Revelation 5:14

14. The fivefold songs are ended, and it comes back to the standing fixtures; namely, the cherubic beasts and the elders, to confirm and ratify the utterances; the former by their amen, and the latter by their profound adoration of the Eternal.

On these two chapters we may note, that the theophany and the celestial rejoicing at the possibility of opening the seals imply a stupendous value in the revelations about to be made in the coming apocalypse. No book in the Bible has so magnificent an introduction, with such an assumption of the value of its own contents. However little some Christian periods or Christian thinkers may value this apocalypse, it sets a stupendous valuation upon itself. Its opening is occasion for glorious hymns to the opener. The burden of the hymns, indeed, is the great atonement by his sacrificial death; but this revelation is here a leading part of the results of that atonement. The same, indeed, is true of the entire New Testament canon that the revelation of gospel truth results from the atonement; but this apocalypse, as crowning close of that canon, and standing prophecy for the Christian Church. This view may seem to justify the terrible warning against all mutilation or corruption in Revelation 22:18-19, and may suggest how, in speaking for the apocalypse, it speaks for the whole canon. Note on Revelation 22:6.