Opener of the Seals

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What dazzling glories strike mine eye

Author: James Relly
Published in 2 hymnals

Representative Text

1 What dazzling glories strike mine eye!
How infinite the mystery;
What truth divine doth God reveal,
When Judah's Lion breaks the weal!
Expounds to man that sacred book,
Which from the Father's hand he took.

2 Long did this secret lie conceal'd
In God, nor was it yet reveal'd;
Nor men, nor angels, could discern,
Nor might the Father's nature learn:
Nor was there found a worthy one
To take the book, and look thereon.

3 But to dispel our gloomy fears,
A Lamb with marks of death appears;
Deep wounds, with blood exhausted vein,
Denoted that he had been slain:
And in that wounded form prevail'd
To read the book, tho' sev'n times seal'd.

4 When ev'ry seal is open broke,
And each attending voice hath spoke,
An universal silence reigns,
Whilst he the sacred page explains:
Yes! heav'n itself in silence waits,
What the dear, worthy Lamb relates.

Source: Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs: selected and original, designed for the use of the Church Universal in public and private devotion #CCXXXIV

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Author: James Relly

James Relly was born about 1722 at Jeffreston, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and died in 1778. He was converted to Christianity during the Great Awakening ushered in by George Whitefield. He worked under George Whitefield as a Calvinistic Methodist preacher and missionary. However, Whitefield and Relly separated ways over Relly's seemingly universalist teaching that all humanity was elect (i.e. saved) when Christ took the punishment for all sin when he died. He also departed from both the Calvinists and Methodists by taking the doctrine of Justification further, in teaching that believers no longer sin and the Law's sole purpose is to condemn humanity and point them to Christ. He was the mentor of John Murray, the founder of the Universalist Ch… Go to person page >

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