And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach.
The angel in mid-heaven
I. The revival of a missionary spirit in the Church of Christ. We say a revival, for that spirit not only formed a necessary element all through the new dispensation, but it had its recognised place in the old. How many of the prophets of Judah and Israel, in varied words and imagery, exulted in the prospect of times when the exclusive privileges of the covenant-land would cease, when nations sitting in darkness would see the great Light! How often in the Psalms do we find the same aspirations! The sweetest strains of the minstrel monarch of Israel are missionary odes. It was the apostolic age, however, which was the era for the grand development of missionary zeal. But was missionary ardour to expire with the primitive era in the Church of Christ? a transient outburst of enthusiasm, when Peter and John crossed the borders of Palestine for the regions of Asia Minor and the distant lands of the dispersion; or when Paul braved the surges of the Adriatic and confronted the merchant princes of Corinth, the philosophers of Athens, and the captains of Imperial Rome? Far away in the distant east there lay a mighty empire. Poetry had sung of it as “the climes of the sun,” and British arms and enterprise had claimed it as their proudest trophy. But the darkness of spiritual death is brooding over it, and polluted fires are rising from unnumbered altars. Thither the Angel of the vision wings His way. Altar-fire after altar-fire is quenched. The chime of the Sabbath bell and the hum of the Christian school break the stillness of moral solitude, and he comes back to tell, “In the region and shadow of death light has sprung forth.” The evangelist beheld the Angel of the vision “flying.” It denoted at once suddenness and rapidity.
II. The instrumentality employed, “the everlasting gospel.” This was the book the Mission Angel held in his hand. It may seem to proud reason a poor weapon with which to effect the moral conquest of the world. And more especially when that gospel is proclaimed, not by angels, but by feeble men. “But the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” It seems to be a law or distinguishing feature in His government of the world that the mightiest ends are effected by the simplest and often unlikeliest means; that results are brought about by agencies and instrumentalities in themselves apparently inadequate to produce them. Look at His providential dealings as these are recorded in the page of Scripture. It was the sling of a shepherd-boy and a few pebbles from the brook which brought to the dust the giant of Philistia. Twelve humble fishermen from Tiberias’ shores (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). And, powerful in the past, the same moral and spiritual forces are still to be mighty for the pulling down of heathen strongholds. Countless Dagons are to fall before this Ark of God. And who can fail to admire the wondrous adaptation of that everlasting gospel to all characters, and ages, and times! The vision of the text, moreover, tells us it is destined, on a yet vaster scale, to vindicate its title to be “the power of God unto salvation” unto the very ends of the earth--the grand fulcrum and lever in one which is to elevate degraded humanity.
III. The extent of the commission: “To preach to them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.” (J. R. Macduff, D. D.)
The flight of the angel through heaven
I. The subject of his ministration: “The everlasting gospel.” This blessing God designs by the Christian ministry to confer upon the whole world.
1. The heathen have lost the knowledge of God. We may infer the greatness of this loss from the fact that the knowledge of God is the only foundation of religion. But how can this knowledge be restored? It is only taught by three volumes--Nature, Providence, and Revelation. But Nature and Providence never taught this knowledge without the comment of Revelation. Nothing restores the lost knowledge of God but the gospel.
2. They are without the knowledge of their sinful state.
3. They are without the knowledge of acceptance and pardon through the true Mediator.
II. The characteristics of this ministry.
1. It is the ministry of men. The term “angel” is not a designation of nature, but of office; ministers are called angels in Holy Scripture. The ministry of the gospel is exercised by men, that they may not only teach doctrine, but be the witnesses of what they teach.
2. It is an authorised ministry. An “angel” is a messenger, and a messenger must be sent. The command of the Lord is, “Go ye into all the world,” etc.
3. It is an open and undisguised ministry. St. Paul gloried in using “great plainness of speech.” There is nothing in Christianity that requires concealment.
4. It is a zealous and successful ministry. The attitude of “flying,” in which the angel is placed before us in the text, denotes zeal and activity; an eagerness to deliver the message, and to carry it into the remotest regions. And, thank God, we have such a ministry in progress. It has met with difficulties, and future difficulties await it, yet it is pressing onward.
III. Its extensive commission. It is sent to “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.”
1. The gospel is equally needed by all nations, and equally adapted to all.
2. There is an essential difference between the Jewish and Christian dispensations. The Jewish dispensation was restricted to one nation and period; the Christian dispensation is universal, embracing all the different tribes of men, and extending to the end of time.
3. The extensive commission recorded in the text is the foundation of universal philanthropy.
4. It gives noble and expanded views to Christians. Study and understand your own religion. It is not one amongst many modifications of human opinion. It is from God, and it is intended by Him, like Aaron’s rod, to swallow up every other.
IV. The specific objects of the angel’s ministry.
1. The angel cries out, “Fear Him.” The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the source and guard of virtue. But the heathen are without it. They have religious fear, but not the fear of God. The fear of God is a mixture of awe and love.
2. To establish His worship. This is another effect of the promulgation of the gospel. Instead of idols, to place the true God in His temples. Instead of polluting orgies, to teach men to wash their hands in innocency, and thus to encompass God’s altar. Instead of vain mediators, to have the name of Jesus in which to trust.
3. To claim for God His revenue of praise and glory.
Lessons:
1. Behold, then, a glorious object of contemplation--the progress of the angel in the midst of heaven.
2. It depends on you to speed or delay the angel.
3. Let it not discourage us, that the world maybe tossed and troubled. (R. Watson.)
An ideal preacher
I. His theme is glorious.
1. A gospel-message of Divine love.
2. An ever-enduring gospel.
(1) Because its elementary truths are absolute.
(2) Because its redemptive provisions are complete.
3. A world-wide gospel.
(1) A necessity to all mankind.
(2) Equal to all mankind.
II. His movements are expeditious.
1. The message is urgent.
2. The time is short.
3. Life is uncertain.
III. His sphere is elevated. It is the characteristic of all truly regenerated men that they are not of the flesh, but of the Spirit; that they set their affections on things above; that though in the world, they are not of the world; that they live in heavenly places. (Homilist.)
The dissemination of good and the destruction of evil
I. The dissemination of good.
1. The gospel in itself is good. It is at once the mirror and the medium of eternal good.
2. The gospel in its ministry is good. It comes from heaven, and is conveyed by heavenly messengers to men.
3. The gospel in its universality is good. It overleaps all geographic boundaries, all tribal, linguistic distinctions, and addresses man as man.
4. The gospel in its purpose is good. Its supreme aim is to induce all men to worship Him who made heaven, earth, and sea.
II. The destruction of evil.
1. This aggregation of evil must fall. Faith is to overcome the world.
2. This aggregation of evil falls as the good advances. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The preaching of the everlasting gospel
I. The commission to preach the gospel. Some persons are heard falsely to argue that there is no need to send the tidings of redemption to the heathen; that they will be saved or be lost, according to their use or abuse of the light they have received; and that to impart to them the gospel is only to increase their condemnation, if they die unbelieving. But to such cavils we need not reply. Our Lord’s command, as well as the conduct of the angel in our text, is clear and express.
II. The manner in which that commission is to be executed.
1. By calling sinners to repentance.
2. By directing them to Christ.
3. By warning them of a future judgment. (C. Clayton, M. A.)
The undying theme--the originality and acceptability of the gospel
1. The gospel, in its authorship, is one with nature.
2. The gospel, in its comprehension or extent, includes heaven and earth. The flying angel unites the two, and shows in clear and bold figure the celestial origin of the gospel. It is no growth of the darkened earth--no high stage of a merely natural development--no offspring of civilisation. Heaven and earth are made one again in the gospel.
3. The gospel, in its history, advances from the deepest obscurity to the highest prominence.
4. The gospel, in its design, unites the particular and the universal.
5. The gospel, in its spirit, unites the purest mercy with the most perfect justice.
I. A statement of the gospel.
1. Its originality. That is original which is the first of its kind, and stands alone. Absolute originality is to be found in God alone; for the Divine mind alone has the power of pure creation. The gospel is original, whether we view it as emanating from God, as a series of facts in human history, or as a new life in man--that is, whether we view it as a creation of God the Father, of God the Son, or of God the Holy Ghost.
2. Its acceptability lies in this--that it satisfies the demands of an honest and earnest mind. Is proof required that the Word of God, as a historical and literary production, is what it claims to be? It possesses more evidence on this point than any other book. But the point in respect of which the gospel is most widely and warmly accepted is that it satisfies the heart and conscience.
II. How the gospel is everlasting. We may here take the two aspects under which we have just considered the gospel, and show how the epithet everlasting applies to each--how it is for ever original or new, and how it is for ever good or acceptable.
1. The gospel is everlasting in its originality. The word new has two meanings, not only different, but apparently opposed to each other, which yet, taken together, give all the more complete an idea of the gospel. We call that new which is the first of its kind; we also call that new which is the last or latest of its kind. The gospel is the first and last system of truth, the oldest and the newest thought of God. It is everlasting, although new. Other new things soon lose their freshness, wither, and grow old; but it remains ever new, full of the life of God, fresh as the morning of creation. It continues new by ever growing newer--ever leading us deeper into its source in God.
2. The gospel is everlasting in its acceptability. We do not grow insensible to its influence through repeated experience of its power. The more we come into living contact with it, the more do we see its beauty and profundity--the more do we see that its meaning and charm are quite inexhaustible. (F. Ferguson.)
The missionary angel
1. It is the everlasting gospel, because it deals with everlasting things. It proclaims the everlasting God.
2. It is the everlasting gospel because it emanates from the everlasting God.
3. The everlasting gospel because it is based upon the everlasting covenant.
4. The everlasting gospel because it guarantees to us everlasting life, the life of communion; the life of knowledge, of entering more and more into the mind of God, and drawing our whole life’s power from Him, the Lord our God.
5. The everlasting gospel because it is sure to bring to us everlasting joy. (E. A. Stuart, M. A.)
The everlasting gospel
I. The angel spoken of is not merely an individual, but the representative of all faithful ministers of the gospel.
II. The title which the Spirit of God here gives it. It is called in our text “the everlasting gospel.”
1. It is called the everlasting gospel because the substance of it was settled in eternity by the triune Jehovah, in the counsel and in the covenant of peace. It is the revelation of the eternal purpose of God.
2. It is called the “everlasting gospel” because, in spite of all the opposition that has been offered to it, it has continued still to be preached, and it will always so continue.
3. Another reason is because, amidst all the changes to which this sublunary state is subject, the gospel alone is unchangeable, and alone affords a safe and solid foundation, on which the people of God can rest.
4. Once more, it is called “the everlasting gospel,” because all its promises “are yea and amen in Christ Jesus,” and never can be revoked.
III. The instrumentality employed in its promulgation.
IV. The predicted triumphs of the gospel. (R. Shutte, M. A.)
The everlasting gospel
Some one not long ago published a book with the title, “Gospels of Yesterday.” It discussed the writings of several authors who, in our generation, have caught the popular ear, and analysed their doctrines with keen incisiveness. At present I will not pass a judgment on its estimates. But how striking the name itself! “Gospels of Yesterday”--how many there have been of them! They lasted as long as they could, but the world outgrew them. There is only one gospel which is everlasting. Now, why is this? What makes the gospel of Christ everlasting?
I. Its universal message. The reason why so many gospels have been doomed to become gospels of yesterday has been because they have addressed themselves to what is transient or partial in human nature, and not to what is permanent and universal. Men have been hailed as saviours of society because they have been able to give relief from a need pressing at some particular time, or because their doctrines have fallen in with some passing phase of popular sentiment. But the glory of Christianity is that its teaching is addressed to what is most characteristic in human nature and absolutely the same in all members of the human race, whether they be rich or poor, whether they inhabit the one hemisphere or the other, and whether they live in ancient or modern times. You have only to glance at the most outstanding words of the gospel to see this. Take, for example, the word soul. This word was in the very forefront of the teaching of Jesus. Jesus went down to the child, the beggar, the harlot--the weakest and most despised members of the human family; and when He was able to find even in them this infinitely precious thing, it was manifest that He had discovered the secret of a universal religion; because, if this existed even in the lowest, then it existed in all. Or take another great word of the message of the gospel: take the word sin. This word also is borne on the forefront of Christianity, and how universal is the response which it finds in the heart of man! Not to multiply illustrations too much, take only one more--the word eternity. This is also a word which the gospel carries on its very front. It speaks of it wherever it goes. Christ brought life and immortality to light by the gospel; He spoke of the objects of the world invisible as one who had lived among them; and He spoke to men of a home of many mansions to which they were to aspire. Now, this message strikes a chord in every human heart.
II. Its particular message. The great things in human nature are, as I have said, common to all; yet human nature is never precisely the same in any two specimens. There were never in this world even two faces absolutely alike; and much less are the minds ever precisely alike which lie behind the faces. The gifts of nature, such as beauty, strength, ability, genius, are distributed in ever-varying proportions, and the various circumstances in which people grow up emphasise the natural differences. Some are born to wealth, others to poverty; the gifts of some are improved by education, the genius of others is buried beneath the hard conditions of adversity. What a difference it makes in the fate of a human being whether he is born in the heart of Africa or in the capital of England! But the gospel has a message for this difference in each specimen of human nature, and for each quarter of the globe and each age of the world, as well as for that which is common to all. God has a special message for every age. His gospel has a word in season for every condition of life--for the little child, and the young man in his prime, and for old age--a word for the multitude and a word for the few. The Chinese, when they accept the gospel, will find secrets in it which the British have never discovered; the twentieth century will discover phases of the Christian life which are lacking in the nineteenth. We have not exhausted Christ, and we have not exhausted the gospel of Christ. (J. Stalker, D. D.)
The gospel in terms of duration
This word “gospel,” we bethink us, gets only its modern form in our homelier phrase “good news.” The word here linked with it, therefore, is scarcely the sort of word we would naturally link with it--“an eternal gospel.” Eternal good news? The combination is one which strikes our ear as if it contradicted itself. News flashes and fades. How little is there that we would still call news after a day’s sun has set upon it! Yet there is a sense in which news may be said sometimes to last. The news is so important to us that it lingers in the heart, and in a manner keeps itself fresh. The gospel is always new, because you are always gathering something further of its import, or sighting something hitherto unexplored of its sublimity.
I. The gospel has in it every element of durability.
1. There are some enterprises, some houses of business so “safe,” as you call them--so set for enduring--that even prudent men will count upon the future of them as if it were present. Such concerns are always conceived and conducted, you will find, on principles of wisdom--of wisdom that is calm and clear-sighted, fit to anticipate dangers and to provide for difficulties, so that surprise or loss is made as unlikely as may be. Such concerns, moreover, are usually built up slowly--grow firm as they grow great, and at every stage are solid all through to the heart. This element of durability belongs to the gospel. It took existence under a wisdom which was at once infinite in its range and eternal in its experience. The gospel was matured in sight of every difficulty and every danger it could ever meet. It has never shown the least kinship with things hasty, immature, unstable. It is built into the system of things, and is thus settled upon foundations that are too deep and broad to come within the power of any law of destruction or damage or change.
2. There is another important element of durability in the gospel. The Divine justice, it is evident--the eternal sense of what is morally due, and the eternal fulfilling of what is morally right--cannot afford to brook the least breath of contravention. Now, it is an eminent peculiarity of the gospel, that it stands in the most intimate harmony with justice. It is such, that whithersoever it goes supreme justice goes with it.
3. The gospel has still another element of durability. Purity is proof against decay; impurity is decay already begun. And the gospel is a holy thing. It sprang from holiness: it was framed upon holiness; it makes for holiness.
4. I will name only one thing more about the gospel which involves its enduringness. We count upon the success of an undertaking which has abundance of strength behind it. What project would we not reckon secure of a firm place in history if the flag of every nation were unfurled around it, and every heart was knit to every other in the resolve that it should prosper and last? But all our figures are poor when we bring them alongside of the fact concerning the strength which girds this gospel. It is the gospel of the Omnipotent. But is His gospel then omnipotent? Virtually it is.
II. The gospel may be called “eternal” because duration hitherto has been so full of it. The material universe, we have come to know, is stupendously great. Thought wearies itself in a wilderness of world-systems; and when our glasses have carried our vision farthest into the teeming depths of space, we more than conjecture that we have only been gazing around the horizon-line of an ocean of Divine handiwork. Yet, in the minds of those to whom both are equally known, the gospel bulks larger than this universe that is so nearly infinite. We catch stray echoes of the converse of mightier intelligences than time can hold--of beings who know creation with a knowledge which dwarfs all our science into the knowledge of children; and for once that they are thinking of God’s creation they are ten times thinking of God’s salvation. And this, we may assure ourselves, does no more than reflect the thought of the adorable Creator. The Lord of the gospel is the Lord of creation, and He is the Lord of creation as the Lord of the gospel--this actually now, and this potentially from “before the world began.” This gospel would seem to be the oldest thing we know. For it has the look of being more than an eternal thought of the Divine mind, and more than an eternal purpose of the Divine will; it wears an appearance of completeness, of maturity, of readiness, of actuality almost; it has gotten a prerogative of making a place for itself among eternal things, and of casting its own influence into the whole current of the immeasurable past. We listen on this sea-board of time, and the sound which reaches us out of the shoreless eternity is a gospel-sound. We are hearing the far-coming murmur of “an eternal gospel.”
III. The gospel may be spoken of as “ eternal” because it will always be what it has always been. No change is to be detected in its character or its contents through all the changes that have come to pass in its condition and its circumstances. It has not even developed, save in manifestation and in the spread of its influence among men. What, then, of the future? What of the coming generations of the history of the gospel in the world? These may see more of change than even the past generations have seen. Shall the gospel itself be touched with change? The Scriptures, which hold the revelation of it from the beginning, may come to be beheld in a light so searching, that venerable beliefs as to their formation may be universally modified. Meanwhile the gospel will stand as it has never but stood; and the total result of all new light, of all new movement, will be the more full and luminous display of what those tidings are which abide for ever. And is it so? Shall this gospel which we so poorly preach, and which men are so slow to hear--shall it be to some of us our theme, our motive, our inspiration, the breath of our life, when the first ages of redemption have gone far into the past? Still new?--and still the same? Even so. The same Saviour, the same great kinship to Him, the same clearing of the dark past, the same upward road to spiritual health and power, the same “everlasting righteousness,” the same mercy, the same love, the same peace and joy made up to eternal measure--this, with deepening knowledge of what it all means, and ever-gathering enrichment from what it all infolds, will the gospel of Jesus Christ continue to be as long as eternity continues I
IV. The gospel may be called “eternal,” in contrast to so much that is associated with it in the world. Is there anything at all in the world that is unshifting and sure? We think little about the uncertainty of things, because we know so little else. Yet it would be a luxury, we imagine, to be able to fix our thought, not to say our hope or our love, upon something which will not catch the general infection of things as it gets into treacherous motion, or slips our grasp, or vanishes, leaving us to soothe as we can our aching hearts. It is this gospel. It is what brings us to the friendly stability of God as a personal and present and settled possession. For the good tidings, from generation to generation, from man to man, from experience to experience, abides the same enriching, comforting, rectifying thing, unable to disappoint or deceive. (J. A. Kerr Bain, M. A)
The everlasting gospel
I. The gospel. It is a “glad message” from God to man; good news from heaven to earth.
1. Of God’s free love.
2. Of God’s great gift.
3. Of God’s propitiation for sin.
4. Of God’s righteousness.
5. Of God’s kingdom.
II. The everlasting gospel. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
The survival of the fittest
I. Because it gathers up all the teachings of nature. Ii. Because it fulfils all the predictions of prophecy.
III. Because it meets the universal wants of man.
IV. Because it possesses immortal youth.
V. Because it is ever gaining fresh empire and renown.
VI. Because its author has risen and reigns for ever. (F. W. Brown.)
The gospel of retribution
1. What, then, is this gospel? It is the gospel of retribution; we are to fear and glorify God because the hour of His judgment is come. This is the truth which the angel flying in mid-heaven, between God and man, proclaims and always will proclaim. This is the truth which St. John calls “an eternal gospel”--not the gospel, and still less the only gospel, but still glad tidings of great joy to us and to all mankind. Are you disappointed? Do you say, “That is true enough, no doubt. Sooner or later the actions of men do round upon them in the strangest way. A man may as soon jump off his own shadow as evade the consequences of his own deeds. But we need no apostle, no angel out of heaven, to teach us that. Our poets, our moralists, our philosophers, our very novelists, have long sung in that key. And our own hearts, our consciences, our experience of life, have taken up and swelled the strain. We need no future witness to the fact of retribution. But there is no gospel in the fact. It brings no good tidings to us, but rather tidings of despair. A gospel of redemption would be good news indeed if it could possibly be true; but a gospel of retribution is a mere contradiction in terms.” Are you so sure that every man must receive according to his deeds that you have made your ways and doings good, that you dread and resist every temptation to do evil? You respect and observe the law of gravity because you are quite sure that it k a law. Do you show an equal respect for the law of retribution? Consider, again, if the law of retribution is familiar to you, is it nothing to you to be assured that what you admit to be a law is also a gospel? When we are told that God’s judgments on sin are an eternal gospel, a gospel for all beings in all ages, what is implied? This is implied--and there is no truth more precious or more practical--that the judgments of God are corrective, disciplinary, redemptive; that they are designed to turn us away from the sins by which they are provoked. Nothing can be more wholesome for us, and no truer or nobler comfort can be given us when we are suffering the painful consequences of our evil deeds, than the assurance that these retributions are intended for our good; not to injure or destroy us, but to quicken life in us, or the godly sorrow which worketh life. And, surely, up to a certain point at least, we can see that this law is a good law, deterring us from evil, driving and inviting us toward that which is good. But if the law work good it is good; i.e., it is a gospel as well as a law. It would be bad news that the law was to be repealed. That there is much in the operation of this law which as yet we cannot fathom, or cannot prove to be good, must be admitted. One man’s guilt is another man’s loss or pain. We often suffer as much from our ignorance as from our sins. The best people often have the hardest life. And here, as we cannot walk by sight we must walk by faith. Retribution is a gospel, an eternal gospel, because it is medicinal and redemptive, because it either corrects that which is evil in us, or because it is a discipline by which we are prepared for larger good.
2. But this mystery of unprovoked or disproportionate suffering may grow clearer to us as we consider that, in his eternal gospel, St. John includes not only present, but also future judgments. The angel is always proclaiming judgment, but he also proclaims “hours” of judgment, crises in which the whole story of a life, a race, or an age, is summed up, and finally adjusted by an unerring standard. Such an hour was then at hand. Such an hour is never far off from any one of us. No fact, no truth, proclaimed by Christ and by His angels or messengers, has been invested with more awful terrors than this of the last judgment--the last, or at least the last for us, the judgment which closes this earthly span. And, to flesh and blood, it must always be full of terror. And yet there are considerations which may well abate our surprise. For, with all his fear of judgment, there is a deep craving for justice in every man’s heart, and a profound conviction that, in some respects at least, he has never had it, or never had it to the full. His neighbours have wronged him. He has had to suffer for their folly, their extravagance, their crimes, their sins. His actions have been misrepresented, his motives misconstrued. Or circumstances have been against him, and he has never been able to get the culture he longed for and prized. Poverty, drudgery, grief, and care have exhausted him, leaving him no leisure and no force for pursuing the loftier aims of life. Or he has been unfortunate in the relationships he has formed, and found them a burden instead of a help. As you all know, there are men who, in a thousand different ways, have been crippled, hampered, thwarted, defeated in the race of life, who have never had a fair chance, whose hearts have been shaken and soured by the accidents and changes of time. And if to any of these sufferers from misfortune or injustice, sitting in darkness and asking, “What does it all mean?” you could say with conviction and authority, “It means that the end is not yet; but the end is coming. God will yet do you ample justice, redress all your wrongs, compensate you for all your losses, turn all your sorrows into joy, make you what you would be, and enable you to do and to get all you crave”--would not such a message be a true gospel to him? If he could believe it, would it not be to him as life from the dead? Would he be slow to give glory unto God? And is it not good news that when we pass from the hasty censures of a busy and careless, if not a cruel, world, we shall be weighed in finer scales and a truer balance? that our most inward and delicate motives will be taken into account, as well as the blundering actions which so ill expressed them by One who knows us altogether, and reads the thoughts and intents of the heart? Fear God, then, and give Him glory, for the hour of His judgment is coming and is nigh. You cannot help but fear Him, indeed, for His pure eyes must discern much evil in you which you have failed to detect; and at His bar you will have to answer for your injustice to your neighbours, for the wrongs you have done them, for your misconstructions of their characters, their actions, their motives. But, according to St. John, with fear or reverence we are to blend thanksgiving. According to him, retribution is a gospel as well as a law, and we are to give glory to God even as we advance toward His judgment-seat. How should either an apostle, or an angel, bid us bless God for the hour of judgment as for a gospel, if there were no mercy, no hope, no blessing in it?
3. This gospel is an eternal, or universal, gospel, a gospel for all ages, for all men. It is proclaimed unto “every nation, and tribe, and tongue and people.” And here, surely, we may find a theme for praise. The world is full of injustice, full of misery. And as you think of these common events, events as common in every other circle as in your own, what a gospel is this which the angel, flying in mid-heaven, proclaims with a great voice: “This world is not all. It is not the end, but only the beginning; and the beginnings of life are always obscure and mysterious. The hour of judgment is coming, in which the mystery will be explained and vindicated; in which God will redress every wrong, compensate every loss.” Take the world as it is, cut it off from the great astronomical system of which it forms part, and it is a mystery which none can fathom. And take human life as it is, as a story without a sequel, and you can only give it up as aa insoluble problem, a mighty maze without a plan. But listen to this gospel of retribution, connect this world with the world, or worlds, in heaven, regard the present life as an introduction to, a discipline for, a larger, happier life to come, and your burden is eased; the problem becomes capable of a happy solution. If you must still fear God, you can also give Him glory because the hour of His judgment is coming, the hour at which He will gather the whole world under His rule, and all nations and tribes, and tongues and peoples, shall become His people and know Him for their God. That this law of retribution has another aspect, that the justice of God must be full of terror for as many as cleave to their sins and will not let them go, none of us are likely to forget. (S. Cox, D. D.)
The gospel enduring
Mineralogists and geologists are predicting in doleful strains the exhaustion of coal. Even such an eminent Christian philosopher as Dr. Chalmers believed that the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of nature would fail to keep pace with the wants of a rapidly increasing population. But the gospel is eternal. “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” Amid all life’s vicissitudes He is unalterable in love and power.
There followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen.--
The doom of the world-power
The second angel follows on the first; the doom of the world-city, the metropolis of the empire of the world-power, follows the proclamation of the gospel. The principles of Christ’s gospel must undermine the world-power: the fall of some Babylon principle has almost always succeeded the age of spiritual revival. Pagan Rome goes down before the gospel. (Bp. Boyd Carpenter.)