The End of the Redeemed.
I. Such a vision as that of the text is intended, we cannot doubt, to form a ground of hope and of encouragement in the progressive advancement of our spiritual life. Our nature is possessed of an instinct ever looking forward to the end of our course, with power to brighten the scenes with imaginative pictures. It is the life of hope, and every faculty is stimulated and sustained by its influences. The Revelation is the one book of Scripture that specially feeds the yearnings of souls who live on the promised inheritance of the redeemed. When a man is returning home after long wanderings, he anticipates the scene, the old haunts, the faces, the voices, of early days; and his heart springs up and burns within him. The revelations of St. John were intended to tell us of this far home of faith and to quicken a similar spring cf exulting anticipation, to cause the same glow of hope to spring within every one who is disciplining himself patiently in the midst of these earthly trials, waiting for the fulness of the manifestation of Christ.
II. These visions, moreover, involve the existence in disembodied souls of active, living energies. There are those who tell us that souls separate from the body pass into an unconscious sleep; that the dead are consequently losers in comparison with those who remain on earth. But the saints are represented in the visions of St. John as no less actively engaged than the angels who appear in the same visions. This may in part explain the calling away of many whom we think we can ill spare, leaving us in their full strength and spiritual maturity. They have other service in higher worlds; they are needed where alone more blessed tasks of love can be accomplished.
III. These visions raise us to a higher view of human life. The outward scene around us deceives us; the thought of the faithful who are gone before us is calculated to counteract our fearful downward tendency. They trusted all to God, and they have found Him true. We may have many ends; they had one: we may have divided hearts; they had given all their heart. This unity and consistency distinguished their course; and as they lived, so they died, in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off. The standard of our earthly life rises as we look on their present existence with God.
T. T. Carter, Sermons,p. 31.
Reference: Revelation 5:9. Talmage, Old Wells Dug Out,p. 277.