The Father Almighty

YEs, again! “the Father Almighty,” but there is a difference between those words, as we recite them at the beginning of the Creed, and as we recite them now that certain other clauses have attracted us and been explained. We have learnt that Father was not only the Creator, but gave the Son to be the Saviour of the world, that He was crucified, dead, and buried, as the exponent of the Father’s loving plan for our salvation, and that “the Man of Love” is now seated at the Father’s side. Thus there is an altogether new note in the songs of Eternity. This is exquisitely illustrated in the fourth and fifth chapter of the Book of Revelation. The word Apocalypse, as we all know, is Unveiling, — it contains an account of the realities, which John beheld, when the slight veil that hangs between us and them parted for a few minutes. What a comfort it is to know that the word contains no suggestion of long sight or the telescope, for under those circumstances we should have been compelled to think that there was truth in the words, 144 which are absolutely false, and which no child should be allowed to sing:

There is a happy land,

Far, far away.

Heaven is not far away. It lies all around us, from our infancy and onward. Only a veil hides us from it, which may be slit or torn at any moment. The Apocalypse, therefore, simply tells the story of that which is, and which always is. Hence the value of searching beneath its gorgeous images for the truths that lie beneath.

Now, in those two chapters, there are five songs. The third of these is entitled a new song, as though it embodied some fresh conception of the Divine Nature; and when once it has been uttered, it seems to enhance the imagination of Heaven, for it absolutely colours and dominates the fourth and fifth.

The earlier part of the fourth chapter describes the throne of the Eternal, bathed in splendour which excels that of earth’s most precious jewels. The emerald rainbow of God’s perfected purpose surrounds it; the sea of glass is spread out before it. The rarest colours of the natural world are focussed in one rich panorama of beauty. Next we learn of the Eternity and Moral Perfections of God. The ceaseless chant of the wonderful beings which represent Creation, tells us that God’s Nature is Holy. Time with its senses of past, present, and future leaves no trace upon His Eternal Life. Next, we catch the music of that Song of Creation, which ascribes the existence of the whole great universe to the will of its Personal Intelligent First Cause. Still further we are taught that the scroll of history, to which none can add, nor any subtract from it, awaits His hand to unfold it seal by seal. None of these mighty considerations, however, avails to startle a new song.

But it is when in the midst of the throne with its burning glory there appears One who bears the marks of Calvary; when the Lamb of the Cross, the Grave, and the Glory appears, who revealed the cost to which the redeeming Love of God was prepared to go, who was made sin for us, and who by His tears and stripes healed us, then Heaven breaks out into a new song. It was as though its imagination were caught, and its admiration aroused. They Sang a new song, saying, “Thou art worthy to take the Book and open the seals thereof, for Thou wast slain, and hast purchased us to God by Thy blood.” Henceforth God the Father Almighty is associated with the Lamb, “‘ as it had been slain.”

It is from the Throne of God and of the Lamb that the River issues, whose limpid waters descend with Holy Spirit fulness to the arid plains of Earth. The Throne of God and the Lamb are in the midst of the City and His servants serve Him. The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb make the sun and moon needless — “they are the Light thereof.” When the Seer looks around for the Temple of the Holy City, — the most natural enquiry for a Hebrew to whom the Temple was the very heart and centre of the Holy City — he is told that the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple of it.

So is it with this grand old Creed, when it ‘mentions for the second time the Holy Name of the Father Almighty, there is the touch of an added depth and tenderness, sweetness and pathos for the Lamb is in the midst of the Throne, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.