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This verse is taken from:
Revelation 1. 16
“search the scriptures” John 5:39
John now records for us the overall aspect of His face. The Lord’s face, well recognized by His own when He was here, is now the face that shines with unnatural brightness!
John in his letter to Gaius says, ‘I will not with ink and pen write unto thee: but I trust I shall shortly see thee … face to face’, 3 John 13, 14. To him, to write was one thing, but to see ‘face to face’ was so much more. Here, then, we are in glory, ‘face to face’ with Majesty.
Stephen recalls that Abraham saw ‘the God of glory’ and never turned back. Moses wished to see the face of God at Sinai and was denied, but the reflected glory remained on him many days afterwards. Three of them, including John, had seen the blistering brightness of His transfigured face on the ‘holy mount’, and Paul was transfixed by the same glory as he lay in the dust of the Damascus road. Later, he described it as impenetrable light, ‘above the brightness of the sun’.
These were but moments in the history of men seeing God, but now the glory encountered by the aged apostle outshines them all. The Shekinah glory of a past day shines in unclouded brilliance from His face and John immediately falls at His feet as dead.
It was ‘as the sun shineth in his strength’. The sun is presented to us as a figure of the utmost in power and vigour. It ‘rules the day’ and is as ‘a bridegroom coming out of his chamber … as a strong man to run a race … nothing hid from the heat thereof’, Ps. 19. 5, 6. Now, we mark the fulfilment of Joseph’s dream to whom, as the sun, all the lesser lights bowed the knee, Gen. 37. 9. But a greater than Joseph is here.
In Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3, the Lord Jesus is declared to be ‘the brightness of his (God’s) glory’. This is the unique, observable and apprehendable radiance of God’s glory. This unique One is He who holds the lampstands, sits on the eternal throne, who takes the scroll and unseals it and who will bring to fruition all the purposes of God for men. We gladly bow the knee, and own Him Lord!
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