Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 341 · December 7
The Fourth Alleluia
“And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”
You hear the sound before you hear any words. John reaches for three comparisons and does not choose between them: the voice of a huge crowd, the roar of a river in flood, and thunder overhead. It is the kind of sound you feel in your chest before you can make out what it is saying.
"Alleluia! sing to Jesus" is the first line of a hymn that William Chatterton Dix wrote in the eighteen sixties. Dix worked for a marine insurance company in Glasgow and wrote hymns in his spare time. He opened this one with a Hebrew word that the New Testament carries over without translating: hallelu-yah, which means praise the LORD. Congregations have sung it ever since without needing anyone to explain it.
That word appears four times in the New Testament, and all four are in this chapter. The first comes right after a great city has fallen: "For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand." Then John writes, "And again they said, Alleluia," and then, "And her smoke rose up for ever and ever." So the first Alleluias rise over a city's smoke, because God has finally put right what that city did to His servants.
By the fourth Alleluia, in today's verse, the reason has grown larger: "for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." Omnipotent means all-powerful. This is an announcement, the kind of news a herald calls out when a king's reign has begun and everyone needs to hear it. The Lord has always been King. Here His reign is out in the open, and the singing breaks out because at last it can be seen and heard by all.
Three verses later comes an invitation, and John is told to write it down: "Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb." Wherever you are as you read this, whether the sound around you is thunder, or rushing water, or three people and a piano in a small room, that invitation has been written for you. You do not need a good singing voice to answer it. Come, and add your Alleluia to theirs.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 341 is Taken Up When Forsaken (Psalm 27:10).