THE DOVE OF GOD
It is most wonderful that
once, and once only - in the Bible records - has the Spirit of God been
actually seen upon the earth; and by one man only - the only man who was
filled with that Spirit from birth (Luke 1 : 15).
“John bare witness, saying I have beheld the Spirit descending as A DOVE out of heaven” (John 1: 32) :- a descent in the form of a dove
which all four Gospels - a rare thing - record.
That it was the actual form of a Dove, though invisible to all except Jesus
and John, Luke puts beyond doubt:- “The heaven was
opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily form, as a dove” (Luke 3: 22). The heavens opened, and out of those heavens,
descending upon the Son of man, came down the Heavenly Bird, the snow-white
Dove of the Spirit of God. “The Father shall give you another comforter, that he may be
with you forever ; for he abideth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14: 17).
Now this descent of the Holy
Dove of God not only takes us back to the very dawn of creation, but it reveals
the unchanging character of the Spirit - the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever. The Revised Margin puts it thus:-
“The Spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the waters” (Gen. 1 : 2); or, as the Talmud exquisitely paraphrases it, - “The
Spirit of God was borne over the water as a dove which broods over her young.” The
word in Genesis for ‘brood’ is the same as that
used, in Deut. 32: 11, for the eagle “fluttering over her young.”
The Holy Spirit, from the first dawn of creation, was the Holy Dove of
God: He brooded, germinating life, as “the Lord and Giver
of life”; and just as He filled the
Now before we deal with this
exquisite revelation of the character of the Holy Ghost, we observe that He is
working that character into us, and that therefore everything we learn of God’s Dove, we learn of
our own ultimate character. The very
term ‘dove’ runs through the Bible revelation of
the Christian. The moment Peter made his
saving confession, at that moment Jesus said, - “Blessed
art thou, Simon, Bar‑jonah” - son
of the Dove, child of the Holy Ghost‑
- “for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee,
but my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 16:
17). In His charge to the twelve apostles -
sample Christians of all ages - our Lord says, “Behold,
I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as
serpents, and harmless”
- guileless, defenceless, gentle – “as doves” (Matt. 10:
16). And our ultimate departure from the
world, the Holy Dove returning with us to Heaven, is thus described:- “Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the
doves” - for doves
move in flocks – “to their windows?” (Isa. 60: 8); and the cry that comes, in moments of
pain from many a watchful saint to-day, is the inspired cry,- “Oh that I had wings like a dove! then would I fly away,
and be at rest” (Psa. 55: 6). What darts more swiftly and surely home than a carrier-pigeon? All therefore that we learn of the Spirit, we
learn concerning God’s ideal for us.
Now the dove is the bird of love. Little children love it. The look of the Spirit - as the Song of
Solomon reveals - is a look of love: “thine eyes are as
doves: let me see thy
countenance, let me hear thy voice” (Song 1:
15; 2 : 14). It is the only bird
of the
heaven which is domestic
: it does not require to be caged as
a prisoner, in order to be kept among men.
The Holy Spirit has alighted amongst us of His own free will: He has
alighted at the impulse of love. The
steeple of an old church was to be pulled down, in order to prepare the way for
some modern improvements. Soon
everything was ready and the foreman shouted aloud to the men to pull. As the old steeple began to tremble, and sway
from side to side, a beautiful white dove was observed to fly round and round,
not daring to go in at its accustomed place, and yet evidently unwilling to
depart. She seemed to be aware that a
great calamity was about to happen, while a hundred voices shouted, “See that dove!”
“Poor thing!” the foreman observed, “she must have young ones up in the steeple.” Again the workmen gave a vigorous tug at the
rope, and the old steeple reeled and tottered.
The distress of the poor dove became so great that everyone felt sorry
for her, and not a word was spoken. The
bird hovered a moment on her wings, and at the instant that the creaking
timbers began to topple over, she darted into the steeple and was hid from
view. When the rubbish was cleared away,
she was found lying between her young ones - all three crushed to death. Here was a spectacle of devoted love - love
even unto death. So it is with the
Lord. “Who through
the eternal Spirit offered
Himself without spot to God,” The
Holy Spirit was the crushed Dove on
The second characteristic of
the Dove is gentleness. The dove, unlike the eagle or the hawk, is
utterly defenceless: it is a shy, sensitive bird: it is probably the most
harmless of all living creatures. It has
no talons, and naturalists tell us it has no gall. It is remarkable how often the dove is
referred to in the Scripture as the bird of gentle, brooding sorrow, - “I did mourn as a dove” (Isa. 38: 14). The Spirit
wakes the sweet sorrow of the penitent soul: “they
shall be like doves of the valley, all of them mourning, every one in his iniquity” (Ezek. 7: 16); and the Spirit “helpeth our infirmity with
groaning that cannot be
uttered.” It is God’s
indescribable sorrow over a lost world. Fenelon
says,- “We must lend an attentive car, for His voice is soft and low; and it is heard
only by those who hear nothing else,” - the sweet, low call of the
Lastly, the dove has always been the emblem of puity. It was so pure a bird in
the eye of God, as not only to be classed as ‘clean,’
but the only bird allowed on the altars of God.
“If his oblation to the Lord be a burnt offering
of fowls, then he shall offer” - as the only birds permitted‑ - “his oblation of turtle‑doves, or of young pigeons” (Lev. 1: 14). His mother offered for Jesus two
white doves. Both the Dove and the Lamb
were offered on the altar of
Now we see where the Dove rests. The Dove descended upon the Lamb. Over
the young child stood a star; but over the Lord stood the Dove of God: “upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon him, the same is he that baptizeth
with the Holy Spirit” (John 1: 33), -
the Christ of God. There is a Jewish
tradition that, as all the world did not know where Noah’s Dove came from, and Noah himself did not at last know
where it went to – “it returned not again unto him any
more” - so the door would at last open, and – “blowing
where it listeth” – ‘the Spirit of Messiah’
would come forth, and abide upon the head of Messiah. Certain it is that just as the dove that went
forth from Noah’s Ark “found no rest for the sole of
her foot” in all the corpse-filled waters, so the Dove of God, hovering
over all human kind, found only one resting-place - the head and heart of the
Lamb. “God
giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him” (John 3: 31):
in Him alone dwelt “all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily.” It was not a crown which descended upon the brows of our
Lord, but a Dove: all that the
Dove is of love, and gentleness, and purity, the Lamb is. And it is our intense joy that the Dove of
God finds a nest in every re-born soul, with these exquisite results:- “The fruit of the Spirit is love” - love is its first fruit – “joy,
peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, temperance” (Gal. 5 : 20).
So, finally, the Holy Spirit, abiding on earth since
Pentecost, has, in the Bible, only one recorded prayer, a prayer which prays
for the return of the Lamb. Nothing
could more decisively enthrone the truth of the Second Advent. “The Spirit and the bride say, COME”
(Rev. 22 :17). The prayer, the preaching, the expectation of
the Second Advent has no more massive foundation than this - that it is the one
recorded cry to God of the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Spirit knows perfectly all evolution, all progress, all Gospel
advance, all revival; yet He says that there is one solution, and one only, for
world-problems: “the Spirit and the bride say, Come.” He is the master of all knowledge, of all
solutions of all problems, and He says there is but one possibility for the world’s salvation: “the Spirit and the Bride say, Come.” None but the Holy Spirit knows the deep
things of God - the everlasting plans, the profound purposes, the unrevealed
powers of God; yet, knowing all, He says that the one and only hope for the
world is the return of' Christ.
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