Covenant-Victims: Amen. Lamp: Furnace
A practical principle of extreme importance is brought out when Abraham asks, “Whereby shall I know?” in reference to God's promise: he is instantly pointed to the covenant-victims. That is to say, when anyone needs “assurance,” he is pointed to Christ—not to his own feelings, spiritual experiences, good works, resolutions or anything else. The fact is, a man's spiritual emotions are apt to be very variable and change with the barometer or the state of his health; but even if they were not so, the “feelings” form no proper ground whatever to rest on, in reference whether to assurance of salvation or to anything else. The feelings vary; but Christ is the same yesterday and to day and forever.
This is an aspect of our Lord's work very much overlooked; namely, that—quite distinct from the shedding of His blood in atonement—there is the sprinkling of His blood, as Victim of the covenant, to ratify and seal it. All the promises of God in Him are yea [that is, affirmed and ratified], and in Him Amen [that is, culminated and fulfilled]. But this word “Amen” is a very remarkable one: it is a symbol-word of absolute and final affirmative: it is the “formula of acquiescence “ amongst the Jews; with which a deponent responded, when examined on oath: it was the word which our Lord habitually used (being translated “verily” about 100 times in the Gospels): generally speaking it is not translated but is carried into the different languages of the earth intact. Like some few words of sacred importance, it is untranslatable and is pronounced by all tongues alike. Two foreigners of diverse languages met on a steamer in the South Pacific. One of them who was a Christian thought from the demeanor of the other that he must be one also; but he knew no word by which to accost him. At length he approaches, raises his hands and eyes, and says “Hallelujah!” to which his companion responds, putting his hand on his breast, “Amen!” They compressed a great deal of excellent and orthodox theology in those two words and did one another quite as much good as if they had held a long disputation on the homoiousian controversy, the shape of tonsures, or the color of vestments.
For “Hallelujah” is the pervading harmony, and “Amen” the closing diapason of the vast universe. So we find in Rev. 3, when, at the Laodicean epoch, every purpose and promise of God seems thwarted and broken, Christ is presented as the AMEN. There is a strange presentation to Laodicea in every way. In all the former churches the Lord had been characterized by some of His possessions or attributes—even to the beloved Philadelphia where He “hath the key of David;” but in Laodicea (the present or approaching condition of the professing church) we have not the attributes or powers of Christ presented as a means of remedy, but Christ Himself So He is called the Faithful and True Witness—others, as witnesses for God having proved unfaithful and untrue; the beginning of the creation of God—now that all things approach the end, God goes back to the beginning; and The Amen, in Whom all the divine and eternal decrees center and coalesce—Who affirms and fulfills every word which has proceeded out of the mouth of God, and collecting the (apparently) broken lines of His counsels, reconciles, formulates, and fulfills them. The wailing discords of the groaning creation are “resolved” into an everlasting harmony in this closing diapason—AMEN.
“The fowls came down” —the evil spiritual powers and principles are ceaselessly trying to take away the sign of the covenant; that is, to rob us of Christ, or some part or attribute of Christ. Abraham shows us what we should do: he did not compromise with them nor give place to them, he “drove them away.” We need ceaseless vigilance and uncompromising firmness in this respect, to yield (doctrinally) no particle of the truth concerning either His personality or His work, His name or His word.
In the mythical story of Senapus, the blind king of Ethiopia, his table used to be spread with rich and sumptuous viands; but as quickly as thus furnished, hell-born harpies would swoop down and snatch away the food. And there is many a one still, who is crowned with divine favor and furnished with celestial food, but who is thus continually robbed of his portion, from before his sightless eyes, by the powers and principles of darkness. “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit ye like men, be strong!”
Then the patriarch is cast into a horror of darkness and oppressed sleep; but he wakes again. It is typical of what his posterity should go through of oppression and suffering ere they should rise in the national resurrection of which Daniel speaks. And through all the horror and oppression goes the smoking furnace and the burning lamp, passing between the reeking bodies of the slain victims: and this was how the covenant was made and what it signified. For God had ordained that through judgment and calamity His people should be purified as in a fire and should give light as a lamp in the darkness. This would be true of both the lines of promise, the stars, the heavenly family, and the sand, the earthly family. Of the former—the spiritual family—none would question that this is the purpose and destiny; but of the latter, the fleshly family of Abraham, we need to be reminded, now in the day of their rejection, that the decree is no less certain to be fulfilled, and that the time must surely come when the heralds of Jehovah shall proclaim He hath “chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” “Arise, shine, for thy light is come and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.”