Sermon Series Is Based on Revelation

1915

Beginning last Sunday evening Rev. John Robertson Macartney began a series of sermons upon the Book of Revelation at First Presbyterian church. This much-neglected book of the sixty-six books contained in the Bible, will be expounded during the coming months after the same manner in which the Book of Daniel was unfolded during the last season.

Among other remarks in the opening sermon the speaker said: "This series of sermons will endeavor to unfold the teachings of the mysterious signs and symbols of Revelation. A distinct blessing has been pronounced by God upon those that read and 'hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written therein; for the time is at hand.'

"The writer of this book is the disciple, John. He is the author of the Gospel of John, three epistles and the Revelation. Under Emperor Domitian, John, who was the pastor of the Christian church at Ephesus, near the close of the first century of our Christian era, was banished to the Island of Patmos in the Aegean. sea. There in the year 97 A. D. the visions and messages contained in the apocalypse of Revelation, were given to him. The meaning of the word revelation, which is the translation into English of the word apocalypse, is an unfolding. The book is an inspired portrait of the Son of God; it is the epiphany of Jesus, the description of His personal glory to which prophets and martyrs look forward with waiting hope. This same Jesus was manifested to John on Patmos not for a passing moment, but glowed and moved before him, while Christ unveiled before John's eyes the panorama of future events of 'things shortly to come to pass.' John as he was bidden by the Saviour sat down at once and wrote the things that he saw, and the words which were spoken. This accounts for the difference there exists between the language of John's gospel and the language of the Revelation.

"The Revelation is written for believers in Jesus Christ. The man of the world, the soul unillumined by the spirit of God, cannot comprehend the teachings nor symbols. The Bible says the things predicted or foreshown are to be studied because for this very end they were inspired and that they may be understood by the servants and people of God. The apostle Peter tells us that there is 'a sure word of prophecy unto which we do well to take heed as unto a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arises in our hearts.' "

The sermon on Sunday night will cover the first chapter of Revelation. Topics of consuming interest will follow in regular series.

—Waterloo Evening Courier, Waterloo, IA, Sept. 25, 1915, p. 6.