How May the Lord Disclose or Reveal Himself to His Disciples
History, Prophecy, and Gospel
John 14:22-24
Judas said to him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?…


Disclosure, or revelation, is at least a double process. It consists in the presentation of an object of knowledge, and a mental reception of what is presented; a clear manifestation, and an object of this who is capable of apprehending it. Again, different objects of knowledge manifest or disclose themselves through diverse channels of apprehension. There is demonstration through the senses, as when we report, upon the authority of the sense of touch, that an object is hard, soft, smooth, or rough. There is also the declaration of the reason, as when we candidly consider the professions of a political party and decide upon their merits. And there is the revelation of the affections, as when we discern the bitterness of ingratitude or the sweetness of fidelity. Each kind of truth has its own channel and method of getting at the mind. Moreover, different truths or objects manifest themselves in various degrees, according to the capacity of the recipient. Not long ago I visited one of my colleagues in his mineralogical cabinet. Opening one of the drawers, I took in my hands two specimens with the remark, "These are duplicates." "Oh, no," was the reply, "they are quite different minerals." "How do you know that?" I said; "they look just alike." "No," was the response, "they look extremely unlike." To my sight the specimens were identical. To his critical vision, although casting the same rays of light upon his eye as upon mine, and presenting the same surface, they made an incomparably more definite revelation. There are said to be men employed in the wine vaults connected with the London docks who are able by taste not only to distinguish between a sherry, a claret, and a port, but also to tell the district in which a given wine was produced. It is even asserted that in many cases they can name the year of the vintage. To each of us is given the share of revelation which his capacities can apprehend. Men say, "Let us understand these so-called spiritual truths; let them be explained, demonstrated. Let us be convinced." The demand is fair; but the explanation, the demonstration, the conviction, must be to a capacity appropriate to this special kind of truth. A truth has not been revealed to us unless we have experienced the emotions which it is fitted to arouse. Any of us may read accounts of what is seen by the astronomers who are using the Lick telescope, but only they who have gazed through that splendid glass, to resolve nebulae into clusters of hitherto undistinguished worlds, have known experimentally, have personally received the revelation of these hitherto unknown worlds. To one who does not possess it already, words cannot convey experimental knowledge. They simply name our ideas. Any new knowledge which they seem to give is simply a rearrangement of ideas previously in the mind. Looking into the kaleidoscope, you see gaudy colours. Turn the kaleidoscope: something new has apparently entered it. In fact the same light is there as before, so are the same bright pieces of glass; but they now have a different arrangement, and therefore reflect and transmit the light in a different way. Words are simply the power to turn the kaleidoscope of our experiences. If we lack the experiences, words cannot give them. All you who are parents had many times heard the words describing parental feelings before you yourself became parents. You thought you knew their meaning; but in fact it was a totally new experience when your first helpless child was placed in your arms. Let us seek to apply all this to the Master's words. The Lord's manifestation becomes revelation to some and not to others, not because of differences in God, or in His manifestations, but because of differences in men. To expect that the result shall be to all of us a revelation, it is necessary to assure ourselves that we have that spiritual sense to which the Lord alluded in His reply to Judas. There must be not only an exhibition of the Divine self, there must also be the human capability of apprehending this. "Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." The heart is not the sensitive plate upon which the manifestations of the Father can become the visible image, until it is prepared by the chemistry of love. With such preparation, the Divine manifestation meets a human capacity to receive, and revelation is complete. You read in the Bible a passage as familiar to you as the alphabet. Hitherto it has seemed to contain very little meaning, and certainly has been no mediator between you and God. Now, however, it scintillates with new meaning, and seems weighty with unsuspected value. Every high-school scholar is familiar with the experiment by which the agency of the air in the phenomena of sound is proved. A silver bell is suspended upon a spiral spring in a glass globe. The bell is kept in vibration, and its sound is at first clearly heard. But now an air pump is set in motion beneath the globe. The impact of the bell's tiny tongue upon its sides goes on as before, yet as the air is exhausted the sound grows fainter and fainter, and at last completely dies away. The ocular manifestations are exactly as before, but the receptive medium of the air, without which sound cannot exist, is gone. In the Master's explanation, love is that medium, that condition of the heart, within which alone the manifestations of the Divine presence and of Divine truth can transmute themselves into revelation. The mysticism of this chapter is transcendent realism. There is a touch more delicate than touch, a vision more penetrating than vision, a hearing more acute than hearing. Jesus Christ was not a physical but a spiritual revelation. The physical senses of hundreds of men came into relation with the manifestations of Christ's physical existence, but, for lack of that "eighth sense," of love, discovered in him no divinity. Jesus Christ presents a body of spiritual facts adapted to human apprehension. He is not spiritual fact made discernible by physical faculty. The whole life of Christ, as written in the Scriptures, is the Holy Spirit's canvas. If we go to it sympathetically, the Spirit of God will glorify Himself in us. He will cause us to see and feel and know the facts of spiritual life. It is our right to have just as authentic evidence that the grace of God changes the heart, as stands in the records of the apostles. It is given us to have a spiritual insight for ourselves, and to be able to testify, not that there is an old chronicle which reports that a Pharisee of Tarsus was spiritually blind and somehow gained spiritual eyesight, but to testify that we were blind, yet now see. It is our privilege to know that the Spirit of Christ is the vital power of our spiritual nature, and from immediate knowledge to testify of its operation.

(History, Prophecy, and Gospel.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?

WEB: Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, "Lord, what has happened that you are about to reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?"




Christ Manifesting Himself to His People
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