The Vine

Revelation

Beauty of Scripture

Like a perfect porcelain figurine, the scriptures can be turned all around and its perfections can be viewed from every angle. “Perfect in imperial posture. It stands. It moves across time, as though it does not move at all, yet it graces all who adore them. The face of God smiles through it amicably, sometimes frowning, but always maintaining strong and perfect serenity. The physical presentation of its words beautifully dressed, infinitely pure and true and faithful – infinitely polite like a gentleman even in addressing the lower forms of humanity. Occasionally, when beheld in cool aloofness, they appear marionettic to those who are too proud or too busy. This perfection of manner comes only from heavenly aristocracy. The scriptures if met by an ordinary man, can be most agreeable or instead, can be excruciatingly sharp with those who think themselves above it. But no on can argue with a work of art.”

The scripture, though perfect in manner and aristocracy sees no need to patronize but joyfully condescends to men of low estate letting each man know that he is infinitely loved and valuable. Someone has said that the Bible is God's love letter to mankind and indeed, its pages are replete with his voice constantly calling mankind into fellowship. God wants to reveal himself to man.

The fantastic panorama of history, the portraits of Biblical heroes and villains combine ineffably to reveal a Great Hand gently guiding the reader to some monumental and carefully calculated purpose of its own. God, in uncountable ways, revealing himself to us. “Life is an entanglement of secrets, mysteries that are not exposed until all the unexpecting recipients have been prepared by providences which might make them ready to find a clear path. No one but the ardent searcher will be given the precious light that guides the seeker to discover the pathway of truth in its sublime perfection and simplicities.”

The revelations of God himself are wrapped up and then delivered in the covenants. The buds of self-exposing to human eyes open slowly in the dispensations of God interacting with his humans. Wrapped and protected in the calyx of providence the church bud is neatly tucked away under layers and layers of the flower's petals waiting for the blossoming.

The long Root finding its life source in eternity from where she would be given strength to push for the flowering. The petals of dispensation gradually unfurling, unfolding in the centuries and in the fullness of time to expose the precious stamen that would find fertilization in the culmination giving an explosion of seeds to fill the earth.

The topics to be observed and learned are neatly and seamlessly presented that on casual reading no one notices. Yet the seeker who desires to see God's face will notice infinitesimal nuances of His face and eagerly and expectantly follow. The lines of truth not yet obvious except in the ordinary plain life of the ordinary plain man. Those who seek shall find. It will not reveal its precious gems to those who scan its pages with an unregenerate heart or those who set their hearts to discredit the Holy Book and its Author. They will savor and despise a drop and miss the ocean.

How delightful to find the scriptures answering, echoing itself as if meeting itself in the next book. Like a three-fold cord that is not easily broken, it binds itself to itself, truth with truth and truth again: sometimes a sense of unreality, beyond our ken, fantastic in its boundless limits – large, beyond human ideas and possibilities; grand things we cannot see, yet irrevocably and experientially real and believable to the humble heart.