Revelation 14:6-8 And I saw another angel fly in the middle of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth… This word "gospel," we bethink us, gets only its modern form in our homelier phrase "good news." The word here linked with it, therefore, is scarcely the sort of word we would naturally link with it — "an eternal gospel." Eternal good news? The combination is one which strikes our ear as if it contradicted itself. News flashes and fades. How little is there that we would still call news after a day's sun has set upon it! Yet there is a sense in which news may be said sometimes to last. The news is so important to us that it lingers in the heart, and in a manner keeps itself fresh. The gospel is always new, because you are always gathering something further of its import, or sighting something hitherto unexplored of its sublimity. I. THE GOSPEL HAS IN IT EVERY ELEMENT OF DURABILITY. 1. There are some enterprises, some houses of business so "safe," as you call them — so set for enduring — that even prudent men will count upon the future of them as if it were present. Such concerns are always conceived and conducted, you will find, on principles of wisdom — of wisdom that is calm and clear-sighted, fit to anticipate dangers and to provide for difficulties, so that surprise or loss is made as unlikely as may be. Such concerns, moreover, are usually built up slowly — grow firm as they grow great, and at every stage are solid all through to the heart. This element of durability belongs to the gospel. It took existence under a wisdom which was at once infinite in its range and eternal in its experience. The gospel was matured in sight of every difficulty and every danger it could ever meet. It has never shown the least kinship with things hasty, immature, unstable. It is built into the system of things, and is thus settled upon foundations that are too deep and broad to come within the power of any law of destruction or damage or change. 2. There is another important element of durability in the gospel. The Divine justice, it is evident — the eternal sense of what is morally due, and the eternal fulfilling of what is morally right — cannot afford to brook the least breath of contravention. Now, it is an eminent peculiarity of the gospel, that it stands in the most intimate harmony with justice. It is such, that whithersoever it goes supreme justice goes with it. 3. The gospel has still another element of durability. Purity is proof against decay; impurity is decay already begun. And the gospel is a holy thing. It sprang from holiness: it was framed upon holiness; it makes for holiness. 4. I will name only one thing more about the gospel which involves its enduringness. We count upon the success of an undertaking which has abundance of strength behind it. What project would we not reckon secure of a firm place in history if the flag of every nation were unfurled around it, and every heart was knit to every other in the resolve that it should prosper and last? But all our figures are poor when we bring them alongside of the fact concerning the strength which girds this gospel. It is the gospel of the Omnipotent. But is His gospel then omnipotent? Virtually it is. II. The gospel may be called "eternal" because DURATION HITHERTO HAS BEEN SO FULL OF IT. The material universe, we have come to know, is stupendously great. Thought wearies itself in a wilderness of world-systems; and when our glasses have carried our vision farthest into the teeming depths of space, we more than conjecture that we have only been gazing around the horizon-line of an ocean of Divine handiwork. Yet, in the minds of those to whom both are equally known, the gospel bulks larger than this universe that is so nearly infinite. We catch stray echoes of the converse of mightier intelligences than time can hold — of beings who know creation with a knowledge which dwarfs all our science into the knowledge of children; and for once that they are thinking of God's creation they are ten times thinking of God's salvation. And this, we may assure ourselves, does no more than reflect the thought of the adorable Creator. The Lord of the gospel is the Lord of creation, and He is the Lord of creation as the Lord of the gospel — this actually now, and this potentially from "before the world began." This gospel would seem to be the oldest thing we know. For it has the look of being more than an eternal thought of the Divine mind, and more than an eternal purpose of the Divine will; it wears an appearance of completeness, of maturity, of readiness, of actuality almost; it has gotten a prerogative of making a place for itself among eternal things, and of casting its own influence into the whole current of the immeasurable past. We listen on this sea-board of time, and the sound which reaches us out of the shoreless eternity is a gospel-sound. We are hearing the far-coming murmur of "an eternal gospel." III. The gospel may be spoken of as " eternal" because IT WILL ALWAYS BE WHAT IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN. No change is to be detected in its character or its contents through all the changes that have come to pass in its condition and its circumstances. It has not even developed, save in manifestation and in the spread of its influence among men. What, then, of the future? What of the coming generations of the history of the gospel in the world? These may see more of change than even the past generations have seen. Shall the gospel itself be touched with change? The Scriptures, which hold the revelation of it from the beginning, may come to be beheld in a light so searching, that venerable beliefs as to their formation may be universally modified. Meanwhile the gospel will stand as it has never but stood; and the total result of all new light, of all new movement, will be the more full and luminous display of what those tidings are which abide for ever. And is it so? Shall this gospel which we so poorly preach, and which men are so slow to hear — shall it be to some of us our theme, our motive, our inspiration, the breath of our life, when the first ages of redemption have gone far into the past? Still new? — and still the same? Even so. The same Saviour, the same great kinship to Him, the same clearing of the dark past, the same upward road to spiritual health and power, the same "everlasting righteousness," the same mercy, the same love, the same peace and joy made up to eternal measure — this, with deepening knowledge of what it all means, and ever-gathering enrichment from what it all infolds, will the gospel of Jesus Christ continue to be as long as eternity continues I IV. The gospel may be called "eternal," IN CONTRAST TO SO MUCH THAT IS ASSOCIATED WITH IT IN THE WORLD. Is there anything at all in the world that is unshifting and sure? We think little about the uncertainty of things, because we know so little else. Yet it would be a luxury, we imagine, to be able to fix our thought, not to say our hope or our love, upon something which will not catch the general infection of things as it gets into treacherous motion, or slips our grasp, or vanishes, leaving us to soothe as we can our aching hearts. It is this gospel. It is what brings us to the friendly stability of God as a personal and present and settled possession. For the good tidings, from generation to generation, from man to man, from experience to experience, abides the same enriching, comforting, rectifying thing, unable to disappoint or deceive. (J. A. Kerr Bain, M. A) Parallel Verses KJV: And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, |
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