AN OPEN DOOR
By D. M. PANTON
How unutterably wonderful it would be if
we had a letter put into our hands written by the Lord Jesus Christ since He
has gone into Heaven, and directly addressed to ourselves. But
this is exactly what we have. Our Lord, by the words with
which He sums up every Letter He writes to the Seven Churches, charges these
Letters home on every believer, everywhere, for all time:- He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches:
what the Spirit is saying not to the Angels, but to the Churches; not merely
Letters posted through John to seven cities, but Letters sent to the churches
everywhere, so long as there are churches; Letters spoken by the Spirit
silently, convincingly, with enormous enrichment, to every believer throughout
the world who has an ear that can hear. So
these Letters, dictated to John by our Lord personally in
The Opener
In every Letter our Lord purposely
fills the whole background, and is Himself the fountain, the dynamo, the hinge
of all service; and to Philadelphia He shows Himself as the One who locks and
unlocks with the omnipotence of God, and with the finality of fate. He that is holy, he that is
true, he that hath the key of David; he that openeth, and none
shall shut; and that shutteth, and none openeth (Rev.
3: 7). He holds the key of
all lands, for the door of service; the key of all hearts, for the door of
hearing; the key of all Scripture, for the door of holiness: He holds the keys
of Death and Hades, for the opening of the tomb; the keys of Heavens door - I saw a door opened in heaven
(Rev. 4: 1) - for rapture. Wherever there is
a lock in the universe, Christ holds the key, to turn it either way: He opens
and all Hells might hurled against that little gate moves it not an inch; and
He locks with the finality of doom.
A Door Opened
So
A Kept Word
In dealing with the present state of
the Church, the Lord opens, as He always does, by finding what He can praise. I know that thou
hast a little power - how humbling for us all, that this is, the highest praise the Lord gives
to any of the Churches! - and
(using that little well, Alford) didst keep (obey, watchfully observe, Moses Stuart) my word - my body of doctrine, my entire
teaching, including (for us) the Seven Letters - and didst not deny my name - tested, in given moments in the
past, you stood forth as Christian, whatever the cost. The supreme quality in the Angel on
which Christ seizes is not his Scriptural creed, but its active
embodiment in his life.* A church may be poor in its temporal resources,
but rich in its fidelity; if my strength is small, God does not demand from me
what only greater gifts could produce; wherever I am, it is enough if I live
His Word, and whatever my resources, if I devote them to the glory of His name.
Brainerd saw souls crowding to Christ: William Carey, on the
other hand, worked for seven years without a single conversion; and Henry
Martyn saw scarcely one throughout his ministry, yet he cried, - Let me burn out for God,
and he did: God measures by the purity and intensity of the flame, rather than by
the immensity of the forests which it sets on fire.
[* Emphases here are mine,
and following. - Ed.]
Enemies
Our Lord next unfolds the important lesson that our honour,
our ultimate vindication, is in His hands alone, and that nothing really
matters but His Judgment Seat; and so He touches on the invariable accompaniment
of the open door. Paul said:- A great door
and effectual is opened unto me, and (not but: an opened door creates an enraged enemy) there are many adversaries (1 Cor. 16: 9). So here. Behold,
I give of the synagogue of Satan - in the first century the Jews were
among the fiercest persecutors of the Church - (some) of them which say they are
Jews, and they are not - for all are not Israel who are merely Israel by blood (Rom.
9: 6):- behold I will make them to come and worship before thy feet; and the Angels enemies shall also
know that he has won his Lords special love - and to know that I have loved
thee.* So our Lord had promised when on
earth. He that hath
my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; AND I WILL LOVE HIM (John 14: 21).
* It is an extraordinary warning to us all that a letter from
Ignatius to this very Church, only a generation later, reveals that these
Christians, seduced by Judaizers, had come to reject the New Testament, and to
accept only the Old.
Rapture
Our Lord now gives the only direct and personal promise given
in all the Seven Letters; and He bases it solely on the kept word. He flings open the door of
rapture into heaven. Because thou didst keep the word of my patience - the truth of the Lords prolonged
patience until He makes His enemies His footstool - I also - I correspondingly will keep
thee - thee, emphatic
and prominent (Alford) - from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the whole world, to try them, that dwell upon
the earth. Second
Advent truth, on which our Lord bases the Angels escape, is far from being kept by all the children of God. No religious
leader, is the
pathetic cry of Miss Christabel Pankhurst,
ever
told me that not by the Labour Movement, nor by the Woman Movement, but by the
way He has Himself provided will God bring peace on earth. The Angel is not to
be preserved through the
Great Tribulation, for he is to be preserved from its season - I will keep thee from the hour
- the season in which it happens moreover, as he is actually dead, he cannot be
kept through
it he is to be kept from it, either by
removal, or by death; and the Lord thus bases rapture foursquare
on fidelity, not on converson.
If the Angel had not escaped the Great Tribulation by death
he would have escaped it by rapture. Observe the lex benigna of the
The Crown
Our Lord now opens the door to coronation. Once again comes
the inevitable warning, even to the one Church on which falls no blame: its
crown, even its crown, is in
peril. Hold fast that which thou hast, that no
one take thy crown: hold fast your patience, your stedfast faith, your labour of love;
hold fast sound doctrine and your lowly life and unworldly conversation. It is
no small thing to hold even what we have - having done all, to stand; and many of us need to realize that
what we are doing is far more valuable than we know. A small jewel can be a
priceless gem. So, the Saviour says, hold fast; for our crown - not our life - is in
jeopardy: thy crown - if we have run well, it is already
banked to our credit but, that no one take it - be
indifferent, be slothful, be unfaithful, and our crown passes to other brows. The parallel
truth, of the transference of opportunity, is openly pronounced at the Judgment
Seat:- Take away from him the pound and give
it unto him that hath the ten pounds (Luke
19: 24). LET NO MAN, as Paul sums it up (Col.
2: 18), ROB YOU OF YOUR
PRIZE.
The Throne
So now the last door opens, that door into the Kingdom through
which only the overcomer passes. He that overcometh, I will make him a
pillar in the temple of my God, and I will write
upon him the name of my God, and mine own new
name.
Stedfastness in duty culminates in stedfastness in glory. Satans wisdom always
lies in imitating God; and the tattooing of the name of the Antichrist (Rev. 13:
16) in the flesh of every votary is doubtless a
conscious imitation of what Satan knows will be done by God - foreheads stamped
with the name because permeated with the character of God. Exactly so we
find the 144,000, a body of rapt first-fruits, having his name, and the name of His Father, written
on their foreheads (Rev. 14: 1): with such a distinction impressed on him, the
conqueror would be recognized and acknowledged by all as entitled to hi s place
in the New Jerusalem
(Moses Stuart). So the three golden distinctions - rapture,
coronation, enthronement - our Lord makes dependent on works, because the whole
Letter is governed by its opening statement - I know thy works: that is, the
Letter is no statement of fundamental - [or
initial and eternal] - salvation, but an analysis of our conduct,
with its consequences; and therefore watchfulness, unfaintingness, overcoming
He explicitly states to be the conditions which alone
create the golden rewards. A field-marshals
baton (it used to be said) slumbers in every common soldiers knapsack; and
when Napoleon was once asked to create a marshal, he replied - It is not I who make
marshals, but victory.
An Open Ear
Finally, the Lord clenches all home on
the individual heart:- He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. The fact that the Holy Spirit
transmits the words lifts them out of all limits of time and place, and makes
them binding so long as the Spirit, together with churches, are on earth; and,
as it is what the Spirit is saying to the churches, the unhearing ear, as well as the healing, is inside the Church. Our Lord thus inserts a characteristic and
pregnant warning by the use of a phrase which He always employs (Matt. 11:
15; 13: 9-43; Mark 7: 16; Rev. 13: 9) for truths of singular importance, disconcerting character, and rare
acceptance:- He that hath ears to hear, let him
hear. The Saviours
implication is that His words will be accepted and
lived by only a few in the Churches. Be that one, Jesus says. Such a believers
church may perish, but he can reach the summit of
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