We at the close have
all the responsibility. The vision and the blessing was from Him who is, and
who was, and who is to come. "Who is" is the immutable being of God. Thus
time is brought in in connection with Him who is eternal -
the coming One -
who is, was, and is coming. (1)
One who was (had revealed Himself in
previous ages to the earth or to men, to the Abrahams and Moseses of old
time), and at the same time was the coming One who would make good
everything revealed of and by Himself. (2)
The axe is at the root of the trees, the
fan is in the hand of the coming One, the wheat is gathered into God's
garner, the chaff burnt up. That is, there is a close of the history of
God's people in judgment. (3)
True faith, in the midst of such a system,
never rises so high as the glory of the coming One, the true rejected David,
but it loves Him and cleaves to Him. (4)
Innocence, man without law and lawless,
promise coming in as a thing apart, man under law, under priesthood,
obedient royalty with law, sovereign unlimited royalty over the world,
prophets to recall to law and to foretell the coming
One and judgments, and at last the Seed of promise, grace in the
world — this is history, history as it appears in fact in scripture, yet
principles of dealing with man which test him morally in every way, and
bring out the whole state in which he is, in which I am, before God; yet the
connection of one part with another no one of the writers could have had in
his mind, or does not refer to.
(5)
They celebrate the
Creator-God, the governor of the world, the God of the Old Testament; what
He is outside Christianity, consequently for the world, whether the world or
Israel; the Almighty, Jehovah, the coming One, the God who is coming, as He
is the God who was. (6)
The character of God
here is Jehovah, the Ancient of days, who is, and who was, and is
the coming
One. (7a)
{*The reading is this:
"I am Alpha and Omega, saith the Lord God, the One who is, and who was, and
who is the coming One, the Almighty."} (7b)
But the whole statement
is all a blunder. This age is before Messiah, "the coming one" when He is
revealed, but two only are admitted in the passage. (8)
He presents Himself in
Nazareth, His natural home on earth as the fulfilment of
the coming one in
its moral blessing. (9)
And this is one great
truth of what I may call the translation of the name in the Apocalypse; not
"who was, and is, and is to come," but "who is" (o
on), "who was" the God known of
old, the promiser withal, and who is the "coming one"
o erchomenos,
when He will
be Ancient of days, and Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, and His
name known (even that Jehovah, and Jehovah alone, is so) over all the earth.
(10)