BEHOLD THE LAMB!

“… Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” – John 1:29

It is not enough to have a theoretical understanding of God’s redemption through Jesus and how He came to fulfill the Old Testament system of sacrifices as the Paschal Lamb – as important as that information may be.

No, it is of greatest importance that we behold Him.

Some translate the word, “Look,” but the meaning is the same. We must linger over the vision of Jesus and stare into His eyes.

We must be captivated by His presence so that to even blink we would disrupt the flow of His radiance into our souls.

We must drink deeply of His beauty that transcends human comeliness. We must experience Him in all His glory and behold Him.

In Jesus Christ, the Living Word, we have beheld the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. God has allowed us to glimpse Himself and touch His own incarnate flesh.

Why wouldn’t we stop everything else we might be doing and bathe in the wonder of a moment of Lamb of God?

Oh, Lamb of God
Upon whose sinless shoulders
All sin has pressed down its awful weight,
We pause amidst the frivolous trivialities of our lives
To behold You
In a manger, on the cross, ascending to Your throne
Coming once again in glory
Amen.

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Happy New Life!

“And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. …  And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God …  And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! “  John 1:32, 34, 36

Against the backdrop of the Christmas story, we meditate upon John’s testimony to the significance of the Incarnate Word of God. The Spirit descends, the record is borne, and the Lamb of God is revealed.

It is a transitional moment of transformational power. The formative years of Jesus’ life are complete and the babe we left in the manger is now a man who knows who He is and what his mission is on earth is to be. It is the conclusion of the Christmas story and the beginning of a ministry that will culminate in His passion.

Jesus comes to John to be baptized and His baptism is a celebration of new life and new possibilities.

He stands with sinners though He has never sinned. He enters into the symbol of repentance for the sins that we have committed. He identifies intimately with humanity and in that act of identification, God sends forth His own Spirit to visibly and dramatically identify with Him.

It is a new day. In much the same way that we mark a new year with noise and celebration, God marks the ministry of Christ with John’s declaration, “This is the Son of God,” followed by “Look everyone! This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World!”

The old is passing away. The new has come. From now on baptism will mean something entirely different and no one will need to be imprisoned in their despair of sin. New years had come and gone for centuries with their twin commemoration of the Day of Atonement. This was no mere new year. This announcement was of new life!

Happy New Life!

Ray Summers' Book Link

Best Commentary on Revelation

Also on SCRIBD

 

Excerpt  from Summers:

Neglected, misunderstood, and grossly perverted, the book of Revelation stands quite alone in the New Testament. Most readers have been content to pass it by with the attitude, No one understands it anyway. For many others it has had a peculiar fascination. For some the fascination has been from a religious motive; for others the fascination has been from the viewpoint of curiosity. There has been such a profusion of conflicting opinions about the meaning of the book that many have despaired of ever securing a comprehensive interpretation. It has been used extensively by individuals and groups who have found that they could prove almost anything by manipulation of the symbols contained in it. For this reason their attention has been centered upon Revelation as the basis for strange systems of interpretation. This policy follows an error related to one of the basic principles of interpretation: The obscure passage should be interpreted in the light of the clear passage. To take the opposite method is to tie one's hands from effective work in interpretation.

One has only to examine the multitudinous books written on Revelation to find the book pitifully mistreated at the hands of those who have not informed themselves on the possible meaning of the book for those to whom the Lord first gave it. Even among those who have made such effort to inform themselves there rages such controversy that many thoughtful men have abandoned the search for the truth of the book.

Facing this condition, two paramount questions confront us. Shall we abandon one of the books of our New Testament canon? There are many of us who believe that the Holy Spirit not only inspired the writing of the books of the Bible but that he also preserved them for the use of men. Believing this, we cannot consider the abandonment of the book the proper attitude for sincere Christians to take. We cannot agree with Martin Luther, who at one time refused to have the book in his canon because, in his opinion, it was impossible to understand it. Since the Holy Spirit inspired its writing and through his own processes preserved it for us, it must have some meaning for men of all ages–those who first received it and those who read it in every generation. Surely we are not to abandon it.

The second question has to do with our study of the book. If we do not see fit to abandon it, is it not our duty before God and a confused world to seek earnestly to find the true meaning of the book? To most Christians Revelation is a closed book. Some help they find in the messages to the seven churches in the opening chapters. In time of sorrow they find comfort in the beautiful language of chapters 21–22. But the section from chapter 4 through chapter 20 leaves them wandering in a hopeless maze. Some others have gone to the opposite extreme. They have sought to interpret all the details of the perplexing visions in such way as to unfold all the pages of the future. Time after time they have worked out a chronology which has included the date for the end of the present age. Each time their date has come and gone and left their prophecies unfulfilled. Surely their errors serve as a warning against such purpose and procedure. Such a system only leaves the average reader mystified.

The purpose of this work is to present a method of approach by which the reader may come a little closer to the problem of the exegesis of Revelation. It is our purpose to determine the fundamental truths underlying this strange book. We are to determine the meaning of the book for those who first received it, the suffering Christians of Asia Minor, and the consequent meaning by application to conditions of our own day.

In the discussion which follows we will consider the nature of apocalyptic literature. Since Revelation falls within this distinctive body or type of literature, we cannot ignore the general nature of such works. The conditions out of which such works grow will be studied along with the characteristics of all apocalyptic literature.

The next step will be a survey of the methods of interpreting the book of Revelation. These fall into four general classes, with the method suggested in this work as a possible fifth method. This fifth method is the one presented as the one closest to the truth, but an apropos warning is suggested by Wishart,¹ who feels that every presentation of Revelation should be prefaced by some such warning as, Let him who is without his favorite speculation cast the first stone!

Proceeding from this point, the historical background will be treated in intense fashion. This will include a discussion of all matters relative to authorship, date, recipients, and occasion as they touch the interpretation of the book. The book reflects an attitude of faith in God and his purpose which is unsurpassed in the New Testament. This reflection can best be understood when we know the condition of the original readers of the book. The aim of this work, then, is to present a consistent interpretation of the book as a whole, keeping in mind that the chief aim is to bring out the spirit of confidence in the living, victorious, redeeming Lamb who moves with majestic step through this climactic revelation from God. This Lamb-Christ who was victorious over the chaotic world conditions of the first century will be victorious over similar conditions in every other century until the kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ: and he shall reign for ever and ever.