George D. Watson (D.D.) relates in the book God’s Eagles or, Complete Testing of the Saints that some years ago a very saintly man in humble life, dreamed that he went to Heaven and saw a great factory where angels were making crowns for the saints, countless thousands of crowns of all sorts and different sizes and shapes and of almost infinite variety in their make-up and degrees of purity and splendor.  He dreamed that his guide told him that when a man became a Christian, the Lord sent an angel to measure his head, and have a crown prepared for him that would fit nobody in the world except that one person, and that if that Christian would carry out the life work that God had planned for him he would get the crown, and that if he failed to do all his work the crown was changed.

            Psalm 149 tells us:  “Let the saints be joyful in glory, and let the high praises of God be in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands, to execute vengeance against the heathen and punishment against the people” (that is, the armies of the Antichrist) “to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute upon them the judgment that is written in the prophecy; and this honor have all saints.”  This scripture does not apply to the servants of God in the present dispensation in which we live, the age of the cross, in the age of humiliation and suffering and persecution and the various testings of our faith and love.  But this Scripture belongs to the age of the crown and the kingdom and the glory and the dominion which is to be ushered in after the resurrection of the righteous.

            You have heard some call the present dispensation the age of grace; however, all the grace we enjoy from the hand of our Dear Lord was won for us at the Cross of Christ.  You must distinguish between those words in the Bible which belong to the age of the cross and those other Scriptures which belong to the age of the crown.  Paul explained to his faithful young minister he had trained (2 Timothy 4:8):  “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing.”  If there be no resurrection from the dead, Paul says, our life is vain, our hope is vain.  Paul says his crown is laid up for him, and that he would receive it “at that day,” that is, the day of Christ’s second coming.  There is not a single word in all the Bible about anyone getting his reward at the time of death, but every single Scripture on the subject teaches that the righteous will get their rewards at the second coming of Christ and not before.  It was said to Daniel that he should rest, and get his reward at the end of the days.  Jesus says as he is in The Revelation:  “I come quickly, and my reward is with me (Rev. 22:12).”  And so the crown that St. Paul is to wear through the glorified ages is now hung up in the heavenly places waiting for him to get his resurrection body, and receive his judgment at the seat of Christ, and then Jesus will give him the crown, and he will take his place in the front rank of the great saints in the kingdom of God.

            It is very awkward when people try to make the Scriptures fit into a period for which they are not intended.  When Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Jesus told Peter to put up his sword, because that was the period when Christ and His saints were to suffer the indignities of the wicked, and that age of patient endurance still continues.  But when the saints come riding down with Christ on white horses made of fire, that will be the age of judgment, of the righteous wrath of God against all wickedness, and in that age the glorified saints will act in harmony with the wrath of God, just as truly as in this present age they act in harmony with the long-suffering and patience of God.  The glorified saints will share in the very feelings which Christ has toward the enemies of God, and in the winding up of this present world’s history these saints are to be endowed with judgment authority over the world and take part with Christ in judging the world and in overthrowing all the systems of iniquity, and in ridding the world of its tyrants and usurpers.

            The bridehood saints follow next to Christ on white horses, and then follow other armies, spoken of in one place as virgins without number, according to their various degrees.  All these glorified armies of saved people will come riding down from the sky, from the marriage supper, following the Lord Jesus on horses of white fire, to take part with Christ in the destruction of the armies of the anti-christ, and to take part with Him in ruling the nations with a rod of iron, or, more properly, “shepherdizing the nations with inflexible righteousness,” typified by the rod of iron.

            G. D. Watson, a Wesleyan Methodist further explains that we are all saved by faith, but that we are rewarded according to our individual works.  We have salvation now through faith, but our crown has connection with our life-work.  We are to earn the crown before we die, but receive the crown at the coming of the Lord.  Daniel 12:2-3 “Many, who sleep in the earth’s dust, shall awake, some to everlasting life and others to shame, to everlasting abhorrence.  Those who are teachers shall then shine as the brightness of the firmament and those who turned many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”  How else could such a thing happen were it not for a crown atop the head of the wearer?

            Are there three crowns that may be ours?  Though the Bible speaks in different places of a specific crown of life (Rev. 2:10), a crown of righteousness (2 Tim. 4:8), and a crown of glory (1 Peter 5:4), G. D. Watson thought these words represent not three different crowns but are terms referring to the one crown we receive.  The crown of life may take on those aspects for a godly life lived, or a crown wrought out of the life of Christ; a crown of righteousness implies a crown for righteous actions (works), not only a crown for having a righteous heart, but a crown for righteous activity in: thought, prayer, will, love, action and obedience.  And this crown will correspond exactly (!) to the amount of righteousness lived out in one’s life.  And the third, the crown of glory, implies the crown of glorification belonging to a resurrected and glorified body, a crown of glory in distinction from a natural crown or a crown of grace.  This crown will be literal and real.  John saw the 24 elders (the Greek does not limit “elders” to male gender only) in the Revelation wearing crowns of pure gold, and Watson takes it that the words mean exactly what they say.

            Gold is the finest metal that has ever been found in the material creation, and the city of the New Jerusalem is made of pure, transparent gold, which will be a literal fact and not a metaphor.  The people who teach that the crown is only a metaphor or an illustration are apt to have a religious experience of the same order; in other words, they have only a metaphorical religious experience, a metaphorical conversion, and a metaphorical sanctification, and only a typical baptism of the Holy Ghost, and so they have nothing but a symbolic religious life without any powerful reality, and are looking for nothing but symbolic resurrection and a symbolic second coming of the Lord, and all their religious life is a shadow and a sham.

            The crowns that the glorified saints are to wear on their heads will have in these the things which indicate the lives he and she have lived, the work he/she has done, the measure of this person’s piety; and that crown will indicate their rank in the kingdom of God, and everyone that looks on her/his crown will be able to see at once their individual rank in the kingdom of heaven, and the measure of his or her rewards as well as what has been the peculiar state of the life of faith of the person in the past.

            Thankfully, our good Apostle Paul unites himself with other saints and speaks of other believers receiving a similar crown, especially those who love the appearing of the Lord Jesus (2 Timothy 4:8).  To love the appearing of Christ is something more than to love Christ in the ordinary sense of that word.  It means not only to love Christ as a Savior, and love His character, and to love His church and His gospel, but, more than all these, to love His person, to love Him in His glorified body, to love Him as a coming King to rule over the earth, to love Him the way He appeared to Daniel and on the Mount of Transfiguration, and in His resurrection glory.  This form of love makes Christ a more vivid reality than is experienced by ordinary believers.  It makes Christ a glorious, bright reality to the soul, and this is what we need to qualify us to see His face, so writes Mr. Watson.  And he concludes:

            In all the Bible, Paul is the only one that has left us a testimony at the close of his life, and God has used him as a sample of the eagle saints who have, by grace, prepared themselves for the flight, either into paradise (the natural death of believers), or for the flight of the translation, when Jesus gathers His people to Himself in the sky (so-called, our rapture).

            May I, reader, finish that man’s dream with my conclusion, making it a story with a moral tale as a word to the wise?  Well… It so happened that during this visit to see the crowns awarded in heaven to the saints, there came a women rather demurely up to this angel and after a little while of waiting she finally interrupted the talking.  She asked where her crown might be, for she had not yet been issued one and others she knew from her church already were wearing theirs.  “Oh,” the angel said.  “And on what basis have you a claim of a crown?”  She answered, “I witnessed in my way.”  “Oh,” the angel replied again.  “So tell me, what sort of witness were you, in your lifetime of Christian living?”  “I was a silent witness,” she explained.  “I see,” said the one in bright clothing.  “Then for this silent witness, you shall be given an invisible crown.  Here they are.  You may select one.  They all fit every size and you have your choice.”  He pointed her to glass case that appeared totally empty.  “But I don’t see any crowns in there,” she stated in her perplexity.  “How are others to see that I am wearing one of these?”  “Oh,” replied the angel for the last time.  “In the same manner in which they learned of Christ through what you say is recorded as your silent witness.”  The angel dispensing crowns no longer talked to her, and she no longer had any question to ask.

            Don’t let your crown be without its jewels for the bright service to the Lord that you have rendered.  Don’t let yourself go into eternity having little to show for the years you had available for developing a fruitful life!  Have the Life of Christ exuberant, overflowing, and a blessing as you greet others, help and assist the needy, cheer the afflicted, commiserate with the tearful, rejoice without jealousy with those who have succeeded, give in the way you have been given, etc.  We all have Christ in our hearts, but we all do not have the fruitful lives that the Lord has commanded.  It’s not too late!  You can add to your heavenly slate those things which the Lord still has planned for you to do.  Pray and pray.  Ask the Lord to forgive your laxity in service to Him.  Make His schedule more important than your schedule.  Learn to love the unlovely, and if others don’t return their thanks back, don’t lose your faith over it—press on!  But do all as unto the Lord (Matthew 25:42-45).  And finally, this is good for you to keep in mind:  “Your crown is in the works!”