Revelation 2:16 Repent; or else I will come to you quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. The Church at Pergamos, to which this promise is addressed, had a sharper struggle than fell to the lot of the two Churches whose epistles precede this. It was set "where Satan's seat is." The severer the struggle, the nobler the reward. I. We have THE VICTOR'S FOOD, the manna. That seems, at first sight, a somewhat infelicitous symbol, because manna was wilderness food. But that characteristic is not to be taken into account. Manna, though it fell in the wilderness, came from heaven, and it is the heavenly food that is suggested by the symbol. One moment the din of the battlefield, the next moment the refreshment of the heavenly manna. And the first thing that it plainly suggests to us is the absolute satisfaction of all the hunger of the heart. Here we have to suppress desires, sometimes because they are illegitimate and wrong, sometimes because circumstances sternly forbid their indulgence. There, to desire will be to have, and partly by the rectifying of the appetite, partly by the fulness of the supply, there will be no painful sense of vacuity. Then there is the other plain thing suggested here, that that satisfaction does not dull the edge of appetite or desire. Bodily hunger is fed, is replete, wants nothing more until the lapse of time and digestion have intervened. But it is not so with the loftiest satisfactions. You that know what happy love is know what that means — a satisfaction which never approaches satiety, a hunger which has in it no gnawing. Satisfaction without satiety, food which leaves him blessedly appetised for larger bestowments, belong to the victor. Another thing to be noticed here is what we have already had occasion to point out in the previous promises: "I will give him." The victor is seated at the board, and the Prince, as in some earthly banquet to a victorious army, himself moves up and down amongst the tables, and supplies the wants of the guests. Christ Himself bestows upon His servants the sustenance of their spirits in the realm above. But there is more than that. Christ is not only the Giver, but He is Himself the Food. He said, "I am the Bread of God that came down from heaven." The man that lives upon the Christ by faith, love, obedience, imitation, communion, aspiration, here on earth, has already the earnest of that feast. If you do not like the earthly form of feeding upon Jesus Christ, which is trusting Him, obeying Him, thinking about Him, you would like less the heavenly form of that feeding upon Him. II. Note, THE VICTOR'S NEW NAME. When we read, "I will give Him a stone, on which there is a new name written," we infer that the main suggestion made in that promise is of a change in the self, something new in the personality and the character. What new capacities may be evolved by the mere fact of losing the limitations of the bodily frame; what new points of contact with the new universe; what new analogues of that which we here call our senses, and means of perception of the external world, may be the accompaniments of the disembarrassment from "the earthly house of this tabernacle," we dare not dream. But whatsoever be these changes, they are changes that repose upon that which has been in the past. And so the second thought that is suggested by this new name is that these changes are the direct results of the victor's course. Both in old times and in the peerage of England you will find names of conquerors, by land or by water, who carry in their designations and transmit to their descendants the memorial of their victories in their very titles. In like manner as a Scipio was called Africanus, as a Jervis became Lord St. Vincent, so the victor's "new name" is the concentration and memorial of the victor's conquest. So once more we come to the thought that whatever there may be of change in the future, the main direction of the character remains, and the consolidated issues of the transient deeds of earth remain, and the victor's name is the summing up of the victor's life. III. Lastly, note THE MYSTERY OF BOTH THE FOOD AND THE NAME. Both symbols point to the one thought, the impossibility of knowing until we possess and experience. That impossibility besets all the noblest, highest, purest, Divinest emotions, and possessions of earth. Poets have sung of love and sorrow from the beginning of time; but men must love to know what it means. Since, then, experience alone admits to the knowledge, how vulgar, how futile, how absolutely destructive of the very purpose which they are intended to subserve, are all the attempts of men to forecast that ineffable glory. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. |
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