Spurgeon: December PM
* 12/19/PM
"And there was no more sea."
--Revelation 21:1
Scarcely could we rejoice at the thought of losing the
glorious old ocean: the new heavens and the new earth are none
the fairer to our imagination, if, indeed, literally there is to
be no great and wide sea, with its gleaming waves and shelly
shores. Is not the text to be read as a metaphor, tinged with
the prejudice with which the Oriental mind universally regarded
the sea in the olden times? A real physical world without a sea
it is mournful to imagine, it would be an iron ring without the
sapphire which made it precious. There must be a spiritual
meaning here. In the new dispensation there will be no
division --the sea separates nations and sunders peoples from
each other. To John in Patmos the deep waters were like prison
walls, shutting him out from his brethren and his work: there
shall be no such barriers in the world to come. Leagues of
rolling billows lie between us and many a kinsman whom to-night
we prayerfully remember, but in the bright world to which we go
there shall be unbroken fellowship for all the redeemed family.
In this sense there shall be no more sea. The sea is the emblem
of change; with its ebbs and flows, its glassy smoothness and
its mountainous billows, its gentle murmurs and its tumultuous
roarings, it is never long the same. Slave of the fickle winds
and the changeful moon, its instability is proverbial. In this
mortal state we have too much of this; earth is constant only in
her inconstancy, but in the heavenly state all mournful change
shall be unknown, and with it all fear of storm to wreck our
hopes and drown our joys. The sea of glass glows with a glory
unbroken by a wave. No tempest howls along the peaceful shores
of paradise. Soon shall we reach that happy land where partings,
and changes, and storms shall be ended! Jesus will waft us
there. Are we in Him or not? This is the grand question.