Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation

Crowning the Christ is an intensely practical thing, whether taken in the personal sense or the world sense. He has been crowned in the upper world. With wondrous patience and graciousness He pleads for the personal crowning in our lives. Some day — no one knows just when — He will begin to act as the crowned Christ in all the affairs of our earth.

The initiative of all action to-day on the earth is in man’s hands. Some day the initiative of governing action on the earth will be in the hands of the crowned Christ, even while the personal initiative of each man’s life will still be in his own hands.

God is intensely practical. Jesus was never concerned about speculation nor mere discussion; He was too intent on helping people. The Bible is wholly a practical book. It is concerned only with helping us. It does not tell us all the truth there is; we shall be constantly learning more in the future life. But it does tell us all we need to know now. And its purpose in telling us what it does is wholly practical, — to urge us to right choice, and to lives that square with the choice. This is the purpose that decided just what truth should be told in the Book.

There is one book of the sixty-six devoted wholly to this subject of the crowned Christ, — “The Revelation of John.” Every one of these books touches Him at some angle, and finds its deepest meaning in what He was to do and did do, and yields up its secrets only under the touch of His hand. But this book, the closing and climax of all, the knot in the end of the inspired thread, this deals wholly with the action of the crowned Christ.

No book of the sixty-six has seemed so much like a riddle and set so many a-guessing. And without doubt much of its meaning will be clear only as events work themselves out. Events will prove the only expositor of much. But it is with the deep conviction that this is wholly a practical book, written wholly from a practical point of view, and concerned wholly with our practical daily lives, that I have ventured to take it up in this series of simple, wholly practical, Quiet Talks. And it is only this side of its teachings that will be dealt with here. The Book is a street leading into the true overcoming life the Master would woo us to.

It is only after many years’ study of this Book of the Revelation, and a special study the past three years and a little more, that I have ventured to put these talks together. And now they are sent out with the earnest humble prayer that others may find some little practical help in prayerfully reading, as I have found much in prayerfully studying, under the Master’s gracious faithful touch.

He went to the fields to find him;
And a following flock behind him.
And the sling and the stone for battle;
And the enemy driven like cattle.
And the Shepherd-King’s son whom He gave them;
He told of a Christ sent to save them.
And the glory, the message, the choir;
And returned with their hearts all on fire.
He said to the throng before him,
And away to the cross they bore Him.
O man on the cross, God-forsaken;
The sheepfold by death overtaken.
He went to the grave to find him;
And a following flock behind Him.
O strength of the faint and the fearing;
And the day of His coming is nearing.”

Coronation Gift

Christ is crowned. Not in any vague far-fetched meaning, but in the plain common-sense meaning of the word, He is crowned.

Mark xvi. 19.

For crowned means put in the place of highest power, with full right to exercise that power at will. And when the crucified Jesus went up that Olivet day, before the astonished eyes of the disciples, into the sightless blue, on the cloud, He was received in the upper world by the Father. And He was lifted up into the place of highest honour and greatest power. He sat down at the right hand of the Father.

Matthew xxvi. 64.

He had said it would be so. Breathing the air thick with bitter hate on the night of His trial, He had quietly said to the Jewish rulers that even so it would be, bringing at once about His person the bursting of the storm of hate. Now His unfaltering trust in His Father has its sweet reward.

Acts ii. 33; iii. 13-16; v. 31-32; vii. 55, 56.

The Holy Spirit poured out on Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, was the gift of the crowned Christ. The rushing sound as of a mighty wind that filled all the house, the tongues of flame plainly seen, the bold talking to the crowds of foreign Jews of God’s mighty power, the faithful witnessing about the crucified Jesus in the city that hounded Him to death, the convinced crowds openly declaring at the peril of their lives their belief in the despised Jesus, the strangely rare unselfishness even in money matters, and the winsome graciousness of spirit that marked, not only the inner circle, but these greatly increased crowds, — all this said one thing in clear unanswerable tones of unmistakable power, Christ is crowned. For the sending down of the Holy Spirit was the act of the crowned Christ.

And every touch of the Holy Spirit’s presence within trusting hearts, — the sweet peace, the quiet assurance, the longing for purity, the drawing away to prayer, the hunger for God’s Word, the intense desire to have others saved, the passion to please this wondrous God of ours, — all these simple marks of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our hearts, all tell us, and each tells us, in unmistakable tones, that Christ is crowned. For this wondrous Spirit within is the gift of the crowned Christ.

When Jesus went up from the earth, holding as His sure captive the captivity of suffering and death to which He had with such great strength yielded, He received gifts, coronation gifts. The Father gave Him all. He gave Him the disposal and control of all. This was the crowning.

Psalm lxviii. 18; Ephesians iv. 8; Acts ii. 33.

And in His great out-reaching love Christ received these gifts on behalf of men, His blood brothers. And at once He gave to men, to His trusting disciples, the all-inclusive gift, the Holy Spirit, His coronation gift. So God came anew to dwell with men as originally planned.

This blessed Presence within tells me, by His mere presence, that Christ is crowned.

Romans viii. 34; Ephesians i. 20-22; Philippians ii. 9-11; Colossians iii. 1.

I Peter iii. 22.

The writers of the New Testament make a chorus of sweet music on this chord, ringing out in clear tones the full notes of delight and joy. Luke’s simple narrative sounds the note four times. Paul swells it out with a joyous fulness that grows in volume and intensity as his narrowing prison walls shut out more and more the lower lights, and centres his upward gaze upon Jesus, “far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named,” with “all things in subjection under His feet.” John’s special companion and working partner, Peter, makes this note blend with and dominate the minor chord of suffering for Christ’s sake.

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