In the Mediterranean Sea there is a tall, rocky island called Patmos. Halfway up the side is a cave where tradition says John wrote the Book of the Revelation. There he saw the throne of God and the glories of another world before him; but he felt himself oppressed with sorrow. The tears ran down his cheeks because there was a book sealed with seven seals in heaven, and no one was found worthy to open it. Search had evidently been made, but none was found equal to the task.
Then one of the elders said, “Weep not; behold, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath overcome to open the Book.” John wiped his eyes and raised them to see this lion; but he beheld a Lamb.
Then he saw Him take the book; and when He took the book, the roll–in a moment the idea might flash into John’s mind! When did he last see Him take a roll in His hands? Oh, how memory flies back through time in an instant! Remember that scene in Nazareth. Did John recall it when the chazzan handed his Master the scroll of Isaiah? It all may have come before him in a moment, as he saw the carpenter’s Son taking the roll again.
Do you know that when our Lord shut up that scroll, it was one of the most remarkable things He ever did?
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,” He read, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,” and then comes a comma in our English Bible (the fact that there is no comma in the Hebrew makes what follows all the more remarkable). But the verse goes on: “and the day of vengeance of our God.”
But at that comma in the middle of the verse, Christ closed the book, to the astonishment of all in the synagogue. They knew the passage well. He handed the roll back to the chazzan, who took it back to the ark, and the sentence was never finished. “To preach the acceptable year of the Lord”–nothing more. “I am He that shutteth and no man openeth.” That was what He said in Nazareth; but in heaven He says: “I am He that openeth and no man shutteth.”
And this is the miracle–that the Lamb in the midst of the throne in heaven is the carpenter of Nazareth; and the carpenter of Nazareth who shut the book in the middle of the verse at “the acceptable year of the Lord” will open it again before the throne of God and read on where He left off, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” That is the subject of the Revelation. The seals are broken one by one, and what is read? “The day of vengeance of our God.” In Nazareth He said, I will fulfill the Word of God as far as the middle of the verse, but the rest shall never be fulfilled till I reopen the book in heaven.
For these many centuries the roll of Isaiah has been shut in the middle of that verse and sealed by God with many seals. One comma alone divides mercy from judgment, the Saviour of the world from the Judge of all men–one single comma!
This present age still continues by virtue of the long-drawn-out tenacity of that one comma. What is a comma? The shortest breath in reading. But here it is a majestic pause in the ways of God that all men might be saved, that all might come to a knowledge of the truth. The sole reason that the gospel is still preached is because the force and value of that comma–the grace of God–is not yet exhausted. But it will be when the Lamb takes the book from the right hand of Him who sits on the throne and begins to open it. The day of mercy will then be over, the door will be shut.
It is strange indeed to have the curtain drawn aside for a moment from these deep spiritual mysteries in the midst of our daily life. We seem to be in a world apart. The veil is lifted and we pass back into our ordinary life; but we cannot return without bearing some impression of the enormous issues which are working quietly behind the current course of this world.
We see its affairs moving onwards; the varied topics of the day are on our lips, but behind all these the lives of men are depending on the value of a single comma in the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah–long drawn out in the providence of God.