The Rapture of the Spirit
“And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,” — REYV, xxi, 10.
ED so we have Pisgah moments still!; There are times of inward rapture in which I am quite carried away — caught up to meet the Lord in the air. Like Moses I stand upon a great and high mountain, and the desert is forgotten and the promised land is near. I could not live but for these glints of sunshine. When the night is very dark and the desert is very dreary, I say to myself, ‘(Remember what you saw on the mountain; you will come out of the desert; there is a city somewhere.” And verily I am right, my mountain moments are the test of what I shall be. It matters not how seldom they come; if they came only once, they would still predict the compass of my wings. Sometimes in the early year you can hear but the note of a single bird, and all the rest is silence,
Yet the bird and not the silence is the coming reality; a little while and nature will take up the song and be song altogether. Even so is it with my mountain moments. My songs may be few, but they are few because the year is early; they and not the silences are the realities of the ripening hour. A whole lifetime in the desert is outweighed by one sight of the city of God.
Spirit Divine, in whose presence is fulness of joy and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore, send into my spring premonitions of the summer gold. Send me in advance ‘‘days of heaven upon earth” — days of warmth above their season, days of sunshine brighter than their time. I have known Thee in Thine hours of conflict moving on the face of the chaotic waters. I have known Thee in Thine hours of calmness descending dove-like on the banks of Jordan. Am I not to know Thee in yet one stage more — Thy stage of overflowing joy? The struggle with chaos is noble; the peace of Jordan’s dove is beautiful; but hast Thou not moments in which Thou transcendest even these? Hast Thou not moments in which my soul is “carried away,” transported, surprised out of itself? Hast Thou not moments in which the Baptist outruns the Messianic age and tells me beforehand of the glory that shall be revealed, when the desert dwindles into a span and eternity alone is real? Such moments I ask of Thee. By these and not by its shadows shall I measure life. Mount Ararat was dry when all beside was flooded, but Mount Ararat was the reality and all beside was vanishing away. When Thy sunlight touches the summits of the mountain I know that ere long there shall be ight in the ety too.