In the context of our second passage we have a vision of the great
multitude redeemed out of all nations and kindreds, 'standing before
the Throne and before the Lamb, arrayed in white robes, and palms in
their hands.' The palms in their hands give important help towards
understanding the vision. As has been often remarked, there are no
heathen emblems in the Book of the Apocalypse. All its metaphors move
within the circle of Jewish experiences and facts. So that we are not
to think of the Roman palm of victory, but of the Jewish palm which was
borne at the Feast of Tabernacles. What was the Feast of Tabernacles? A
festival established on purpose to recall to the minds and to the
gratitude of the Jews settled in their own land the days of their
wandering in the wilderness. Part of the ritual of it was that during
its celebration they builded for themselves booths or tabernacles of
leaves and boughs of trees, under which they dwelt, thus reminding
themselves of their nomad condition.
Now what beauty and power it gives to the word of my text, if we take
in this allusion to the Jewish festival! The great multitude bearing
the palms are keeping the feast, memorial of past wilderness
wanderings; and 'He that sitteth on the throne shall spread His
tabernacle above them,' as the word might be here rendered. That is to
say, He Himself shall build and be the tent in which they dwell; He
Himself shall dwell with them in it. He Himself, in closer union than
can be conceived of here, shall keep them company during that feast.
What a thought of that condition—the condition as I believe represented
in this vision—of the spirits of the just made perfect, 'who wait for
the adoption, to wit, the resurrection of the body,' is given us if we
take this point of view to interpret the whole lovely symbolism. It is
all a time of glad, grateful remembrance of the wilderness march. It is
all a time in which festal joys shall be theirs, and the memory of the
trials and the weariness and the sorrow and the solitude that are past
shall deepen to a more exquisite poignancy of delight, the rest and the
fellowship and the felicity of that calm Presence, and God Himself
shall spread His tent above them, lodge with them, and they with Him.
And so, dear brethren, rest in that assurance, that though we know so
little of that state, we know this: 'Absent from the body, present with
the Lord,' and that the happy company who bear the palms shall dwell in
God, and God in them.
III. And now, lastly, look at that final vision which we have in these
texts, which we may call the Tabernacle for the renewed earth.
I do not pretend to interpret the scenery and the setting of these
Apocalyptic visions with dogmatic confidence, but it seems to me as if
the emblems of this final vision coincide with dim hints in many other
portions of Scripture; to the effect that some cosmical change having
passed upon this material world in which we dwell, it, in some
regenerated form, shall be the final abode of a regenerated and
redeemed humanity. That, I think, is the natural interpretation of a
great deal of Scriptural teaching.
For that highest condition there is set forth this as the all-sufficing
light upon it. 'Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with men, and He will
tabernacle with them.' The climax and the goal of all the divine
working, and the long processes of God's love for, and discipline of,
the world, are to be this, that He and men shall abide together in
unity and concord. That is God's wish from the beginning. We read in
one of the profound utterances of the Book of Proverbs how from of old
the 'delights' of the Incarnate Wisdom which foreshadowed the Incarnate
Word 'were with the sons of men.' And, at the close of all things, when
the vision of this final chapter shall be fulfilled, God will say,
settling Himself in the midst of a redeemed humanity, 'Lo! here will I
dwell, for I have desired it. This is My rest for ever.' He will
tabernacle with men, and men with Him.
We know not, and never shall know until experience strips the bandages
from our eyes, what new methods of participation of the divine nature,
and new possibilities of intimacy and intercourse with Him may be ours
when the veils of flesh and sense and time have all dropped away. New
windows may be opened in our spirits, from which we shall perceive new
aspects of the divine character. New doors may be opened in our souls,
from out of which we may pass to touch parts of His nature, all
impalpable and inconceivable to us now. And when all the veils of a
discordant moral nature are taken away, and we are pure, then we shall
see, then we shall draw nigh to God. The thing that chiefly separates
man from God is man's sin. When that is removed, the centrifugal force
which kept our tiny orb apart from the great central sun being
withdrawn, we shall, as it were, fall into the brightness and be one,
not losing our sense of individuality, which would be to lose all the
blessedness, but united with Him in a union far more intimate than
earth can parallel. 'The Tabernacle of God shall be with men, and He
will tabernacle with them.'
Do not let us forget that this highest and ultimate hope that is held
forth here, of the union and communion, perfect and perpetual, of
humanity with God, does not sweep aside Jesus Christ. For through all
eternity the Everlasting Word, the Christ who bears our nature in its
glorified form, or, rather, whose nature in its glorified form we shall
bear, is the Medium of Revelation, and the Medium of communication
between man and God.
'I saw no Temple therein,' says this final vision of the Apocalypse,
but 'God Almighty and the Lamb,' and these are the Temples thereof.
Therefore through eternity God shall tabernacle with men, as He does
tabernacle with us now through Him, in whom dwelleth as in its
perennial habitation, 'all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.'
So we have the three tabernacles, for earth, for heaven, for the
renewed earth; and these three, if I may say so, are like the triple
division of that ancient Tabernacle in the wilderness: the Outer Court;
the Holy Place; the Holiest of all. Let us enter into that outer court,
and abide and commune with that God who comes near to us, revealing,
forgiving, in the person of His Son, and then we shall pass from court
to court, 'and go from strength to strength, until every one of us in
Zion appear before God'; and enter into the Holiest of all, where
'within the veil' we shall receive splendours of revelation undreamed
of here, and enjoy depths of communion to which the selectest moments
of fellowship with God on earth are shallow and poor.