Revelation 4:1

THE VISION OF HEAVEN

‘Come up hither.’

Revelation 4:1

This is the first of a series of visions which St. John had in Patmos—the vision of the temple in heaven, the vision of the throne of God and the Lamb, the vision of the seven angels with the trumpets, the vision of the seven vials, of the last things, of the New Jerusalem coming from God out of heaven, St. John is here called to a view of the hierarchy of heaven watching over the Church below.

I. St. John summoned to a vision of heaven.

(a) The summons was given by Christ, Who alone has the keys of death and of Hades. This was an apocalyptic vision; soon Christ called His servant to the never-ending vision of heaven’s glory. How soon may it be said to us, ‘Come up hither!’ Therefore should we look upon earth and earthly things from heaven as a ‘coigne of vantage,’ ascending thither in the Spirit.

(b) The vision was seen by St. John in the Spirit. There was thus a higher condition of spiritual exaltation. In the Spirit we may see visions of heaven by the eye of faith that shall purify our life and fill it with meaning.

(c) The purpose of this vision was that St. John might know ‘the things that should be hereafter.’ It was not knowledge of his own personal future, but of the future of God’s kingdom, and events in the world bearing on it. God alone knows all this, but we may know that all that happens on earth is most surely settled in heaven. All is ordered by a Sovereign Intelligence.

II. St. John’s vision of heaven.

(a) The sights he saw. There was a throne; there was the Enthroned One, and around this Enthroned One His accessors, the twenty-four elders; and the four living creatures. The lightnings come from the throne, and symbolise the justice of God in His law; the rainbow encircled the Enthroned One, and is an emblem of the mercy of God; the sea of glass was in front of ‘Him that sat on the throne,’ symbolic of the undisturbed repose of the great Jehovah. ‘He sitteth above the waterfloods; He sitteth King for ever.’

(b) The songs he heard. There was the song of the four living beings, who cried, ‘Holy, holy, holy,’ like the seraphim in the temple of Isaiah (6). What a song is this! To God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost—holy, holy, holy—a song ever repeated in the Christian Church on earth in the trisagion of the Holy Communion Office. There was also the song of the four and twenty elders.