is likely that we should have thought so too. And we know how calculations have been made as to the time of the end. The illustrious Bengel reckoned that it would be in 1836, and his mistake is on record as a warning to all who would make similar rash statements, though even yet the warning is neglected by some. But our Lord has told us that it is not for us "to know the times and the seasons" (Acts 1.), and all human calculations are therefore foredoomed to error. And it is well for us that we cannot know. "Ignorance is bliss" in regard to such a subject. Could we fix the date, those far off from it would harden themselves in their sin; those near at hand would become as the Thessalonians did, unfitted for their daily duty, and would not, as St. Paul bade them do, "mind their own business." And so in regard to what is to each one of us as the end of all things, the date of our death, we are kept in merciful ignorance of it. And to keep us therein God has so ordered our lives that there is no hour of it in which men may not die, and in which many do not die, and no hour of it in which they certainly know that they must and shall. Hence little children die, and young men and maidens, boys and girls, as well as the old and grey headed. Ruthless and cruel are seemingly not a few of the visitations of death, cutting down youth in the first freshness and bloom of life, often not sparing the bride and mother in the fulness of their joy, forcing the hot tears from the young husband and wife as they mourn hopelessly over the cradle that held the little one whose life was to them dearer than their own. Such things are. And to some they seem horrible and cruel. But it is in order that we all may be delivered from that paralysis of hope and energy which would come upon us, as it comes upon the convicted felon in the condemned cell, if we knew the actual moment when we must die, and could count off every hour that draws us on to the inevitable doom. Therefore is it well that we do not know the time or the season. And in regard to the end of the world, what mercy is there in the fact that the time is not yet, that "the master of the house" has not yet "risen up, and shut to the door"! For now many will enter who then will not be able. We are thankful that Christ has not yet "accomplished the number of his elect." And they who are his, how much they yet have to do to learn and to obtain before they are prepared to meet their Lord! "The bride has" not yet "made herself ready;" but she must and will, and that she may "the Bridegroom" tarries. Therefore, if this be the meaning of the angel's oath, that "the time is not yet," we rejoice in it both for ourselves and for myriads more. II. THERE SHALL BE NO MORE TIME. And this we believe is the meaning here - that there shall be no longer delay, postponement, no more weary waiting, no longer any lingering of the accomplishment of God's purposes. So regarded, it was for the. Church of St. John's day a blessed sursum corda, a cordial and good cheer, helping them to endure patiently and to hope on more and more. The "mystery of God" shall soon "be finished," so soon that, as we say "we are come" to any city when we see its towers and spires rising before us, although we may yet be some considerable distance from its gates; so, because the time is so short, we may say it is over, the waiting time is past - it exists "no longer." And thus: 1. The Christian may comfort himself. True, the age drags out its weary length, but each individual life is short, and generally long before even that short life is done the recompenses of God, the earnest and pledge of the yet larger recompenses of eternity, are given. "The Lord is not slack concerning his promises" - how often we have gratefully to confess that! Yes; they are so given, even here and now, that the believer is constrained to own, "Goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life." Tares are undoubtedly amongst the wheat, to its sore detriment and harm, but they are not always to be there; it is a mystery that they are there at all; we would like to go and pull them up, but we cannot; but the harvest draws on, and then the trouble will all be over. But: 2. The enemies of God should be afraid. The avenging gods - so the old pagan world believed - have their feet shod with wool. Men hear not their silent approach, and they may be upon them, they often are, in a moment. The sinner never knows how near God's judgment upon his sin may be. Of many the angel hath sworn that there shall be time no longer; the judgment of God shall fall. In a moment, in bright noonday, when the sky is without a cloud, unseen and unheard, the last link that binds the mass of snow and ice to the mountain side is severed, and the avalanche rushes down into the depths below. Do not the events of every day prove, now on this sinner against God's laws, and now on that, that God hath sworn concerning them, "there should be time no longer"? III. ALL TIME SHALL CEASE. Thus also our text may be understood. "Time" and "duration" are not synonymous terms - the latter includes eternity as well as time; but time and eternity, notwithstanding their common quality of duration, are contrasted in Scripture as being of essentially different natures. Time means the present condition of things; eternity, that condition which belongs to the age to come. "The things that are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are eternal." Time is of the age that now is; eternity, of the age that is to come. Thus understood, it is not difficult to believe that time - this age - shall cease. The Bible speaks of "ages." The word is commonly rendered "world," but its true meaning is "age." Thus it speaks of "ages of ages," "this age," "the age to come." And every branch of science tells of different "ages." Geology speaks of them and marks them off one from another by different names. History, biology, philology, all speak in similar way. All tell of ages when the condition of things was altogether different from what we see now, and how one age has succeeded and prepared for another. Therefore that there should be a passing away of the present age to which time belongs, and that it should be followed by one in which time, as we understand it, should be no more, is affirmed, not only by the Bible, but by manifold other evidence beside. And not only shall there be succession, but advance. There have been ages in which we can trace no form of life. These have been succeeded by others which have had life, but only in its lower forms. These again by others possessing higher forms, and at length the highest of all, that of man. And in harmony with all this the Bible bids us look on to an infinitely better condition of things than now we know of, in the age or world to come, whereof the sacred writers speak. Here "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain even until now;" but there "the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption," etc. (Romans 8.). The inscrutable problem of this present life, "the mystery of God," as it is termed in ver. 7, shall "be finished," and there shall be "a new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." And the means whereby all this shall be brought about, not only the Bible, but scientific research also, reveal with startling clearness. The Bible says that the angels of God "shall gather out of his kingdom all things that do offend, and them that work iniquity." Science says that in the progress of the ages the fittest alone survive. All that are incapable of the higher life that is to be disappear and perish, and the fit and worthy alone remain. Such is the solemn "Amen" of science to the teachings of the Word of God. And are there not like facts visible even now amidst mankind? Growth and advancement in races, tribes, nations, families, and individuals, the records and observation of human life, are full of such happy facts; but, on the other hand, there are the mournful facts amid the same subjects, of degeneracy, decay, and death. Character determines these things, and the Bible says the same. Oh, how, then, does all this appeal to every soul! For what am I preparing myself? Must I be doomed to die because I am not fit for the better life that is to be when time shall be no longer? or - and God grant it may be so! - am I by virtue of my living union with the Lord Jesus Christ, who is himself "the Life," destined for glory, honour, and immortality with him in the Eternal? That this may be so is why our pulpits and sermons are forever re-echoing with the appeal, "Come to Christ." The Bible and experience alike attest that it is through living faith, carrying along with it, as such faith ever does, the surrender of the will, the heart, to him, that we become vitally grafted into him, and so in his life - the eternal, the blessed, the glorious - do forever share. For he said, "Because I live, ye shall live also." - S.C. Parallel Verses KJV: And sware 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 time no longer: |
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