What is the hidden manna mentioned in Revelation 2:17?

To all such there is a twofold promise; first, that they shall "eat of the hidden manna." There is a very distinct relation between the promise and the evil in Pergamos. The temptation was to eat of things sacrificed to idols; the Lord says, "I will feed you with that which alone can satisfy." In such a way He would encourage His own to resist the seductions and gratifications of the world. And what is the "hidden manna"? It is, as has been written, "Christ as known in His walk down here, though now in glory — the corn of that heavenly land. The 'hidden manna' was not the daily manna, but the manna which had been laid up in the ark, and kept as a witness in Canaan." What answers to this figure is clearly Christ in heaven; but His being in heaven, at the right hand of God, constantly reminds us of what He has been down here in the wilderness, of what He was as tempted and humbled; and, being ourselves in wilderness circumstances, beset, as in Pergamos, by special temptations, we delight to recall Him to our remembrance, and to feed upon Him, as the One who was tempted in all points like as we are, apart from sin, and we are sustained and strengthened. We thus, eat of the "hidden manna"; for, as the manna, Christ is no longer seen, being hidden in heaven.

To all such there is a twofold promise; first, that they shall "eat of the hidden manna." There is a very distinct relation between the promise and the evil in Pergamos. The temptation was to eat of things sacrificed to idols; the Lord says, "I will feed you with that which alone can satisfy." In such a way He would encourage His own to resist the seductions and gratifications of the world. And what is the "hidden manna"? It is, as has been written, "Christ as known in His walk down here, though now in glory — the corn of that heavenly land. The 'hidden manna' was not the daily manna, but the manna which had been laid up in the ark, and kept as a witness in Canaan." What answers to this figure is clearly Christ in heaven; but His being in heaven, at the right hand of God, constantly reminds us of what He has been down here in the wilderness, of what He was as tempted and humbled; and, being ourselves in wilderness circumstances, beset, as in Pergamos, by special temptations, we delight to recall Him to our remembrance, and to feed upon Him, as the One who was tempted in all points like as we are, apart from sin, and we are sustained and strengthened. We thus, eat of the "hidden manna"; for, as the manna, Christ is no longer seen, being hidden in heaven.

The fact of the church's getting into the world isolated at once the faithful Christian. The church only became invisible through sin. It was not God's intention, it is not according to His heart, that it should ever be so, though I believe that all was permitted and ordered wisely. God did not make a light to be hid, but to be set on its due stand. Such was the fact now: Catholicism reigned, if you take the protracted view, which soon paved the way for Popery. But if the word penetrated him who had an ear to hear, it gave secret fellowship with Christ when the public position had become settledly false. Hence to a true-hearted saint, amid all this ruin and confusion, He says, "I will give to eat of the hidden manna" (verse 17). The manna represents Christ Himself as He came down from heaven and took a place of abasement in the world. Those who were slipping away into the world are reminded of the place which Christ took down here. The "hidden manna" refers to the use which was made of the manna for the ark: a certain portion of it was taken into the holy place as a memorial before God. The faithful are to eat not of the manna only, but of the hidden manna.

We see the Lord's eye and heart had followed them to where they dwelt, even to Satan's throne, as He said, "I know where thou dwellest"; and from thence (that is, from the spirit of association with it) He would call them with this word of warning, "Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth." Here the word is spoken of judicially as a sword out of Christ's mouth. In such a state of things the word of God is the source to which the saint is drawn. The promises now become much more individual: "To him that overcometh, will I give to eat of the hidden manna." It was hidden faithfulness which was to be sustained by the promise of this hidden manna (seen indeed in one sense, because the fruits would be manifested to all around). The church as a body was dwelling in the world; then, as a necessary consequence, comes the secret life of the heart of the faithful soul with God in the power of the word. It is the inward link with that which never changes in its character, sustaining secret fidelity to God. And what a difference is this from the judicial use of the word - the being fought against by the sword of Christ's mouth (the living members being associated with the Christ who suffered on earth, but is now in heaven)!

302 The manna signifies the Son of God become incarnate to give life to our souls, His entering in humiliation into all our circumstances, and is the provision for the daily walk through the wilderness: for we find the manna spoken of in connection with Jesus as the living bread sent down from heaven. "This is the true bread which cometh down from heaven," John 6. But what then is the hidden manna? The manna for Israel was spread around the camp; and they were to gather it daily for their food. And so likewise is Christ to be the daily provision of the soul while in this wilderness world; but this is not the hidden manna. There was to be a golden pot of manna laid up before God, and when the Israelites had got into the land, they were to have the memorial of what they had enjoyed in the wilderness. This hidden manna is the remembrance of a suffering Christ down here - the memory of what Christ has been in the wilderness, as a man, an humbled, suffering man, and who is God's eternal delight in heaven; and in our eternal state, he that has overcome, he that has been faithful in separation with Christ from the world, will have the everlasting enjoyment of fellowship with God in His delight in a once humbled Christ - the same kind of delight, although in a different measure. If we are walking faithfully with a rejected Christ, instead of letting Balaam into our hearts, we shall enjoy Christ thus down here in spirit; but we cannot enjoy Christ in our souls, if we are mixed up with ungodliness in the world: if we pretend to it, then it becomes Nicolaitanism. But in proportion as we get and apprehend the secret of what Christ was in the world, in our souls, shall we feed upon Him; but this cannot be, if we are walking in the spirit of the world. Even the presentation of Christ in the gospels we cannot enjoy, unless it is as food for the soul. A man may say that truth is very beautiful; but if it only feeds the imagination, it does him no good. God did not give His Son to suffer down here, and then to be played with, but to feed upon.

303 The "white stone" gives the general idea of a vote in favour of any one; it is the secret mark of approbation from one to another. There are public joys in heaven common to all, thousands and thousands of voices in communion and praise, echoing the song of praise. And there are joys we share in Christ together here; but He must have our individual affections as well as our common affections. My own peculiar joy in Christ you can never know, neither can I ever taste yours; and this is true of the highest affections. "A new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." That name would have no meaning for anybody else but him to whom it is given. Christ reveals Himself to the soul in such sort that a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy. Individual joy, personal communion, is distinct from, though it enhances, the universal joy; and that individual joy which we know down here will never be interrupted. This promise, as do all those to the churches, relates to the future time of heavenly blessing; but it is also the source of joy and strength now. The Spirit of God makes us anticipate the day. We may have now in spirit this "white stone" from Christ, this secret expression of His grace and love, which others cannot have for me, neither can I have it for them. How this makes this "white stone" worth everything else! What a secret source of strength it is, even though all the world think me wrong, if I have the white stone of Christ's approbation, acquired in following the word, but known in the heart! But, I say again, I must judge all by the word, that sword of His mouth that disarms and purges all the workings of Balaam. Then I do not mind - let the world talk about things as it pleases, Christ has talked to me, and in the coming day of glory will own all He has said to me.

160 The word is that by which Christ draws the church to Himself. He comes out with a "sharp sword with two edges," v. 12. The word of God is the resource of the faithful, and the promise is more individual. In the sorrow and pain of seeing those belonging to God not departing from iniquity, there is bound up in the heart this link of secret fidelity to God which associates them with a suffering Christ. They shall have to eat of the hidden manna. It was hidden faithfulness which was to be rewarded with this hidden manna; the fruits, indeed, would be manifest to all around, but it was a secret between God and the heart, an inward link with that which never changes in its character. What is this hidden manna? We find manna spoken of as the bread which cometh down from heaven: "My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven." The manna for the Israelites was spread about the camp, not hidden. Christ is the provision for daily walk. But besides this they were to take a pot, and lay it up before Jehovah: when they had got into the land, they were to have the memorial of what they had enjoyed in the wilderness. So we in heaven shall have God's eternal delight in what Christ has been down here as the suffering Christ. The memory of what Christ has been in the wilderness is God's eternal delight. With us, he that has been faithful with Christ in rejection from this world will have the everlasting joy of fellowship with God in the delight in Christ as the suffering Man, which He had and has and will have for ever. It will be the same kind of delight, though of course always in different measure. If we are walking faithfully with a rejected Christ, instead of letting Balaam into our hearts, we shall enjoy Christ down here now; but we cannot enjoy Him while we are going on with the world. If we so pretend, it becomes Nicolaitanism or Antinomianism. Even in the Gospels what enjoyment can we have if walking in the spirit of the world? The imagination may be fed, but the soul is not satisfied. God has not given His Son to be played with, but to be fed upon.

The teachers of the doctrine of Balaam in Pergamos taught Christians to eat things sacrificed to idols, but to the overcomer of this evil the Lord promises the hidden manna for his food. This would remind us of the pot of manna that was laid up in the ark as a witness and memorial of God's faithfulness in giving Israel manna for forty years in the wilderness. The manna was Christ in His walk down here in humiliation in wilderness circumstances. The hidden manna is Christ in heaven, hidden from the eyes of men, but treasured by the Father. As we behold Him there by faith, we are reminded of what He has been down here, tempted and tried in all points as we are, but victorious over all. Recalling Him thus to mind, we feed upon Him and are sustained and strengthened in secret communion. Christ the great Overcomer is the food for the child of God, and as he feeds upon Him strength is gained for overcoming and he too becomes an overcomer.

If we think of the hidden manna as that which the overcomer will be given in heaven, it would tell us of how wilderness experiences of feeding on Christ down here will bloom afresh in glory. There we will enjoy anew all that Christ has meant to us in this wilderness life, how He sustained us as the manna for our souls.

Answer: "The hidden manna" is undoubtedly a reference to the pot of manna which was laid up before Jehovah as a memorial, Ex. 16:33. It speaks to us of God's appreciation of that pathway of holy separation and obedience to His will, which ever marked our Lord in His service here for the glory of God. The overcomer in Pergamos was one who had also walked a pathway of subjection to God, and separation from the worldliness which invaded the Church at that time. As a special reward, he was to share in the appreciation of the Father of His well-beloved Son. It is well to remember that faithfulness down here develops in us a capacity to enjoy certain things in a fuller way when we are in heaven above. Such is the reward for one who seeks to imitate the pathway of separation walked by our Lord.

There will be found some who overcome in this state of things, and the promise to them makes reference first, to the Old Testament, and then to a custom common in those days. The hidden manna was that deposited in the ark and so hidden from human eyes. It was typical of the graces of the humbled Christ, so beautiful in the Divine estimation but hidden from the eyes of men. The overcomer should feed upon, and thus have communion in, that which is the very delight of God, whereas communion with the world was becoming characteristic of the church in Pergamos. The white stone was given in those days as a token of acquittal. The overcomer should have not only this, but in it a new name, known only to himself and the One who gave it; a token therefore that the Lord owned them as His, in view of communion with Himself. So we may say that the overcomer is promised communion with both the Father and the Son.

The promise has two parts, which are in beautiful relation to one another. The manna, as is evident, speaks of Christ Himself, and of our apprehension of Him, the white stone is a sign, on the other hand, of His appreciation of us. How blessed is the interchange of affection thus expressed! How touching the appeal to it where the heart of His beloved is so manifestly wandering away from Him! The manna is wilderness food: it fell only there, in Egypt it was not yet known; arrived within the borders of the land, it ceased. It was divine provision for those to whom God was an absolute necessity, whom He had brought into a place where was no natural provision, where they were wholly cast upon Him. It was this necessity which was their claim upon the tender compassion of their great Deliverer. He had, indeed, made Himself responsible to answer to it, and all their varied need was thus to draw out new witness of divine resources, - riches of glory - power and love alike. The wilderness does not speak of any natural condition. Egypt is the natural condition, and Egypt is a very fruitful land. There were many drawbacks there, no doubt, which would in general be freely acknowledged. Plagues smote there as elsewhere, and an oppressive tyranny brooded over it: but the one, they might hope individually to escape; the other, they bore in company with a multitude. But the productiveness of the soil no one could question: "We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic: and now our soul is dried away, there is nothing at all but this manna before our eyes." The promise of the manna is, then, for the wilderness, but it is the overcomer in Pergamos who alone knows the need of the wilderness. Those who have settled down in the world proclaim by the fact how little they find the world such; and this character of the overcomer confirms our view of the state spiritually of Pergamos itself. Here it was no longer the state of individuals merely, but of the mass; and not even a secret state, but avowed openly in deed if not in word. Thus, then, the Lord speaks to him who, true to his calling, finds in Himself his one necessity and satisfaction. "Bread shall be given him, his water shall be sure." Yea, "meat which endureth unto everlasting life," and water which shall "be in him a spring of water, springing up to everlasting life." And this may remind us that the manna, of which the Lord speaks in the promise here, although it be the manna of the wilderness, is not, nevertheless, what was partaken of in the wilderness. The "hidden manna" was that put by command of God into the ark, and carried into the land, that after­generations might see the bread wherewith He had fed them in the wilderness." In this case it was, of course, not eaten; but the Lord promises to the overcomer here that he shall eat it; clearly in the blessed place which for us has in the highest degree the character attributed to the land of Canaan, - a place "where the eyes of the Lord are continually:" the wilderness food is still to be enjoyed when the wilderness is passed forever. The hidden manna was the memorial sample of what had fallen long before: it is typically the abiding remembrance of what we once tasted, - the fresh taste in eternity of Christ as enjoyed by faith down here. We may thus see (and it is good to see,) how closely connected the life to come is with the pres­ent. Do we not miss much by separating them as widely as we sometimes do? and by supposing that, apart from all experiences and attainments here, all elements of blessing will be found in equal degree in the cup of eternal joy, when our lips are once at its brim? by imagining that if "when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away," then all present effects of lack of communion, or of that knowledge which results in and implies communion, will be necessarily passed also; not allowed to abate in any wise the eternal portion? Is this what the words of the apostle indeed assure us of? For each one of us, no doubt, the state will be perfect, the partial condition will be done away. That is surely so. When the bud is ripened into the flower, the perfect condition is reached; it is a bud no longer. Does it follow from this at all that the flower is in no wise dependent upon that bud which is passed away? We know it is dependent. So when it is no longer a condition of faith, but of sight, - no longer seeing through a glass, darkly, but face to face, the present knowing not the knowledge itself, but the manner of it - will have passed. We "shall know," not as afar off any longer, but in the presence of the things known. That is, "as we are known," as He to whom all things are present knows us. It does not speak of the measure of knowledge, but of the manner of it; for who could suppose the measure of it to be God's omniscience?

The address to the overcomer now is in perfect keeping with what we have seen to be the character of Pergamos as a whole. The Lord, significantly, in the first place carries us back to the wilderness, for the world with the Church settled in it is not less a wilderness on that account, but rather the more. But it is only he who realizes this wilderness condition who will find the gracious provision which God has made for him. In the wilderness, because it grew nothing for them, because they were mere pilgrims through it, God provided, as we know, the bread from heaven; and now, says the Lord, "To him that overcometh will I give of the hidden manna." But we must notice, nevertheless, that it is the hidden manna of which He speaks. The hidden manna was that preserved in the wilderness to be carried into the land, that the children of Israel, when there, might see the food with which the Lord had sustained them in the wilderness. For us it is the evident and beautiful picture of what will be the result in eternity of the realization of the wilderness condition here. The food of the wilderness will be there enjoyed again; and, must we not say, in that time, when everything will be perfected, enjoyed in a fuller way than even in the wilderness it could have been? For, what is this manna? It is Christ Himself, as He has declared of Himself, "the bread that came down from heaven," the food of His people ever. Christ has come down, not merely in manhood, but Himself also into the conditions of the wilderness, come down to know all that is proper to man here, apart from sin; and even as to sin, to bear it, though the sinless One, in His own body upon the tree. It is, as we know better day by day, through the trial of the wilderness that we learn continually better the grace of Him who has come down into it, and are made to learn His thoughts, His ways, His grace and tenderness, and to find thus communion with Himself in all the power of this to sustain the soul. But the manna is hidden now; Christ is gone on high; but He is the same Christ, without any possibility of change. On the throne He is still the One who served us in our need in the lowliest condition; and the Servant's heart, that which love gave Him, is still His own. We are to realize that now; but how we shall realize it, when we are above with Him, when we shall be competent to see Him as He is; when we shall be able under the glory manifest in Him better to realize that glory which faith has learned to be in Him, the glory of the love which brought Him down in service! How we shall turn back then to the wilderness itself to read again the old experiences that we had of Him when we went through it, to taste them with a new freshness and sweetness in that place where there will be no more inability, no remnant of indifference, but when every spiritual sense will be always at its highest! What shall we not learn of the Man Christ Jesus there! And one can see in this way how we must have been in the wilderness, must have had the experiences of the wilderness, in order to be able to enter into this. No angel, it is plain, could know Him thus as we do. And must it not be that while every one of us will find with Him a deeper enjoyment than we have ever known, yet this enjoyment will be measured by that which we have had of Him on the way there? We must bring, in this sense, the manna with us out of the wilderness, in order to enjoy it in the land. A solemn consideration for us surely this is, which makes the reward here in a very strict sense the reward of the overcomer, the one whom the world does not overcome, but who overcomes it; all the more difficult indeed when the Church itself is in the world and laying hold of the world as having right to it in a way which, however, does not make him who does this the master, but the slave!