THE HEAVENLY HOME.

(Rev. xxii:1-11.)

I. The Analysis.

1. The conditions of perfect blessedness, verses 1-5 (see "Heart").

2. The consummation and its effect, verses 6-9. The imminency of His coming, verses 10, 11.

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

The twenty-second chapter of the Revelation does not give, as the lesson title would indicate, a vision of our heavenly home, but of the glory and blessedness of the millennial earth. The river is the river of Ezekiel's vision (Ezekiel xlvii), and the conditions of blessing those which shall obtain when Messiah's kingdom is set up.

But heavenly blessedness is not a matter of locality, though doubtless heaven is a locality. The conditions of heavenly blessing are the same wherever they exist, and the millennium is but "the days of heaven on earth" (Deut. xi:2i). The heart of the lesson, therefore, I judge to lie in those conditions as set forth therein. These are seven, two negative, five positive. That is, if felicity is to be perfect some things must not be, and some things must be.

The two negative conditions are, "no more curse"; "no night." The "curse" of God is His sorrowful assent to humanity's final choice of the things which carry curses in their very nature and being. "As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him; as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him" (Psa. cix:17). But in the heavenly home no one will desire the things which are accursed, but all will delight in the will of a God who is perfect love.

So of "night," or darkness, which is always in Scripture associated with evil, and with separation from God and from the good. To say, "there shall be no night there," is to say, there shall be no evil there. Herbert Spencer has defined heaven (in which, by the way, he did not believe) as "A perfect being, in a perfect environment." That is what our heaven is to be: a perfect environment. No curse, no night.

Then, on the positive side, which is the great matter, after all, five wonderful conditions of blessing are enumerated.

"The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it." And that means the perfect reign of perfect love. Love is the only ultimate authority. Of love only could it be said: "Love never faileth." Everything else fails. Power has a thousand limitations—even almighty power. The almightiness of God could, indeed crush us into dust, but only the almightiness of His love can make us love Him, and, till we love Him, and obey because we love, He esteems nothing as done. That is the inner reason why we are not under the law but under grace. That the throne of God is there means, in Paul's great phrase, that "Grace reigns through righteousness." But it is the throne of the Lamb, too; that is, the regnancy of redeeming love; the love that "loved me, and gave himself for me."

Again, our heavenly home is a sphere of service—the service of love. Perfect blessedness there could not be in inactivity. We are to have bodies incorruptible, glorious, powerful, and spirits made perfect in immortal vigor; how could perfect felicity for such things be without service in that larger sphere of life?

We are to "see His face." Love cannot be perfectly content, still less satisfied, without the presence of the beloved one. The face which we shall see is the face that was buffeted for us; the "visage that was more marred than any man." It will express His love for us, and answer the love which we bestow through His matchless grace.

His name will be in our foreheads. That speaks of perfect conformity to His likeness. It is the blessing which logically follows seeing His face. "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." To be with Him and to be like Him—that alone would seem heaven.

But we too shall reign. Kings by the new birth, we are now keeping the hour of His patience (Rev. iii:10). Then we shall be associated with Him in authority. Doubtless in the lesson the sphere of that authority is the millennial earth; but the essential thing in royalty is not the sphere of rule, but true kingliness of being, and to that shall we, now so easily ruled by self and sin, be at last brought. No man is truly a king who must be ruled by external power.