Looking Through the Crystal
Revelation xxii. 1 v.
“And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”
It is a clearness of revelation that is here spoken of. The crystal is an emblem of revelation. Men have looked into it to know the future. What St. John wants to know is the present. His mystery is not heaven, but earth; it is Patmos, with its separating sea. The revelation lie wants is an unfolding of the secret of sorrow. And where does he find this crystal river of revealing? Strangely enough, in God. We are often apt to explain why there should he a mystery in sorrow by saying that God’s ways are above us. St. John says it is only by looking at God’s wTays that the mystery of sorrow vanishes. It is “from the throne of God and of the Lamb” that the river of revelation flows. “The throne of God and the Lamb” — what is that? It is the power of sacrifice. The plan of the world is as clear as crystal when I see the Lamb on the throne. As long as I think sacrifice a blemish, nothing can explain it. If heaven is incompatible with pain, the crystal can never be clear. But if pain be on the throne of God, if sorrow be a necessity of love divine, my view is luminous. If the river that makes glad comes from the fountain of sacrifice, if the pleasures at God’s right hand are born of self-surrender, I can see with satisfaction the travail of my soul. I may well drink of the river of His pleasures.
My Father, let me see the source of Thy stream. I am not afraid of anything that it has carried from the beinnin. When I first saw the dark places in the river, I thought they had come in somewhere during its course. But if I am told that they are there from the days of the stream, it makes all the difference. Nothing impure can come from Thee. The source of the stream is Thy Throne. If sacrifice be on Thy Throne, the winter is past. I am not anxious to trace the river forward to its ocean j I would rather trace it backward to its rise. They tell me that my pain will issue in glory; but has it issued from glory — from Thee? Reveal Thy Christ, oh, God! Reveal the divinity of sacrifice. Reveal that the Lamb was slain from the foundation. Reveal that not Eden, but Gethsemane, was the world’s garden. Reveal that the red, and not the white, blossom was the goal in Thy heart which made the dawn in my life. The veil of my temple is not sorrow, but its seeming accident alness; rend Thou my temple -veil. I shall have a front view of the universe when I see the Lamb on the Throne.