THE mere sound of the promise, that he who overcometh, shall once be made a pillar, does not particularly appeal to our ordinary sense. Scripture itself tells of but one individual, who was turned into a pillar, and that was the wife of Lot. One punished because of her unbelief, of whose dreadful lot Jesus Himself reminded the eleven, surely not for imitation, but as warning (Luke 17, 32).
At once therefore the emphasis must be put upon the words that accompany it: A pillar in the temple of God. And in this connection to bring closer to us the ever yet strange comparison of a man with a pillar, you can do no better, than to understand by it a pillar of support. “A pillar of support in God’s church” was, at the close of the last and in the beginning of this century, a common expression, which especially after some one’s death was very popular. It was particularly in vogue with respect to a prominent and wealthy member of the church, who had been ordinarily pious, a lover of his pastor, and liberal in his contributions, as often as, solicited or unsolicited, money and much money was required by the church, for her poor or for her clergy. Spiritually in those unspiritual days this image of “pillar of support” was less in vogue. It was as Bilderdyk sang: “When on account of her guilt a nation must perish, in church begins the leprosy of soul.” And in those days especially the church-front leaned ever more crookedly toward Mammon.
Though indeed the image of “pillar of support” renders service, in lessening the strangeness of the expression, as regards the matter itself the promise of Jesus stands directly over against it.
It is not said, that the pastor-loving dead was a pillar for God’s church, but promised, that Jesus Himself will make him, who overcame, to be a pillar in the temple of God.
In this glorious promise there is no mention of the militant church on earth, but of the church triumphant above.
The entire church-idea indeed falls away, to go up in the image of the temple of God. It is in that temple of God, that, according to Jesus’ rich promise on Patmos, every Christian hero who overcame, and conquering entered upon eternal life, by Christ Himself shall be placed as one of the pillars in the completed structure.
IN allied figurative language St. Peter had said something similar of the church on earth. Together the redeemed must form “one spiritual house.” Of this spiritual house Christ was “the chief corner stone.” And now every believer must be “a stone in that house,” a “living stone,” that by new addition of believers the walls of this spiritual house might every time rise higher (1 Peter 2, 4, 5).
But in Jesus’ promise there is mention of something far more glorious.
If Peter compared the church on earth to an house, to walls raised in stone, here on Patmos the Lord chooses the far richer image of a temple with colonnades, like that of which Athens gave the magnificent example, and similar temples in all the cities of Asia Minor, and also in the cities to which these seven epistles are addressed, such as at Philadelphia, to whose church the letter with the mention of the pillar at the end went out, which by their magnificence of architecture roused admiration.
So by the magnificence and luxuriousness of their temples the Heathen as it were took out the eyes of Jew and Christian. By the side of such temples the Synagogue fell away altogether, and Christians gathered in the upper room of one of the friends.
On earth the Church repressed, small, insignificant, in everything bearing the sign of the Cross; but in the great and illustrious day this was to become otherwise. Then all Heathen magnificence of building would fall into ruins, but gloriously from heaven the “new Jerusalem” would come down. In this new Jerusalem the temple of God would no longer be the copy of what Moses saw in the mount, but the rich original itself, which amid heavenly splendor had been shown to Moses. And this temple, would be built, not of dead stone, but from spirit and life. Heroes, heroes who had overcome, would in that temple bear up the sacred pinnacle, in more beautiful image and far purer harmony, than ever Athens had represented it symbolically in her colonnades.
ON earth the temple stands alongside of life. Zion is added to Jerusalem. This can not be otherwise, this must be so, because the temple encloses the sacred and shuts it off from the unholy life of the world.
But in the realm of glory this antithesis falls away. Then everything is holy. Holy the life itself. Therefore in the future of our Lord a temple alongside of life is unthinkable, and St. John tells us (Rev. 21, 22): “I saw no temple in the city, for the Lord, the Almighty God, is her temple, and the Lamb.”
Of course, where everything is temple, there is no place for a temple apart. There life itself has become one temple-life. And there that temple-life does not rest upon pillars of granite, but upon the heroes of faith and upon the heroines of faith, who in Jesus’ power have captured that temple from Satan and the world. And in that temple, they are no longer as in earth stones masoned away or hidden, but columns, pillars, which stand out in full length, in life-size, slender, and glisten in the fullness of their appearance. Glisten as Jesus has hewn them, as Jesus makes them rest upon their pedestal, as Jesus adorns them with the capital as with the crown of victory, as Jesus shall arrange them in orderly series and ranks, as Jesus in mutual relation shall unite them into one whole.
HEREIN lies the blessedness of indispensableness. From the wall of a house a stone can be removed, and the house still stand. But from the structure composed of pillars, not one pillar can be missed, without the beauty being broken, and the bearing-power of the whole being torn from its relation.
The pillars are numbered. Every pillar is one. And not one can be thought away, without the charming beauty of harmony being lost.
This makes the promise of Jesus, that he who overcometh shall be a column, a pillar, so warm and significant. The temple of God is not finished without you. Only when you also shall have been given your place in it, will it be completed in its heavenly loveliness. Yea, truly, because God elected you, are you likewise indispensable to the consummation of that structure.
And indispensable not only for the beauty of harmony. Because life here on earth is on so low a level, beauty of art in every way must be superior to life. But in the realm of glory all art falls away, because life itself shall be perfect in beautifulness.
The column, the pillar in the temple of God shall not merely be beautiful, but also bear.
Thus you will have significance with respect to that temple. You will be a part of it. However wonderful it may sound in your ears, the whole of it shall for your part rest upon you.
And Jesus shall make that true, not only for a Paul or Peter, or for whoever else who after the apostles, in Jesus’ church appeared in the foreground, and whose name sounded far. O, no, Jesus shall make this to be a truth for every one who overcame. Also for the quiet folks in the land, for the forgotten ones, who here on earth had scarcely any count.
It shall be with this as with the stars of God in the firmament. You see sun and moon, and know a few starry figures besides. But who counts the thousand and ten thousand suns, with their wandering stars and satellites, which hide in the milky way? And yet all these also proclaim the glory of God, all these the Lord likewise knows by name, these also He calls, and see, no single one is missing.
And so in those illustrious colonnades of the eternal temple every elect of the Lord shall glisten with the others, shall bear up with the others, together with all saints shall constitute the one great whole. And Jesus shall so will it. Not you will there take a place, but Jesus shall there place you. In the glory which He has with the Father, His Mediator-heart does not rest. He wants to see the splendors of His glory themselves shine, beam and glisten through the endless colonnades of God’s temple, and with this also not one, not even you can be missed.
Only, you must have overcome, overcome until the end. The heart that did not overcome Satan, but allowed itself to be overcome by Satan, goes into the grave dull and lustreless as the brick, and can never shine along in the heavenly colonnades of emerald and porphyry.
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