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THE
GREAT DAY OF THE LORD
A SURVEY
OF
NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING
ON
CHRIST'S COMING IN HIS KINGDOM, THE RESURRECTION, AND
THE JUDGEMENT OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
BY THE
REV.
ALEXANDER BROWN
LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK, 62 PATERNOSTER ROW
1890 (Second Edition 1894)
AN EARLY SYSTEMATIC HYPER PRETERIST BOOK:
"To sum the whole into a
sentence — with the fall of Jerusalem, the then existing age was ended, the
dead were judged, the saints were raised to heaven, and a new dispensation
of a world-wide order instituted, of which Christ is everlasting King, and
ever present with His people, whether living here or dead beyond." (p. 257)
Hyper Preterism:
Alexander Brown:
The Great Day of the Lord:
A Survey of New Testament Teaching on Christ's Coming in His Kingdom,
the Resurrection, and the Judgement of the Living and the Dead
(1890)
"To sum the whole into a
sentence — with the fall of Jerusalem, the then existing age was ended, the
dead were judged, the saints were raised to heaven, and a new dispensation
of a world-wide order instituted, of which Christ is everlasting King, and
ever present with His people, whether living here or dead beyond." (p. 257)
- A simple but fundamental mistake, confining the new aion
within the brackets of carnal chronology. It is the
same exact mistake of Futurism, except that the incorrect HyP
AD70 dispensational line in history past has immense
theological consequences with which Futurists will never have to
deal, placing their dispensational line as they do in history
future (thereby not ever having to deal with the myriad
complications of living in a global change of spiritual economy
-- which yields theological Universalism of some sort.. hence
the high concentration of Universalist/Pantelist/Comprehensive
Grace teachers within full preterism).
"Some reader may demur to our suggestion that the first resurrection
took place after the close of the Judaic age, on the ground that such an
event must leave its mark on history, while history's page is blank.
If we turn to v. 51 we shall there plainly read that this resurrection
was then immanent. Paul says" we shall not all sleep," that is, at "the
last trump," the signal of this deliverance of the dead. If this were
true, what date within a lifetime was more likely than immediately after
the old dispensation was judged and done away? Indeed, if we turn to
"the last trump" in the book of Revelation, we find that it is the
time for the judgement and resurrection of the dead, and that it is also
the close of the old dispensation, as witnessed in the overthrow of
Jerusalem."
CLICK HERE FOR PDF FILE OF ENTIRE BOOK
NOTICES OF THE FIRST EDITION.
THE INDEPENDENT.
"It is eloquent and vigorous, and sets forth many great and
just spiritual conceptions."
THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY.
"There is a great deal in the book well worth thinking
about. Mr. Brown has evidently a vigorous mind, and he can put his
thoughts into nervous and telling language."
EXPOSITORY TIMES.
" An exceedingly able and deeply interesting study of
this strange book, the Apocalypse. Mr. Brown is both a scholar and an
independent thinker, nor is his style less vigorous than his thought."
SCOTSMAN.
"A learned and acute view of the prophetic visions and
their eschatology. The book is so clearly and closely argued that whether
its reasoning command assent or no, it will always prove stimulating and
suggestive to a reader interested in this subject."
THE EXPOSITOR.
".The Book of Revelation still attracts commentators, and
Mr. Brown has published a thoroughly sensible guide to its interpretation.
In applying his key to the meaning of particular passages he is remarkably
successful. Sobriety and sense characterise the interpretation throughout,
and none can read the small volume without feeling increased hopefulness
about the understanding of a book which is virtually sealed to most readers.
The work deserves to be widely read."-Dr. DODS.
THE CLERGYMAN'S MAGAZINE.
"Here we have a brilliant book on a great theme, and
unlike most productions of the kind. The writing is forcible and telling,
and the argument is convincing, though calculated to shake confirmed
beliefs. Other writers have been before him in the elaboration of his
theory, but we believe the author to be the first to have given it an
original and striking setting, and to make a readable book where they have
failed. We have read the book from beginning to end, and should like to be
instrumental in recommending it to others. For, whether we agree with the
conclusions or not, it will be difficult to retire from this delightful book
without feeling that it has awakened new thoughts and exercised a powerful
stimulating effect on faith and practice."
PREFACE.
IT is greatly to be desired that Christian scholars and
- divines should thoroughly re-consider that interesting
field of doctrine known as "Eschatology." Current
opinions on" Last Things" are widely and increasingly
felt to be dependent upon a highly artificial system of
interpretation, and even then are marred by evident
inconsistencies, and scarred by visible self-contradictions.
The practical results, besides, have been
deplorably unwholesome to Christian life, making it
unduly sectarian, feverish, and materialistic, as well as
damaging to the claims of Scripture as an authentic
record of the teachings of our Lord and His
Apostles.
This book is a humble plea with all who are
concerned with Scripture interpretation to re-consider
the whole question of the Coming and Kingdom of
Christ. It proceeds upon the
principle that prophecy
Vi Preface.
is not couched in occult or deceptive language, though
strongly Hebraistic in conception and expression, and
aims at showing that what Christ and His. Apostles
foretold was strictly true when their language is
interpreted
in its directest sense, and in remembrance
of the spiritual ends they had in view. The substantial
accuracy of our. conclusions may almost be presumed
from the fact that New Testament prophecy is found
self-consistent and easy of interpretation, and the
outcome entirely worthy of the Gospel of God's
salvation.
Our method is by the necessities of the case strictly
exegetical, and we extend to each book a separate,
though sometimes brief examination. We give the
first and most prominent place to the Apocalypse for
diverse reasons. It is the one New
Testament book
which is professedly concerned with the Second
Advent, and is constructed pictorially to answer to the
Biblical phrase which is the title of this work-its
evening and morning prophecies together making up
that epoch of judgement known to the closing
centuries of the Jewish dispensation as "The Great
Day of the Lord." In keeping with this design, it is
not only the fullest Scripture dealing with our subject
but at the same time the simplest; because, in spite
of its allegorical scenes and Kabbalistic hints, it is the
richest in detail as to the time, the nature, and the
sphere of our Lord's Coming in His Kingdom. The
Preface. vii
other books of the New Testament are accordingly
treated as subsidiary and corroborative,-the only
further light found in them being what St. Paul teaches
\ as to the origin and developement
of the resurrection
body. The one drawback of our method is that it
leads to a repetition .of texts and of ideas; but on the
other hand, su~h repetition may the
better drive home
the _unfamiliar teachings of this work, and the more
forcibly exhibit the perfect agreement which exists
between all the New Testament books as to the facts
of our Lord's Second Coming.
We have not thought it needful to discuss the
authorship, date, and structure of our piece de
resistance,
the Apocalypse. The exigencies of the case do not
tie us to any particular opinion. The book might
have been written in part as a theological explanation
of events already past, or in anticipation of events
about to come. However, the evidence for the latest
date consistent with the authorship of St. John is so
scant, and dubious at the best, while the internal
evidence for the earlier date is-so exceedingly strong
and so clearly supported by traditions almost equal in
authority and more than equal in probability to those
which support the first, that we cannot refuse our
belief to the earlier date fixed for its origin. In any
case, what we find to be the only possible interpretation
of the book is in itself a strong presumption of its early
and apostolic origin.
viii Preface.
Our readers will probably not find fault with us for
endeavouring, not merely to elucidate the prophetic
sense of Scripture, but to accompany it with those
lessons of life and godliness with which true prophecy
is always charged. As New Testament prophecy is
here interpreted it will be seen that its message is
an essential portion of the Gospel of our salvation,
and lends ftself easily to didactic purposes.
The first edition of this book was published four
years ago, and was received with a favour for which
we return our sincerest thanks. This edition adds to
the first a more careful examination of the other New
Testament books than could be given when these
were only cursorily cited to point out their agreement
with certain teachings in the Apocalypse. It is hoped
that this enlargement will make the volume increasingly
useful j and certainly, the
eschatological parts of
the Gospels and Epistles are as commonly misunderstood
as the so-called mysterious Apocalypse itself.
In conclusion, we would in all sincerity assure
a~y readers whose minds may be pre-occupied with
the more sensational doctrines now popular that, on
calm consideration, they will find the views here presented
not only more distinctly scriptural, but more
helpful to Christian life and more comforting in view
of death and the infinite beyond. One thing we
assert as beyond all question, because now vouched
for by a very wide experience, that to those who use
Preface ix
this key the entire Bible -becomes a more luminous
and helpful book, and many passages that before
seemed confused, contradictory, or even meaningless,
cease to be perplexing and become radiant with a
satisfactory meaning. May the. divine blessing lead
each reader into the knowledge of the truth.
ABERDEEN, October, 1894.
COR RICE N DA.
Page 62, line 2. CorII incredulous" read iNCrtdible.
u lo.t., n 8, for IIexpiscated If It
tsju1tJ{td.
II 13-4. It 2, CorII augeries II
"augwries.
II lSI, U 2I r for CI understood"
II ",iSlltulerstootl.
It J82, It 19, CorU
who n 1uJw.
U 2031 It 23, for II Aceldema.
tI II AceltJamtJ.
II 231, " 17, for U temporarily It
II tt",jortUl~.
CONTENTS.
~ht (lj)ttat ~a!! of the
~orb
In the Old and New Testaments,
ST. JOHN
Specially prefaced to be its interpreter, ...
THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST.
Through what media Christ is revealed, ...
The time and place of this revelation,
The Christ about to be revealed, ...
Christ's Message to the Asiatic Churches-
As to the time of His coming,
" their moral state,
II their immediate future,
PAGB
I
3
&
16
18
19
20
THE PROPHETIC VISIONS.
'art 1.-ettightfaU. Dr tltt ~aet ~a~s
of tltt Jdllish ~ie.
Heaven opened,-The Divine Moral Government, 25
Christ assumes His Mediatorial Powers, ... 33
The Beginning of Judgement, 41
The Sealing of God's Elect, 51
The Trumpet Judgements, 59
The Mystery of God Finished, 79
Destruction in order to Salvation, 86 'art
II.-~ll~.pting, Dr the
~bbtnt of the Qthrlstian ~e.
The Woman and the Dragon, log
The Wild Beast from the Sea, 123
The Tame Beast from the Land, ... ... 133
Appendix.-The Beasts, the Man of Sin, and Anti-christ,
140
The Church on Mount Zion, 144
The Son of Man in the Clouds of Heaven, 154
The Seven Last Plagues, ... 163 _
xii Contents.
PAGE
The Harlot judged, 179
The Marriage Supper and the Victory of the Word of God, 196
Satan Bound-The Millenial Reign-The Judgement of the
Dead, 205
The New Jerusalem, ... 229
Summary and conclusion of this Book, ... 244
HIS GOSPEL AND EPISTLES.
The difference in style and tone, ...
Why little Apocalyptic teaching in the Gospel, ...
Christ's twofold coming to His disciples,
The lapse of time before His coming,
Approaching Resurrection and Judgement,
The" last hour" of the Epistles,... ...
SS. MATTHEW, MARK, AND LUKE.
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS.
257
258
259
261
264 •
267
When written, 269
The mission of John the Baptist, ... 271
Jesus un the nearness of His coming, 273
The coming and development of His Kingdom-modern
misunderstandings, 276
The Lord's last prophecy, ... ... ... 280
The meaning of the Disciples' questions,... 285
The answer in detail, 295
Corroborative Parables-The Virgins, The Talents, The Sheep
and the Goats, 313
ST. JAMES AND ST. JUDE.
Eusebius on the cause of St. James' Death, 324
The falling away in the Jewish Church-the day of judgement
-the Parousia at hand, ... 325
The Witness of St. Jude, .. 326
ST. PETER.
The Apostle living in the last days,
The" restitution of all things," .
Impending judgement, ... .
The Kingdom heavenly in its nature,
Is the coming delayed in the Second Epistle? ..
Supposed destruction of the world,
328
329
331
332
333
334
Contents.
ST. PAUL.
Difficulties with his" eschatology,"
XIII
PAGE
33£
339
340
342
344
347
348
FIRST AND SECOND THESSALONIA"S.
His teaching at Thessalonica,
The second coming a time of peculiar judgement,
The advent signalised by a resurrection of the dead,
The coming just at hand, ...
What is meant by the coming,
The rapture of the living Saints, ...
FIRST CORINTHIANS.
The" day of Christ" still near, and described as a Jewi.h
Judgement, ... ... 352
The resurrection at His coming, 354
SECOND CORINTHIANS.
Paul's supposed change of outlook, 358
His view of the earthly tahernacle, 360
Longing to he "clothed upon," ... 364
A process already begun, ... 366
GALATIANS.
A transition period between the the Old Jerusalem and the
New, 368
ROMANS.
Impending judgement-Glory about to he revealed-victory at
hand, 369
The restoration and conversion of the Jews, 371
EPHESIANS.
The dispensation of the fulness of the times about to come,
372
COLOSSIANS.
The Gospel preached in all the world before the enrl-the
shadow and the coming substance-the "rudiments of the
world" to be consumed by the wrath of God, 373
PHILIPPIANS.
The day of Christ to be seen by the Philippians, yet Paul
prefers
to die, although not prepared to say that he is perfected or
ready for the resurrection, 375
TIMOTHY AND TITUS.
The Apostle's last word-the judgement near-the glory of God
about to appear-the signs of the coming in the Apostacy
of the Church, 377
xiv Contents.
ANONYMOUS.
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
The old age still running, but about to disappear,
The world about to come,... .. ... ...
The changing dispensations,
The city about to come, ...
The tones of impending judgement,
CONCLUSION.
NOTEWORTHY FINDINGS,
APPENDIX.
THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS.
CLEMENT OF ROME,
BARNABAS, ...
HERMAS,
IGNATIUS, .
POLYCARP, ..
Sub-apostolic religious literature, ...
BIBLIOGRAPHY,
INDEX,
389
394
394
396
396
397
398
II CQthe ~ttnt ~lt}1
uf the ~urb."
INTRODUCTORY.
" IF TRUTH DO ANYWHERE MANIFEST ITSELF, SEEK NOT
TO SMOTHER IT WITH GLOSSING DELUSIONS, ACKNOWLEDGE
THE GREATNESS THEREOF, AND THINK IT YOUR BEST
VICTORY WHEN THE SAME DOTH PREVAIL OVER YOU."
-HOOKER'S Ecclesiastical Polity, Pref. Sec. ix,
"~ht Q5ttat !lay of the ~~tll
"
S"TANDS like a background of red-hot fire in all the
Scriptures from Isaiah to Revelation. Judgement
is God's strange work; but in a world of sin, with a
righteous God upon his throne, the tones of threatening
must always be reverberating through the air.
Happily, even in Old Testament revelation, God's
judgement-day is always at the same time" the day
of his salvation."
" Destruction and salvation are the hands
Upon the face of time."
All salvation is by fire; to save is necessarily to destroy.
Hence the great Messianic Salvation for which
Israel hoped, is identical with" That great day of the
Lord" in which "his fury shall burn like an oven."
"The acceptable year of the Lord" is "the day of
vengeance of our God."
Interpreters of prophecy vainly think that the prophets
were somewhat confused in their outlook.
Isaiah is charged with confounding the first and
second advents of our Lord, while those two events
were lying at least 2000 years apart. Those old Seers
were better instructed than their commentators. The
advents were resolved into one because they are
substantially
one, both as to their intention and their
2 The Two Adueuts Om.
time. The unvarying testimony of the Scripture is,
that the same generation sees the consummate sacrifice
of our great High Priest and the desolating judgements
of our righteous King. The New Testament day of
judgement is the historical boundary line between the
legal age and that gospel era which is " the acceptable
year of the Lord." It takes
both the first and second,
the suffering and the reigning Christs,
to introduce the
gospel dispensation; just as it takes the dead and the
risen Christ to constitute that one Mediator who can
save unto the uttermost all who come unto God by
Him.
That such is the standpoint alike of Old Testament
and New Testament writers may be seen at a glance
by anyone who will be at the pains to look for this
idea in the Scriptures. Our Lord lived and suffered in
the latter years of the Mosaic age, and taught his disciples
that his work, whether He lived or died, was
to bring that age to an end. As plainly as language
could express it, He told them that his work would
be completed ere many years had passed. Accordingly,
their eyes were ever looking forward to that
awful day, significantly called" the last." They speak
of themselves as living in the last days, in the end of
the age, on the edge of a fearful crisis which will
shake the heavens and the earth; and they plainly
recognize that Christ's saving work is not complete
until this judgement is consummated. This is the
reason why all through the New Testament we have
sounding the trumpet of immediate judgement; or, to
revert to a former figure, why the background of the
Scriptures is the red-hot fire of judgement. Christ's
saving work is not finished with his sacrifice. He is
The Gospels and tlte Apocalypse One. 3
to reign and judge-destroy his and his people's enemies-
before his saints can enter into their eternal
rest, and the world be made to realize the marvellous
fact that God has come to dwell on .earth and to bestow
his pardon and salvation without distinction as
to race, or as to the greatness of men's sins.
The Apostle John was especially chosen and prepared
to explain to the expectant Church those
aspects of Christ's conquering work with which it was
immediately concerned. He had to tell his generation
in what facts they could discern the boundary
line of the old and new ages of the world; where
and how they were to read "the sign of the Son of
Man," and feel assured that He had prepared a place
for them in heaven, called up his saints from the grasp
of Hades, and secured a certain victory for his Gospel
on the earth. This message was conveyed in his book
of" Revelation"; ominous with meaning for its times;
as pregnant with meaning for ourselves. Never will it
be an old almanac, void of sense, except by the help
of a library of historians. Pre-eminently, it is the record
of Christ's saving work in continuance of his
earthly sacrifice,-so essentially bound up with it, that
without the Apocalypse, the Gospels are incomplete
and meaningless. In short, it is the final and crowning
word of revelation-filling up Paul's profound
epitome of the Saviour's mission :-" for to this end
Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord of
both the dead and the living." (Ro. xiv. 9). The
Gospels are "the earthly things" of Christ; the Revelation
is "the heavenly"; the former tell us that He
died and rose again, the latter that He lives and IS
the LORD both of the LIVING and the DEAD. There4
"Blessed is He that Readeth."
fore the Revelation of St. John is not a book to be
evaded and left enigmatical to the Church; or which
can be neglected without serious injury to the Church's
doctrine and life. We trust that many of our readers,
to whom it has been hitherto a sealed page, or a
stumbling-block, will find it to be one of the most
suggestive and comforting portions of the Word of
God.
May the good Lord endow reader and author alike
with the spirit of wisdom and interpretation, that they
may be worthy of the blessing pronounced upon those
who read and understand.
THE
REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST.
INTRODUCTOR Y.
CHAPTER I.
T\HE opening verses of John's book are equivalent to
- the title page of a modern volume. That head line
"The Revelation of Jesus Christ" is a comprehensive
summary, implying that the main scope of the work is
the manifestion or unveiling of what Jesus Christ truly
is in his divine nature and his saving work. This
Apocalypse is to be seen in "the things whic/t must
shortly come to pass." Christ is by no means about to
reveal Himself in his naked personality to the eyes of
men; nor to be made the subject of a treatise in which
his essential nature and relations to the Church and
world will be exhaustively unfolded. Heis to reveal himself
IN CERTAIN FACTS OF HISTORY. As these unfold
themselves they will be seen to contain"a manifestion
of his presence," a demonstration of his superior
nature and exalted functions as the One Great High
Priest of Humanity, and the Prince of the Kings of the
Earth, whose will must finally become supreme. Somewhat
as the effective miracle of the words "Rise up
and walk," was the visible sign and pledge of the
invisible blessing of the words "thy sins are forgiven
thee," so the outward and visible deeds here prophesied
again, as they had been in the days of our Saviour's
flesh, were to stand as signs of power and blessing
issuing from their Lord in unseen and eternal spheres.
6 Christ Reueaied £n History.
[I.
Such being the ostensible purpose of the book, it is
evident that this" Revelation" can be given only in
events which" must slzortty come
to pass." A personal
revelation in historical occurrences fixed for a
distant
day, or beginning in some near day and slowly dragging
itselfonward in unspecialized events standing hundreds
of years apart, could have rendered no possible service
to the early Church; and unhappily, as we know, could
only keep in perplexity the Church of
succ~ssive
centuries. To have any power of comfort for the
Church, or any force of conviction for the world, it
must be a process of comparatively brief and compact
dimensions ; condensed almost into an episode; a
tableau of events which can be seen almost at one
glance of the eye.
Now, in the title page of the book there are no less
than FIVE distinctive indications of the whereabouts in
history this" unveiling" must transpire.
(1) We have the intimation that God gi1/es
this
revelation to Jesus Christ. Earlier in Scripture
we are
told on high authority that the very angels in heaven
do not know the day and hour of the coming of the
Son of Man; and not even the Son Himself, but the
Father only, who keeps the times and seasons in his
power. The fact that now the
day and hour are
communicated to the Son is proof of the immanence
of the event. "The Father loveth the Son and sheweth
Him all things that Himself doeth," that is, as He
proceeds to execute them. The time is come for God
to work; then Christ is sent to give the revelation to
his waiting and expectant Church. Indeed, Christ
becomes, as we shall see, the executor of the Father's
will.
1-3.] A Book for its Times. 7
(2) This revelation is for Christ's"sen/ants,"
of whom
. ] ohn is one. Primarily, this revelation is not the book;
it is the actual historical unveiling of the majesty of
Christ. The events narrated are to happen in order to
reveal Christ to his servants then on earth. That the
revelation is an actual unveiling before that generation
seems implied in the order to transmit the necessary
key to the events to the churches over whom John
was exercising presbyterial functions, and through
them to the universal company of believers.
(3) The same is clear from the fact that those to
whom the book is sent are" hearers" in the churches
when the book is read, and are required"
to keep tlu
tlzings zuritten therein," by fidelity to Christ"
in the
midst of the events in which the "unveiling" is being
realized. But how could those addressed be seriously
concerned in the prophecy of the book, if no part of it
is yet fulfilled, or even if by far the greater portion lay
in the dim and distant future, and especially that event
which really is the only one of practical importance in
the book-the second coming of their Lord? Does
the language not imply that" the proplucy"
is one,
condensed, immediate,-the coming of their Lord to
them,-putting the Church upon a new probation? The
epistles to the churches will clearly show that the book
is not so much a series of events as one event, the
Coming of the Lord; and that the prophecy from first
to last enters into the life of the existing members of
those churches, tests them individually like a judgementday,
and rewards or punishes openly before the world.
How vastly different is the standpoint of the apostle
and his contemporaries from that of a recent expositor
who makes the daring statement that" It
is clear that
8 Does God Educate by Delusions? [1.
God, though giving the prophecy in the apostolic age,
cannot have intended it to be understood for many
many subsequent generations." Thus, we are invited
to believe that this book was really intended to be a
mystification of the church for eighteen centuries; that
God calls darkness light, and deludes his people by
false hopes. If God educates his
people by such
delusions, where does this process end? May not the
hope of a second coming be as delusive for this century
and the next as it was for the first? May not the hope
of immortality itself be only a benevolent ignis fatuus
to lead the Church across the bogs of sensualism to
firmer walking ground? The method savours too
much of a trick to be divine. The book pledges itself
at its birth to be a book whose words are" faithful and
true," and in the keeping of whose instructions there
is a great reward. " Let God be true and every man
a liar."
(4) This unveiling of Christ is to be given in
things w/zz"ch MUST SHORTLY come to pass." These
words ought to put beyond all controversy the substantial
meaning of the book. Unhappily, few English
exegetes have been prepared to stand by their direct
sense. One class reads them as if they ran-" things
which must shortly begin to come to pass." Alford,
although he actually interprets the book according to
this false sense, denies strenuously its validity. The
meaning" is, he says, things" which in their entirety
must soon come to pass,"-" must have come to pass"
-" be fulfilled." Others admit that the clause must
cover the whole transactions of the book, but put
this word"shortly" on the rack and stretch it out
over at
least 2000 years. "It is God's word,
and we never
1-3.] " Tlze Day ofJeho·valt." 9
know what shortly may mean with Him, to whom a
day is as a thousand years." On this principle we
cannot know what any word from God may mean,
whatever it may concern, for God is not at any time a
man. But certainly this elastic treatment of the temporal
element in prophecy cannot be justified in one
single case: and is actually refuted by the classical
case in Daniel, by which it is most frequently
defended. Dr. Briggs assures us that near and at
Itand
in the prophetic books mean nothing: are only stock
bits of furniture in the prophetic art. The" day of
Jehovah" was at hand alike to Joel and to Malachi;
and Jesus and the Apostles go on using the same
loose and confusing speech. (Messianic Prophecy, p.
54.) Such blundering has no existence save in the
imagination of slovenly or careless interpreters, who,
if they were not deceived by phrases, would see that
the prophecies they confound do not refer to the
same impending judgements. There are many" days
of Jehovah" in the visions of the prophets. Now, it
is the destruction of Moab, then it is Jerusalem in
danger of Scythian or Assyrian invasion; or it is
Babylon threatened by the Medes, or Egypt defeated
on the Euphrates; occasionally it is a purely ideal and
general judgement of the enemies of the Church. To
mix all these judgement-days together, and charge the
prophets with confusion, is an unpardonable sin.
Whenever a prophet says that" the day of the Lord
is near," it will be found on the simplest comparison
of his prophecy with contemporary history, that some
terrible calamity is impending in which God's hand is
to be seen. This blunder, into which too many writers
have fallen, may be explained thus:-They imagine
10 Were the Apostles i'rfistaken ? [1.
the prophet to be thinking of an ideal and final judgement
which is described as near, while actually distant;
whereas he is thinking of a specific day of judgement
which is actually ncar, but which in its processes and
results he describes in ideal terms. It is forgotten that
the prophet is poet aa well as seer. These various
judgement-days are not to be confounded because described
in similar terms. The prophets are not to be
supposed as looking through a haze, and having" no
sense of perspective.'" All such uncomplimentary
comments should cease, and prophecy be read according
to the plain straightforward sense it must have
carried to those for whom it was spoken at the first.
However, it is no prophetic utterance we have here;
but a business and prosaic record of the apostle's own
interpretation of his book. It is after he has received
his visions, mastered their contents, and is about to
put them into literary form for the Asiatic churches
that he deliberately pens these words - pens them
with a human and honest sense. What did John mean
by the words tV
TrJ..XH-sllortly? Did he really understand
the events of Christ's parousia to be just impending?
No scholar doubts that such was the real
belief of the apostolic age; and therefore, on the
theory we combat, we are invited to look back upon
the painful spectacle of those "inspired apostles"Christ's
faithful companions and martyrs-blundering
on such a simple matter-inspired to utter phrases
which deceived themselves and conveyed wrong impressions
to the Church! We cannot but feel sorry
for those deceived apostles, worthy of more candid
treatment; but what are we to think of the divine
action in the case? Is it enough to cover it (as Mr.
1-3.] " SllOrtly " means- What
? 11
Guiness does) with the soft apology - "The Holy
Ghost did not undeceive them." Pray, Sir, who deceived
them first of all? At how many more apostolic
misapprehensions does God wink? Is it a part of
God's general method to use language which deceives?
Is it possible that He can employ tools so sinister and
offensive?
I t is maintained, however, that" shortly" is "a
prophetic
formula" of all ages, and means nothing in this
place. Alford, followed by the Speaker's Commentary,
stakes the whole case upon our Lord's use of the
word in Luke xviii. 8,-" He will avenge them
speedily," where, he says, "long delay is evidently
implied." We are perfectly willing to take up the
challenge, especially since the subject of our Lord's
discourse is identical with the subject of John's
Revelation.
Our Lord looks forward to the time when, in
the social disorders and persecutions of a closing age,
his apostles will be sorely pressed, and many of them
martyred for the faith. Then (as in the corresponding
passage in Rev. vi. 10), their blood will cry from the
ground for revenge, and ascend with the groans of
their fellow saints on earth. At first God cannot grant
their prayer; but He says to them :-" Rest for a little
season until your fellow-servants and your brethren
which should be killed like you shall be fulfilled," then
relief will come. Thus our Lord teaches his disciples
to persevere in prayer, with the assurance that just when
God seems deaf to their bitter cry, their victory is near.
They are to know that "it is darkest just before the
dawn" ; that"when things are at the worst they begin to
mend" ; and therefore the word" speedily" is
expressly
intended to oust every possibility of the notion of
12 " The Time is at Hand." [1.
delay. Surely the disciples would easily understand
that from the moment of their faintness and despair
relief was near. So plainly is deliverance near to the
temporal standpoint of the thought of Christ, that one
may well marvel that able expositors should be capable
of such mistakes as to pen: "here speedily implies a
long delay." We claim that it can mean nothing but
speedily; and that the idea of delay would choke
all
breath out of the parable.
(5) The solemn assurance, "the time is at hand," we
hold to be an honest word; and as such it is made an
argument for watchfulness. If, as a matter of fact, the
prophecy hardly concerned that generation, what truth
is in the apostolic statement, or what force in the
argument? Then who is responsible for the excitement
of hopes destined to be disappointed; for the
culture of church piety by baseless fears and deceitful
promises? Is it lawful to do evil that good may come?
We are not ashamed to press this argument once again.
These are questions that must be faced.
PREFACE AND DEDICATION (i. 4-20).
JOlIN'S mind is stored so full of the soul-stirring
scenes
which he has beheld in trance that, as soon as he is
face to face with his readers, he anticipates his subject
in abrupt and broken utterances of the sublimest character.
The Christ whom he reveals is at the very first
the Christ both of the Gospels and the ApocalypseHe
who shed his blood for men, and is now "the Ruler
of the Kings of the earth," who has made his Church a
kingdom and his people priests, destined to supremacy
on the earth. His present message to the churches is
4-7.] Tile Time and Place of the Parousia.
13
-" The unveiling of the hidden glory of the Crucified
is near. He cometh in his kingdom. All eyes shall
see the signs of his kingly dignity, and especially that
people who slew Him as if he had been a worm and
no Son of God. All the tribes of the land shall beat
their breasts over Him. Amen-So let it be."
*
Here again we have a key to the true interpretation
of the book. John quotes from Zech. xii. where the
prophet is typically teaching that before the ideal age
comes in Israel will have" to mourn that she pursued
with mortal enmity a servant of God sent to bear
witness to the truth." The sorrow of that day is to fill
all the land of Israel in its tribes, and to be particularly
distressing in Jerusalem. Surely John's quotation of
these words indicates his belief that they are hastening
to fulfilment, and points us to the field on which the
apocalypse is mainly to transpire. The tragedy begins
while the Jew is still in possession of the land, while
Jerusalem stands, and while some of that generation
which pierced the Christ are still alive to be visited by
the fitting Nemesis of their crime. The same limit of
time was fixed by our Lord Himself for his parousia"
This generation shall not pass away till all these
things be fulfilled;"-" Some of you standing here
shall not taste of death till you see the Son of Man
coming in his kingdom." It is a
glaring fact that in
almost every possible form, Christ indicates the whereabouts
in place and time of his coming, and that in
every instance it is near to those who stand about Him,
and involves the unbelieving in a penalty which is at
* It may be as well to note
here, once for all, that the Greek word so
frequently translated "earth," means also" land," and ought
as a rule
to have been so translated.
14 ..In the Spirit."
[I.
once the rupture of their national covenant with God,
and the destruction of their national life. "Judgement
must begin at the house of God." In Christ's day this
judgement is within a lifetime, a generation; in the
Epistles it is" at hand"; in the Apocalypse it is come.
The Jew, as Paul and James so clearly intimate, is to
bear the brunt of it; but the thunderbolts that shake
the city of God to its foundations will send out their
waves of trouble and distress to the ends of the
earth.
John, the son of the eagle eye, was languishing in
banishment for the testimony of Jesus. In the midst
of his sufferings, he must often have remembered the
enigmatical saying of his Lord concerning the terminus
of his earthly life-" What if he tarry till I come?"
and fondly cherished the expectation that he would
be spared to see the day when his Lord would take
his mighty power and reign. At length a mystic hand
is laid on him, and he too becomes as one who has
transcended death. The deep eternal world is all
around him. Christ is discovered to be in no distant
sphere, but present with his Church even before the
end of the age. Consciousness needs only to be
turned inward from the sphere of sense, in order to
witness the occurrences and scenes of that deeper and
more enduring world.
Immediately, John learns that he has been brought
hither for a purpose. He is to see marvellous things;
and to write his visions in a book that the men of his
time may ponder its lessons and be blessed in their
observance.. In John's first vision he saw a picture
that was dear to him, because it reminded him of a
10-16.] "jesus Crowned." 15
sacred past; and sad as dear, because it prophesied of
a splendour that was soon to pass away. This golden
candlestick is not now, alas, the glory of the temple;
it has become the symbol of the Christian Church. In
this centre of illumination stands one like the Son of
Man, as John had seen Him in his transfigured glory.
The face of this heavenly personage is so dazzling in
its burning splendour that John is glad to rest his eyes
upon the drapery which invests Him. The garments
are sacerdotal. Now, the Aaronic priesthood is entirely
superseded; the Son of Man Himself is the High
Priest of humanity. The smoke of burning flesh stiIl
ascends from the altars of Jerusalem; but only to affront
the majesty of heaven. Visibly the seven-branched
candlestick is in its place; but its light is burning to
the socket and will soon go out. Jerusalem is no
longer the divine centre of the world; because supplanted
by that Church in which Christ dweIls, and
through which He is the light of the world.
Such is the marvellous transformation which has
taken place upon that Jesus who parted from his
disciples on Mount Olivet, as only the sublimest of all
men, and hitherto too much conceived of as still
hampered by the smaIl dimensions of our manhood.
The manhood is indeed retained; but He has now
become the Ancient of Days described in prophetic
scenes, the Eternal' Wisdom, white with the
splendours of its purity. The eyes of his Divine
Intelligence
go to and fro to search the evils and
exceIlencies of all hearts; even in his feet, where He
comes' closest to the earth, his outgoings are most
glorious. Altogether, Christ is revealed to his Church,
in his divinest and most gracious attributes. He is
16 What Cllyist is to tile
CllUycll. [1.
the Great High Priest, the voice of Everlasting Love,
the Sun that brightens all man's heaven, the King
who wields the all-conquering sword of truth, and
carries the keys of eternal kingdoms in his hands.
He is no longer the tender martyr, or the resuscitated
prophet of the Church's feeble faith, but the very
Christ of God, exalted far above all angels, clothed
with the attributes of the Eternal. This Son of God
is going forth to war; He is taking to Him his great
power, and is to reign until his enemies are judged and
scattered. His fainting Church will see ere long that
she is destined to prevail and to fill the whole earth
with her ·glory.
This then is the" Revelation of Jesus Christ." The
contents of the book are to answer to the features of
this image, prove it true. The churches are to watch
and see if the immediately unfolding history of the
world does not illustrate and confirm its teaching, and
his supernatural claim. They have thought of Him as
afar off in the heavens; they must learn that He has
always been amongst them. Just as they are despairing
of the triumph of the cross they are to be assured
that the moment is at hand when the tide of victory
will turn. When their enemies are most triumphantly
asserting that the Christ is for ever dead, they are
to see that He has risen indeed, and not as a
man might rise, but a's God must rise when He
takes the form of our humanity. This was a revelation
suited for the hour, and for all time. The
Church is .the kingdom and city of God. Read in
this book her mission. Interpret by this book her
various trials; discern, if you will, her future history.
This book explains it all, simply because it is a
19.] The Limits of tile Book. 17
revelation of what Christ is to the Church, and
how Christ fulfils his will in the Church's destiny.
It is from Christ himself that John receives his
commission
to write this book. Its contents are prescribed
in a form which John could neither mistake nor
disobey. "Write what thou sawest" (or hast seen
when the visions are finished), " both the things which
are" (the then existing state of things in the seen and
unseen worlds in their inter-relations) "and what is
about (p.EAAH) to happen after these,"*-the changes
which must immediately supervene. Here then
is the well-defined field of history to be embraced
within the book. Is it not the very climax of absurdity
to treat a book whose subject is so strictly
limited, as if it were a chart of universal history, an
almanac with enigmatical dates covering undecipherable
distances of time? The book is pledged again and
yet again to treat substantially of its own immediate
times,-and it can only be in some merely incidental
way, and with frankest acknowledgment, that it will
venture to step beyond the bounds assigned to it.
With no warning to the contrary, we shall stand by
common sense and common honesty in seeking for
the meaning of the book.
* While the Revised Version does more justice than
the Received to
this verb expressing the immediateness of events, it often
in this and
other books of Scripture most unreasonably gives it the
go-by: especially
when its reference is to the second coming, the resurrection
and the
judgement.
CHRIST'S MESSAGE TO THE CHURCHES.
CHAPTERS II.-III.
"Watch, for ye know not the hour of the coming of the
Son of .lifan."
r'f'IHESE seven epistles are passionate even burning
Jl. appeals to actual historical assemblies of believers.
I t is beyond the right of exegetes to give these
churches
a typical significance; or to break up their evidently
contemporaneous existence into seven successive
periods covering the entire history of the Church.
THE TIME OF CHRIST'S COMING
is described as urgent and immediate to each individual
church, to the last, no more so than to the
first. To Ephesus, Christ says: " I
will come quickly."
To Smyrna, his coming is preceded by a brief affiiction
soon to fall on them: "Fear not the things, which
thou art about to suffer; behold the devil is
about to
cast some of you into prison." Pergamos is threatened
with immediate judgement: "Repent or I
come quickly."
Thyatira is told that the long suffering of the
Lord is exhausted and judgement about to begin (vv.
21,22,25). Sardis is exhorted to watch because the
storm may burst at any hour. Philadelphia is told
that an hour of judgement is about to come on all the
world in which Christ will be present to protect his
friends, as well as to war against his foes. Laodicea is
H.-III.] "Watch l " 19
threatened with immediate rejection: "I will soon
spue thee out of my mouth. . Behold, I stand at
the door." Thus the crisis is as near to the last church
as to the first-equally near to all, in the same events.
It is difficult to see how the churches could interpret
this message with any other meaning, in absence of the
slightest hint to justify a repeated, successive or distant
fulfilment of its solemn warnings. As a matter
of fact, the universal Church was at that time in lively
expectation of Christ's coming; and, therefore, these
epistles sent from Christ Himself could not but intensify
the certainty that the most tremendous climax
in the world's history was at hand. No ulterior end,
such as that of keeping the Church always on the
alert for Christ's coming, can justify the use of deceptive
language in the Scripture. The Son of God is
not so impotent as to require to delude his Church
into beliefs which, for the vast majority, can have no
fulfilment. If this tricky method
were pursued by
any other founder of religion, it would be universally
stigmatized as unworthy jesuitry. We ought not to
impute such methods to Him whose word is-Yea
and Amen.
THE MORAL STATE OF THE CHURCHES
is precisely that which long before it had been prophesied
to be at our Lord's parousia. Christ describes
his pre-advent Church as suffering persecution, inundated
with false teachers, strifes, seditions, and impurities,
"whereby the love of many shall wax cold."
Paul warns the Thessalonians that the coming will not
be " until the falling away come first." Timothy is
20 Tlze Falling Away. [II.-III.
instructed" that in the last days grievous times shall
come ;"-false teachers will abound, sensual lusts invade
the Church, and lawlessness prevail. Peter reminds
his readers that they had been forewarned of
the corrupt condition of the Church in " the last of the
days," and points them to the evils then existing as
corroborations of these prophecies. John, in his
epistles, cites the abounding heresies of his day as
proofs that" the last hour" is come. Jude quotes
Paul's prophecy as to the last time, and puts his finger
on the evil doers who fulfil it: "these are they who
make separations, sensual, having not the Spirit." Let
our reader once again cast his eye over the state of
the Apocalyptic churches, and there he will find every
evil in full blast which the Gospels and Epistles foretell
as symptomatic of the coming of the great day of
the Lord. The whole Apostolic Church, if we may
judge it by its named representatives, is in a state of
serious relapse. Weary of its terrible conflict with its
foes, invaded by Gnostic thought and heathen vice,
tormented by Jewish spite, it is faint and ready to die.
The critical hour is come when Christ must either go
down or conquer.
THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE OF THESE CHURCHES
is interestingly bound up in the events and especially
in the issues about to happen in the world's history :
described spiritually in this book. Ephesus is to
make her choice between extinction and the last scene
of the book-true life in the Paradise of God. Smyrna
is appointed to the martyrdoms of chs. vi. and xii.,
and to be rewarded with deliverance from the second
II.-III.] Tile Coming in Churclt Experience.
21
death (xx. 14; xxi. IS). Pergamos is threatened with
the sharp sword of the Word of God (xix.), and
encouraged to repentance with the promise of being
sealed with the new name, given to the elect (xiv.).
Thyatira is to be visited with great tribulation (vi.
and xvi.), but the faithful are to sit with the manchild
on God's throne (xii., xix.), and enjoy" the morning
star," i.e. the coming day, which Christ's advent
heralds
in (xxii. 16). Sardis is warned, in language repeated
in xvi. 15, at the very crisis of the coming, that if
found faithful she will be dressed in white robes (vii.
9-13) for the marriage supper of the Lamb, and have
the final victory of eternal life (xix.) Philadelphia is
promised that the Jew shall be humbled at the Christian's
feet, and the victors made pillars in the temple
of God, and citizens of the New Jerusalem (xxi.), To
Laodicea comes the warning of rejection; but on
amendment, a share in Christ's victory and kingdom.
Thus patiently have we gone over these epistles to put
before our readers the significant fact that the events
connected with Christ's coming, as described in subsequent
visions, are distinctly set before these churches as
experiences through which they must pass, and whose
happy fruits they may reap. They are warned of an
immediately impending struggle between the powers
of Light and Darkness, in which they will suffer, but
out of which they will be spared to come as victors.
The promise to Philadelphia is expressly significant.
The Jew had been the bane of the Apostolic Church:
" its thorn in the flesh"-often as troublous inside the
Church as out of it. He claimed to be still the praised
of God; and like Ishmael, persecuted the Isaac of the
Spirit. When in amiable relations with his Roman
22 The Key to tlte Visions. [II.-III.
master, his one aim was to stir up Rome to crush the
Church of Christ. The moment is now come when
his pride will be overthrown, his power to injure
broken, his covenant relationship be annulled, and his
privileges visibly passed over to the believer in Christ
Jesus. The old Jerusalem is about to pass away, the
new about to come down from God in heaven. .A
new era dawns for the Church and the world. This
is the key to the events about to come to pass. The
whole unfolding of the book from first to last is an
experience immediately awaiting them as Churches of
Jesus Christ. If we will not see
this fact, so plainly
intimated before the visions dawn, we deserve to miss
their meaning, and to be given over to the fate of those
who" delude themselves by the believing of a lie."
PART 1.
"tRigbtfall; or tbe l..aet lDa\?e of tbe
3ewieb Bge.
" The Lord shall judge his people."
" Woe unto us! for the day
declineth, for the shadoic« of the
evening are stretched out."
" Then sank the star of Solyma,
Then passed her glory's day,
Like heath that in the wilderness
The light wind whirls away.
Silent and waste her bowers
Where once the mighty trod,
And sunk those guilty towers,
Where Baal reigned as God."-Nool·c.
HEA VEN OPENED.
CHAPTER IV.
" The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice.
He sitteth bettoeen the cherubims, let the earth be moved."
WE are now on the eve of that predicted cata-
~ Y clysm by which a dispensation which has
"waxed old" is to be providentially broken up, and a
new and better era introduced into the world.
If we
remember the crisis of the hour we shall soon discover
the meaning of the vision which John proceeds to
write. Many of the earliest readers of the Apocalypse
were familiar with the scene depicted here. Ezekiel
the prophet had had a similar vision when an exile
by the river Chebar. Jerusalem dragged on a weary
existence under a king whom Nebuchadnezzar had
set over it. The Jews left in the city had profited
nothing by the chastisement, and still worshipped
idols in the temple dedicated to Jehovah. Then this
solemn vision comes to Ezekiel, and he is bidden prophesy
that a severer storm of judgement is about to
break upon the holy city. Jerusalem is to be trodden
down, the temple to be demolished, the city of God
left desolate, the old kingdom of God to disappear!
But Ezekiel was made to understand that there was
a Divine Providence in the calamities of his time.
He learns that if the old order changes it is to give
26 Ezekiel andJohn. [IV.
place to a new and better; that the judgements which
befall his people will not uproot God's kingdom from
the earth, but in reality prepare the way for more
glorious manifestations of his power, and a still more
gracious fulness of his presence among men. This
Apocalyptic vision is so like Ezekiel's because John's
circumstances are the same. The older prophet was
in banishment-John was an exile for the word
of Christ. Ezekiel's generation was crushed by
the Babylonian beast-John's was oppressed by the
mightier incubus of Rome. Ezekiel's Jerusalem was
about to be laid in ruins because it had rejected the
Servant, John'S because it rejected the Son of God.
In both epochs, the judgement would necessarily
seem to be destructive of all
God's promises to his
people, and of all hope for the regeneration of the
world. In the latter epoch, the Church was as yet
so outwardly identified with the Jewish people and so
little severed from Jewish thought, that it could not
but share largely in the trials of the times, if it did not
altogether sink in the general collapse. And so, as the
faithful in Ezekiel's time were strengthened for impending
judgements by a vision of God's throne, and
a reconstructed temple far excelling the glory of
the past, John and the Church are also solaced by the
assurance that God still reigns, and uses all the forces
of the universe for the advancement of his cause.
" The Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up."
Heaven is opened to John's sight. There is the
throne of God. It is not empty. It
is not possessed
by a multiplicity of powers that rule the earth with
divided counsel. One sits on it. One Will rules over
1-3.] Love and Severity in God. 27
all. One Supreme Intelligence directs the course
of history. One plan is being carried out from the
foundation of the world to the final consummation of
its destiny. The character of the Deity who reigns is
symbolized by the bright translucent gleam of jasper
and the rich red glow of the sardius stone. There is
no mixture nor confusion; but all over that transcendent
form there is both the gleam of the purity of
truth and the rich warm glow of love. Behold your
God! not the God of Calvary only, sweet to look on
in his mingled tenderness and love, but as well the
God of righteousness and truth. We shall read very
soon of "the fierceness of his wrath!" but look beneath
the surface, and there is the calmness of the
unruffled sea. His judgement is not a bursting avalanche
of passion; it is the inflexibility of his truth
going forth to victory. His justice and his mercy are
the same, though of diverse aspects. The truth which
condemns our evil saves us from its power. When
God comes down to judge, He is a Father overwhelming
us with the bitterness of our sins in order that He
may purify and save; the severity of the jasper tempered
by the generous warmth of the ruddy sardius.
Shining above the throne there is "a rainbow like
an emerald to look upon." This God is the old historic
Y ahveh of Israel. If the
Gnostic heresy was in circulation
by this time that the God of the Jews was another
and inferior being to the God of Jesus Christ, and that
He had come to dethrone Him, here is its refutation.
It was this God who said-" I have set my bow in the
heavens," and He still remembers it in mercy. He is
also the strong and jealous God of Mount Sinai. Now
He says," Yet once more I shake the earth." The
CJlerubim and Seraphim. [IV.
quaking mountain was expressive of the goings forth
of higher truth, the institution of new laws, the
threatening of severer judgements. Here, likewise, a
new dispensation is to be officially begun. Old things
are to pass away, all things are to be new. Another
grand climacteric in the world's development has been
reached. New light is to break forth from Jehovah's
throne; a new fire which will consume his enemies.
It is indeed to be a war of THRONES ; and Jehovah's
sovereignty will assert itself against all the priestly
hierarchies, the tyrant Caesars, and the idol gods that
have held dominion in this world.
In the front of that throne" are seuen lamps of fire
bunting, wlziclz are tlte seven spirits of God." The
deep
meaning of this symbol is still hidden, but we may
safely say, with Bohme, that it points to seven fundamental
powers that penetrate and illumine the universe.
The effluent influence of God is well illustrated
by the light and heat of fire. God is our Sun; his
love and light, in all their sevenfold diversity, flow
forth continually to quicken and inspire his creatures.
"And before the throne there was a sea ofglass like
unto crystal." This sea would look as if it were the
floor of heaven; the foundation of God's throne.
Does that throne rest on darkness and on mystery?
Are God's ways full of perplexity and crookedness?
Nay, the principles of his government are most transparent.
His throne is established in righteousness,
and all the outgoings of his rule are truth and equity.
"Uherubim. and Seraphim; C17Jing-Hol!J, Iwl!J, Iwl!J."
Round about the throne were placed "four LivingOnes,"
bearing the likenesses respectively of a Lion,
6-8.J Divine Providence. 29
a Calf, a Man, and a flying Eagle. It
is significant
that these are the principal types which the
ancient world chose to symbolise the Divine; yet
great diversity prevails as to their interpretation.
It
seems impossible to do better than to understand them
as embodiments of the powers or qualities of God in
his government of the world and its nations.
"Strength and Courage are Divine," said the Assyrian.
In the government of God, there is no lack of either in
the treatment of his friends or foes. His utterance of
judgement is like the lion's assault upon its foes; his
vigilance is like the lion searching for its prey-unsparing
in its efforts to rend the carcase of every false
and evil thought that lodges in the mind of man.
" Usefulness is Divine" said other ancient nations. The
plodding ox, what better symbol of patience and fruitful
force? Divine Providence is not merely like a lion
going forth to slay, but like a patient ox turning all
its toil to fruitfulness. If God
destroy, it is that He
may build again; if your error is exposed, it is to lead
you to the truth; if you are afflicted, it is to correct
your ways; all divine activity issues in abiding good.
The human form divine is Wisdom inspired by charity.
Such indeed are the energies of God-most wisely ordered,
most humanely inspired; and ever working
upward with the intelligence, the penetration, the unwearied
flight of the eagle. There is aspiration, progressive
evolution in the processes of God; a power
that lifts all creation up into diviner forms, and for
ever beautifies the sons of men. "They that wait
upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall
mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and
not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint."
30 All to the Glory of God. [IV.
The "eyes" with which these Living Ones are
endowed are expressive of the Divine Omniscience
which accompanies them in their action, the infallibility
with which they act; and the" wings" again tell that
they never grovel in the dust, but soar unweariedly to
higher and still higher heights of excellence. Accordingly,
their final cause in the universe is to manifest
and declare the glorious character of God. Does
history reveal a power within it, not ourselves, that
makes for righteousness? Is God's government unfolding
happily and progressively as the ages roll? Is
the earth being surely, if slowly, delivered from its
vanity and corruption? Does the human race progress
under the courageous, practical, kindly, and inspiring
Providence of God? Men ask these questions, not
without their fears that the world goes from bad to
worse; but whatever be the devious courses of the
stream, let us heartily believe that the Living Powers
that work upon this world as the hands of God, are
such as John described-infallible by their omniscience
and ever rising upward in their spiral course ;-therefore
never resting in ascribing "glory, honour, and
tllanks" to Him that sitteth on the throne, by the
growing betterness and beauty of the world.
"Principalities and Powers in the Heaoenlies"
Apparently outside the circle of these Living Ones
are "four and twenty Elders, seated upon thrones, wearing
zohite robes, and having crowns of gold upon their
heads:" Who are these? it may be asked; for the
answer is not quite apparent. Sometimes _they are
taken to be representatives of the Christian Church,
but more frequently twelve prophets and the twelve
4,10.] Tile four and twenty Elders. 31
apostles, representing the Old and New Covenants.
We believe it to be altogether a mistake to find the
Church already standing round the throne of God in
heaven. Even the Lamb is not yet seen there;
therefore it is impossible to have redeemed humanity.
These Elders are not human; they have not passed
through the great tribulation, nor been redeemed from
the earth. As Kelly notices, to the destruction of his
own interpretation, " their worship does not go beyond
the thought that God had created and sustained all
things." With Reuss, we take them to be angels of
the highest rank, a grand celestial priesthood, who, by
reigning over God's creation, give Him that continuous
glory which is his due. Perhaps, we ought even to go
the length of identifying them with that order of
angels in whose hands the Mosaic Covenant was
ordained (Gal. iii. 19; Heb. ii. 2). Let us not forget,
however, that we are dealing only with a symbol.
And yet, why may there not be in the spiritual universe
actual thrones and dominions for the due administration
of God's will? Let us not fancy that in discovering
kings and priests in heaven we are simply carrying up
our human notions and transforming heaven according
to our earthly models. It may be that the Elders are
24 because there were 24 courses in the Jewish priesthood;
and yet, may it not rather be that the earthly
arrangement was the shadow of the order in the
heavens? Perhaps after all, heaven is not so unlike
earth; except that it is the sublimation of our noblest
hopes, the unalloyed fulfilment of all that is good and
true on earth. All its creatures are pursuing the
highest good in contemplation and in action, because
all of them refer their activities and joys to· the holy
32 Wlzo is on the Tltrone? [IV.
inspirations of their God, and utterly forget themselves
in the work committed to their trust.
Ponder on this vision and yuu will see how fittingly
it answers to the wants of John and his fellow christians.
The question which was gnawing at their
hearts amid all the horrid disorder and oppression of
those times was, Is Satan King of Kings and Lord of
Lords? or is there after all a righteous God, and is
that God upon his throne? The answer is no dream
of the night, no fanciful speculation, no dogma from
the schools, but an open sigltt of heauen-s-e.
revelation
of God's throne as fixed and sure, in closest contact
with the earth.
"The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice."
" There is a river, the streams whereof shall make
glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles
of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she
shall not be moved; God shall help her, and that
right early. The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God
of Jacob is our refuge."
THE LAMB IN THE MIDST OF THE
THRONE.
CHAPTER V.
" Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession;
who sat doum on the right hand of the throne of the
Maje8ty in the Heavens."
S' T . John might well be satisfied, for a time at least,
, with the vision which he had seen. He had been
the witness of a turbulence and disorder down on earth
which have been seldom, if ever, paralleled in the
world's history. A Roman historian of the period
(Tacitus, Annals, B. 1., 2)
has painted a powerful
picture of the times in which this Revelation was
given to the Church. Wars, earthquakes, intrigues,
murders, domestic impurity, treachery, profanity, and
political revolution, are the pigments with which he
paints. Whatever were the common sufferings of the
time, it was worse to be a Christian. The follower of
Jesus was then a social pariah on whom men might
trample as on a worm, and whom corrupt officials
delighted to hunt to death, in order to confiscate his
goods to an empty exchequer, or for private spoil.
Added to the disturbed condition of the churches, it
was a time of perilous trial to the faith of many
Christians. To an earnest soul like John's, racked
with fears as to the future-longing for the coming of
God's Kingdom, and yet doomed to see the world
3
34 Tlte Book of Destiny.
[v.
growing worse, and the state of the Church more
hazardous-this vision of a throne set high in heaven,
a government whose energies were full of eyes of
wisdom, and clothed with wings of aspiration and
progress, must have come with a peace and hope that
made him calm and steadfast as a rock. But this is
only the beginning of a series of more brilliant revel
ations,-
the first scene in a drama of many acts of
ever-intensifying interest, in which is to be unfolded to
the Church the dark and troublous path by which
God will lead her to her final victory.
" The purpose ofHim that 100rketh all things after the
counsel
of His .cill."
John looked again at Him who sat upon this throne.
"On Izis rig-Itt Izand lay a book." The Seer at once
divines that the contents are a matter of immediate
interest to himself, and is eager to be told the meaning.
Therefore we may safely say, this is the book of
God's eternal purpose-the counsel of his Will-the
thing that God will do against every opposing power.
Many ()f us have been jealous of the doctrine that
God has a written plan for each separate human life,
to which every will must bow by grim necessity. We
have regarded such a doctrine as fatal to freedom, to
morality, to religion; and as time has passed, our
contention has been justified by an increasing concurrence
of opinion. But we have had no jealousy of the
doctrine that God has fore-ordained what He Himself
shall bring to pass-that God has settled plans, the
counsel of his own unerring wisdom, by which He
ever works and guides the world to its certain destiny.
2,3.] Who knows tlte Mind of the Lord?
35
Such a faith is of prime necessity when men are
called upon to struggle for the true and right in the
face of odds that might well appal the stoutest heart.
It was a faith essential to the earliest pioneers of
gospel truth, as they flung themselves into the midst
of savage hordes to conquer or to die. Without this
faith, the fires of persecution would have withered the
spirits of our own reforming forefathers. Instead of
battling against mighty odds with a hope that rarely
died, and a strength like the very strength of God,
because they held themselves to be guided by a Will
that was invincible, they must needs have yielded to
despair, and crept into their mountain caves to die like
beaten dogs. Through the faith that their cause was
God's and that God marches to certain victory, the
weakest was made mighty to labour and to endure.
" The things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God."
But how is it possible for men to know what God's
hand may contain? The cry of all ages is-" Who is
worthy to open this book, able to break the seals that
lock its contents from the ken of men? " Man wants
his augurs and his prophets very much, and is willing
to pay the price of their charlatanism. "But no one in
lzeaven, or in earth, or in tlte deptlts of
hades" can read
the secret purposes of God. The" times and seasons"
are kept hidden even from the angels in the Father's
hand. The book of God can be read only by some
one who has a perfect apprehension of the mind of
God; and if the book is to be translated for the ears
of man, by some one who has a perfect apprehension
of the wants and longings of the human heart.
36 Our problems soh/ed in Clzrist.
[vo
So eager was John, that a moment seemed like a
century of delay, and his despair found vent in tears.
Is it possible to grieve standing even in the presence
of the throne? Tears are human. Dante meets Virgil
with the challenge-s-v.Art thou truly man or melancholy
shade? " The answer is-" Non 1I0m; 1I0mo gia fui,"
(not man; I once was man). The hallowed assurance
of our Christian Faith is, that we shall be more human
once we have crossed the threshold of that life.
Before the unsolved problems of eternity, we too may
be moved like John. His heart was with the Church;
the destinies of his people roused his interest; and
THERE he hungers to know, whether the tree of life
which God has planted on the earth, is to be torn up,
or to root and spread itself in peace and joy to men?
But God shall wipe away all tears. An Elder said to
John "weep not!" Ah, how often do we weep like
John; too soon, before we know God's story to its
end; weep because there is a little pause, and we fancy
that it ends in darkness or in death, when, if only we
were patient and had faith, we should anticipate a
splendid culmination for whatever his Providence has
begun. U Be/wid, tile Lion of
tke tribe of fudalz, tile
root of David, Izatlz ouercotne to open the book and loose
tlze seuen seals thereof." These were familiar titles
to the members of the Apostolic Church. They
connect Jesus with the brightest hopes of Israel, the
grandest promises of the old prophetic word; and
point to Him as the heir of David's throne, whose
right it is to reign over all the peoples and the princes
of the earth.
But why has He such power, and through what
special aptitudes does He prevail? Behold, this Lion,
6.] Sacrifice the Way to Power.
37
name of power, magnanimity and courage, is in very
deed a Lamb. How contradictory, yet how true in
the experience of the Church. The ways of the Lord
are a combination of power and gentleness. Able to
tear and destroy, his very fierceness is the play of love.
He can slay and be slain. Here at this moment, He
is the Lamb slain for our sin, the Lamb of wounded
love, God's sacrifice for our salvation; but for the
completion of his work, the Lamb must be as well the
Lion who can destroy the enemies whom his love
cannot transform.
" Exalted far above all Principalities and Powers."
This slain Lamb is in the midst of tlte throne.
Blind unbelief, so proud to be" unduped of fancy,"
says-
"He is dead. Far hence He lies
In the lone Syrian town,"
but to those who have eyes to see, God has made it
plain, that Christ has really ascended up to imperial
power and splendour in the heavens. God is never
in the future to be severed from this Lamb. His
throne is never to be seen apart from Jesus crucified
; in its very thunderings and lightnings there
is the spirit of gentleness and love' that suffered
unto death that we might live. This Lamb is henceforth
inside the mystic circle of the Elders and the
Living Ones. In all directions, the energies of God
flow out through the principle of self-sacrifice and
mercy. None the more is God's government one of
laxity and incompetence. The Lamb has seven horns,
that is perfect power, and seven eyes, infinite
discern38
All tllings put under Him.
r-.
ment to detect the evil and the good. " As the Father
hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to
have life in Himself." The Lamb is invested with the
judging and quickening powers of God: henceforth is
to be held as most Divine.
Then the Lamb took the book out of the rigltt Iland
of Him that sat on the throne. This is the
transformation
of Old Testament revelation into the sweeter
spirit of the New. .The Father has given the kingdom
to the Son. Moses is no longer master of the
house; the Son is taking his mighty power to reign.
The Lamb is now" the power of God." Henceforth it
must be known that all highest power must take the
form of love, and that they alone know God who see
Him through this once-suffering now triumphant
Mediator.
" Let all the Angels of God u'O'rship Him."
This apotheosis of the Lamb is universally acknowledged
in the heavens. "When God bringeth in his
first begotten" into the highest heaven, Cherubim
and Elders all fall down before the Lamb in homage
to that Divine Man in whom both hemispheres of the
universe are united, and a lost world reconciled to God.
Now is the time for universal joy and thanksgiving.
On earth Christ has achieved a mighty work, though
it is still only in its bare inception. He has given to
God a Church that even in its infancy is the mightiest
power the world has ever known. The kingdom of
God is come. Prophetically, the Church is seen to
reign. It is the stone cut out of
the mountain that
hurled against the brutal kingdoms of the earth will
grind the strongest of them to powder. Heaven begins
6-14.J C/zrist Head ouer all. 39
its actual reign on earth; and this is the moment of
high festival."
Surely this is indeed an answer to the cry of the
troubled churches of John's time. Is the devil's carnival
to reign on earth? Are oppression and violence
to prevail against the saints of God? Hear the answer
in the swelling song of heaven-" The Lamb is the
mightiest power; He is invested with the royalties of
heaven and earth; He is the redeemer of his people
from the grasp of every power that is inconsistent with
the reign of peace and love. His Church is glorious
in its might; as yet a small and secret company of
kings and priests, it nevertheless rules the destinies of
earth, and the nations that shall not acknowledge it
shall perish." Such was the assurance which came to
that fainting Church from the throne of God. Small
as yet was the company of them that kept the word
of God; but they were the kings of their generation,
the wielders of that influence which more than all has
shaped the world's growth through eighteen centuries.
In this joyful acclamation at the advent of the
Lamb all ranks and orders of the angels join (v. II).
That sacrificing love by which the world was redeemed
concerns all ranks of God's creatures. The manifestation
of his character as a God who suffers for his universe,
suffers to abolish suffering amongst the creatures
He has made, is an occasion of transcendent joy
through all the sentient universe. Yea, down even to
the unseen depths of being there can be but one re-
* Ifthe reader will turn to the Revised Version (ch.
v, 9-10), it will
be seen that they who sing this new song of the Kingdom are
no part of
the redeemed. It is the heavenly hierarchy who here
celebrate the initiation
of the era of redeeming love.
40 God in Christ.
[v.
sponse. Wherever God in Christ is known and recognized,
there can be only joy. God in Christ is the God
of conciliation, of progress, of increasing light and
liberty. As God in Christ is known, his praise shall
increase through all eternity.
THE OPENING OF SIX SEALS.
CHAPTER VI.
" The time is comefor judgement to begin at the house
of God."
T'HERE is something in the heart of man that
~ makes him pry into the future. We ever look
forward with good hope. Fortune, not misfortune, we
anticipate; but no revelation of the future would be
true to life that did not mix our joys with tears, and
show us dark and lurid shadows falling here and
there upon the silveriest path that human foot has
trod. Perhaps John may weep again; this time, because
the seals are opened and the future ominous
with every token of distress and pain.
A seal is opened by the Lamb. Then John hears a
voice of thunder say" Come." It is the utterance of
the Lion: Providence in its strong commanding aspects
; and this call is addressed to the rider and his
horse not yet in the field of vision. The Lion is here
the servant of the Lamb. An ancient prophet said
they should "lie down together;" and the first true
reconciliation
was realized in Him who is at once the
Judge and the Saviour of Men. But notice that even
here the influence of the Lamb is uppermost. The
strength and courage to devour and rend are completely
at the bidding of the Lamb who was slain.
"Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered."
John saw, and behold, a wlzite horse, with a crowned
rider, going forth conquering and to conquer. A power
42 Victory! Va' Victis! [VI.
this with which the lion-like aspect of Providence is in
closest sympathy. It purports
victory on victory. I
have felt strongly drawn to the interpretation given
by Alford, Godet, and others, that this represents the
conquering, invincible, V';ord of God-truth from the
bow of doctrine, which is like an arrow in the hearts of
the enemies of the king. Great is truth, and it must
prevail in every province and dominion now enslaved
by darkness and sin. There is, however, a certain
incongruity between so sweet and pleasing a conception,
and the dreadful images which follow; and I feel
constrained to prefer another view. Emphasis is laid
on victory-let us keep to that.
This horseman is the
leader of an army; the commander of the awful
powers that follow. These are for the time to be victorious.
This rider then may only symbolise the invincibility
of the powers that follow, the certainty that they
shall do the work for which they are sent forth of God.
May we not go a little further, and see the symbol of
some imperial government, whose power has been
hitherto invincible, and before whom there is still a
course of victories. Va: Victis!
In vain will be their
resistance. If already they have been conquered, and
are impelled by some impulse of independence to reassert
their liberties, it is only to be smitten with a
stronger hand, for God says that the conqueror shall
be victorious still. But the picture is not all darkness.
That conquering power is in the hand of God. Terrible,
therefore, as are the figures that follow, John is
consoled by the assurance that they are in the service
of the Lamb.
"Wars and rumours of wars, and famines in direr« places."
These seals are at once reduplications and expan1-
8.] Famine and Death. 43
sions in their successive order. The white horse of the
first is, in the second seal, the red horse of
tumult,
warfare, fratricidal strife. With war's red hoof
trampling over the fertile fields, burning and treading
into the mire what it cannot use, and withdrawing men
from the peaceful ways of industry, there comes the
dread black horse of famine and want. "A measure
of
tuheat for a penny! " One day's wage earns only one
mouth's bread, so that the workman will devour all
that he can win, and have nothing for the hungry
members of his family. Bread at eight times its usual
value-famine prices! Our first thoughts are for the
poor; but the rich as well will have great concern for
their luxuries of "oil and wine." That the scene is
eastern cannot well be denied; nor that the wheat and
barley, the oil and the wine, were the leading products
of Palestine in the days of John. History tells us how
much its inhabitants had reason to be troubled about
the means of life in the terrific days of the revolution.
"I will send the pestilence and also wild beasts among
them."
There is one power at least that will mercifully end
the sufferings of men. After famine follows
Death. It
will do its work by the sword, by hunger, pestilence,
and by the wild beasts that come down upon depopulated
lands and smoking villages. That is the
appalling scene that has followed in the wake of every
conqueror. It is the witness of what mere brute power
can do,-of what brutes men can become when they
forget the imperative THOU SHALT of a just and righteous
God, and become worshippers of a mere I WILL.
The lesson has often been pressed home on men, that
tyrannies can only end in blood and tears
j that
44 Hades. [VI.
wealthy indolence, looking down upon the struggles
of ignorance and hunger weltering uncared for at its
feet, will be torn down from its glittering throne to
walk in poverty and rags; that indifference to the
will of God must soon become incompatible with the
brotherhood of man; and that the final refuge from
man's inhumanity to man is death. And indeed it is a
refuge that might well be envied in such miserable
days. were it not for a ghastly form that comes behind.
The unillumined Hades of ancient thought meant
disembodiment and weakness, judgement without
much hope of rest or victory. John can say nothing
to redeem this future, for he is dealing with a heathen
or pre-christian world. rn all
ages, with a universality
and persistency that are surprising, men have divined
this miserable vision of the future life. Everywhere it
has called up fear and trembling, but neither selfinterest,
nor false philosophy has been able to drive
this faith from the common heart of man.
" Where.wever the carcaseis, therewill the
eaglesbegathered together."
But we must turn back for a moment. What has
all this to do with John and the infant Church?
Much every way, if John recognises in this conquering
power some fresh assertion of its domination on the
part of Rome. Where will this be felt? We cannot
hesitate in answering-Jerusalem is still the centre of
John's thoughts as she is the sacred centre of the earth;
and it must be especially in the chosen land that such
dread events will reach their deadliest climax. John
knew that these sweeping calamities were such as God
had frequently before employed for the chastisement
of his native land. Had not Jehovah said to that
4-8.] Where is the blow to fill! ? 45
ancient prophet who like himself had seen the Throne
and Cherubim: "I send my four sore judgements upon
Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome
beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and
beast" ? Knowing that the Jews had filled up the
cup of their iniquity, until Paul was compelled to say
that" God's wrath had come upon them to the uttermost,"
it was scarcely possible to interpret these visions
otherwise than as a threatened repetition of the desolations
which hac befallen Palestine in Ezekiel's time.
" What shall be the s~gn of
thy presence, and of the end of the age?"
Besides, John had heard Christ asked concerning
the destruction of the temple and the end of the
Jewish age, and had not forgotten the thrilling answer
" Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars; nation
shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,
and there shall be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes
in divers places. All these are the beginnings
of sorrows." And here in his apocalyptic visions these
identical calamities stand at the head of that series of
tribulations amid which the Kingdom of Heaven is
born. That these should come directly from the hand
of God and from the Lamb, John well knew. He had
by no means mistaken those trenchant parables in
which Christ warned the Jews that the consequence of
his murder would be the destruction of their political
existence and theocratic privileges. "The Lord of
the vineyard will send his armies and miserably destroy
those wicked men who slew his Son, and will let out
his vineyard unto other husbandmen." "His armies!"
-yes, his armies. It would be no
surprise while it
would be a consolation to the christians of those
times
46 The Martyrs' Cry.
[VI.
that it was not Nero nor Vespasian who was judging
Jerusalem. It was God. The punishment would not
be sorer than was needed. The wrath of the Lamb
would be tempered by all the mercy of his Love; and
the day of darkness would surely pass away to usher
in a gladder day than the past had ever seen.
" Shall not God avenge Ais elect? . He will avenge
them.
speedily."
Another seal is opened, and a startling picture is unveiled.
The scene is in the eternal world but without
particular localisation. Souls of martyrs are seen
beneat/:
the altar ON which the Lamb had at first appeared as
slain. The symbol seems to signify that their state is
one of sacrifice rather than of reward. They are not
yet in their resurrection forms, nor in the society of
their Lord; but cry aloud as if impatient of God's
delay to judge their persecutors. This is indeed a
startling revelation; yet clearly it is a reference to the
parable recorded in Luke xviii. Our previous discussion
of its meaning will enable us to be curt. Our
Lord foretold that the time would come when the
blood of his Apostles would be shed, and that upon
their murderers would come God's great day of revenge,
although the vengeance might seem to be long delayed.
St. Peter appears to have felt, with a natural
impatience, when writing his second epistle, that this
avengement had been too long delayed; and explains
it by the divine unwillingness to cut short man's
period of repentance. At last, however, the Church is
told that the hour is come! Heaven's patience is
worn out: the clouds are gathering for the storm.
The spirit-martyrs are to be patient "for a little time"
until their number is complete. Meanwhile they are
9-17.] TIle Sinners' Wail.
47
given" wllite robes" to signify that their
vindication is
proceeding from that hour.
We must take care to read nothing passionate, vindictive,
or cruel into the martyrs' cry. The natural
man's desire for vengeance is that his enemy shall
suffer injury for injury, wrong for wrong, simply to be
quits, and without regard to whether vengeance will
yield good results. The spiritual man's desire is that
evil shall be checked, that folly and wickedness shall
become their own avengers, and wisdom and righteousness
involve their own reward. His cry for vengeance
is that justice may put its check on evil; break the
power of those tyrannies and falsehoods that withstand
the progress of the truth, and thereby hasten on the
time when the order and peace of heaven shall prevail.
The personal element cannot, perhaps, be altogether
excluded in this case; for when the time is
come they will lie no longer beneath the altar, but
will be adorned with crowns and palms, and become
the envy of coming generations to whom the prize of
martyrdom is denied. Even now, in anticipation of
the day of victory, they are putting on their festal
robes.
.. Your children shall begin to say to the mountains:
Fall on
us; and tu the Mlls cun'?" us."
The sixth seal moves towards an answer to the
martyrs' prayer. The scene here opened up is simply
overwhelming in its grandeur, being no less than the
destruction of the physical universe. Popularly it is
not read as a " sign," but taken as science-an actual
astronomical catastrophe. As a matter of fact, the
days of the Apocalypse were remarkable for their
48 [vr,
physical portents. From the close of the reign of
Tiberius, A.D. 37, earthquakes hardly ceased until the
fate of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79. During
Nero's reign, more than 300 cities were demolished by
earthquakes. From Rome to Jerusalem, nature was
in one continuous condition of disturbance, and visited
with signs of a portentous character. Plainly, however,
the reference of this seal is not to a physical demolition
of the universe. Such a blunder is inexcusable.
After the catastrophe is past, the earth stands fast in
its place; there is still land and sea, trees and grass,
unhurt by the commotion, and an abundant population
which has not felt the shock! In the interpretation
of prophetic books we must remember the habits
of prophetic thought. The host of heaven was dissolved,
and heaven rolled away as a scroll in the day
of God's vengeance upon Edom (Is. xxxiv. 4). All
the lights of heaven were made dark when Babylon
was destroyed by Media (Is. xiii. 10), and when the
star of Egypt set (Ezek. xxxii. 7-8). The same catastrophe
took place at the invasion of locusts in the days
of Joel; and Amos uses the same symbols to pourtray
the impending tribulations ofhis time. In short, the
scene before us is the concrete form in which all prophecy
answers the question: "Shall not the day of the
Lord be darkness and not light? even very dark, and
no brightness in it?" (Amos v. 20.) There is therefore
no excuse for the ignorant fear that conjures up
a universe broken up and pulverised. The symbology
is indicative of troubled and revolutionary times, when
the ordinary foundations of society are broken up,
when old religions perish, the leaders of thought are
stricken down, and chaos reigns.
12-17.] "Weep for Yourselves." 49
The scene of this impending revolution is marked
off by our Lord himself in Mat. xxiv. 29. It is centred
in sacred J udrea : and so powerful a fulfilment of
the symbol is never again to take place in human history.
The actual fact was no whit behind the prophecy.
Renan utters no exaggeration when he says
that during those days" life actually became unbearable;"
and "men's minds were kept in a constant
state of frenzy" (Les ApOtres, 264-6). No wonder
that the kings, and princes, and chief captains"
(compare
Acts iv. 26; Mark vi. 21) especially, were afraid
of what was coming on the land, and that the multitudes
were weary of life, and called upon the rocks to
fall on them and end their tortures. This imprecation
is first heard in Hosea x. 8, when Israel is suffering
from the Assyrian invasion. Christ forewarns "the
daughters of Jerusalem" that it wiII be repeated by
their children in the dreadful sufferings of the coming
Roman desolations; and there can be little doubt that
this Apocalyptic scene is intended to be the realisation
of Christ's prophecy by that very generation that,
as children led by their mothers' hands, had heard the
fatal warning from his lips. The striking figures of
this picture do no more than justice to the dislocations
and terrors of that time in Palestine. The armies of
the Lord have appeared, as the people had been
warned by the preaching of apostles and evangelists.
The powers that rule religion and the state, the sun
and stars, are tottering; famine, pestilence, and civil
discord are breaking up society, and the land is rocking
to its foundations. No wonder that multitudes
recognize these judgements as God's punishment of
their sins, and are tormented with the fear that it
4
50 Outraged Love.
[v!.
may be true that they have actually murdered the
Son of God. No fire burns so fierce at last as
outraged love.
THE SEALING OF GOD'S ELECT.
CHAPTER VII.
" Ah Lord God! wilt thou destroy all the residue of Israel
in thy pouring out of thy.fury on Jerusalem?"
TIHE last scene told us that heaven and earth are
- about to pass away, and a new heaven and a
new earth take their place. The picture John now
sees is one much needed to pacify his anxious mind;
for the question must have started-Amid such convulsions,
what is to become of the people of God?
Here he is told by powerful symbols that no breath of
wind can blow upon the land until God gives his
consent. The four winds of Daniel are apparently
political spirits or powers, and these winds must be
akin. Violent and reckless as these are, they cannot
be allowed to blow until God has first of all secured
the safety of his faithful ones.
This sealing scene is suggested from Ezekiel, like
so much else in the Apocalypse. That ancient
prophet, as a prelude to the Chaldzean devastation of
Jerusalem, saw in vision a man clothed in linen go
through the city of Jerusalem and mark the foreheads
of the men who sighed and cried over her idolatries;
the remainder were committed to the sword. We
shall not err in thinking that there is a similar meaning
here. God's "four sore judgements" are about to
break once more upon the land; and to show that
52 Does Providence discriminate? [VII.
these are limited and bounded by Almighty Providence,
it is decreed that their vengeance shall not fall on
any who are the doers of God's will. How often does
it seem to us that Providence is a Power without a
Conscience !-a judgement without discrimination-a
vengeance that falls alike on all. One thing happeneth
alike, we say, to bad and good. Let forth the dogs of
war, let famine fill the land, let the pestilence waste at
noon-day-what respect have they for righteous men?
Yea, is it not too frequently the case that the blow
falls first upon the righteous man, and that they who
escape most deftly are, if anything, the wicked?
" Streams will not curb their pride
The just mall not to entomb,
Nor lightnings go aside to give his virtues room;
Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good mall'S
barge."
Doubtless there is much to perplex us in the daily
march of Providence, and we may well at times bewail
ourselves and say there is no favour for the
righteous; but a wider survey and a calmer judgement
will discern, sometimes at least, the clearest
indications of the presence of a Hand that shields and
saves. Especially in times of critical importance to
the Church may the presence of God's angel be discerned,
sealing his saints and building round about
their persons and their homes a wall of fire through
which the Adversary cannot break.
An"d who are these whom Providence now shields
so marvellously? They are called "the
servants of
God," and by more particular designation they are
"the tribes of the children of Israel" The
reference
must be either to the whole believing church of Christ,
or to the believing sons of Abraham. The latter is by
1-8.] A Remnant shall be Saved. 53
every argument to be preferred. This seal is the fulfilment
of an Old Testament promise that Israel shall be
gathered from the corners of the earth and preserved
in a kingdom that shall never be removed; and also
of certain well-known threats, one of which was
familiar to every Jew, and may have helped to give
this vision its particular form-" the Lordsltall separate
him unto evil, out of all tlte tribes of Israel" (Deu.
xxix); and another better known to the members of
the Church,-God will "gather his wheat into his
garner, and burn up the chaff with unquenchable
fire." The narrative is then so diluted with a Jewish
tincture that it cannot be explained but by referring
it to the believing Jewish Church. If
the vision had
been intended to give comfort to some distant Gentile
Church, surely a symbolism would have been chosen
not so likely to create perplexity. So definite a
particularisation of the tribes seems unavoidably to
point to the actual Israel of the flesh; and no choice
is left to us when we have seen, at so many points,
that Palestine as God's land, Jerusalem as his city, the
Temple as the centre of his worship, the Jews as his
covenant people, are so intimately concerned with the
scenes and visions of the Apocalypse. The burden of
these impending judgements is to fall on them.
" God did not cast off his people which He foreknew."
In the interval between the ascension of our Lord
and the destruction of Jerusalem, the question was
never absent from the Jewish mind (alarmed by the
threatenings of national destruction so freely uttered
by the prophetic Spirit in the Church)-" Has God
cast away his people? Is Israel given over to deWlzat
advantage Ilatlz tile jew? [VII.
struction? Is it not written that Israel is God's
everlasting people-that of his Covenant there is no
end?" Now that the destruction of the Jewish policy
seems most imminent, that question presses with a
new intensity upon the hearts especially of all Hebrew
Christendom. The answer comes-" God hath not
cast away his people. No faithful soul shall perish in
these impending judgements. Out of every tribe a
remnant will be saved. The holy people will live on :
its name never be blotted out. So great will be the
tribulation, that except the days be shortened no flesh
shall be saved; but for these elects' sake those days
shall be shortened, and a multitude out of all the
tribes be' preserved according to the covenant mercies
of our God." Such is the message which comes to
John. Prophetic assurances of Israel's perpetuity are
to be fulfilled; but the Christian Church is destined
to supplant the nation; the Church is organically one
with Israel. The holy seed among the covenant
people are the first-born of the Church of Christ; and
the nucleus around which all its future growth shall
cluster. In coming generations of believers, these
sons of Abraham will find their true successors, and
perpetuate an Israel truly worthy of their fathers'
God.
" In ChriBt Jesus there is neither Jeu: nor Greek."
All over Christendom there is a deep-felt interest
in the future history of the Jews-a heap of wasted
sympathy. Nothing will please but that the Jew must
be visited with some magnificent favour in the future
development of God's kingdom; so that he shall stand
upon the shoulders of the Gentile and lord it over him.
9-17.] One Body and one Spirit.
55
The Scriptures give the Jew no pre-eminence beyond
that he is first in the field, and has the natural rights
of the first-born son; with the ominous intimation
that these are frequently, through unfaithfulness, for
ever transferred to the younger. The Pauline answer
to this extravagant expectation is one that for ever
ends its prospects :-" In Christ there is neither Jew
nor Gentile. He is a Jew who is one inwardly. In
the broad field of the Gospel, there is no respect of
persons." In John's time, we fear that a somewhat
bitter struggle existed in the Church between its
Jewish and Gentilish clements: a struggle for supremacy.
Had it been left to men to settle it, God
only knows how it might have ended. Perhaps there
was a Providence in the limited number of Jews who
entered the Apostolic Church; for if the bulk of
Israel had been converted, the chances seem that
circumcision and other J ewish rites would have been
maintained and made compulsory, so as to give the
Jew that primacy of rank in the Church which many
Christians seem anxious to bestow upon him at this
day. However, God settled it by Titus; and finished
it beyond recall by Hadrian. The Jew was to have
no special pre-eminence henceforth in the Church of
God.
This settlement of the question is plainly pre-intimated
in this book, the vision of a nameless multitude
out of every nation andpeople and tongue. There is
much need for the caution given to interpreters by the
question of the Elder: "Who are these?" It comes
readily to the lips to say-" the Church in heaven,"the
vision is so pure and beautiful. In fact, the favourite
answer is, that this is a vision of the heavenly
56 Tltrough the Great Tribulation. [VII.
Church; with some, the Church of the early centuries;
and with others, the Church after the consummation
of all things. Every interpretation which makes it the
Church in heaven at any period is egregiously astray.
It makes a violent and needless dislocation of the order
of the visions. Why, the Apocalyptic martyrs are
not yet in heaven, but waiting in a state of sacrifice.
As a vision of heaven, it would contradict the vision
of the sealed believers-a minority of the Church preserved,
but a numberless multitude given over to be
destroyed, though compensated by heavenly glory!
How much happier to see in it really a supplementary
vision to the first. God's Jewish people are preserved
at the focus of the storm; and is it to be imagined
that God's Providence is less careful of his Gentile
Christians? Is the Apostolic Church exclusively
Jewish, or is it a more eclectic gathering as becomes
that God who is not the God of the Jew alone, but of
the Gentile also? (Rom. iii. 29). And there is the
splendid answer in this white-robed and rejoicing
multitude.
They, like their Jewish compeers (and they now
together form one delightful company) have come
through great tribulation.' The" hour of trial"
intimated
to three of the Apocalyptic churches as "about
to come," is here in vision past. Great multitudes
have
struggled through those dark and dreadful hoursunder
the shadow of God's wing. Their palms are the
indications of their victory. Their white robes are
the
proof that like Sardis they have stood faultlessly the
brunt of Satan's onset, by the ardour of their devotion
to the Lamb who died for them. Their place before
tlte throne of God (ethical not local) is symbolical of
9-17.] Tile Church to be triumpltant.
57
their nearness and dearness to God; they are the
people of his Presence, the pillars of his new temple,
God's Kings and Priests; the chosen ones that dwell
henceforth in that Jerusalem which is the throne of
the Lord (Jer. iii. 17). In short,
we stand at that point
of sacred history when the middle wall of partition is
broken down; and the Gentile becomes fellow-heir with
the believing Jew of all the special privileges of the
elect of God. Here henceforth is God's chosen Israel.
The beautiful pastoral idyll in which their simple
joys are described seems too pure and hallowed for
this earth. These delights are, however, just such as
were promised to the Asiatic churches if victoriousthat
kingdom of God in the heart which is "righteousness,
peace, joy in the Holy Spirit." Indeed, it is
Isaiah who is the author of these images of serene
delight. Even in his earthly Utopian Jerusalem he
expected the Lord to spread his pavilion, and be "a
covert from the storm and rain ;" to save them from
hunger and thirst, and lead them like a shepherd unto
living springs; and to multiply to his waiting people
" the breasts of his consolations." These experiences
may seem too exalted to be enjoyed on earth; but
beyond all question they were the every-day anticipations
of the Prophets and Apostles of God's ancient
Church. Have we not all known saints whose earthly
experience was not excelled by the raptures of this
white-robed multitude?
The vision must have wiped away all tears, for a
time at least, from the eyes of John; for it indicates
that the Church of Christ will do for Israel and the
world even more than was spoken by the Prophets of
the ancient Word. At all events, the vision is delight58
Joy in Heaven. [VII.
ful to the Principalities and Powers around the throne
in heavenly places. The song of the triumphant
Church is caught up and echoed by them as it floats
in to the ear of God. What a splendid picture of responsive
sympathy and joy filling the hearts of all the
holy universe of God! How far the angelic heavens
seem, to our dim sight, to be removed from this dull
and sinful earth ! Yet not so far. "There is joy in
heaven over every sinner that repenteth." When great
multitudes of the nations ascribe their blessedness to
God and to the Lamb, the angel heavens break out
into sympathetic and triumphant song. The victory
seems to be their own. What a revelation of unselfish
love as filling every heart, and binding all the worlds
of God in one. There is no trace here of that
that Satanic spirit which rejoices in its own exclusiveness
when set high apart in isolated glory! They rejoice
to see Mercy triumphing over sin, Salvation
reaching forth its mighty arms to grasp multitudes
from every nation under heaven.
THE SEVENTH SEAL, WITH ITS
TRUMPET JUDGEMENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
" These are the da.1fS of
vengeance, ichen. all tMngs written
must befulfilled."
T\HIS silence in heaven is a moment of deep suspense
- before the august events about to be unfolded"
the calm before the lightning storm." Seven Angels
prepare to sound seven trumpets. Meanwhile, a scene
of deep significance transpires. We see the prayers
of the saints ascending up to God from a censer in the
angel's hand; and then the fire of the altar is thrown
from the censer to the earth, and causes thunders,
lightnings, and earthquakes. Already we have been
told that the loudest cry of the Church is the groan of
her martyred saints: "How long, 0 Lord, is thy
judgement of the earth to be deferred?" Already
these saints have been told to wait" a little while;"
and now this fire thrown from the censer is the sign
that their prayers are bringing vengeance down upon
the earth. The Lord will indeed avenge them sjJeedily.
Judgement is a portion of his saving mission, for He
"came to cast fire upon the land," and even in the
days of his flesh it was" already kindled." Thus are
we continually reminded that the time occupied in the
drama of the book" is short."
60 As fericho. [VIII.
" The Son of Man shall send forth his angela with a great
sound
of a trumpet."
The seven trumpets, then, are the FINAL elements
of vengeance which fall upon the race that has rejected
God and embrued its hands in the blood of his witnesses.
The judgement-process takes this form to remind
us of the graphic and powerful story of the sixth
of Joshua. There we read that the sounding of seven
trumpets was the herald of the falling of the walls of
Jericho, as the first security for the ultimate possession
of the promised land. Weare come to a similar crisis
in the history of the newer Israel. For forty years the
Church has been enduring hardships in the wilderness,
but now will have a signal token given to her that she
shall finally possess the promised land, the universal
earth. Another city is to fall, and its fall is a triumphant
Gospel victory. It follows as
matter of course
that this new Jericho, which stands in the way of the
progress of the truth, must fall soon. If, as so many
imagine, these trumpets are sounded over a period of
1500 years, with as many as 700 between some of
them, and are to transpire on fields continents apart,
what sign can that be to the Apostolic Church, or
indeed to any generation of Christians? Diffusiveness
destroys intensity; is waste of power, and never commands
attention. Accordingly, all seven angels are
jJrejJared to sound at once. That speaks to haste, to
close succession, to repeated blows, while the predecessor
is still felt. And such must be our reading to
maintain consistency with the statements of the book.
John is to tell the churches of things "which must
shortly come to pass." This hour of tribulation was
"about to come." The weary martyrs are only to
6-12.] As Sodom and Egypt. 61
rest "a little while" until their prayer is granted.
Therefore the trumpets can cover only a brief season;
and must be found fulfilled in the days of John.
Certainly there was no delay.
.. The Lord toill maJce thy plagues uxmderful ; . . .
and He
7IJill bring 7tp07! thee again all the diseases of Egypt."
Tile first angel sounded, and there followed hail and
fire mingled with blood, and tlzey were cast into the Imld.
A glance over the four plagues of this chapter at once
recalls to memory the plagues of Egypt, and the
judgement upon Sodom; and John especially must
have noticed the correspondence. Now if we are
concerned at all with the question-On what portion
of the earth are these four plagues to fall? we have
but to ask, whether John gives us any indication of
what land he would reckon as equivalent to Sodom
and Egypt? If we can determine
this point, it will save
us from the mistake of seeking in the desolating inroads
of Huns and Goths, in the advent of Mohammed,
in Saracenic armies, in Turkish Pashas, and in the wild
French Revolution, with other events of modern times,
the fulfilment of a prophecy which was limited by the
Seer to a definite space and an apportioned time.
Fortunately we have the statement of John himself.
For once let us anticipate. Turn to ch. xi. 8, and you
read-I( And their dead bodies lie in the street of the
great city which spiritually is called Sodom and
Egypt,
where also their Lord was crucified." We have only
to remember that Jerusalem often stands for Palestine,
as Berlin stands for Germany, Rome for I taly,
Constantinople
for the Turkish Empire, and it becomes
apparent that the CENTRE of the scene where these
62 Tlte house of bO'fldage. [VIII.
Apocalyptic plagues transpire (whatever may be their
circumference) is that so-called "holy land," which,
by its incurable infidelity and wickedness, has become
as -hateful in God's sight as Sodom and Egypt in the
days of old.
If then we see that these calamities are centred in
the holy land, we can derive therefrom a lesson of no
small significance. The nation which has been exalted
unto heaven can be cast down unto hell. The elect of
the present may be the reprobate of the future. God
puts no nation in a supreme place that will not do
supreme work, and God keeps no nation in supreme
places that will not meet the supreme duty of the hour.
I[ the chosen clay is spoiled upon the wheel, the
Potter will shape it for a different destiny. This evil
fate is anticipated by St. Paul in the Romans, where
he hints that Pharaoh's judgements may be in store
for Israel. Was not that a hidden intimation that the
Jew had become the oppressor of God's true Israel;
that he more than any other, held the infant Church
in bondage, and like Pharaoh must be smitten that
God's people may go free? Thus certainly reads history.
The early Christian Church was for years the
convenient appenage of Judaism. Its truths were narrowed
by Jewish limitations; its offices claimed for
men of Jewish blood, its liberty chained by the cramped
spirit of the Jew; altogether, it was enslaved in the
grip of that Jerusalem which" gendereth to bondage."
Besides, the Jew outside the Church was the most
active opponent of the Gospel. Everywhere he was
fierce and intolerant in his opposition to the rising
faith. The Roman and the Greek" cared for none of
those things," nor as yet had differentia ted between
6-12.] The climax of Jewish Sin. 63
the Christian and the Jew. The Jew well understood
that the religion of his fathers was fighting for its life,
and everywhere rose in massive opposition to the
Cross. Being amongst the most astute of men, wealthy
and managing, custodiers of the public purse as moneylenders
in all the thriving cities of the empire, they
had no difficulty in harassing the preachers of the
Gospel. They hired the idlers and the ragamuffins of
the cities to hoot and stone the evangelists; bribed
magistrates and officers to imprison and persecute.
Well does Paul say, "These Jews are contrary to all
men; forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they
may be saved; to fill up their sins always; but the
wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." (1 Thes.
ii. 15). It is no fancy, then, that the Jew was to the
infant Christian Church what Egypt had been to the
infant Mosaic Church; and we need not be astonished
that Egypt's plagues should be repeated on those who
are now repeating Egypt's cruel and oppressive
policy.
" As on Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven,
after the same manner it shall he in the
day that the
Son of Man is revealed."
The first four trumpet plagues are then the heralds
of blighting desolations that are to fall upon this garden
of the Lord. They seem constructed especially
to remind the reader that there was about to be a final
and complete fulfilment of the terrible threats in Deu.
xxviii. and xxix. Moses warns the covenant people
to take heed lest their hearts turn away from the Lord
their God, lest there should be" a root among them
that bears galt and zoormtoood" Then the
desolations
64 Th« fruitful land made desolate. [VIII.
of Egypt will be repeated; and he that comes from
afar will "sec the plagues of the land and the sickness
wherewith the Lord hath made it sick; and that the
whole land thereof is brimstone and salt, and a burning
that is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth
thereon l£ke the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah,
Admah, and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his
anger and in his wrath." Let anyone be at the pains
to compare the Palestine of the days of Christ, with
its abundant population, its fruitful soil, its teeming
waters, and profitable commerce, and the Palestine of
the last eighteen centuries with its desolated forests,
ruined villages, dried brooks, waterless wells, silted-up
harbours, salt and rainless fields, and he may well
exclaim-" Truly a fearful commentary on the first
four trumpet visions."
That the calamities of these trumpets did actually
befall Palestine in the days of John need not be said.
" The soil," says Rabbi J ohanan, who escaped from
Jerusalem during the siege," has been transformed,
and the formerly rich fields and pastures are for the
most part become barren waste." Open the page of
Josephus (Wars, B. iii. c.
10) and read that as the
struggle raged along the coast-
" The sea was bloody a long way;" and that later in the war
" one might see the Sea of Galilee all bloody and full of
dead
bodies, and the shores full of shipwrecks; insomuch that the
misery was not only the object of commiseration to the Jews
but to those that hated them and had been the authors of
that
misery."
We can easily understand that, in the midst of the
unparalleled calamities of those days, the waters of
life were turned to bitterness, and the day was very
6-12.] Day turned into Night. 65
dark. In such an hour, religion is man's supremest
solace, and there is no help but in God. Alas, here
religion is only a soutee of
bitterness and contention,
of confusion and shame. As time passed on, repeated
calamity waked up fearful questionings, and faith was
perishing. Was this God in whom their fathers trusted
not a dream-a myth like so many of the gods of the
surrounding nations? What certainty was there of
his existence? How could He be the God of Israel,
and stand idly by to see his people crushed between
the upper and nether millstones of plundering religious
factions and invading Roman armies? Thus does the
sun of Israel's day grow dark. They can discern no
brightness in its shining, or feel anything of its
lifeimparting
warmth. The moon, too, shines with an
ominous diminution of her lustre. The Church itself
is waning in its influence, growing dark and enigmatical,
less and less able to inspire the failing hopes of
a mourning people. The priests are no longer men of
light and leading, able to interpret the voice of heaven,
and reflect the mind of God. The very stars are dark
-Scribes and Rabbis, the astutest politicians and
interpreters of prophetic lore, can shed no more light
upon the national question than the most ignorant
tillers of the soil. Less and less have they to say upon
the problems of the hour, and soon will cease to guide
at all. Deplorable condition! No light from heaven
-no love on earth. God failing men, silent or only
answering, as Josephus tells us, in the prodigious
storms of rain, thunder, and lightning, with amazing
concussions and bellowings of the earth, which now
and then filled Jerusalem with midnight terrors, as the
awakened consciences of the people interpreted them
5
66 Other Woes to follow. [VIII.
of " some grand calamities that were coming upon
men." (Wars, iv. 4, 5.)
Great as such sufferings are, they are by no means
the greatest of all woes. Indications are abroad and
visible to such men as John, that in a national collapse,
the transition of an age, the judgement of a people
who have been exalted up to heaven and are to be
cast down unto hell, there are greater sufferings still to
follow.
" Woe, woe, to the illllabitants of tile land by reason
of the other voices of the trumpets wlzich are yet to
sound."
THE
TRUMPET JUDGEMENTS CONTINUED.
CHAPTER IX.
" Tribulation such 1M hath.
not beenfrom the beginning of the world
until now, no, nor evershall be."
FlOUR angels have sounded their trumpets and the
- earth has been stinted of its produce, commerce
has been paralyzed, war has stained the seas with
blood, bitterness has been infused into all the natural
joys of life, and religious faith has declined until the
light of life has become almost as dark as night. But
the abyss of woe has not yet been fathomed, and it
must be touched.
TIle jiftlt angel sounds. Thereupon, John sees not
a falling star, but a star which before had fallen
to the
earth. To him was given tile key of the bottomless
pit. The star apparently represents some
religious
power, stands for a fallen heavenly light. The prevalent
interpretation of this trumpet is that this star is
Mohammed, the smoke Mohammedanism, the locusts
are the Saracens, the crowns of gold are their turbans,
and the tails which sting are the horse-tails of their
standards. We shall see, as we proceed, whether this
view will stand the test. Meanwhile, why should we
leap forward into history more than 500 years beyond
the time of John? We have come upon no indication
whatever that John is not still telling his fellow-servants
68 The Fllllen Star. [IX.
of" things that must shortly come to pass."
If an author
tells me that he is to delineate events in close proximity
to his times, surely it is a gross perversion to carry his
words forward into history 500 years. At any rate
Mohammed could not possibly be this star, because he
never was a heaven-fixed star giving light upon the
earth; much less did he fall by unfaithfulness to his
commission. Nor did Mohammed ever hold the key
of the bottomless abyss, any more than he ever held
the key of heaven. This fallen star looks to be the
truth of God perverted into falsehood-an exalted privilege
abused-good converted into evil. I
For this
reason, the star cannot be Nero (Macdonald).
It
might be Satan-only, as Gebhardt remarks, "the king
of the abyss is to be distinguished from the star." The
best interpretation we have seen is that of Maurice,
who takes it to be the Jewish people as a society set
apart to witness for a true and righteous God.
If
we are at liberty to say that this people transformed
the Word of God into an authority for false and evil
principles, would not such a description as we have
here be verified? Would not such a perversion of the
truth of God be an opening of the bottomless pit to
let out upon society every dark and noisome plague?
What other than abyssmal inspirations could float up
through minds" that have turned their backs towards
heavenly purity and light, and plunged deeper and
deeper into darkness with no other than the false
lights of self-love's lustful fires and vile emotions
guiding them away from all that is good and true?"
Were these Jews not such a society of men? Entrusted
with" the oracles of God," were they not a
light shining in the heaven; and were they not by
1.] Tke Prophetic Gift abused.
69
this time fallen from their high position to the earthto
the very dust of selfish worldliness?
" From the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness ,gone forth
into all the land."
The above interpretation is a key that fits the lock
with fair precision, and we are loathe to meddle with
it. Yet on the whole we think the key would move
more sweetly in its wards if the star were interpreted
not as the Jewish people but rather as the distinctive
prophetic gift or office imparted to that people to give
light on earth. Israel's prophetic light, once so glorious
in its splendour, became a fallen star. The prophets
lied, the people loved to have it so-then divine inspiration
ceased. Prophecy, in its fallen and degraded
forms of magic, augury, divination, and enchantment
(to which the Jewish people took with greed), opened
the gates of the abyss to belch out every sort of demoniac
inspiration, and fostered gross delusions which
ultimately lashed their victims with the stings of
scorpions.
"The prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail."
This bottomless pit is unbelief. When Judaism lost
its divine illumination it became a fountain of corruption.
Clinging to the form of godliness, it lost more
and more the power; and when at length the land was
seen smouldering in the fires of judgement, what did
that seem to witness but that the God of Israel was as
much a myth as Jupiter and Apollo, and other farcical
gods of Greece and Rome, To what other end
could a people come of whom Christ was compelled to
say, " Ye have both seen and hated both me and my
father."
Now, what is this we see? Smoke as tke smoke of
a greatfurnace darkening t/u 'very heavens. When the
70 Smoke and Locusts from tlte Pit. [IX.
pit of godlessness is opened up, volumes of darkness
come belching out of its unfathomable depths. The
infernal vapours of false, bad passions obscure almost
totally what is godlike and divine. All error is an
obscuration
of the light of truth; but by moral infidelity
the sun of heaven is blotted out, and there is nothing
left for us but a burning fiery furnace of destruction in
the depth, and a world hideous with gloom because
all joy and light have gone. Yes, life is dark when
there is no God, or only a God that has abandoned us;
when there is no brotherhood on earth, no Father of
the race in heaven; no home with a loving immortality
to shelter our naked souls.
Worse than the darkness which makes day hideous
is a plague of locusts from the pit. The imagery here
is modelled on the plague of locusts in the book of
Joel. Whether that prophet was referring to a literal
plague of locusts or to an army trampling down
the land in its victorious march, expositors cannot
tell. Certainly the figure might well be applied to an
invading military host; and so John's locusts are by
some applied to the Saracenic armies who marched
under the banner of Islam. Such an application of
the figure is not lawful here. These locusts" are not
to Iturt tile grass, nor any green tlting, nor any tree."
Is
it possible to imagine the march of barbaric armies
without destruction to the fields and tillage of invaded
towns and hamlets? These locusts are not to hnrt
those wllo are sealed of God. Is it possible that those
Mohammedan invaders,sweeping impetuously along on
a crusade of conversion, would pass by every Christian
and leave him unhurt ?-would not their hatred be the
bitterest where men's faith in Christ was staunch and
3-7.] Heathen "Schwtirmerei."
71
uncompromising? Is it possible that the commission
given to those warlike hordes was" not to kill men,"
even Christless men, but only to hurt them for fiz1e
months; or that the men oppressed by them would seek
death and not find it? No more express intimation
could be given that these locusts are no human
power, and least of all victorious Mohammedan armies.
What, then, are these swarming beastly forms that
wound men like a scorpion wizen it strikes? Their
origin contains the answer. Open the abyss of unbelief
and godlessness-what swarms of low, crawling,
sensuous thoughts invade the mind to consume the
tender blade or early shoot of goodness that may yet
exist! "They are like horses prepared unto the battle"
-fierce, desperate, impassioned, warlike. Ever boastful
and pretentious, they look as if they were to fight
man's battles and make him victorious over evil; but
the more specious their pretences, the more bitterly
they deceive and wound. On their heads are imitation
crowns of gold. Infidel imaginings, magical
incantations,
full of sensuous vigour, come with kingly pretensions
to their dupes. "Follow us, and we shall bring
you better times. The earth is ours and we shall reign
over it." But the actual significance of their crowns
is that a godless spiritualism, equally with a godless
materialism, is a tyrant where it rules-a source of
torment rather than of blessing. "Their faces were as
men's." Those lying dreams from the abyss pretend
to be divine, but are only reflections of man's own
thoughts, the birth of his own restless passions; and
when they come to rule him with a regal sway, their
influence is accursed and there is only torment for
their victims.
72 Fierce ye: Effeminate. [IX.
"And tlzey had Ilair as the Ilaz'r of women,'! though
they had the teeth of lions. Their aspect is largely
warlike; and there is a commotion as if preparing for
war. A true description of mingled sensuality and
superstition when emboldened by a temporary ascendancy.
Let them once attain to power, and whatever
be the soft airs they assume, the indulgences they
offer, the pledges given that sensuous loves are halfdivine,
and subject to no law, they are beastly
destructive powers-
" Like to Furies, like to Graces ;"
difficult to subdue when once encased in their hellforged
armour-pretentious in their claims, but able to
carry on only a mimic warfare against the truth and
light of God.
Such are the locusts from the pit. Sensual reasonings,
strengthened by heathenish superstitions, all the
spawn of hell, inspired with deadly hatred of, and
pouring out their venom on, all that is pure and heavenly.
Shielded by the imperviousness of their materialism
to spiritual light, they seem to themselves to
be an army of gigantic warriors, while mere pigmies
seen in the light of heaven. Swarming forth from the
nether pit which a decadent faith and a perverted gift
have opened up, threatening to destroy all goodness,
they will have only a temporary triumph-indeed, will
rather hasten than hinder the advent of heaven's
kingdom.
This sensuous invasion has power to hurt men for
five months. The time allotted is perhaps of no
marked significance, as it is the usual period of a locust
plague; and yet it is remarkable that it marks the
R-12.] The Reign of C/zaos. 73
most terrific period of Jewish delusion, disorder, and
mental agony-the five months' siege of Jerusalem.
From all this mental stupefaction and stinging torment
of disappointed hopes, t/ze sealed of God were
free. They were not in the darkness and delusion of
the smoke of the pit. The end was declared from the
beginning; and in the knowledge of God's purposes,
they shook the dust of the city from off their feet, and
fled. Josephus tells us at great length how the city
came to be like hell let loose on
earth; and not so
much from Roman arms as from the brutal passions
and infernal feuds of its deluded populace. The god
worshipped in those months was not JEHOVAH the
Creator, and sustainer of all life and beauty, but
ABADDON the Genius of Destruction.
" Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored:
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all."
No wonder that in such times of calamity and distress,
with the powers of heaven all shaken, the order
of society broken up, with mutual faith and trust destroyed,
hunger and pestilence raging in the streets,
the clamour of war around the walls, and hearts stung
with the arrows of a reproving conscience,-no wonder
that men' sought for death, to end the bitterness of a
life that had become intolerable. Death, you might
say is easily found of them that seek it. Yes, but
such men as these as carefully shrink from death as
they eagerly long for it. Conscience makes cowards
of them all ; and while seeking death, they stilI would
rather bear the ills they have than fly to others that
they know not of. Oh, if death were only sure to be
74 Fire, Smoke, and Brimstone. [IX.
annihilation, the extinction of all hated memories, the
negation of all future pains, then death would be
utterly desirable. But who can assure them of this
immunity from the judgement of a righteous God?
Such death, such deep forgetfulness they cannot find.
One woe is past, but another is about to fall.
A
sixtli angel sounds, and a voice is heard from between
the horns of the golden altar. Mark that it is still the
day and dispensation of the altar in Israel; but now
the altar is no sign of reconciliation but of judgement
proceeding to extremity.· The prayer of the martyrs
is hastening to accomplishment.
" Wickedne88 burnetli as the fire ;
the people also are as the
fuel offire ; no man spareth. his brother:"
The four angels on the Euphrates are let loose, and
there comes upon the scene an army of 200,000,000
horsemen. A number of preterist expositors find here
a reference to the Eastern troops (Roman and Parthian)
that were marched and concentrated upon
Palestine at the outbreak of the war; and the angels
are either the four Roman legions or the four Eastern
kings mentioned by Josephus as coming to the conquest
of the land. This might possibly supply a framework
for the vision; but is very far from realising the
pith of what John sees.
We must remember always that these visions seem
intended to gather up all the prophetic utterances of
the Old Testament anent" the day of the Lord," and
thus teach us that in the events about to happen ALL
THE SCRIPTURE IS TO BE FULFILLED - the ideal
judgement-day be realized, and the ideal kingdom of
God ushered in-that time" whereof God spake by
12-14.] TIle hot Simoom. 75
the mouth of his holy prophets which have been since
the world began ;" and which Peter localises as to date
when he says to' those before him-" they told of
THESE days." (Acts iii. 21,24).
The judgement before us having its issues in the
altar in front of God reminds us of the Psalm "the
Lord is in his holy temple: upon the wicked He shall
rain snares (pac/lim, but possibly it should read
pecham,
coals), fire, and brimstone, and burning wind." The
physical picture called up here is the hot, blasting,
alldestroying
simoom, a favourite image of divine anger
with the Prophets. Isaiah invokes an overwhelming
judgement upon Assyria in similar terms: "The Lord
cometh from afar burning with his anger, and in thick
rising smoke, his lips are full of indignation, his tongue
as a devouring fire, and his breath. like a
stream of brimstone." Jeremiah is very bold, and
turns this flame of judgement on Jerusalem: "A
hot wind from the bare heights in the wilderness, not
to fan nor to cleanse. Behold, He shall come up as
clouds, and his chariots shall be as the whirlwind; his
horses are swifter than eagles." The vision of St. John
then points to some invasion that like the hot blast of
the simoom shall burn and scorch until desolation
reigns.
The Euphratean country might well be chosen as the
source of this unhuman raid. The simoom was an
eastern wind. The enemies of the ancient Church
hailed mostly from the East-the Scythian, Assyrian,
and Babylonian especially-descending like evil beasts
from the neighbourhood of this great stream. But ere
O. T. history closes, those enemies have disappeared;
they have been judged and cast down to hell. There,
7G The Eupltratean Host. [IX.
where formerly was the river of Paradise, was now as
the Prophets had said. a wilderness whose streams are
pitch and dust of brimstone, whose ruins are the resort
of the wild beast, and the Satyr, the habitations of
spectres and devils of darkness (Is. xxxiv.), When
then from the Euphrates region there comes up this
unnatural host like the hot blast of the simoom, it is
to signify the iavasion of this once holy and blessed
land, by all the taint of heathenism, and by all the
scorpion power of hell. The boundary of God's ancient
kingdom is assaulted-taken at the rush-wiped clean
out. The difference between Zion and Babel is no
more, for Zion has renounced her calling and her God,
and must be left to be devoured by the demons she
has worshipped.
This terrible break-down had not been unforeseen.
Of that day and hour knew no man, not even the
angels of heaven; but it was all in the purposes of
God-" the hour and day, and month and year "known
with the utmost exactitude by Him who never
precipitates his judgements in his anger, nor delays
them needlessly by his long-suffering mercy. The
martyrs and the living saints had thought the cup of
iniquity to be full, and wearied for this vengeance;
they had thought to hurry the day by their prayers;
but the hand of God will not be forced, yet the prayers
of his people will be answered. And so, a trampling
host of desolating powers are let loose upon the land
to sweep it like the hot simoom.
"Tlte land is full of bloody crimes, and the city i8 full of
violence."
Over the land rolled the hot sulphureous blast. "The
third part of men was killed." The population of
16-10.] Tlt~ Reign of Terror.
77
Palestine IS reckoned to have been from four to five
.millions; and the accepted estimate of life destroyed
is one million and a half. A fearful holocaust !-the
work of heathen passions, breaking out into heathen
violence and brutality, such as many good men can
only explain to themselves on the supposition that the
Jewish people got to be possessed by a host of demons
from the abyss whose purpose was to make a hell on
earth. No more sickening tale of covetousness,
impurity, madness, and fratricidal strife can
be found
in the annals of history. Those scenes were but very
faintly parodied in the seven years' struggle of the
French Revolution. There too atheism and irresponsible
brutality were enthroned; and there too contentious
strife and devilry became supreme, and Frenchmen
shed their brother's blood as if it had been filthy water.
Break down this boundary line between the spiritual
and the sensual, the kingdom of God's wisdom and
man's natural desires; profane all that is sacred; and
whatever be the arts and culture of the people, you will
have the same result. Where heaven does not reign
hell will. When the fear of God has perished and men
become self-idolators, there is no fiendishness too
subtle for imagination or too brutal to be executed
against other men. All the wisdom of those in power
is low, sensual, crawling in the dust; and when cunning
fails, they strike and kill. It is the Reign of Terror.
Fire and brimstone are the implements by which
Eternity is made terrible: it were well for us to
remember that God does sometimes kindle Tophet
here. . The fiery sufferings that are seen to follow sin,
and lick up the grace and joy of life like oil, are the
breath of Jehovah, a stream of brimstone prepared
78 Tiley repented not. [IX.
against the hour and the day; and that fire must burn
until the pile on which it feeds 'is turned to smoke and
dust. " Our God is a consuming fire."
Strong and loud as were these trumpet calls to
repentance, the residue of men remained unchanged;
enamoured of their falsities even while tormented by
them. They cannot see the connection between their
miseries and their apostasy from God. Outwardly
indeed they give God honour; inwardly they bow to
idols. Possibly they persuade themselves that worship
condones wickedness; or that by their wickedness they
are the more devoutly serving Him. However it be,
the light that is in them is as darkness; and since they
will not repent there is no resource to a righteous God
but to go forward with yet severer judgements until .
not only the Euphrates has been passed but utterly
dried up-not only the walls of Jericho been shaken
but utterly thrown down.
THE MYSTER Y OF GOD FINISHED.
CHAPTER X.
" The Mystery of Christ which in other qenerationsiras not
made kmoum:"
A\T this point there is an interruption of the
trumpet
- ~ blasts, in order to offer a
needful explanation.
John sees an angel of conspicuous dignity descending
on the earth. A favourite supposition is that Michael,
the angel-prince of Israel, is intended. More probably
it is Christ. As such, John describes although he does
not name Him; and appropriately so, for He is veiled
in clouds. It is Paul's doctrine verificd-" The Lord
shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice
of an archangel, and with the trump of God." Events
are nearing the boundary line between the old age and
the new; the Lord is "coming in his kingdom ";
already his foot is on the land and on the sea-the
token of his claim to universal dominion; and the
last trump waits his word to bring the old world to
an end.
The little book open in Ilis hand indicates that only
a little remains now to be revealed, so far as his leading
purpose is concerned. The spoken thunders are,
however, ominous of further and severer judgements,
and John is able to interpret them; but apparently
they bespeak some judgement which lies out of the
line of present purposes, and are not to be explained
80 No delay. [x.
as yet. Doubtless they will be unfolded to us in the
proper sequence of events, and in the usual strong
symbology of this book. The story of God's ancient
people is not yet complete; with that only are we
now concerned.
" A short work will the Lord make of it."
Meanwhile, the angel has lifted up his hand
to
heaven, and sworn that" there shall be time no longer."
These words have not unfrequently been misunderstood.
Sometimes they are said to mean that time
shall at this point cease to be, and eternity begin; and
again, they are interpreted as saying that a certain
period of time, defined to be 1111~
years, shall not
quite elapse (Bengel, adopted by Wesley), bringing
down the period of its terminus to 1836. All such
notions become fantastic before the evident meaning
of the words, as given by Alford :-" there shall be no
longer a lapse of time-time shall no longer intervene
;" or more directly, as in the margin of the
Revised Version, and recommended by the American
Committee for the text, "there shall be delay no
longer."
And what is the occasion of this very solemn protest?
It looks back to the fact that the judgements of the
preceding trumpets have been ineffectual in the
production of repentance; and possibly have left their
victims in a state more reprobate and hopeless than
before. Then, "why should they be stricken any more?
Will they not revolt yet more and more?" It may
be so, yet for many reasons the work of judgement
must proceed. The martyrs beneath the altar will find
the promise kcpt-" Rest yet for a little time." That
6-7.] The Mystery of God. 81
little time is now about completed. The climax of
vengeance is at hand. If the] udge
has seemed to be
not listening to the supplication of his claimants, it is
because He is exceeding merciful and not willing that
the day of grace should be unduly shortened. But
where punishment after punishment has signally failed
to soften, and they who have felt" the terrors of the
Lord" have only the more fixedly clung to their
superstitions
and crimes, what remains for it but to hasten
on that act of doom which will at least vindicate the
righteousness of God, and cleanse the earth of a false
and obnoxious system?
" My name shall be great among the Gentiles."
Let us not suppose, however, that the saints of God
can cry for any merely bloody triumph, any merely
personal vengeance upon their persecutors; or that God
would pledge himself to be the instrument of such
destructive
passion. Both are impossible. The saints
are to be avenged by the bringing of God's
mystery to
an end; that is, the coming into the light of full
accomplishment
(according to God's meaning), of all the
messages spoken by the prophets, especially those
grand evangelical intimations that had been the hope
and yet the puzzle of all bygone generations. That
had been the subject of bitter disputes between those
early martyrs and their persecutors, as witness the
case of Stephen. The battle between the]udaic and
Christian schools raged round the question-" How is
God going to fulfil those Old Testament promises of
a Messianic kingdom?" Jewish scholasticism gave an
answer that glorified the temple, the law, and the blood
of Abraham! The answer of the martyrs was-
6
82 The Martyrs Vindicated. [x.
" Messiah will be a suffering priest, a lamb of sacrifice
for the sins of the world. He will break down the
middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile;
abolish the ceremonial law, and bring all nations into
the obedience of faith. In his day no land or city will
be holier than another; no race will pride itself upon
its favouritism with heaven, for in every mountain
God's name shall be honoured and his praise ascend
to heaven." The core of the conflict was Jewish
localism against Christian universalisrn ; and, in the
intensest hatred of a religion which seemed to despoil
him of his glory, the Jew sprang at the Christian's
throat, as if that would save his grand inheritance.
When those martyrs who had felt the sting of Jewish
venom cried for vengeance, they were crying for the
triumph of their principles, for the plain and manifest
vindication of 1!he truth for which they died-the
truth that Palestine was no more the holy landJudaism
no longer a living and authoritative revelation
of God's will-the Temple no longer the one
place
where God could be approached with acceptable worship-
the kingdom of the Jews no longer synonymous
with the Kingdom of Heaven! That vindication is
the only vengeance allowable to the saint; and it is
on the eve of being given to those supplicants. J udaism,
as an official system is hastening to its close; " an
end is being made of the holy people," as predicted
by Daniel; an obstructive Church which has ceased
indeed to be a Church is being speedily reduced to
nothingness by the successive sounding of the trumps
of doom; a dispensation utterly corrupt, and refusing
to advance along God's line of march, must needs be
devastated and destroyed to make way for a higher
8-10.] The Bitterness of Good News. 83
and purer dispensation of the grace of God! Oh,
how incredulous it must have seemed that a people
so exalted of God should come to so miserable an end!
No wonder that the angel feels it needful to lift his
Iland to heaven, and make a solemn attestation that it
shall be so! Yes, when the angel who IS ABOUT TO
SOUND shall utter his mighty voice, then, even while
the echo is in our ears, the walls of this once-sacred
Jericho shall fall, and the newer Israel will march
straight forward into its possession.
John is now ordered to take the little book and eat
it. The knowledge of the contents of this book, which
concerned the finishing of the mystery of God, was
pleasing to his first perceptions, but painful to his
human sympathies on further contemplation. Jeremiah
had the same experiences-i-" Thy word was unto
me the joy and rejoicing of my heart." But afterwards,
when he discovered that his predictions implied
the desolation of his people, his patriotism found
expression
in passionate Iamentation-s-" Behold, see if
there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow. My bowels
are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth for
the destruction of the daughter of my people." The
same experience befell Ezekiel, and at the destruction
of his people he "sighed with the breaking of
his loins, and with bitterness." Surely when John is
made to repeat the experience of these older prophets,
it is an indication that his circumstances are identical.
He is to read and inwardly digest what must needs
cause joy because it promises redemption to the world,
but must as well be painful to his" bowels of mercies,"
his brotherly compassions; for the book concerns
above all men on earth, "his kinsmen according to
84 A Barren Tree. [x,
the flesh," for whom, like Paul, he could have wished
to be accursed from Christ, if thereby he could save
them for the service of God. Long-expected as was
this denoument, perhaps John had hoped to the
very
end for some happy compromise in which Jerusalem.
the joy of all the land, would still be saved the ravages
of her cruel foe, and Judaism harmonised with the
spirituality and universality of the gospel. Now, every
hope is gone. Her days are numbered; the seventh
trumpet is about to sound; and with the reverberation
of its notes, the outward signs of Hebrew greatnessher
temple, her self-government, her priesthood, and
her capital will pass away.
" Cut it down, why cumbereth it the 9I'Ound?"
A solemn lesson this for all coming ages. Every
institution of God or man is daily being tried upon its
merits. No nation is impervious to the judgements
that test its deepest foundations, and determine
whether it is worthy of a place in history. No church.
no sect, no dispensation, even if it be the Christian.
can boast of its immunity from the possibility of decay
and death. God only hath immortality. The best
things can become corrupt, and the corruption of the
best is the filthiest and most noxious. The Lord will
not acknowledge any Church as his out of which his
truth has perished; and if it should become a buttress
of ancient tyrannies or of class distinctions, and a
gilder of worldliness and sin with the glitter of
respectability,
no matter that it has been once a Church of
God,-against it will go forth those thunderbolts of
judgement which will level it with the ground. It is
in vain for men to say of their Churches or their sects
11.] A Larger Prophetic Outlook. 85
" The Lord hath set his love upon us-the temple of
the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we!" For such
was Israel. Yet He who said that she was "engraven
on the palms of his hands," had also in the course of
time to say-" 0 Jerusalem, thy house is left unto thee
desolate." There is no decree of perseverance for
Saint or Church, unless they persevere.
It is a wholesome
lesson for individuals and communities. If Christ
be not in us we are reprobate. Void of the righteous
spirit, we are worthless branches on whom devouring
fire shall fall.
John is not allowed to linger in unhappy contemplation.
He is called to work. "Thou must prophesy
again, concerningmanypeoples, and nations, andtongues,
and kings." Is not this another proof added to the
many that John has been prophesying hitherto,
mainly of one nation, and one people: painting
tragic
pictures of the dying struggle of an ancient and Godhonoured
dispensation with which one people was concerned?
However, his mission is not to finish with
destruction; after the night will come the day. He is
not giving us occasion to glory over the downfall of a
people; but teaching us how that people's fall will
bring in a dispensation of love, mercy, and truth, that
will concern equally and for ever every people and
tongue and nation under heaven.
BREAKING IN PIECES THE POWER OF
THE HOL Y PEOPLE.
CHAPTER .XI.
" Tlw relno/'ing of those things that are shaken, that those
tllingll
1()hich are not shaken Inay remain."
ALMOST universally ~hi.s chapter is
held to be the
- -.:.. crux of Apocalyptic interpreters. We are
conscious
of the difficulties of our task, but we face them
without despair. Let us keep a tight grip of the clueline
John has put into our hands.
We have now before us the vision which finishes
"the mystery of God." That mystery is revealed in
the "unveiling" of Jesus Christ; and will find solution
in the open light of day. What is this mystery?
We can see it gradually coming to the light within
this book. It is, put as a human query,-How is God
to realise the universal hopes and promises held out to
his ancient people, and as well be true to his special
covenant with the seed of Abraham? God was
pledged to do great things for his people. His kingdom
was to be an everlasting kingdom, and Jerusalem
was to be the joy of all the earth. Now, unless these
promises are to be utterly falsified, there must be some
real sense in which Judaism does not perish, in which
the temple is not destroyed, nor the covenant people
cast away. The solution, as we know, is found in a
real organic and historic unity between the Church
and the covenant people. As Baur would say, there
1-2.] Saved from the Fire. 87
is a real" Ineinander" of the truth as it is in Jesus and
the truth according to Moses-the temple of Jerusalem
and that temple in which God permanently dwells
with men.
This unity in God's purpose, and this continuity of
his kingdom, are not sufficiently justified by the vision
of 144,000 of all the tribes of Israel saved alive in
covenant love. Not only must the Jewish stock live
on as God's elect, but the ideals on which it was fed
by its Prophets must survive, or rather be carried forward
into new developments, in which every hope and
promise of the past will be abundantly realised. Not
only the people must be sealed, but the covenant worship,
and its principles. After that, the deluge.
The answer to this demand is now before us.
Before absolute destruction comes, John is told to
measure the temple of God-the vaos
and its incense
altar, with them that worship therein; but to take
no reckoning of the outer courts as they have
ceased to be of value or significance, and are henceforth
to be profaned. As in Ezekiel's case, a temple
is to be destroyed; and first measured, because it is to
be rebuilt in more magnificent proportions.
Expositors
here stumble into errors which we must carefully
avoid. We must not conclude (with such as Bleek,
Colani, S. Davidson) that John here prophesies that
the material temple of Jerusalem is to be saved from
destruction in the siege, or (with Macdonald and Russell)
that the measuring is the prophecy of its destruction.
Destruction is no doubt implied in the measuring;
but restoration is the essential idea in the case.
The" signs" of this book are not concerned with
merely literal events, such as an historian might chro88
The Eternal in the Temporal. [xi.
nicle, but with the spiritual principles worked out in
that history. We must also avoid the error that the
temple measured is the human temple of believing
Jews (Weiss, Gebhardt, Waller); and the outer court
the unchristian Jews. This would be a needless repetition
of the process accomplished in the sealing of
the tribes. The vision is meant to tell us how the
temple may perish and yet live; Jewish worship cease
and yet survive; Old Testament prophecy seem to
be belied in the letter while amply fulfilled in the
spirit. In Jewish worship there is a kernel which is
indestructible; a shell which may be broken and
thrown away. The altar of incense, the offering of a
prayerful heart, is the essence of all worship; but the
blood of bulls and goats is only a symbol for a season,
a mediatorial vehicle to serve until the perfect day is
come. Judaism and Christianity are simply various
developments of one divine eternal plan. The New
Testament was latent in the Old; the Old is transfigured
in the New. The Gospel is the temple
without its outer court. In Christ Jesus there is no
longer Jew and Gentile, male and female, priest and
worshipper; but all are one. Christianity is the Holy
Place to which every nation has direct access. The
preservation of the outer court in John's symbol would
have meant the imposition of Jewish rites on Gentile
peoples; or, in other words, it would have made ritualistic
Judaism the outer gate of Christianity, as so
many J udaising Christians wished. But now the
rudest heathen, washed from sin by the precious blood
of Christ, becomes himself a priest to God, with freest
access to the Holy Place. The epistle to the Hebrews
explains how the Jewish temple is preserved while
2.] TIle Abomination of Desolation. 89
transfigured. Jesus has opened up the way into the
Holiest. We need no son of Levi, no bestial sacrifice,
to introduce us to the fellowship of God! We have
but to come with a cleansed heart, and stand and offer
incense for ourselves at the golden altar in the full
assurance of faith, for our great High Priest is gone
within the veil, and through him our offerings ascend
to heaven, and are acceptable to God.
" Jerusalem. shall be trodden doum. of the Gentiles, until
the times
of the Gentiles befulfilled."
The destruction of the outer temple court (sacerdotal
Judaism) is effected by the trampling forces of
" the nations." They are to tread the holy city
under
foot for "forty and two months."
"The city is here
taken as the symbol of the entire people, because the
metropolis in common is the centre and essence of the
nation or land." (Waller's Offenbarung, in
loco). That
might well be universally admitted. It
is surely more
than a chance co-incidence that the trampling down
of the sacred people by the Romans and their allies
began in the spring of 67 A.D., and lasted until Sept.
70 = 2 and 40 months. Objections are raised to this
interpretation (vide Alford) on
the ground that Jerusalem
cannot be called "the holy city," seeing that
soon after it is designated" Sodom and Egypt,"-at
least, that both characters cannot be realised in J
erusalem.
We cannot feel sure that we ought to treat
this objection seriously; but it may be useful to add
a word or two upon the point. Every reader of the
Scripture surely has observed that the custom is very
common of calling a thing or person at once by an
ideal and a real name. The" holy seed" are described
90 ferusalem Trodden Down. [xi.
as acting most profanely; the" saints" are charged
with being" carnal." Why should not Jerusalem be
called holy, viewed by its sacred calling; and
sinful according
to its actual character? Or, again, as ethical
qualities are always relative in finite things, why
should Jerusalem not be called IlOly when considered
in its contiguity to the profaner forces of heathen
Rome ; and sinful when regarded as in contrast with
our sinless Lord, whom it so ruthlessly crucified? Or,
why should not Jerusalem be sometimes named according
to its pretentions as a sacred city; and at
another time be characterised after the ethical spirit
by which it is possessed? We leave the reader to
form his judgement. At any rate, the meaning of the
vision was unmistakeably realised in this 42 months'
military raid. The Jewish polity in its outward and
temporal form (its outer court) was thoroughly pulverised.
Palestine was henceforth incorporated with
the Roman empire; the country was stripped of its
population; the soil was confiscated and sold to the
highest bidder; the temple was levelled to the ground,
and its sacred vessels carried to Rome to grace the
entry of the conquering general; and the contribution
of two drachmas which every child of Israel throughout
the world had hitherto given annually to the
tem ple he was now required to transfer to the Capitol,
or cent re of Roman worship. Thus was Judaism in
its national life, its religious forms, its pretentious
claim to be the one mediatorial nation, utterly spoiled
and broken up. The work went on till finished, and
.. the times of the Gentiles" were brought in . " Indeed,
the Gent ile found his day of grace, because the Jew
qua J ew had ceased to be. When the temple sank in
Diqitrzed byGOOgle
2-3.] The Truth Set Free. 91
flames, the practice of the ritual law became impossible;
the priesthood was reduced to an honorary
sinecure and empty name. "This could not but appear"
(says Dollinger, First Age ofthe Church,
109) "to
all Christians, surely also to many Jews, as a solemn
rejection by God, declared in deeds, of the people He
had formerly chosen out of all the nations of the earth."
Without this, the day of the Gentiles could not have
come; at least, by this it came. So witnesses a historian
who is not thinking of any text in the book of
Revelation :-" The destruction, never to be repaired,
of the material temple, cut the cords which bound the
new faith to its local habitation, and launched it under
the hand of Providence, on its career of spiritual
conquest."
(Merivale, Romans under the Empire,
vi. 605).
It is also note-worthy that from that day the Jew
ceased to make proselytes of the Gentiles. Thus was
the symbol of the measured temple amazingly fulfilled.
The Roman conquest, treading down the outer court,
brought out the glories of the inner sanctuary of God's
truth; and at the same time ushered in " the times of
the Gentiles "-the day of Gentile pre-eminence in the
kingdom of heaven.
THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF TWO
WITNESSES
is a symbol whose introduction in this place has been
a source of great perplexity, but which, according to
our interpretation, could not well have been omitted.
"No solution has ever been given of this part of
the prophecy," are the ominous words with which
Alford opens his comment. Events move rapidly in
92 Law and Love. [xi.
these days, and solutions have been found which only
the ultra-fastidious can refuse.
The time during which these two Witnesses prophesy
is identical with the treading down of the holy
city by the heathen. The latter is given in moons,
perhaps because it is a continuous work, and a work
of darkness and of night, of judgement and destruction
; the former is given in days, because it is a daily
and intermittent task, and emphatically a work of light.
Who are these Witnesses? They are not so much
two distinguished persons as two offices or functions,
two aspects of God's work in Israel-the governing and
the teaching. These" two olive trees"
or " two candlesticks"
are the two" sons of oil" referred to by Zecharia-
the priest and the king or judge in Israel-who
fulfil their offices not by their personal power and
might but by the Spirit of the Lord. In other words,
they are the institutions of the Law and the Priesthood-
guided by prophetic inspirations. The Law is
God's demand that men shall love Him with all their
hearts and minds; the Priesthood is God's witness
that He loves the sons of men and dwells among
them as their Sun and Shield. The Law demands
righteousness; the Priesthood offers help to its attainment.
It is, therefore, absolutely true that if men war
against these Witnesses they are burned with " unquenchable
fire." Truth and Love are the keys of the
kingdom of life ; men must revere them or be scorched
to death in that fire of brimstone which is the righteous
breath of the Lord. The Old Testament never
wearies witnessing, and the foregoing trumpet-plagues
arc the latest proofs, that all heaven's rain, all earth's
fru itfulness, and all society's order are dependent on
Diqitrzed byGOOgle
3-5.] Tlze old Truth Glorified. 93
their being honoured; while all the plagues of Egypt
and Sodom break out of the abyss when men war
against their sovereignty. Moral evil, in short, is the
primal fount and origin of all man's miseries on earth.
Expositors are greatly tempted to find these
Witnesses in Christian apostles and preachers. They
sometimes search Jerusalem in its latter days for two
apostles who were slain, and may have had the
marvellous resurrection here narrated. It is scarcely
possible to be farther off the track. It turns the" sign"
into a verbal prediction, which it is not.
It ignores the
statement that it is imposslble for any man to hurt
them, because in the attempt tlte man Itimself must
be
killed. The martyrdom of two personal Christian
witnesses would flatly contradict this intimation.
Besides, the Apostles cannot yet be appropriately
introduced, as the Gospel age is not yet officially
begun. The Jewish age is still only on its dying bed,
and John concerned only with its dying agonies, and
what can be saved from the wreck. From its people
there has been saved a remnant-the believing Israel;
from its temple, there has been saved the Holy Place
--does nothing more remain to be conserved? Yes, one
thing more-s-the divine soul of the dispensation's
truth! The very fact that" a seed" was saved, is
proof that there was something divine and eternal in
Israel's worship and polity; and the sealing of the
saints therefore logically involves the measuring of the
Holy Place,and the resurrection of theseWitnesses. The
parallel between the three is very close, and crammed
full of instruction. The elect seed, transferred from
Judaism to the Church of Christ, is the core or heart
.of the Jewish people. The Holy Place is the vital
94 Chn'st in th« Old Testament. [xi.
centre of the Temple system. The inner soul of the
Witnesses is made indestructible in this figurative
resurrection. In all three cases, the outer and more
profane is given over to destruction; the inner essence
of all three survives. Isracl is preserved in its faithful
people; in its spiritual temple; and in the principles
of which its temple was the home; or, to vary the
expression for illustration's sake, the Kingdom of God
in its people, its worship, and its truth and government
lived on through the night of judgement which had
fallen upon its corruptions, and the cumbrous encrustations
which had clung to it and destroyed its
usefulness.
But whose are these two Witnesses? We infer,
without express instruction, that they are Christ's.
Well might He call the light-giving and ruling offices
in Judaism hz's Witnesses. Prophets, priests, and
kings
were the forerunners, the divine make-shifts, set up
until the ideal prophet, priest, and king should come.
All the Scriptures" testify of me," said He. The law
and the prophets were preaching Christ, often not
knowing what they did, all through the ages from the
first. Such is the stand-point of this book-" The testimony
of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" (xix. 10).
There would have been no law, no covenant people, no
priest or king, if there had been no Christ to come in
the fulness of the times.
Where do these Witnesses prophecy? The answer
is contained in the very nature of the Witnesses. It
can only be " in tlze streets of the great city, wlzzch
spiritually
is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our
Lord was crucified." Without veil, the scene is
Jerusalem.
"It is called the GREAT city, as
farther on is
5-8.] The Clzristian's Egypt.
95
Babylon, because it is the metropolis, and representative
of the collective body of the rejected covenant
people, as Babylon is mentioned as the capital and
centre of the heathen world."--(Waller, 243). In spiritual
character, this so-called holy city is only to be
named with Sodom and Egypt. Isaiah was very bold,
and in Jerusalem addressed its dignitaries as-I< Ye
rulers of Sodom." In Jeremiah's time, as in John's,
Jehovah was compelled to say of the prophets-i-" Ye
are all to me as Sodorn." Alford stumbles sorely
because
the designation-s-" Egypt" is not found in the
prophets. Israel could not be Egypt until it became
a house of bondage and oppression ; and that was impossible
until a more spiritual people than itself arose
to suffer from its yoke. If we remember how frequently
our Lord and his Apostles spoke of the
Jewish system as holding its subjects in bonds, imposing
a burden greater than men could bear, as
being a yoke of bondage robbing men of the freedom
into which Christ had come to lead them; or if we
know the history of apostolic times, when there was
the greatest danger of Jewish elements prevailing in
the Church, and swamping it, or let me say, transferring
it into a petty judrean sect, we cannot be surprised
that the Jerusalem which then was, was in the
eyes of such as Paul and John a veritable Egyptian
house of bondage.
Here then, in this hotbed of lawlessness and oppression
the principles of Old Testament revelation lift up
their feeble voice. They have sadly lost their wonted
power and glory, and instead of goodly garments walk
in sackcloth as becomes the evil times. Even in those
dark days there were a few in high places who openly
96 [xi.
rebuked the murderous wickedness and anarchy which
prevailed. Prophetic voices even plainly uttered presages
of doom in the city streets. No man cared; or
only cared so far that by a dagger he soon silenced
the hateful voice. Hear Josephus about the Zealot
defenders of Jerusalem: "These men trampled upon
all the laws of men and laughed at the laws of God;
and for the oracles of the prophets, they ridiculed them
as the tricks of jugglers." The powers of hell prevailed;
the beast from the abyss (certainly not Nero,
but the Dragon), with its locust sensualities and its
demoniac hosts, did what no man nor sword could do
-profaned and desolated the sacred forms of truth
and righteousness.
This shameful spectacle proceeding through those
months was a source of sorrow to the few, but of
jubilant rejoicing to the multitude. To be at liberty to
follow their propensities and gratify their sensual lusts
without divine restraint is, alas, a very welcome liberty
to men whose hearts are black. Every unbeliever in
the divinity of religion, every heathen man who had
been annoyed by the Jew's assumed superiority, every
Roman politician of the time, was happy to think that
Judaism was rotting for the Roman eagles; every
Jew
who wished freedom from the restraints of justice and
religion would hold high carnival over the evident collapse
of sacred principles so long revered. On every
side there were gracious congratulations that a radical
reform had come. It was a scene that may be repeated
any day; indeed, never is wanting where right
and wrong are struggling for the mastery. Every
epoch of anarchy and bloodshed has had its brood of
fiends who stood apart in safety and shouted their
10-12.] Judaism Perfected by
its Death. 97
applause. Let us be charitable enough to hope that
it has been mostly in the delusive dream that" the
day of the wine-press of wrath" is the forerunner
of a "good time coming."
" The sign of the Prop/let Jonas."
The resurrection which soon follows intimates that
divine principles cannot perish from the earth. They
rise from the dead like their Master; though not so
suddenly. God's work may appear to vanish before
the violence of men; but the vanishing point is truly
the moment of its awakening to new power, and its
assumption of complete supremacy. The peoples and
nations that rejoiced over the silencing of divine truth
and authority, and hoped never again to be tormented
by the claims of one true and righteous God, were
speedily disturbed in their godless revelry. As J udaism
died, Christianity shot up into fresh and wondrous
power. I t seemed to the heathen as if the old hateful
truths had been clothed with diviner power, and exalted
up to heaven They had thought that the worship
of the God of the Jews was at an end; that with
its weird condemning voice for ever hushed, its severe
unsympathetic purity ceasing to rebuke their superstitious
revelries, they undisturbed could still enjoy the
sweet licentiousness of their pagan cults; but no,God's
Witnesses arose in form more terrible with
heavenly light, and bore a more effective testimony
against the world's evil.
" Behold, your house is
left unto you desolate."
Whether this earthquake is to be taken as a physical
upheaval may be questioned. Seeing that it is not nar7
98 Earthquake Terrors. [XI.
rated as a vision, but as if it
were history, it may well
be taken in a physical sense. There certainly was
such a storm and earthquake, when God's Witnesses
were lying trodden in the streets of Jerusalem, as
made even the boldest think that God was judging
them. Josephus tells us of" a prodigious storm in the
night, with strong winds, drenching rains, continued
lightnings, terrible thunderings, and amazing concussions
and bellowings of the earth." This, he says, portended
some dreadful calamity; as indeed it did.
Next morning it was found that Ananus, the high
priest, a man of singularly noble character, and other
venerable teachers of the people, had been slain in the
temple courts, then" cast out naked into the streets to
be the food of dogs and wild beasts." That night,
8,500 men were slain, and from that hour, Josephus
says, may be reckoned" the beginning of the destruction
of the city, the overthrow of her wall, and the ruin
of her affairs." (Wars, B. iv.,
chs. 4, 5.) These
occurrences are altogether strikingly like what John
describes in broader features and more spiritual form.
However, we must not think that it is against the city
of stone and lime that God's wrath here is hurled,
or that God can desire Jerusalem to be blotted out.
It is on the men, with their false religious system,
their sins and godless tempers, that heaven's judgement
falls. Enough that Jerusalem's power is broken;
her proud sons humbled in the dust; her theocratic
dignities withdrawn.
It looks, indeed, as if some blessing had come to
Jerusalem by these premonitions of destruction.
" The rest were affrighted and gave glory to God."
Expositors
sometimes import into this the meaning that
13-15.] Wickedness and Wors/tip. 99
the Jewish people are to profit by their afflictions, and
repent so far as to "become a Christian people, a true
Israel, and Jerusalem a truly holy city." (Gebhardt,
&c.) Of course, that prophecy, if ever made, was
falsified. But John makes no such anticipation.
Telling the night-side of Israel's story, he could not
introduce so much of the rosy morning,--cspecially
when such a national morning was not to dawn. What
more natural than that when such divine judgements
are in the land, men should discern that those who
escape particular judgements are no safer than those
whofall. "The rest"-were they holier than those who
perished in a night? Were not they, too, destructible?
Might not their names be in God's book for a judgement-
day, to-morrow or the next? What will they
do in their fear? Give glory unto God, such glory
as such fearful souls can give. But what profit comes
of it ? What can worship in which Catastrophe takes
the place of Conscience lead to? Nothing but a pacification
of men's fears, and a renewal of their evil
ways. The piety born of fear is not regenerative;
fright does not save. It can
awaken in a selfish way;
and bring men to talk flatteringly before the face of
God. But" wickedness and worship" are an old conjunction
which God will not tolerate; and the story
of this book must therefore run :-" Be/told, the third
woe cometh quickly."
" At the sound of the last trump."
The seventh angel sounded. The mystery of God is
finished. The heavenly voices declare that God's purpose
is now made plain. " The kingdom of t/te world
is now become the kingdom of our Lord and kis Christ,
100 TIle Kingdom Come. [XI.
and He shall reign for euer and ever." Here, the
mystery of God is revealed as a grand two-sided truth;
Jesus Christ is God's one vice-regent, the head and
summation of humanity; and this Christ, as Paul so
frequently insisted, is commanded now to be made
known unto all nations for the obedience of the faith
(Ro. xvi. 25-6), in accordance with God's purpose to
have a dispensation of the fulness of the times in which
all things are summed up in Christ, the things in
the heavens and the things upon the earth (Eph. i.
9-10); or, in other words, with God's purpose that the
Gentiles shall be fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of
the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ
Jesus (iii. 6). Thus clearly, the time of the sounding
of the trumpet is the moment when God officially in
history makes plain his purpose to abolish the
distinction between Jew and Gentile, and make them
members of one Church in Christ. If ever there was
such a moment, or can be, never could it be more
appropriately done than when the primary, elementary,
and limited dispensation of the law was brought to an
official end by the divine abrogation of the temple
ritual; and the Gospel preacher was made free to
invite the ends of the earth into the Church of God on
a footing of equality with the best of Abraham's sons.
Here is the historical fulfilment of "the Gospel of the
Kingdom" preached by the Baptist and by Christ
Himself some 40 years before :-" The Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand." Few were then the signs that
Christ was on his way to such marked supremacy;
but the via dolorosa led to the stars and to the
crown.
Now that proud religion which contemned Him is
plucked up and cast into the fire and burned, whilst
15-18.] Why do the Heathen Rage? 101
He is seen "coming in his kingdom," clothed with
power and glory.
" Jr/U'1~ the
81m of .Mancometh, BIUIll Hefind fuitt:
01~ the earth1"
Well may the heavens with brimming- hearts of love,
lift up their voice and sing. Much more joyfully
might the earth hail the coming of the Lord to his
rightful throne; the revelation of a sovereignty in
which love and power go hand in hand to put to shame
the tyrannies and brutalities of the petty kings of earth.
Yet there was no thankfulness on earth because no
faith, no not in Israel, to see that God had set his
Christ upon David's throne as a blessing to the world.
" The nations were zorotk,' at the theocratic
pretensions
of the Jews, and against the claims of the God of
Israel. The kings and princes of the earth had hated
every thought that limited their right to reign, and
promised liberty to oppressed and groaning peoples.
God answers men according to their kind.
Obstructiveinstitutions,
wrathful against the truth, He baptises
with his wrath. Evil has a tremendous grip of life on
earth. Men are by nature lovers of tradition, followers
of precedent. If a thing is old
it is highly reverenced.
Our old nobility, old customs, our most ancient
Church,
are, like old wine, the better of their keeping. Satan
has a prescriptive right to reign if he has had possession
long enough. Vested interests, is the most sacred
principle of political economy. Therefore, we stand
aside,and let old hoary evils flourish, if not too corrupt
to stand erect. God baptises with his wrath whatever
on this earth has served its day. "Spare it, for it is
old! " we say. "It is old, so let it die," is the decree
of God. We dream fondly of the old old world; but
102 Tlte judgement Day.
[xr,
God is ever hastening toward a new heaven and new
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
" The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised."
Not only was it God's time to judge his land; it
was also "tlte time of tIle dead tlrat tltey should be
judged." This is a revelation for which many of the
readers of the Apocalypse are not prepared. It is,
however, in strictest keeping with the teaching of the
Gospels and Epistles. Christ and his Apostles, without
exception, taught that judgement was at hand, not
only for the living, but for the dead as well. The
proof texts are so numerous that we need not quote
them; but it may be needful again to warn some
readers that the immediateness of the judgement to
Apostolic times is not always expressed as it ought to
be in our English translations. It
seems most fitting
that at the close of a dispensation a judgement should
take place of all those who are or have been under its
laws. It is the divine method that
the things of each
dispensation shall be entirely wound up and put in
order before it pass away. The living Jew was judged
and self-condemned by the preaching of the Gospel.
I ts rejection was his sentence to his doom. Whatever
be the meaning of St. Peter, he illustrates this principle
in his statement that" the gospel was preached even
to the dead that they might be judged according to
men in the flesh, but live according to God in the
spirit." He does seem to say that the preliminary
preparations for a judgement of the spirit-world began
with the risen life of Christ. By all appearance it is
to this invisible judgement Christ refers where He says
in John v. 26-" THE HOUR COMETH, and now is,
18.] Tlte Resurrection of the Dead.
103
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God."
That is no figurative transaction with people figuratively
dead; from the fact that tile execution ofjudgement
is the predominant idea in the Saviour's mind;
and from the still more emphatic and unmistakeable
repetition of the truth in v. 28--" The hour cometh
in
which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice
and come forth" unto life or judgement. Such was
the uniform teaching of our Lord's Apostles. If our
Lord's coming was impending, so necessarily was the
judgement-day; and that such sublime events are the
fitting accompaniment of an epoch so marked in its
significance as the close of an age, surely no one can
deny.
" The dead in Christ shall rise first."
Consequently, this is the moment when all those
who have feared the Lord receive their rewards. The
prophets, the saints, the martyrs with their weary cry
beneath the altar-" How long, 0 Lord," are delivered
from the bands of death and attain to glory and
honour. The Lord has descended with a shout, with
the sound of the last trump, the keys of Hades in his
hands, and delivered his waiting saints. This is the
first resurrection. Here again we strike a telling note
of harmony between the Apocalypse and other portions
of the Scripture. The resurrection is declared to be
coming on apace in the Gospels; in the Epistles to be
near; in the Apocalypse to be come. The dead
saints
enter upon their rest at the close of the old dispensation.
The new age with its new liberties to the earth, has new
liberties for the unseen world. The prison doors of
ignorance and unbelief on earth open synchronously
104 A Promise KejJt. [XI.
with the prison doors of Hades. Here is the fulfilment
of the promise Christ made to his disciples-" A little
while and ye shall see me again; I shall come for you
and take you to myself!" Here, too, is the fulfilment
of the assurance of the angels on Mount Olivet: "Ye
shall see Him in like manner come to you again!"
This glorious fulfilment of the promise has been
forgotten in our Protestant Church, and expiscated
from all Protestant theology. It was a powerful
thought, and a happy one, in the faith of the early
Church, though accompanied with unfortunate limitations.
Dante could celebrate the arrival in Hades of
"un Possente
Con segno di vittoria incoronato "
-a Potentate with sign of victory crowned, whose
word released the spirits of his waiting saints, the
first-fruits of his triumph! Were it not well for us in
these days to enter into the possession of the full faith,
not alone of the ancient Church, but of the written
Word; and to rejoice that Christ has indeed led
captive captivity, and not left heaven empty of his
risen saints?
Then comes the ominous intimation that" tlte time
is come to destroy them that destroy tlte land." This
might readily be understood of those lawless and
disorderly Jews or benighted religionists who had been
the curse of Palestine. But clearly, although their
judgement has not been carried to completion in
detail, they are to be understood as judged. This
note is the intimation of a fresh extension of the field
of judgement, of which we are on the eve. Those who
have been God's instruments in destroying the cove18-
19.] Heauen Opened to Beiieuers.
105
nant people, and have trodden down the holy city, are
themselves to be judged in their turn.
"If judgement
must begin at the house of God, what shall be the end
of them that obey not the gospel of God?" Or if
such things have been done in the green tree of juda-a,
what shall be done in the dry tree of that heathenism
which vaunts itself against the honour of the only God?
Anon we shall see this work proceed; John's plan
necessitates a halt in order to make a new beginning
upon different lines.
" The wayinto the holies: is made
manifest:"
Meanwhile, the temple in heauet:
is opened. That is
the signal of two glorious facts. (1.) The reward of
the risen saints is, to enter into more immediate fellowship
with God. They have ascended into a more perfect
life. Never before was that degree of heaven open to
foot of man save Christ's; but now the promise is
fulfilled-" I go to prepare a place for you, that where
I am there ye may be also . . to behold my glory."
(2.) The temple in Jcrusalem is gone; God's house on
earth is left desolate. All eyes are now towards
heaven. The way into the holiest is made manifest,
because the first tabernacle is no longer standing.
Thus are we parabolically taught how, in the new
dispensation
of the gospel, God and man are reconciled,
and brought into a closeness of communion which
presages certain victory to God in the ultimate history
of humanity.
There is one thing apt to strike the reader as very
strange in the contents of this last trumpet-the
apparent insignificance of its contents, in form at
least. Great things are told to
John; but there is no
106 Finis
! [xr,
grand VISIOn, no fulness of detail, no emphasis as if
these things were of much importance; whereas, from
the last and crowning trumpet we should have expected
some grand denoument, in which all that is
past would be comprehended and explained. Nevertheless,
this last trumpet really contains the whole gist
of what has gone before; and it sums up, in few words,
all that is to come in the second part of the Apocalypse.
It is not by any means, as Ewald has said, a prelude
to the following visions; but it is the whole of the
following visions in epitome. And the reason for this
particular brevity of narration seems to be, that almost
all the contents of this last trumpet (signifying as it
does the advent of the Gospel age, with all its magnificent
endowment of Christian blessing) belongs
rather to the MORNING of "the Great Day of the
Lord" than to the NIGHT. It is always hard to draw
a line between the night and the morning; and John,
since he must draw it, chooses to do it so that the
light of the morning will make a narrow band of
brightness on the eastern side of the night. Artistically,
his picture is complete. We have seen the old
age die of sheer rottenness and inanity; and we know
that a new age follows. John will immediately proceed
to introduce the morning of a better day. 'vVe know
how Judaism died; we shall see how the sun of the
Gospel rose, and fought with clouds, and mists, and
storms, until it shone with the light of an eternal day.
PART II.
IDa\?sprtng; or tbe Bb"ent
of tbe
cbrtetran Bge.
" Howl ye, woe worth the day! For the day
is near, even the
day of the Lord is
near, a day of clouds ; it shall be the time
of the heathen."
"As the lightning cometh forth from the East and
is seen even
unto the West; so shall be the coming of the Son of Man."
" Say, watchman, what's off the night?
Do the dews of the morning fall?
Have the orient skies a border of light,
Like the fringe of a funeral pall?
The night is fast waning on high,
And soon shall the darkness flee,
And the morn shall spread o'er the blushing sky,
And bright shall its glories be."-Anon.
THE WOMAN AND THE DRAGON.
CHAPTER XII.
" The beginning of the Goapel of Jesus Christ."
sIERIOUS difficulties have arisen over the
structure
of this book,-many critics and expositors having
failed to notice the principle on which John treats his
theme; or rather, on which "the day of the Lord" is revealed
to him. As typical of such, we may cite first a
case which was lately introduced to English readers in
the pages of the Expositor. A German scholar
(Vischer)
thinks that the Lamb whom we have seen in the
midst of the throne cannot be Christ because Christ
is not born until we come to chapter xii. His English
cicerone (Simcox) sympathises, and thinks it hard to
suppose that an event can be described in chapter xii.
which was 70 years in the past. These apparent
discordances naturally lead to uncomplimentary
theories of the book's origin. All such misconceptions
cease so soon as we apprehend John's simple and
natural, therefore truly artistic plan; a twofold
representation of the day of the Lord-mutually
supplementary; but either of which might stand
alone as meeting the requirements of the title"
THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST."
A few who have noted this double structure have
failed to see the principle on which it is done; and the
line of cleavage has been drawn at chapter x. with a
trumpet still to sound, and the tragedy left suddenly
110 Tlte Author's Plan. [XII.
suspended in the air. The general plan of the book
makes it plain that only here, between xi. and xii., do
we reach the dividing line; and are able to look back
and behold a finished work. John's subject is "The
Great Day of the Lord "-the coming of Christ in
those events of judgement and redemption which are
the official introduction of the Messianic age-the
age of the Kingdom of God; or, as better known by
us, the age of the Gospel. That great day, as suited
the Hebrew mind of John, is arranged in two successive
periods of darkness and light; or, as we say, night and
day. " The evening and the morning were day one."
The" day of the Lord," like the creative day, begins
with chaos and night (the gloom of judgement in the
falling of sun, moon, and stars); and then it proceeds
with the creation of the light, and the victories of light,
in new bloom and beauty on the earth. This is the
regulating principle of the order of the Apocalypse,
and our readers can easily put the matter to the test.
Renan gives expression to a very common feeling
of bewilderment at this part of his comment in his
Antichrist. He says that" the author is little
careful
of the unity of his work," and cannot understand how,
when all seems finished, John" reserves the means of
continuing his tale." Our readers will see that
the fundamental plan of the book implies such
a narrative as we have had, and the resumption of the
tale afresh from a different point of view. All apparent
confusion disappears before the fact that we
witness first the night of judgement, then the dawning
of the better day; see first,
how a decadent divine
dispensation dies, then how
from its womb a diviner
age is born.
1.] Destruction and Re-construction. 111
Look back and see. Is it not evident that we have
been hitherto concerned, as on this principle we ought,
with the decline and fall of the ancient Church-with
Judaism, her apostasy, her growing darkness and her
doom? We have been passing through the darkness
of the night; and have followed its weary hours until
we found that the day was about to break, or had just
broken and no more. On the night-side of God's day,
we are not meant to see much of the Church of Christ,
or even of Christ Himself, except under clouds of
darkness. The narrative is concerned with destruction
and not re-construction. Scarcely do we see anything
of the latter beyond the fact that there are in Judaism
certain things which must survive; and that in the
fires of judgement God preserves them. A spiritual
people, a spiritual worship, and a body of spiritual
truths are seen to survive the general wreck. We
know without instruction that this is substantially the
ideal Church of God: the nucleus of what comes to
be the Church of Christ. As yet, however, the new is
hidden in the old. The things which can be shaken
must be removed in order "that what cannot be
shaken may appear." The scaffolding hides the
gracious proportions of the building which is growing
up within its lines; only when the formal and the
temporary are removed do we have a vision of the
imperishable ideal. John has hitherto written only
the dying history of the old; he will now write the
birth and growth to manhood of the new. Our ears
have heard the cry-" the King is dead! " and now we
shall be pointed to his Son and heir, and hear the
acclamations of the multitude-"Long live the King!"
In other words, we shall now have the light-side of
112 Tlte Daughter of Zion. [XII.
"the day of the Lord." The darkening night has
been pictured; we shall see the same scenes from the
standpoint of the dawning day. The day-star of the
Church will be seen in weakness and struggle with the
dark clouds of the passing night. Not only will the
morning break; the sun will slowly yet surely ascend
the sky, wrestling with many a long trailing serpentcloud
until it reach the zenith of its glory. This
method of handling the subject compels us to travel
over much of the ground a second time. Night and
morning intermingle and overlap at many points, and
so do we find it in John's book. Especially is this
true, as indeed it ought to be, in the closing verses of
Part I., where the Seer is on the borderland of the better
day. That last trumpet ushers in the dawn, and
therefore it is a brief epitome of the visions yet to
come, in which are depicted the rise and triumph of
Christian Truth. Thus grasping the scheme of the
book, we shall the easier thread our way through
impending intricacies, and be able to avoid difficulties
over which other feet have stumbled.
"Zion travailed . . she was delivered of a man
child."
John sees " a woman arrayed witlt tile sun, the moon
beneatk her feet, and upon her lzead a crown of twelve
stars." Expositors find here, with unusual unanimity,
a symbol of the Church the bride of God. The
glories which invest her are not her own. Her brightness
is the refulgence of the Sun of Righteousness.
But which Church is this? It is inadmissible to
answer, the Hebrew-Christian Church of judsea ;
because in that case, the mother would be her own son,
and the son his own mother; and while the mother
.
1-3.] TIle B£rth of Chr£st. 113
flees into the wilderness, as the son she would be
carried up to heaven. Confusion upon confusion.
This interpretation is favoured because of unwillingness
to break the continuity of the visions by going back
70 years, and finding here the birth of Christ. However,
we must needs go back if John is starting de novo
to explain the coming of the day of the Lord from
the positive and constructive side. This woman is the
Church as continuously existing throughout Jewish
history. It is elect humanity as loved, comforted, and
made fruitful by the grace of God; the daughter of
Zion in her beautiful array; that spiritual remnant of
whom Christ as to the flesh was born. Thus does
• John once again catch up another of those permanent
ideals which sparkle like diamonds in the page of the
prophetic word. God has not forsaken Zion; nor
forgotten the wife of his love; nor so much as changed
in his eternal purpose. "The gifts and calling of
God are without repentance." The Church of the past
is one with the Church of the future, except that the
latter is lifted up into a purer faith, a brighter hope,
and a diviner charity.
This " Man ch£ld" is Christ. The" Dragon" is
that
old Serpent the Devil. This animal form is chosen as
the most suitable type of sensual wisdom, cruelty and
cunning, armed with multifarious forms of power, and
crowned with universal sovereignty. Here he lies in
waiting for Christ's birth. Thus does John give unity
to all Anti-Christian forms of evil. This is the envenomed
power that inspired the fox-like enmity of
Herod; that prompted Judas to betray his Master,
and stirred up Priest and Pharisee to slay Him, in the
hope that, Christ once destroyed-the Kingdom of the
. 8
114 Satanic Darkness. [XII.
world would continue in subjection to its dark and
desolating sway. This same dragon lies in wait to
destroy the birth of good in every human soul, to
quench the faintest glimmerings of new light, and to
oppose every heavenly influence and doctrine that
would deliver men from its fatal delusions.
The stars ofheauen dragged to earth by this dragon's
tail may point us to that great apostasy of angels
which figures so largely in rabbinical theology and
which has passed over bodily into Christian thought
(whether in corroboration or merely as a note of'
identification, we cannot say); or it may symbolise
Satan's power over those human lights which God has
set for the guidance of humanity. The saddest page
in human history is, the records of its men of light and
leading. From the grandest heights they have fallen
into deepest depths. There is mingling with the
stream of human life an element of contrariety which
often perverts the highest gifts and the most sacred
offices to mean and selfish, even beastly uses. Such
an apostasy, we might say, had been universal over
three-fourths of the world; the light had been turned
to darkness. This had taken place even among the
stars of Judaism; later, among the star-like minds of
Christendom. All great truths have had their light
obscured by the bad perversions of gifted and powerful
minds who have paid homage to the dragon
principle in preference to the God of love.
" I unll give thee the nations for thine inheritance; thou
shalt
break them with a rod of iron."
This man child" was SOON to rule all nations with
a rod of iron." These words present us with the
4-5.] Absolute lvlorality. 115
govermental aspect of Christ's saving work. He came
into the world to found a kingdom co-extensive with
the human race. That is equivalent to the redemption
of mankind from its vain traditions, its evil habits, its
enslaving tyrannies. His government is to be firm
and strong. Satan had ruled the world hitherto on
the principle of license. Heathen religions kept their
sway because tolerant of the immorality of king and
subject, the noble and his slave; and tyrants had been
popular in proportion as they had pandered to the
frivolous and sensuous tastes of priests and people.
Christ came to institute a kingdom of inflexible
righteousness. Even the pretentious righteousness of
Scribes and Pharisees will not satisfy his iron law.
His administration will be puritanical compared
with the immoral looseness of other kings and
conquerors. His laws will be absolute; his will in
the end irresistible. Under his dominion the decree
holds sway-Men shall reap as they sow. This ideal
purity is not always realised in Christendom; but the
ideal remains to-day not one whit accommodated to
the weak desires of men.
We have in this sentence a conjunction of ideas
quite alien to current conceptions. Christ is " SOON"
to rule the nations, and for this purpose is " caught up
to God and to his throne." Usually it is understood
that the reign of Christ was not to be until a day far
distant from the time of John, and that Christ must
rather descend from the throne of God and come
personally to the earth in order to begin his reign.
Largely it is believed that Christ is powerless now;
remains an uncrowned King until He can come down
from heaven and set up a throne in imitation of
116 War in Heaven. [XII.
Csesar's in Jerusalem. On the contrary, the Scriptures
associate his Kingship with his ascent. He is allpowerful
because He is at the right hand of the
Majesty in heaven, and his ascension was the moment
of his investment with a power and government which
know no end. That indeed was the index of his
triumph, the declaration of his royality, and the leading
captive of captivity. I t is in that glorified condition,
at the centre of Being, that Christ exercises
all his power; and his second advent must be held in
strict subordination to the truth that He cannot leave
his heavenly throne, nor needs to leave it for the
increase of his glory and dominion. He ascended up
to the matrix of all power in order that He might
reign; to leave that centre is to condescend to
weakness and the abnegation of his universal sovereignty.
" I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven."
The first effect of Christ's sovereignty is_H
war in
heauen" There are four different spheres in which
this statement may possibly be fulfilled. It may point
us to some actual conflict, not indeed of arms but of
truth and error, in the inner spirit-world or heavens.
Satan, according to Jewish thought, had access to
heaven and to the ear of God; and could prejudice
the cause of men with God. Pared to the quick, that
may signify only that the evil or imperfect states of
the inhabitants of the ancient spirit-world had a
prejudicial effect upon the spiritual states and fortunes
of men on earth; and that human advancement is
dependent on the defeat or lessening of evil in the
unseen world. This idea, so far as we know, is
5-7.] Satan Overcome. 117
developed only in the schemes of certain of the mystics.
(2.) It may mean that until Christ overthrew the
power of Satan by his assumption of his mediatorial
powers, and his opening of the Holiest to his people,
even Christians in the spirit life were in some sense
imperfect, as the epistle to the Hebrews hints, and in
that sense still accused of sin (Gebhardt). (3.) That
Satanic influences warred against the truth as preached
by the Apostles; while heavenly influences warred
upon their side and overcame. Paul had some such
conception of an unseen foe-" We wrestle not with
flesh and blood, but against principalities; etc., in high
places." (4.) It may signalise the
installation of
Christ upon his Father's throne in his glorified humanityas
a fresh bond of peace between earth and heaven.
Now, God and man are reconciled. The guiltiest can
come to God without any longer being tormented by
accusing fears that sound as the condemning voice of
God.
These are not so much diverse interpretations, as
branches of one and the same conception.
If the first
be true, and Christ in some local sense has purified
the higher regions of the unseen, and so" prepared a
place for us," then all the other senses are in agreement
with the fact and form a part of it. Possibly the
strongest view may be the nearest to the truth. Truth
is stranger than fiction; and this old eastern notion of
fallen angels cast out of heaven, at which the young
world laughs, may be a historical reality. At all events,
this overthrow of Satan as a consequence of the ascent
of Christ to heaven, is in some grand and worthy sense
beyond all doubt. When at last our Lord stood in
view of his death and resurrection, He said: "Now is
118 Tile Accuser Refuted. [XII.
the hour and power of darkness;" but He could
prophetically add, "Now is the prince of this world
cast out." Thus we see how fitly such a conflict is
recorded by the pen of John, as following the advent
of Jesus to his throne.
Immediately there is joy in heaven, because the
devil is dethroned, and Christ, "the friend of sinners,"
is invested with the authority of God. With Christ,
his saints have triumphed against all the accusations
of the evil one. Satan's foulest charge against
humanity is, its selfishness; its proneness to make
profit even of religion. " Skin for skin, all that a man
hath will he give for his life." That accusation was
refuted by the blood of the Lamb, and then by every
blood-drop wrung from the martyrs' veins. "They
I07Jed not their life." Rather than deny the truth they
died a dreadful death, and demonstrated their fidelity
to truth and God. They were able to die because the
Lamb had died. "The blood of the Lamb was a
perpetual witness to them that God had reconciled the
world unto Himself. It was a
living sacrament of a
perpetual and living union between the children on
earth and their Father in heaven Therefore
these men could throwaway their lives, knowing that
the truth was worth more than their lives, and that
they might trust their lives unto the God of truth,"
(Maurice). What glory is thus shed around the
memories of those noble men! Their martyrdom is
made a portion of their Saviour's triumph; for it seems
that Christ, with Michael and his hosts, could not have
silenced the accuser unless down on earth men had
proved by deeds that they could die for God and for
his truth.
!l-14.] Tlte Climax of Wickedness. 119
But what is joyful for the inhabitants of heaven is
misery for the dwellers upon earth. The devil is come
down full of wrath and the bitterness of despair.
Heaven is lost; he still may have the sweet revenge
of creating a wilder turbulence on earth. Now there
breaks upon the land a wave of selfishness and hatred
that boils in wrath against whatever is divine, and
spares neither kith nor kin in its devastating fury It
was indeed a wicked age, " a time of devil ascendancy
over the world," a ripening of the harvest of iniquity.
the overflow of the cup of earth's sinful abominations,
Such a festering mass of wickedness never before nor
since was seen in human history. As we read the
dreadful story of the middle of that century in the
pages of Gibbon or Mommsen, or directly face to face
in Tacitus or Suetonius, one's heart bleeds for that
suffering generation, whether Jews or Gentiles, and
seeks in vain for consolation except in the assurance
that the very violence and brutality of its evil must the
sooner hasten its final removal from the earth.
" Let them that are in Judaa flee into the nwuntains."
And how fares it with the Church? The malignity
of that generation surged in storms against the Chureh,
especially the Hebrew-Christian Church. A fit of persecuting
zeal was at its height, when the national
troubles with the Romans diverted attention from the
Christian cause. Then came the tramp of Roman
legions through the land; and heathen armies threatened
to be more destructive than the persecutor's
blows. But the Church remembered the warning of
her Lord: "Let them which be in Judzea flee into the
mountains," and the wings of God's protecting love
120 Persecution and False Doctrine. [XII.
bore them safely from the field. Our earliest Church
historians tell us that the Jewish Christians fled at the
outbreak of the war to Pella, on the borders of Arabia,
and there dwelt in safety until peace returned.
Though stripped and left with nothing but a bare subsistence
during those three years and a half in which
the Romans trampled down the land, they weathered
the storm of desolation and found them years of
safety and repose.
Foiled in his use of fire, the dragon"
casts out of his
mouth a flood of water as a river," in order to
sweep
the infant Church away. The serpent is sensual and
demoniac wisdom; the waters of his mouth, are a flood
.of fleshly but pretentiously spiritual speculations, under
the ambitious name of Gnosis.
You hear enough of
this in many of the Epistles-of seducing spirits,
and doctrines of devils, forbidding to marry, teaching
the worshipping of angels, denying the resurrection,
denying even" the Lord that bought them "-all of
which Paul calls, "the profane babblings and oppositions
of science falsely so called"-"foolish and hurtful
lusts which drown men in
destruction and perdition."
" What waters were these for the Church to float in
after she was loosed from her old moorings!" and the
Apostles fast passing over to the other shore.
Salvation did not come by the counter-reasonings
of the Timothies, Apolloses, and Clements who were
left to fill the Apostles' places. Everything in a
speculation
depends upon its relations to the wants of life.
Paul told the Colossians how to answer them-" Mortify
your members; keep from sin." He wrote to
Timothy: "The end of the commandment is charity
out of a pure heart and good conscience, and faith un14-
17.] Doctrine knOW1t by its Fruits. 121
feigned-follow after these and you will not be swept
away." And what says the vision which John sees?
"The earth. opened Iter mouth and szoalknoed up the
flood." Every one soon discerns whether such
speculations
have power in them to purify the life and
refresh it amid its constant tear and wear. Will they
help us to be purer and happier here on earth ?-that
is what every Christian wants; not something that
will merely pique his fancy and swell his imagination
with unpractical dreams. Let us not be afraid of the
floods that men call heresy. We shall soon know
whether we can live by them or not, and whether there
is anything in them that can help us in an evil hour.
" A nd the dragon was wroth." The earth in which
he trusts betrays him. The mother Church is faithful
to her King, repells the heresies of Anti-christ, and,
like a faithful wife, goes on to multiply the children of
her Lord. The dragon then turns with greater hope
against the children scattered through the world. The
Christians in the Gentile world must be persecuted,
rooted out, else the powers of hell will be speedily
dispossessed.
Observe against whom it is the dragon
goes to war. He wages not merely a war of falsehood
against truth; but a war of evil against good. Satanic
bitterness does not waste itself in rage against a
sentimental, speculative, or dilettanti piety; it hates
as hell hates heaven, the piety that keeps God's
commandments-
the charity that thinks no evil-that
loves its neighbour as itself, and finds its strength in
God, a God of love who has united Himself to the
human race by the testimony of a suffering, dying, ascending
and reigning Christ. Let that indicate how
you are to obtain the victory-not as believers in ab122
Safety in Obedience. [XII.
stract doctrines or in concrete priestly superstitions;
but as you take up God's will and honestly strive to do
it. War against self-love within your soul; hold fast
to your redeeming Father as you see Him in the face
of Christ, and you will win eternal victory. A child
of the light and of the day, you will neither in time
nor in eternity be a citizen of the kingdom of darkness
over which Satan reigns.
THE WILD BEAST FROM THE SEA.
CHAPTER XIII.
"Anti-Christ is already come."
IT is the dragon that stands upon the shore, and
- looks wistfully across the sea as if waiting for some
confederate to assist him in his evil work. The devil
is never at a loss for tools to do his work. A beast
ascends out of the sea-that may be out of the midst of
many peoples, and tongues, and nations; or the "sea"
may be a fragment of literalism in the picture, and in
that case the beast will be some distant power whose
domain is somewhere across the Mediterranean Sea.
In either case, we may premise with safety that it
represents the Roman Empire. The dragon is a power
whose locus is the air; therefore it is a purely
intellectual
and moral force whose supremacy in the world is
maintained by the inspiration of material agencies to
do its will. The beast belongs by its nature to the
earth; and yet has such affinities with this evil-natured
dragon that it becomes a willing tool for the accomplishment
of Satanic purposes.
This beast has so much in common with the four
great beasts of Daniel's vision, that we are bound to
regard it as a vast political power whose realm
embraces the territory of Daniel's beasts. Presumably
this is the Roman wbrld-the empire of the Caesars,
124 The Heads of the Beast. [XIII.
John will soon settle it beyond a doubt. These "seven
heads" of the beast, he tells us in chapter xvii., are
seven successive kings. Five of them are fallen when
John writes; the sixth is reigning; a seventh is to
come and reign a little time; an eighth head is to be
in power when judgement is at its consummation. It is
evident that we have here some world-power which has
three reigning heads within a few brief years-and
those years far on in the life of the apostle John.
What power can that be but Rome-which actually
had seven reigning heads or more within the last half
of John's life, and at the time demanded by this
interpretation of John's book. These"ten horns" may
therefore be either the Roman legions, or the ten main
provinces of the empire, with their diademed,
semiindependent
kings. Another interpretation mark is
given in v. 3-one of these
heads or kings is smitten so
as to endanger the beast's life, but there is a rapid and
surprising recovery. The sign is so far indefinite as to
give scope for reasonable difference of opinion; but it
is a remarkable fact that among the emperors of Rome
corresponding events were happening in John's time.
Five emperors had been, the sixth was reigning. Thus
we are fixed down to a definite period in Rome's
history. Unhappily we cannot settle with precision
what that period was from the fact that two modes of
reckoning were open to the Apostle. Josephus and
other oriental writers usually count Julius Caesar as
the first; Tacitus and other Latin historians begin
with Augustus. According as John reckons, it is either
Nero or Galba who is reigning at the point of time
represented in the vision. It would not, however, be
wise to be over-precise in fixing so indefinite a matter.
1-3.] Wounded as
if to Death.
125
If we make allowance for the revolutionary disorder
that prevailed on the death of Nero (Galba, Otho, and
Vitellius, being all three at one moment nominally
emperors, and spending together not a year upon the
throne), and on the possibility that John, in his distant
banishment, might not know at any moment who was
or had been actually on the throne, we shall see,
unhappily to our disadvantage, that the reigning
emperor may be anyone from Nero to Vitelliusthirteen
months seeing all four on the throne.
After all, our ignorance is not material. Enough if
in those days we can find anything corresponding with
this rapid change of heads, and this almost fatal
wound with which the beast was smitten in one of its
imperial heads. That head may very well be Nero.
Prophecies had been for some time in circulation
through the empire that Rome and its power would
speedily fall. In the ballads afloat among the people
was the line-" Last of the descendants of ./Eneas, a
matricide shall reign,"-pointing directly to the Emperor
Nero, the last descendant of the great Julian
line, and the wicked murderer of the mother who had
raised him to the throne by her unscrupulous crimes.
This popular impression that Rome had reached the
zenith of its splendour was greatly deepened by events
happening at that time. Nero was growing yearly
more brutal and ferocious in his character-intensifying
the violence and anarchy of all classes of the people.
Misfortunes of all kinds were happening in various
portions of the empire-such as tidal waves, earthquakes,
famines, pestilences. The heavens were full
of prodigies. Tacitus relates that "comets, eclipses,
meteors terrified the ignorant, and were made the
126 Tlte Deadly Wound Healed. [XIII.
pretext for imperial cruelties." Seneca, the tutor and
friend, finally the victim of Nero, says-" The world
itself is being shaken to pieces, and there is universal
consternation." Revolt had broken out in various provinces,
and was especially in full swing with considerable
success in Palestine. Indeed, all the Jews were
persuaded that with Nero the empire would collapse,
and independence be restored to Israel. Politically
the whole empire was in a state of violent agitation,
and at last the stormy surges of popular wrath broke
against the throne. Nero fled in secrecy, only to
perish ignominiously as a suicide, or by the sword of
a household slave. Thus set the sun of the great
Julian line of emperors; amid such disorder, and with
so many adventurers fighting for the crown that it
looked as if the State must break into a thousand pieces
and the sun of Rome's imperial splendour for ever set.
The unparalleled disorders of the times are well condensed
in this brief excerpt from history-the three
successive reigns occupied but a year,-Galba was
hacked to pieces, Otho flung himself upon his sword,
Vitelli us was dragged to the common place of execution
and stabbed to death amid the insults of the
people. Indeed, none of them can be regarded otherwise
than Suetonius names them-" three military
chiefs, who aimed at the imperial purple." It is only
when Vespasian, the conqueror of j
udsea, mounts the
throne and founds the Flavian line, that Nero can be
said to have had a true successor. Then it was the
deadly wound was lzealed. Josephus says Vespasian's
government was the unexpected deliverance of the
public affairs of the Romans from ruin (Wars, IV. xi.
5). Rome at once entered on a new lease of pro3-
5.] Boastfulness and Blasphemy. 127
sperity and power; and all tke world zoondered after
the beast which had so miraculously recovered from its
death-like wound, and believed with a profounder conviction
than before that Rome as an empire was
imperishable.
" The .Man of Sin, the Son of perdition, he that oppoeeth.
and exalteth himself against all that is called God, or that
is
uorehipped ; so that he sitteth. in the temple of God
setting
himself forth as God."
Another feature in the recognition of the beast is
the impression of invincibility it creates-" Who is
like unto the beast? WILO is able to make war with
Idm ?" Well, history has answered that! There was,
however, an excuse for Roman pride and boastfulness.
Her armies were well nigh invincible. If ever she had
been defeated, it was by the interminable swamps and
forests of bleak Germania, or the sterile moors of distant
Caledonia, not by any weakness in the arms or
any faltering in the courage of her legions. Rome was,
indeed, at the time of the Apocalypse, the Mistress of
the World. Lucan could write without flattery:"
Throughout all ages, has every war given subdued
nations unto thee" (Pharsalia, vii. 420).
Boastfulness and blasphemy were the habit of his
mouth. True of any emperor and his generation
before the time of John; but especially true of Nero.
No previous occupant of the throne had been so elated
with his powers, or had so dared to provoke the populace
by his unconstitutional and immoral deeds. As
a proof of the beastly inhumanity and unparalleled
boastfulness of this man, let me transcribe a few sentences
from Renan. "Nero proclaims daily that art
128 Warring 'witlt the Saints.
[XIII.
alone should be held as a serious matter, that all virtue
is a lie, that the brave man is he who can abuse,
lose, and waste everything.. A colossal self-love
gave him an ardent thirst to absorb the glory of the
whole world; his enmity was fierce against those who
occupied public attention; for a man to succeed in
anything was a State crime. To deny his talent
was the State crime par excellence;
the enemies of
Rome were those who did not admire him." To
gratify his craving for notoriety he travelled through
his empire, and entered upon all sorts of circus and
theatrical contests; until at length he returned from
Greece bringing 1808 crowns to prove his superiority
over all the artists of his empire. The uncontrollable
vanity of the man is seen conspicuously in his having
ordered a monument to himself of brass in the streets
of Rome; and erected at the entrance to his palace,
a colossal marble statute of himself, 120 feet in height,
" adorned with the insignia and attributes of the sun."
" It was given to Ium
to make war witlt th« saints,"
. and this work was to continue forty-two months.
This period coincides with the time during which the
Jewish war begun by Nero's orders, was continued; it
also is the period during which Nero himself warred
ag ainst the Church of Christ. He began his persecutions
in November 64, and died a hated fugitive in June
u8. The period during which" he did his works" can
hardly have been either less or more than two and .
forty months. The relentlessness of his persecution
was commensurate with his brutal and irreligious
temperament.
He spoke" in blaspfumy against God, and
against Ids tabernacle, and them that dwell in heauen;"
T his man is here distinctly noted as at once the enemy
Diqitrzed byGOOgle
7-8.] Blasphemies against God. 129
of Jehovah, the destroyer of Judaism, and the profaner
of the gods supposed to dwell ori high. If this
be not Nero, never has there been a man on earth
whom it has so well suited. No doubt he entered on
the Jewish war with the intention of blotting out the
Jewish worship, and enthroning himself in the Creator's
place in the temple at Jerusalem. Nothing in heaven
or earth was sacred but the glory of his name. His
earliest and most enthusiastic cult was of Cybele, the
sensual Syrian Goddess, but Suetonius tells us how it ended:
Religionum usquequaque contemptor, pra-ter unius
Deae Syriae. Hanc mox ita sprevit, ut urina contaminaret.
(lvi.) The insolent brutality of the man is
seen in his daring treatment of the temples of the gods.
In order to find means to repay the debts of his
extravagance:
"Treasures human and divine were swept into the gulf. The
temples of Rome itself were denuded of the offerings of
ages,
the spoil of conquered enemies long hoarded up in the
shrines of
the gods, the trophies of victories and triumphs held sacred
through all emergencies, which even Ceesar who sacked the
treasury had respected. From Greece and Asia, not the
offerings
only, but the images of the gods themselves were carried off
by
authorised commisaioners . . . Nero, emboldened by the
incredible submission of the world to his feeble sceptre,
treated
gods and men alike as mere slaves of his will, ordained
equally,
whether in earth or heaven, for his personal service and
gratification."-(Merivale, ut supra vi. 177-8).
It was but a trifling step to put himself in the place
of the gods whom he had deposed. Nero's first child
was a daughter; but it died in infancy. At once this
infant was "canonized as a goddess; a temple was
decreed to her, with an altar, a bed of state, a priest
and religious ceremonies." A few months after, died
9
130 Worsltipped as God. [XIII.
Popprea his wife, killed by a kick from himself. She
too was made agoddess, and one of the best men in
the State was executed because he denied that
Popprea
was a goddess. Then it was proposed in the Senate
that a temple should be erected to Nero himsclf"
divine Nero "-who had risen above the condition of
human nature, and was therefore entitled to. religious
worship. Certainly, popular adulation, if not even
worship, was not lacking for this besotted emperor.
On the coins of the realm he was saluted as "the
Saviour of the World." Out upon his tours, the people
offered sacrifices by the way; and the poets of the
time assured him that" when he repaired to the stars
he would have his choice of heavens; that all the gods
would suffer him to make himself supreme; and that
if he did not balance himself carefully in the boundless
ether, the stability of heaven would be disturbed."
(Pharsalia i. 50-6.) The saying of John, that
all
worshipped him except the followers of the Lamb
is no
random statement, but a literal fact of history. All
the Roman emperors had been deified upon their death,
and worshipped as ascended gods: Nero was the first
to be worshipped in his life. Farrar says-" At this
dreadful period, the cult of the emperor was almost
the only sincere worship which existed,"
To such a man falls the opprobrious distinction of
having been the first of the Roman emperors to war
against the saints-whether of the old Church or of
the new. In his reign, Paul was beheaded; and
perhaps Peter crucified at Rome. He is said to have
set fire to the city (64 A.D.) for the
double enjoyment
of seeing the glowing spectacle, and having it rebuilt
in splendour as a monument of his reign. Then, to
7-8.] Anti-Clmst. 131
avert suspicion from himself, he transferred the blame,
some say to the Christians, others to the Jews,
Christians included. However it was, "a vast multitude,"
says Tacitus, were brought to trial and condemned.
Some of them were covered with the skins of
dogs and bears, and put into the amphitheatre to be
tornby famished dogs; others were nailed to crosses;
others were encrusted in sulphureous pitch, and set on
fire in the autumn nights along the walks of Nero's
garden, which were opened to the populace that they
might enjoy the tragic illuminations. It is even darkly
hinted that, dressed in the skin of a wild beast, he
entered the amphitheatre and violated Christian virgins
before the populace. No wonder that Nero became
to Christian imagination the very incarnation of evil;
the Anti-christ, the wild beast from the sea; the
delegate of the great red dragon, with diadems and
names of blasphemy on his brow. No wonder that he
left a furrow of horror in the hearts of men, and that
the surmise long lingered that such a monster might
not be dead, but again appear to persecute and crush
the saints of God.
The Roman conquest of Palestine is referred to in
the charge that the beast blasphemes God's tabernacle.
That is temple language; and implies the profanation
of the most sacred places of the Jews in the occupation
of the land. We know that the court, the temple, and
the sacred vessels were polluted or destroyed; and
that the very God of Israel shared in the contempt
and hatred which were poured upon his people.
"It
was given him to -ouercome the saints." He had divine
permission to completely destroy the sacred people
and to be supreme on earth. The Roman empire in
132 Tile Persecutor's Doom. [XIII.
this triumph was the earthly similitude of that Dragon
who is the" Prince of this world." The whole earth
lay beneath his brutal hoof. Only the followers of the
Lamb were pure from the defilement of his worship.
" If any man have an ear let him hear." Does not
this appeal show how much this book concerned the
Churches to which it was addressed? If this beast
stood centuries away from those early Christian
Churches, how much did it concern them to give heed?
But if it meant that this beast who banished John to
Patmos would in this head himself be banished; that
this incarnate demon with his persecuting sword would
himself be finished with the sword, then it was of some
moment that those living Christians of the days of
John should show their fa#ll and patience by
listening
to this hopeful word, and enduring to the end.
THE TAME BEAST FROM THE LAND.
CHAPTER XIII.
" Prove the spirits; because many false prophets are gone
out
into the world.
TIHIS second beast, which rises from the land, is a
- necessary supplement to the beast which rises
from the sea. Without it the political beast would be
a creature of no significance. Both of them were
impotent without the dragon. The devil or essential
evil, is the inspiration of the first beast, and the
second is "the guide, philosopher, and friend" of the
first. The dragon is a supernatural power; the tame
beast is the incarnation of his serpentine wisdom; the
wild beast is the incarnation of his force and authority
to rule. If, then, the wild
beast from the sea is
the Roman imperial power, there should be no great
difficulty with this milder beast-the prompter of its
godless blasphemies. It is
beyond question a religious
power, for no State can subsist without religion; and
especially in the ancient world was the political power
identified with the spiritual, and dependent on it for
its status and existence. This lamb-like beast, with
its draconic teaching, is then the incarnate form of
heathen Romish prophecy, the God-opposing science
and wisdom of the old religions standing in the
service of the world-power and its governor: a Church
in the pay and protection of the State for the purpose
134 Clmrclt and Estate. [XIII.
of exalting its supremacy. It is
the pagan priesthood
and philosophy, with its augeries, its oracles, its false
miracles, befooling a superstitious people, keeping them
in terror of the unseen, and drilling them into servile
subjection to the powers that be. In short, this Christlike,
yet draconic beast, is the live brain of the empire.
We need make little of the Senate, as a separate power,
in our consideration of the Roman State. That
assembly did largely what the interests of religion bade
it. Pontiffs, augurs, and other ecclesiastical officers
were members; and as itself a sacred institution, it
could meet only in a consecrated place. The Emperor
was the national High Priest. The civil law was
the creation of the priesthood, and bore a deep impression
of its sacerdotal' origin. ' " The citizen was merged
in the State ; for the State he was born, he lived, he
married, tilled his land, bequeathed his goods, he
perpetuated
his family. The Roman worshipped for his
country rather than for himself."
(Merivale, Conversion
of the Empire, 34). So absolutely was heathenism
planted at the centre of Roman life that no man could
be a citizen, and buy and sell in freedom, unless he
worshipped the gods of Rome: i.e.,
was stamped with
the mark of the beast. At times this law might not
be strictly enforced; but again and again it was
suddenly brought into force, and Jews and Christians
expelled the State because they would not acknowledge
the divinity of the emperor. At any rate every imperial
coin carried the sign of heathen blasphemy; and so
involved every trafficker in the acknowledgement of
its truth. Priests, philosophers, and statesmen were
all interested in the maintenance of this state of things
for the State paid well for their support. If the em13-
17.] }VIagical Miracles. 135
perors were deified and worshipped, it was at their
instigation.
Every nerve was strained, every trick of
magic used, every resource of demoniacal inspiration
called upon, to demonstrate to the populace the actual
divinity of the temple gods. Magianism had reached
its climax of diabolical cunning. It
was an age-
II When so many marvels happened
That men no more marvelled at them."
Statues walked, spoke, and eat; fire was brought
down from heaven, in order to excite the populace
with a fearful apprehension of the spirit-world, and a
ready obedience to priestly inventions for baffling or
appeasing its angry demons. The most notorious
astrologers of the period were Simon Magus, of Scripture
notoriety, and Apollonius of Tyana. Either
of them might well typify the false prophetical system
of the times; and be the "false prophet" of this book.
Apollonius, the greater of the two, was a little older
than our Lord. He was educated in Tarsus, and probably
known by reputation to St. Paul. Professing
to work miracles, he endeavoured to found a new
religion on the basis of them. He was at Rome in
Nera's time; then we find him in the service of Vespasian,
and the Flavian dynasty, until disgusted with
Domitian. He is said to have pretended that he was
a god; and certainly was looked upon, throughout a
large part of the Roman empire, as an emanation of
the Divine nature. Do we not find here many of the
essential features of the Anti-christ?
This wonder-working beast was particularly active
in the reign of Nero. The evil conscience of this
man,
with the inflated dream of greatness which floated be136
The Number of the Beast. [XIII.
fore his mind, threw him into the hands of soothsayers,
prophets, magi; and for long he was mastered by a
passion to learn the secrets of their arts, so as to have
the spirit-world at his command. Historians of the
period tell us that he hoped" to be able to control the
ways of providence, and give the laws to the gods,"
but instead of" holding commerce with evil spirits" he
was simply led by "the advice of a pernicious crew of
abandoned men and women, who were the Emperor's
confidential ministers and the instruments of every
villany." Thus did the second beast flatter and cajole
the first by magnifying it before the populace, but for
its own selfish and pernicious ends.
But which head of this imperial beast exhibits this
climax of wickedness and profanity? "Here is wisdom.
He that hath understanding, let him count the number
of the beast ; for it is the number of a man, and his
number is X~s, 666." This little
puzzle, which John sets
his hearers is apt to look somewhat undignified to a
grave man of the 19th century, It
certainly would
not bear that look to either a Greek, a Roman, or a
Jew. We have to remember that in those days
numbers were expressed by the letters of the alphabet,
much as if in English a were 1, b 2, c
3, etc. Every
word, therefore, in Hebrew and Greek, was capable of
being read as figures, and then added up into its
arithmetical value Here, then, John suddenly gives a
clue to this monster of iniquity-the letters of his
name make 666.
Certain expositors shrink from what seems the too
pragmatical interpretation of this number by making it
an individual's name. Distance lends enchantment.
Seen through a haze, 6GG is much
more imposing than
18.] Three Mysten'ous Sixes. 137
when it is prosaically tracked home to a first-century
man even if he is a beast and an emperor. Maurice is
quite Turneresque in his power of painting objects in
a haze; and he leaves this beast in the obscurity of "a
society which is a number of atoms without a centre,
work without a sabbath." Our latest commentator
(Milligan) evidently is smitten with the same conception.
"Three mysterious sixes following one another! "-" a
potency of evil than which there can be none greater,
a direfulness of fate than which there can be none
worse." Now this may be very imaginative, but it
does not commend itself as very wise. What light
does it throw upon the beast not already given?
Does not every reader know without H
three sixes,"
that there can be no worse crime, no greater evil, than
to blaspheme God, and make oneself to be worshipped
in the place of God? It seems a needless puzzle
which John sets his readers; at the best, it reduces it
to a very trifling trick, if he is only asking the
conundrum :_H Do you know the
moral meaning of
three sixes?" However, John is not concerned with
the moral significance of the number (although the
moral suggestion of three sixes, may have prompted
him in part to give the cryptogram), but with the way
in which 666 will count into a name. The reader is
not asked to imagine, or to moralise, or to reflect, but
" to count the number." And why is he told that it is
" tlu number of a man," if John means rather that it is
tlu number of a moral idea?
In short, all fair dealing with the matter must treat
it as « tlte number of a man,"
and this man for the time
being a head of the beast in which its brutal and
godless character is being manifestly brought to light.
138 Tlte Number of a Matt. [XIII.
John implies that clear and definite light on this
matter will be found by anyone that with the needful
understanding will search this 666 for the letters of
his name. This, in any case, implies that this man is
a conspicuous figure in the days of John. If this beast
had been Mohammed, Luther, Napoleon, or a Pope of
Rome, all the understanding of the times would not
have shed a ray of light upon the case. A cryptogram
is not a telescope for looking across centuries.
It is
rather a microscope to make more visible what is before
one's eyes. And yet John does not wish the secret to
be visible to every eye. There is an intentional puzzle
in the evident simplicity of the thing; and when the
meaning is discovered the reason for the puzzle will
be plain. No doubt, many readers knew that John
was pointing to an emperor of Rome. Let us suppose
that a Roman citizen, into whose hands an early copy
of the book has come, suspects that his emperor Nero
is here painted in these diabolical hues, and tests the
matter by resolving his name into its numerical value
according to the Roman tongue, it will not make 666.
If an educated man, he will know enough of Greek to
attempt it in that language, but now it makes 1337.
He must let the puzzle drop, no wiser; it is beyond his
understanding; and perhaps for the Christian cause, it
is as well. But suppose the reader has any knowledge
of the _Hebrew tongue (as so many of the early
Christians had,) at once he will discover that NERON
CESAR comes out with precision, 666.
NERON-nlln, 50; resh, 200; vav(o), 6;
num, 50=306'666
CJF1jAR-koph, 100; samech, 60; resh, 200=360j
.
Many of our readers will have noticed from the
Revised Version that there is a very ancient variation
18.] Wlty t/ds
Mystery ? 139
in which the number is 616. It is lucky for the pretty
theory of " the three sixes" that this number has not
prevailed. It is, however, a
corroboration of the
interpretation given above that this number resolves
itself into identical results. There was also in Hebrew
use the Latin form of Nero's name, without the final
nun ; and NERO C.iESAR makes 616. The coincidence
becomes stranger still when we find that the Hebrew
of KAISAR ROM or RUM (the Roman Casar) makes
also this variant, 616. Which number is John's actual
reading it is difficult to determine; but it is satisfactory
to find that, in either case, the result is the same.
John's finger points us to the ROMAN C£SAR, let it be
Nero or some other of his immediate successors, to be
determined by the facts of history.
But why does John resort to this covert way of
pointing out the personal beast? Because it was hazardous
for either Jew or Christian in those days to
offer any direct insult to the imperial majesty of Rome.
The empire swarmed with spies, whose profit was
dependent on the detection of offenders against the
Emperor's majesty. To breathe a syllable of reproach
was counted a crime equal to high treason. Paul, in
quieter times, dare not speak out about" the man of
sin ;" and Josephus, high in favour at the court of
Rome, stops abruptly in his explanation of Daniel's
prophecies, with a mysterious hint that" he does not
deem it prudent to say more." So John writes Nero's
name upon his page; but veils it in a cypher to which
few Romans had a key, while Christians could easily
pene.trate its disguise.
APPENDIX.
THE BEASTS, " THE MAN OFSIN" AND
" ANTICHRIST."
WE cannot quit this lengthy revelation of the powers
of evil, with which nascent Christianity has to contend,
without at least a brief enquiry as to what may be
their relationship to other latter-day manifestations of
evil, such as our Lord's" false Christs," Paul's" Man of
Sin," and John's" Antichrist." *
It is scarcely open to
doubt that Paul's Man of Sin, and adversary to all that is
called God (2 Thess. ii. 1-12), corresponds in character
with John's wild beast from the sea. They both appear
at a time of declension in the Church, both are
opposed to the very idea of the Divine, both claim for
themselves the honours which hitherto have belonged
to the God of heaven, both are instigated by Satan
both are invested with or accompanied by what claims
to be miraculous powers; and both of them finally
" go to perdition."
John's Antichrist (1 Ep. ii. 18; iv. 3) is rather a
heresy personified than a personal agent.
It had been
prophesied before as to come; and at the time of the
epistle is "already come," and busy at its nefarious
work. .
Our Lord's pre-intimation of false prophets, some
of whom set themselves up as Messiahs (Matt. xxiv.),
* We leave out all consideration of any apparently
corresponding agency
in Daniel, because that book is at the present undergoing
smelting in
the crucible of the Higher Criticism.
The Diaboiicai Trinity. 141
differs from Paul's Man of Sin, while in general agreement
with the Antichrist of John.
We propose to show that all three conceptions are
in harmony-the differences being but phenomenal,
according to the local colouring of each case; and
that all three are depicted in the visions of the
Apocalypse.
" Antichrist" is the all-inclusive term. Whatever is
sufficiently Antichrist must exist as a trinity of evils,
even as Christ comes before the world as a trinity of
sacred Powers for the government and salvation of the
world. Now, St. John has just revealed to us
three
beasts rising in opposition to the rule and
authority of
God; and it is only an insolvent mind that can fail to
discern in them an evil trinity intentionally contrasted
with the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost.
The great Dragon or
old Serpent is the Prince of
the power of the air, the God of this world-the Antigod
that, posing as a spiritual and eternal power, aims
at universal dominion in heaven and on earth. The
second beast from the sea, to whom the Dragon gives
his authority and power, and who is invested with
supernatural
honours, is Paul's Man of Sin,-the Antichrist
in the strictest sense: for he is the visible embodiment
and representative of Anti-god, as Christ
is the incarnation and governmental representative of
God the Father. The third beast is the analogue of
the Holy Ghost-(demoniac inspiration and prophecy)
-imparting its powers to Anti-christ, as Christ was
baptized with and wrought miracles in the power of
the Holy Spirit. It bears witness
to the divinity of
the second beast, as the Spirit of God bore witness to
142 Clm's! and A nti-ckrist.
the divinity of Christ; and works miracles on behalf
of Anti-christ and his cause, as the Holy Ghost did by
the Apostles in the service of the Christian Church.
These three are one. Anti-christ -is Satanic power
warring by earthly forces, and demoniac miracles and
teaching; Christ is the power of God, operating by
the Holy Spirit in the world. In this unity and trinity
of evil, all the evil forces warring against Christ in the
coming of his kingdom are gathered up and reconciled.
The contrast and antagonism are complete.
I. Christ is a Lamb,
2. is the form of God,
3. is endued with the Holy
Spirit,
4. has a kingdom and authority,
5. has many crowns,
6. claims universal rule,
7. makes war and overcomes,
Anti-Christ, a composite wild beast.
of Satan.
with demoniac influences.
has the same.
has his thousands.
does the same.
claims to be invincible.
8.
9·
10.
II.
12.
13·
14·
15·
16.
"
's kingdom is delegated
.from the Father,
claims the right to be
honoured with the
Father,
is Saviour of the world,
seals his saints,
is Great High Priest,
leads us to worship God
because He has' exalted
Christ to power,
has his apostles and evangelists
to preach his
name,
was without sin,
was put to death and
rose again,
is eternally exalted,
..
's from Satan.
to be honoured above
God.
uses the same title.
seals his followers.
is Supreme Pontiff.
is medium of glory to
Satan because he has
given his authority to
the beast.
has his magicians and
priests to magnify his
authority. .
is the man of sin.
was smitten and revived.
is the son of perdition.
Windt sltall Reifn? 143
The Sacred Trinity.
"God {Chri;t}WOrking by'
dwelling the the
,in Lamb, Holy Ghost.,
Three holyand loving
personalities.
The Trini~y of Evil.
" Satan {Anti.Christ) Working by
dwelling the Jdemoniacal
in wild beast, arts.
.... J
Three uncle;n and selfish
beasts.
Thus we have in these visions a perfect trinity of evil,
in which is seen the full development of" the mystery
of iniquity" working over against "the mystery of
godliness." The coming struggle is to settle which
shall reign eternaIly, and to whom belong the Earth
and the Human Race.
THE CHURCH ON MOUNT ZION.
CHAPTER XIV.
" Ye are come unto Mount Z1'on."
OVER against this trio of persecuting Anti-christian
\ powers is the Lamb on Mount Zion, with his
144,000 saints. These are the sealed of the tribes of
chapter vii. The difference in the two visions is
precisely what it ought to be according to the principle
on which we have interpreted the two divisions
of the book. In chapter vii.
they were simply covered
with God's wing as those faithful Israelites who were
not to be judged with the people of the land; here
they appear as the actual Church of Christ: the historical
continuance of the ancient, and realization of
the ideal Zion, They are marked as sons of God,
believers in the Fatherhood, and are centred round
about the Lamb. All this shows us that when the
history in this vision is realised, the Church is still
substantially a Hebrew Church. We are not yet come
to the time when the Gentile element is predominant.
These are" the first-fruits unto God and the Lamb,"
and everywhere in the New Testament this title belongs
to the Hebrew Christians. No doubt there is a
close identity between this vision and the beautiful
passage in the Hebrews-" Ye are come unto Mount
Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
&c." We have no means at present of deciding
1-3] As it were a New Song.
145
whether the writer of the Hebrews is actually referring
to this vision of St. John; but at all events, the
vision is well interpreted of the primitive Church of
Christ in its ideal purity and privileges; that Church
especially in Palestine in the days of Nero and St.
John-tempted by abounding sensualities and idolatries,
but true in heart and life to the Lamb of God,
whom they followed as their Shepherd, believing that
He would feed them and lead them into his eternal
rest.
While gazing on this scene, John's ear is rivetted by
music issuing from the upper spheres. It is the "choir
invisible" rejoicing at the sight of this great multitude
who bear the Father's name, and stand in stedfast
loyalty around the Lamb. The innumerable company
of angels in heaven rejoice to see so large a number
redeemed from the bondage of sin and death, and
from the judgements falling 011 the land. As firstfruits,
it is the promise of a noble harvest. " They sing
as it were a new song." Little
doubt but the host
of heaven had sung songs of joy over deliverances and
restorations of God's people in the days of old. But
such a high deliverance as this was new in the history
of the earth, though foreshadowed by deliverances of
the past. The twenty-third Psalm is an old song, yet
it is new as sung by us with our Christian knowledge
of the Shepherd-King. The eighty-fourth is a new
song on the Christian's lips when the" amiable tabernacle
" is in heaven, and" the valley of Baca" is the
pilgrimage of earth. And so this" as it
were a new
song," is the Christian meaning of the ancient promises
of God sung by the angels who are learning how to
interpret those songs of other days that spoke of Zion
1Q
146 Heralding tlte Gospel Age. [XIV.
as God's everlasting love, and whose promises are
more than realised in the opening of God's heaven to
the ransomed sons of men, and the prospect of an
earth delivered from the darkness and oppression of
the dragon and his beasts.
That song, too, is one whose music is echoed in the
Church's heart. None but the redeemed can join in
it; for none else know its meaning. Even if they did,
seeing that it speaks of judgement and the triumph of
the King of kings, it could excite only terror in their
hearts. Who among the godless can say-" I will
sing of the righteous judgements of the Lord?" Only
those who are gathered round the Lamb, delivered
from all evil loves of self, and of the world, and
consciously
inspired with love to God and good feeling
towards their fellow-men, are able to rejoice when
God arises to shake terribly the earth.
If we are
to have boldness in the day of judgement, our hearts
must not condemn us j and if we
are not to be consciously
self-condemned, we must be perfected by love
begotten of the knowledge of God's love to us. Hence,
no man can sing this song but those redeemed from
the sin and evil of the earth, and quickened by the
faith of Jesus dwelling in their hearts.
"He shall send his angels with a great sound as of a
trumpet."
There follows a startling episode. An angel is seen
flying in the midst of heaven, "hm1ing aft
eternal gospel
to proclaim." There is something here to make us
pause. Has the Gospel not been preached already on
the earth? Why should an angel be sent to make
this emphatic enunciation, if, in the usual interpretation
the time is the end of the 19th or in the 20th century?
-- ~-~----_._------------------
3-6.] All Nations Warned of its Coming. 147
Are we to hold that the everlasting Gospel has never
yet been preached in any emphatic sense upon the
earth? The truth is, that this episode corresponds
with the announcement of the angel in ch. x., that
"the mystery of God is about to finish." That
mystery, we have said, was that the Gentiles were
to be made fellow-heirs with the Jews of the covenant
and its promises. That moment is now imminent:
its coming is heralded by an angel with the voice
of a trump. It will be remembered
that our Lord
instructed his disciples that they should in the main
expend their strength upon the Jews, and endeavour
first to bring them into the Christian fold.
The age was ripening for its harvest; and the labourers
sent forth were to do the fullest justice to the children
of his covenant. The years that lay between the
ascension of Christ and the consummation of the
Jewish age belonged to the Abrahamic people. They
were Israel's day of grace. Though Paul and others
did preach to Gentile audiences, yet this was only
like the crumbs that fell from the children's table.
Emphatically, the Gospel was still hampered in its
spread by a prime consideration for the social interests
and ritualistic prejudices of the Jew. Said Christ
Himself to the twelve-" Ye shall not have gone over
the cities of Israel until the Son of Man be come;"
that is, ye shall not have more than time to preach in
the great cities where colonies of Jews are founded
before the commencement of judgement, and the
institution of the universal kingdom. Our Lord also
said, in his great eschatological discourse, that the
proclamation of "the Gospel of the Kingdom" among
all nations would be synchronous with" the End,"
i.e.
148 The Gospel of the Kingdom. [XIV.
of the Judaic age or dispensation. Strauss will have
it that these two sayings of our Lord do not agree, the
first having originated at a time when the current
belief was that the Gospel was intended only for the
Jews, and the second at a later date, when it came to
be seen that the Gentiles were to be embraced. This
intentionally damaging comment is founded on a
common exegetical mistake. The passage in Mat.
xxiv. is identical with the first in Mat. x. 23. Preaching
" among all nations" is equivalent to going" over
the cities of Israel; " inasmuch as the preaching in the
former case is of "this Gospel of
the Kingdom," i.e.
" the good news" in that form in which Jews and their
proselytes were accustomed to look for it-the coming
of the Messianic Kingdom. The Jews of the first
century, with that trading instinct which has never left
the race, were scattered over all the habitable world.
It was the will of Christ that all these settlements
should be visited by the Apostles, and every child of
the covenant warned that the age was closing and a
new dispensation about to begin. Thus would there
be a witness given amongst all nations, which a few
years at the most would enable them to verify.
Judaism was to perish; yet the sublimer essence of
Judaism, with a heart for all the world, would survive
and root itself in the earth; that was the prophecy set
before the nations; and speedily they would see
whether Christ who spoke the prophecy was true and
able to fulfil his word. It is
in this sense that Paul
says again and again that the Gospel has been preached
in all the world; and it is in this sense that the great
Greek fatherChrysostom, much to his exegetical credit,
interprets the saying in Mat. xxiv. When this angel
6-8.] The New Age Death to Bab}'lon. 149
appears, this work of preaching" the Gospel of the
Kingdom" is past and gone. The Jews everywhere
have been warned and called into the Kingdom. The
end is come of which Christ spoke. The angel cries
-" The hour of Ilis judgement is come," The end of
Israel's day; the harvest of the Jewish age is come.
The day of vengeance is to be as well the day of
the acceptable year of the Lord for the Gentile world.
The judgement-day is here again the day of the
world's salvation. The wheat of the Church is being
gathered round the Lamb into God's garner; the chaff
is to be burned with unquenchable fire. The great
New Age of God's World-wide Love is now to be
officially begun, and all men everywhere are called
upon to repent and believe the Gospel. This angel is
therefore here worthily employed in heralding the
advent of the Christian Age.
Another angel follows, crying: "Fallen, fallen is
Babylon the great." But what is Babylon? We shall
know fully by and bye. Just now it is enough to know
only what is written. Babylon is confusion! that
system of error which knows no difference between
one God and another; worships all alike, especially
the God that is most terrible and revengeful; the
system that confounds the king's prerogative with
God's, as it commands-" Let all the people worship
this golden image which I have set up;" in which
men exalt their sensual wisdom and demoniac revelations
above the word of God-the system that has
many voices, many ways of scaling heaven, many
mediators who claim a homage that is due to God
alone-that is Babylon; error with its confusion and
its strife, here organised and forcing itself upon all the
150 Evil Sentenced to Misery. [XIV.
nations of the earth. The prelude to that overthrow
will be the fall of that exalted city which had most
assurance of its eternity. As it is seen to fall, the
Church can rest assured that heathen priestcraft with
its countless shrines and magical devices, and semibrutal
gods, and shameless immoralities will also fall.
The everlasting Gospel will burn up Babylon in
everlasting fire.
Still another angel follows, pronouncing woe against
the worshippers of the beast. The same" shall drink
of the wine of tIle wratlz of God wlzic/l is prepared
unmixed
in the cup of Itts anger." What a gathering of
fiery imagery is concentrated in this passage! How
powerfully it tells of the undying hatred of evil which
is in the bosom of a righteous God! But why does
this alarming denunciation come in at this point of
history? Because, as we are told, the judgementhour
is come; and along with it, to all the nations
there is a clearer revelation of God's righteous love.
Men everywhere are now commanded to repent, held
inexcusable for the worship of the beast, and more
than' ever will find his worship full of gnawing pains
and fiery stings ; because henceforth there is a gospel
for mankind, a revelation of the Lamb as the image
of the eternal God-a richer baptism of the Spirit,
kindling higher longings in men's souls.
If still they
cling to their pernicious doctrines and their sensuous
lusts, then in the presence of the Lamb and his servants,
their sinful lusts will burn within them as unquenchable
fire, and their consciences will gnaw them
like a deathless worm. Thus Christ is to rule men
with a rod of iron. The gratifications of a sinful man
who is face to face with Christ and saving truth must
9-13.] Goodness Rewarded. 151
terminate in torments, whatever spurious delights accompany
them. There can be no peace for wickedness;
goodness alone can make happy.
" The dead in Christ shall. me first: then. ue that are
alice,
that m'e left, shall. toqether mtlt them be caugltt 'Up in
the
clouds to meet the Lord in the air:"
" Here Z"S the patience of tIle
saints" In this climax
of evil; when the devil is angry because his time is
short, the patience of the saints will be most severely
tried; but they may rest assured that Christ is destined
to be victorious. Even now He will make evil
miserable, his own believing people happy; and the
hour is at hand when the faith and righteousness of
his saints will have their reward in the glorious kingdom
of his love.
This fact is counted worthy of divine attestation. A
voice from heaven is heard, saying-" Write, Blessed
are tke dead wldelt die z"n the Lord from henceforth:"
I crave your deepest interest and steadiest patience
for a moment as we ponder over this. The passage
is most sadly understood, and yet it is one of the most
meaningful and consolatory in the word of God. The
whole point of the utterance lies in these wordsfrom
Itencefortlt, usually passed over in silence by the
commentator, as if quite superfluous, or their insertion
a mistake. Clearly enough, they intimate that there
is a special point of time at which the condition of
the Christian z"mmedz"ately after death becomes more
blessed than it was at any previous time. That is the
whole point of the passage: missing that, everything
is lost. After this point of time, " they rest from their
152 Resurrection Immanent. [XIV.
laboursand their works dofollozo them." Before this
time,
death was not rest nor reward; but only a state of
hope and expectation.
Do the Scriptures tell us that there was a time when
the dead in Christ were not at rest, when they were not
rewarded for their great fidelity, when even martyred
saints, had to compose themselves in hope? They
do. In Scripture, the resurrection is a future though
near experience; and until the resurrection-day the
saints have "not yet ascended up," nor are they "present
with the Lord." John, in particular, reveals the
state of all the Christian dead in his vision of the
martyrs, crying with troubled passion, as men who
were wearied waiting for their reward. Then, when
Jerusalem is shaken with God's judgements, and the
new age introduced, we are told that the time of the
dead is come to be judged and rewarded according to
their works. Heaven is then opened to Christ's saints;
and henceforth they worship restfully in the Paradise
of God. And now, as John traces the development of
Christ's kingdom from a positive point of view, we
come again within sight of the same great juridical
transaction. We have just read that" the hour of God's
judgement is come," that is, the time when Christ
rewards
his waiting saints with their resurrection-day,
and reaps the harvest of the earth. Certainly, that
momentous transaction cannot be in front of the 19th
century. It is behind us.
Historically, it lies near
the days of John. It was one of
the characteristic
events of the opening of the Gospel age. Such, we
maintain, to be written everywhere on the page of the
New Testament with the clearness of a sunbeam.
The Apostles and other martyrs are not until this day
13.] Immediate Entrance on Glory. 153
beneath the altar. Hades does not now hold the
Christian as its prey. The martyrs'" little while" is
long since past; and they have been called up into
the glories of the place which Christ prepared for
them in heaven, where now they live and reign with
Christ. From the moment marked by St. John, the
finishing of the work of judgement and the reward of
the dead,-the Christian man who dies goes home at
once to his reward; he has no time of waiting for the
heavens to open their embraces. For the noble and
holy child of God, death is no longer descent, to
wait
in the lingering Hades-state; but it is ascent to
be
with Christ. "If ye will hear it,"
this is the truth that
so many have perverted into the notion of a rapture of
li'l'ing saints, caught up and curiously transformed.
What Paul teaches is identical with what John teaches
here,-that after a certain point of time, the Christian
is caught up at death to meet his Lord, and so passes
in a moment, without sleep or consciousness of delay,
into his rest and his reward. Looking through the
eyes of the Seer we shall be privileged ere long to see
this blessedness realised, and heaven opened to all true
believers.
THE SON OF MAN IN THE CLOUDS OF
HEAVEN.
CHAPTER XIV.
" Then shall. they Bee the Son of ],fan coming in eloud«
~oith
great power and glO'l"//; and then Bhall
He Bend forth, hiB
angela."
PIOR impressiveness and far-reachingness of conse-
quence, no symbol in John's book excels that
now before us. To comprehend its meaning, we must
look backward and 'also forward to what stands on
either side. Immediately in front, we have three
angels appearing in close succession uttering proclamations,
and giving emphasis to their message by the
loudness of their voice. These are the heralds of a
king, marching in the van, sounding their alarming
trumpets to prepare the people for his coming, and
marshalling them for judgement. That is what Christ
said would be the sign of his coming-" his angels
with a great sound as of a trumpet." Accordingly we
have now this vision of the King himself, the Son of
Man sitting on a cloud in heaven, clothed in the glory
of his Father, crowned with divinest honours. Then
again, in the rear are his processional angels with
sickles and vials of wrath. Is not this the thing which
was spoken by our Lord: "for the Son of Man shall
come in the glory of his Father, with his angels; and
then shall he reward every man according to his
works. Verily, I say unto you, there be some stand-
J
14-16.] The Haruest of tlte Age. 155
ing here which shall not taste of death till they see
the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." (Mat. xvi.)
On nearer view, we see that the purpose of this
manifestation is-JUDGEMENT; first, under the figure
of a harvest time; and secondly, as a visitation of
successive plagues. In the first symbol, the Son of
Man gives the signal by throwing his sickle on the
earth; but the burden of the reaping falls upon the
angels. Here again John sees the fulfilment of what
'he had heard from the lips of Christ some forty years
before in such parables as the tares and the wheat.
"The harvest is the end of the age; and
tlte reapers
are the angels." The purpose of this reaping is
described as a gathering out of God's kingdom all
things that offend, and them that work iniquity, in
order that the righteous may shine out as stars and
give light to a darkened world (Matt. xiii. 40-3).
The purpose of this Apocalyptic judgement is identical.
That" end of the age" of which Christ spoke
was the closure of the Jewish and heathen age in
which He lived; Jerusalem was to be the centre
around which its main events transpired; and our
readers are now in a position to well judge whether
we have not found this book of Revelation agree
most precisely, and without artificial manipulation,
with our Saviour's teaching.
Let us now give a careful study to this picture.
The leading figure is" tlte Son of Man."
There is a
reason for the title under which John identifies our
Lord. In the days of his flesh He had said that all
judgement was committed to his hands because He
was tile Son of Man. That tells
us that the tests of
judgement can be measured by a truly human stan156
Tlte Son of ]/fan. [XIV.
dard-that human sympathy and tenderness will have
their share in determining the fates of men, since not
only our High Priest but our Eternal Judge is capable
of being touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and
entering into all the sorrows and temptations of our
case. Can we do otherwise than rejoice in such a
Saviour, and look with quiet confidence upon any day
of judgement which He institutes.
The Son of Man is- not coming to his kingdom. He
is a King. On his head there is a golden crown. He
is seen" in the glory of his Father." His people had
rejected Him as the Son of the Carpenter. Forty
years have passed without any change in Israel's faith,
except indeed in the direction of a more reckless and
abandoned denial of his claims. No curse was oftener
on Jewish lips, no imprecation oftener offered as incense
unto God, than the curse heaped upon Jesus,"
THE HUNG: may his name and memory be blotted
out!" No prophecy was more boastfully uttered in
Jerusalem than that God would utterly destroy the
Nazarenes, while the temple and the law would prove
eternal. At last, there is an answer to the challenge.
The holy land is resounding to the tramp of armed
men-the cities of Galilee and Samaria have fallenthe
heavens are nightly lit with prodigies that ring
the nation's death-knell-Jerusalem is hemmed in
with troops that never weary in their savage hatred of
everything distinctive of the Jew-and every circumstance
is ominous with political extinction to this
proud and boastful nation. Behold, at length the
doleful prophecies of Christ are painfully accomplished,
and Israel is irretrieveably cast down from
her heaven-born eminence. How else can we inter14-
16.] Christ's Coming Not Corporeal.
157
pret this than as God's answer to the Jew? Christ is
crowned with the glory of that divinity which He
justly attributed to Himself; and his enemies overwhelmed
with a well-deserved ignominy and shame.
Philo had argued for the divinity and perpetual
obligation of the Mosaic legation from its endurance
to his time; now that argument is meaningless.
The Son is greater than the servant,-so proves his
dismissal.
" Then if any man shall
say unto you, Lo, here is the Ghrist;
or, Here; believeit not."
Again, let us pay attention to the method of Christ's
coming. It is a prevalent notion,
and a most unfortunate,
that the Scriptures are committed to a descent
of the visible, corporeal personage of Christ,-who is
supposed to have his palace and his throne in some
great city; and, as many think, in a restored Jerusalem.
The notion is unscriptural, we might even say
antiscriptural.
Its influence through these 19 centuries
has been only mischievous-breeding the most reptilian
sectarianism, and sneering infidelity. Here is the fullest
explanation which has been given to us-Christ's final
words. Surely they give us no excuse for expecting the
personal descent of Christ to earth and his corporeal
visibility to men. Christ is seen in the clouds of
heaven. That, in prophetic language, clearly indicates
that his coming is in darkness and in shadow-veiled
in the tribulations of the time, the facts of Providence,
the events of history, visible only to the eye of faith;
and that it is from heaven his power and work proceed.
It is unfortunate if we fashion any more material
conception of Bible teaching than that Christ comes to
158 Our Lord's Own Prophecy. [XIV.
earth in the outgoings of his pQwer, the enforcement
of his authority, the punishment of his enemies, and
the establishment of his Gospel Kingdom. To insist
on any other mode of realising the Second Coming,
so far as this world is concerned, is to invest our Lord's
great prophecy with tremendous difficulties of
interpretation;
it is to falsify it, or to say that the
Evangelists have given a wrong meaning to Christ's
words. There is no escaping the dilemma drawn up
by a late professor of theology at Strasburg :-
"Jesus, in the discourses imputed to Him, does not simply
announce in general that he will return on the clouds of
heaven
-one day, in two thousand years perhaps, or in a hundred
thousand; He announces that He will return immediately after
Jernsalem shall have been profaned. If
the words which they
place in his mouth have any sense, they have that, and if
they
have not, it is because, for theologians, white means black
and
black means white. But for whoever is not a sophist, this
dilemma is set down catagorically ; either Jesus was
deceived,
or these discourses are not his. The Christian Church cannot
honestly escape from this dilemma."--(Colani, Lea
CrO'!lancu
.MeBBianiquea, pp. 251-2).
The door of honour opens only to a right conception
of the nature of the Second Coming. If Christ meant
to pledge himself to such a materialisation and localisation
of his presence on earth as so many orthodox
divines insist upon, then certainly that has not taken
place and the prophecy is disgracefully falsified.
Infidel hangers-on to Christianity rejoice to have it so,
in order that its more supernatural claims may be
discredited. But we can neither believe in the
orthodox carnal coming, with its too apparent shifts
to postpone the time fixed for the coming; nor in the
mistaken Christ, or the blundering Apostles of the
14-16.] The Purpose of Christ's Coming.
159
unorthodox. It seems to us beyond
all question that
Christ's figurative language is mistaken for dull prose,
and even then carelessly interpreted. There is not so
much as a-rag of excuse for those who have imagined
a bodily dwelling of Christ upon the earth, prophesied
mystically for a day then near and from century to
century postponed. Far better that Christ should
not come thus. The vast majority of the human race
are in the spirit-world. If his
redeemed are with
Him in the heavenly world, they will not want Him
to forsake the heavens and go down to earth. Indeed,
do not we ourselves count this one of the most delightful
prospects of the eternal world, that having passed
through death into the better world, we shall be " for
ever with the Lord."
And for what is it that Christ is said to come? The
answer is given in different forms. At one time, it is
to avenge Him on his adversaries; at another, it is to
avenge his saints; and again it is to take his vineyard
from servants who have appropriated the fruit
unto themselves and to give it to others who will recognize
his lordship; here, it is to reap the harvest of
the land. It is a solemn, yea, a dreadful function,
which is thus attributed to Christ; and never at any
time so fittingly as at the transition from the Jewish
to the Christian age can this work be accomplished.
There are particular crises in the history of men and
nations when the false threatens to overlay the true;
when unrighteousness and hypocrisy have supplanted
truth and goodness, and are ripening to a
maturity that forebodes the extermination of God's
kingdom on the earth, and then it is that the judging
work of Christ begins. Perhaps such a reaping-time
160 TIle Harvest of the Land. [XIV.
as this must follow every distinctive revelation of
God's truth. There comes the time when each
ordinance of God has effected all of which it is
capable, and when the perversities and misapprehensions
which invariably gather around it have destroyed
its power and made some change of form desirable.
So was it with the Mosaic Law. It had ceased to be
an inspiration for righteousness; it had become a cloak
for sin; and accordingly its doom had come. Its
good and evil had ripened in their extremest forms;
and if the world was not to perish in corruption, it was
needful that the good should be conserved, and the
evil broken and consumed. It is at this crisis the Son
of Man appears in heaven. He is sending his righteous
judgements on the earth. The good have been
gathered into the Christian Church; the evil have
ripened for destruction, and Christ's punishments are
intended to purify the earth, and fit it for the planting
of the seed of his eternal Gospel. It is now the end of
a dying age, a new and better dispensation is to be
begun. The sickle is cast into the earth; and proleptically,
the earth is reaped.
"I will tell Y01~ what I will
do to my vineyard."
A double reaping is in process. Why there are thus
two harvests has puzzled many; but there is a very
simple reason for this imagery. There were two harvests
in Palestine-the grain harvest and the harvest
of the vines. It was therefore natural, seeing that
Palestine was the scene of this spiritual reaping, and
that our Lord had so frequently used this two-fold
figure of the harvest-field and vineyard, that this harvest
should have its two-fold symbol. However, the
17-20.] Treading the Wine-press. 161
L
emphasis is laid upon the harvest of the vintage. It is
the vine of the land which is reaped. Now, this figure
of" tlu vine of tke land" is most appropriate, if
this
harvest is reaped as we have said in Palestine. Israel
is distinctly and repeatedly figured as the vine of God,
as in Isaiah-" The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is
the house of Israel," and as in the Psalms-" Thou hast
brought a vine out of Egypt." That this" treading of
the wine-press of the wrath of God" is a most likely
description of the bloody wars of Rome all over Palestine
in the days of John is seen by recalling Isaiah
lxiii.-" I have trodden the wine-press alone .
I have trampled the people in my fury;" and also the
lamentations of Jeremiah over the Babylonian conquest
- "The Lord hath trodden the virgin, the
daughter of Judah, as in a wine-press." That this
sanguinary conflict was worthy of being depicted as a
stream of blood pouring out over the borders of the
land (1600 furlongs) and reaching up to the horses'
bridles, is witnessed by the pre-intimation of our Lord
that such sufferings had never before been in any land
and never would be again ; and also by the more prosaic
figures of the Jewish historian, from which we
learn that about a million and a-half of human beings
out of a population of five millon, perished by sword
and famine during the war. Besides this, Jewish blood
was shed in rivers beyond the borders of the holy
land, from Alexandria (in which alone were 50,000
massacred) to Tyre, then up to Damascus, and finally
further north. Well might that awful harvest be represented
as "the great wine-press of the wrath of
God." Yet God's wrath is not essentially different
from his love. If God judged his
people, it was to
II
162 Judgement in order to Salvation.
[XIV.
save them. If the angel cast his
fire upon the earth,
it was to burn up the dry encumbering thorns in order
that the ploughshare of the Gospel might prepare the
soil for the good seed of the kingdom. If
Israel's sun
went down in blood, it was that all the world might
hail the rising of the sun of righteousness. Renan has
written no truer and more effective word in his treatment
of the Apocalypse than where he shews that the
continued existence of the Temple, or even of the City
of Jerusalem, was inconsistent with the world-wide
spread of Christianity, and much more so with the
spiritualisation of its doctrine and worship. Christ's
truth could only be redeemed from Judaistic trammels
by the shedding of Israel's blood.
THE SEVEN LAST PLAGUES.
CHAPTERS XV. AND XVI.
"The Lard knoweth how to deliver the godly out of
temptation."
ACAREFUL reader cannot but be struck with the
---= ~ similarity of this
fifteenth chapter to certain
portions of the first part of the book. We have already
shown good reason why it must be so. As the
vision of the Lamb and the 144,000 of the previous
chapter corresponds with the sealed of the tribes in
chapter seven, so does this vision correspond with
the great multitude out of every tongue in robes of
white. It is the habit of this
book, before any calamitous
judgement falls, to show that God's people will
come through it most victoriously. The 144,000 were
seen on Mount Zion to signify their security while the
harvest of the land was being reaped; this company
standing on the glassy sea are those who refuse to
worship the evil beast, and are to be preserved from
the plagues about to desolate an evil earth. They
stand on that glassy sea mingled with fire __ because
while apparently in the midst of judgement, they are
not touched by its scorching fires, nor troubled in their
souls by any want of clearness or transparency in the
purposes of God.
The fact that they sing" the song of Moses and the
song of tlu Lamb" is enough to show that they are
first-century Christians, and many of them Hebrews
164 Preparing Heauen for Mm.
[xv,
to whom the worship of synagogue and temple had
been dear. We are also clearly dealing with a time
when heathenism and idolatry are rampant in the
earth, and the crucial test of fidelity to Christ is
whether men will offer sacrifice to Ca-sar. The song
of the victors contains other points of identification.
God is addressed as: "KinE[of the Ages,"
because this
is the time of the end, the boundary of the old age
and the new. They prophetically celebrate the coming
of "all nations" to worship
God, because they stand at
the introduction of the age of God's world-wide love.
The temple in Iteaven is at tltis time opened.
This is
the same event as is recorded in xi. ID;
here with
fuller information. In the former case, the opening
stands for the entrance of the dead on their reward;
but here, while the Temple is opened, we are to see a
preparatory work proceed before the reedemed are
able to enter upon its glories. God's judgements are
not yet finished; the vials of his wrath not yet exhausted.
God's angels can dwell in the glory of his
presence; they can breathe amid the fiery smoke that
no man can endure; live in that brilliant light which
sends a haze upon the poor weak eye of man. No
human soul is in that Temple. No redeemed spirit
has been as yet caught up to enter on its glories, for
the place is not quite prepared. However, there will
be no delay. God's righteous judgements are proceeding;
and soon" the dead who died in the Lord" will
be led up into their eternal rest in the Father's house.
XVI. The World's judgement-Day. 165
"Tlte coming of the day of God, by
reason of lI:ltiCIt the
heasens being on fire shal] be dissolced, and the elements
sltall
melt unth. fervent heat:"
The scene to which the preceding is introductory is
one of unusual sublimity even for so sublime a book.
Seven angels proceed from the throne of Deity, resplendent
with the glare of precious stones and the
glitter of golden girdles, and in their hands are bowls
which contain the wrath of God. That wrath is the
fervour of his love for truth going forth in opposition
to Satanic error-it is the purity of his righteousness
in its burning zeal against iniquity-that goodness
which like a fire eats every dry branch of fruitless and
false pretence-that mighty wind which scatters like
the chaff every bad confederacy of men.
Every reader may see at a glance a striking similarity
between these seven vials and the seven successive
trumpets of the earlier portion of the book. Evidently,
we are meant to think of them as related: and
such is the common feeling of interpreters. Along
with a certain identity there are material differences;
easily explained by the principle on which the structure
of this book proceeds. The story of the rise of
Christianity must be somewhat like the story of the
fall of Judaism, so intimately were they bound together.
How the darkness of the night is vanquished,
is not materially different from how the day was born
and swelled to noon. In such a brief prophetic sketch
as John's there comes a point where Judaism will get
mixed up with other forces which are opposed to
Christ, and indeed be so identified in a common enmity
and in a common judgement, that the boundary
lines are lost to view. Finally, Judaism as the young166
The Trumpet Plagues. [XVI.
est and weakest foe will disappear, and a stronger
enemy alone be left upon the field. Heathenism with
its kindred sensualities then remains the only foe of
Christ; and the moral conflict of the age is finally
fought out between the Sermon on the Mount, and
the utterances of pagan oracles and priests.
At the opening of these vials, we are just at that
point where Judaism is already seen as broken in its
power. The land is being reaped outside the city,
and Jerusalem is shaken but not fully judged. Therefore,
our attention, in the main, is arrested by a rampant
heathenism which is inspired from the abyss.
The sphere of divine judgement is widened out, and
it is seen that Heathenism as well as Judaism is to
suffer from the ban of God, be even more completely
judged than the system of his ancient people. Indeed,
the vial judgements are seen to fall on all the enemies
of the Church of God, whether they be Jew or Pagan.
The first trumpet was a plague
upon the produce of
the earth; the first vial, more trenchant in its nature,
is a plague upon the bodies of men themselves. Every
worshipper of the beast is to suffer in that nature
which allies him with the beast. One cannot well
determine whether literal bodily ailments are intended;
and sickness, pestilence, and plague to be regarded as
God's judgements upon men's sins; or whether these
bodily ailments are to be taken as the type of special
moral evils into which the malignant infidelity and
superstition of the age break out. In
either case, we
shall not err far from the truth; for it seems as if history
placed the fact beyond dispute that nearly all man's
suffering is the consequence of sin.
2-4.] The Bitterness of Sin.
167
The second angel poured out his vial, and the sea
became as the blood of a dead man. The second
trumpet produced a similar effect. That may be
interpreted of a time of naval warfare and commercial
paralysis; or it may symbolise the stagnancy and
corruption of human thought and feeling, and the
perversion of the leading elements of life into sources
of pollution and of death. In any case, it is a telling
picture of the stagnancy and incipient corruption of
the most mobile elements of a nation's life in the day
of its paralysis and hastening death.
The third angel poured out his vial on the rivers
and fountains of water, and they became as blood.
The corresponding trumpet told us that the burning
star Wormwood fell into the rivers and fountains and
made the waters bitter. The meaning is the same.
The ordinary joys of life are turned into wormwood
and gall. St. Paul prepared the Corinthians for this
time of tribulation, warning them not to marry, not to
form intimate connections with the world, to sit as
loosely to its treasures as they could, because such
judgements should soon come as would transform the
tenderest ties of life into cups of stagnant blood.
Doubtless, it is like refreshing water in the oasis of life
to enter into wedlock and to have joyous children
dancing round the hearth, while prosperity waits on us
with its golden cup; but what if "the time is short"
until these dearest refreshments of our life are changed
into blood, and our parched lips are wrung with the
cry: "Blessed is the womb that never bare, and the
paps that never gave suck." When Paul foretold such
sufferings for the green tree of the Christian Church,
168 A Dry, Parched Land.
[XVI.
what must have been suffered in the dry tree of an
evil world! If we go back into
that old Jewish and
heathen world (there is not much to choose between
them), we are in a dry parched land where no water
is. Everywhere, commerce is depressed, government
is unsettled, life and property insecure, family life
utterly corrupt, children a calamity, fidelity and
friendship
rare, and suicide ennobled as a virtue. The
springs of life are dry-there is no gladness in the
souls of men. The things that used to be attractions,
now are life's perplexities. Men have perverted God's
good gifts; and their possession has become a canker
and a snare. Even the old religious faith, and the
hopes of immortality kindled by the gods, have been
supplanted by despair; and superstitious fears have
become the very bitterest poison in the cup of life.
Religious error that panders to the sensuous tastes of
men, in spite of its attractions for the time, turns
finally into blood, and woe to them who have to drink
it.
That such punishments are quite consistent with
God's goodness is witnessed by the angel of the waters.
"Righteous art thou 0 Lord because thou hast judged
thus, for they Izave shed the bloodof saints andproplzets,
and tho« hast gh1en them blood to drink." And the
saints beneath the altar also acquiesce-" Yea, 0 Lord,
true and righteous are thy judgements." I t is wonderful
indeed, to see how in every great historical period
men's sins and righteousnesses have ripened into their
appropriate fruit of pain or joy. The sufferings of any
age on which you care to lay your finger are the
natural fruit of its falsehood and its sin, according to an
eternal law that knows no variableness and shows no
4-8.] Day turned into Night.
169
respect of persons. In such seasons of collapse, good
men may be compelled to suffer death, because evil
men cannot endure their testimony against their wicked
ways; but the destruction of the good does but intensify
the misery of those who shed their blood. "They that
take the sword shall perish by the sword "-the men
that shed other's blood as water, will in the ripeness of
the times, have blood to drink, until satisfied and
disgusted with their defilements in which once they
revelled with delight.
The fourt/i trumpet was a plague of darkness; and
the corresponding vial is a plague of scorching heat.
It would be hard indeed to reconcile these two if they
referred to physical calamities. Darken the sun, and
you not only lessen the light of day, but you decrease
the heat; but make this a symbol of the living experience
of men, and then, while to one class truth may
become obscure, to another truth may become so clear
that, if it is unpalatable to their lusts, it will burn them
as with scorching fire. The favourite interpretation of
this vial by those who bring the visions of John down
through all Christian history, is that this sun is
Napoleon-and his scorching fire the rolling of his
artillery and musketry. We cannot think that the
apostle John and the Christians of his generation were
much concerned about Napoleon and his European
wars. But they were over head and ears concerned
with the providential judgements which were falling
upon the men and institutions which stood up in
opposition to the Gospel of their Lord; and with the
lusts and passions breaking out within the hearts of
their own particular generation-tending to the disso170
The Heavens on Fire. [XVI.
lution of society, and the downfall of philosophies and
cults opposed to Christ. Now, can we not believe that
in the higher light which was dawning on that ageand
with its sense of utter failure in its politics,
philosophyand
religion, and other attendant humiliations,
-there must have been a quickening of the passions
of the people, a kindling of disappointment, a sense of
shame and fear, making them reckless, "destroying
mutual love and social confidence, instigating to mutual
fraud and deeds of violence, to sanguinary wars and
other enormities, enough to chill one's soul to think of!"
Yes, by no fitter symbol than the scorching sunshine
can you depict the misery of the man who in the
dawning light of a better age, begins to see the failure
of all his life-long dreams, the enormities of his evil,
and stands self-condemned before a light which he
cannot quench as yet, and which torments him, because
instead of confessing that it is light from heaven, and
thanking God for revealing a goodness to which he
has been a stranger, he turns his curses against God,
and blasphemes his holy name. So did the men of
that generation-they repented not, but perished in
their sin.
The fifth vial is a natural continuation of the
fourth.
When under the scorching heats of hated light, men
go on in evil; and instead of repenting of their sin,
impute their miseries to heaven, the last state of these
men is worse than the first. Paul says-" God will send
them strong delusions that they may believe a lie ;"
which is pious language for the mental law that when
men resist the truth they are necessarily misled by lies,
and drift off into grosser and still grosser darkness. This
9-12.] Hell on Earth. 171
language is kindred to some awful words of Christ's
that we usually associate with another place than
earth. Take first these men with fountains and
streams dried up, and still athirst; then scorched with
heat; then immersed in darkness gnawing their
tongues for pain,-and you have, we think, a state
that is not remote from hell, with its darkness, its
everlasting fire, and gnashing of teeth. The meaning
of these symbols is that, in this day of judgement
which had come to that ancient world, lull was
realised on earth. Is it only by a chance co-incidence,
that Renan writing of this 'very generation, says-" L'esprit
de vertige et de cruaute debordait alors, et faisait
de Rome un veritable enfer!" The souls of men whether
heathen or pharasaic, were scorched,and parched, and so
darkened by their blindness that they knew not where
to turn. Such is the fate of men who reject heaven's
dawning light and cling with fondness to their fallacies
and sins, even when they are lashed by them as by
scorpion stings. Their only hope lay in the knowledge
of the Father of Jesus Christ; but they clung to
their material Messiah or their heathen sensualities,
and were fated to be cast outside the kingdom into
that darkness where there is weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth.
The sixth vial is again a companion picture to the
sixth trumpet. That was the obliteration of all distinction
between the Babel and the Jewish kingdoms,
-the absorption of the sacred in the secular and godless
kingdom of this world. This vial correctly symbolises,
in addition, that Babylon itself is also to be
overthrown in turn. Ancient Babylon, after it had
------------------_._--~_.---- .----.- -- - --
172 The East against the West. [XVI.
destroyed Jerusalem, fell by the Kings of the East
diverting the Euphrates from its channel, and entering
at night while Belshazzar and his court were engaged
in drunken revelries." The vision symbolises a rising
war of Eastern thought against the mystic Babylon.
Strange to say, the life of Rome actually came to be
infested and to have its old stern virtues undermined
by 'a current of Eastern thought
which flowed steadily
in until it came to be a powerful factor in the national
life. Of this Seneca complained, especially of Jewish
thought. Once the West had ruled the East; but the
tide was on the turn. Chaldrean and Jewish astrologers
were the rulers of men's destinies. The gods of
the East, as older than the gods of Rome, came to be
in request as the native deities failed to satisfy men's
wants. At length, there were no gods in Rome more
popular, with the provincials and the lower orders,
than those whose native haunts were the Orontes and
the Nile. Thus, a door was opened for Jewish and
monotheistic thought, which Christianity was able
to utilise effectively. Says Uhlhorn-" This also was
a preparation for Christianity. To the world seeking
for mightier gods, was preached the true God. Men
looked for a new God to the East: according to God's
counsels, He was actually to be proclaimed to the
world as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Conflict,
etc., p. 66.)
The heralds of the Gospel are not unfittingly symbolized
in the Eastern kings who assaulted ancient
Babylon. The Apostles are notoriously "the
kings that
* So history runs, although the story is now regarded
as
more than doubtful. The symbol, however, could
be harmoniously
worked out on the basis of the drying of the Euphrates
in 2 Esdras, xiii, 40-9.
12-14.] Tlte Kings of tlte Eartlt. 173
come from tlte sunrising." They march forth against
the West to conquer Babylon, and make the world
tributary to heaven's kingdom. They are indeed the
children of the light and of the day, who will teach
the darkened kingdoms of the beast to hail the rising
sun. There was an ancient prophecy which said that
an Eastern King should rule the world. That King
is Christ; and seated on his throne are his twelve
Apostles. It is indeed a
marvellous fact that we today
in this distant Western isle are here to verify the
prophecy of John by acknowledging the spiritual supremacyof
Christ and his Apostles. We have been
conquered by the Kings of the East and are now
the willing subjects of the Lamb.
It is significant, however, that at this moment Satan
and his beasts are invoking the brutal force of kings
to war against the cause of God. Largely that warfare
is directed against the Hebrew polity in the
belief that with Judaism the God of the Jews will disappear
from history. It had been hoped that the
commandants in the provinces, and dependent kings,
would have gladly seized the opportunity of the Jewish
revolt to assert their independence ; but on the contrary
they sent their troops with eagerness to erase
Jerusalem from the earth. Titus is even credited with
the motive of destroying both Christianity and J udaism
by his war against the Temple. "These two superstitions,"
he is reported to have said, "although contrary
to one another, are of the same source; the
Christians come from the Jews; the root torn up, the
shoot will perish quickly." Thus, literally, was the
heathen military ascendancy of those days-" tlte war
0/ the great day of God." And yet, while warring
174 The East Victorious. [XVI.
against God, they are doing the work of God. In destroying
Jerusalem, they are blindly preparing the way
of the Kings of the Sunrising; and hastening God's
vengeance upon mystic Babylon. Christianity, reinvigorated
by release from Judaic material limitations,
will all the sooner begin an effective war against
Roman civilisation. How tersely, and in what powerfullines,
the conflict of heathenism with the truth is
drawn in this vision of the frog-like spirits. The
Kings of the East - the kingly truths and principles
of the Christian faith-are to meet in dread
array the kings of the Roman earth-the regnant
principles and passions of the heathen world. There
is to be a war of holy and unholy principles-a conflict
of truth and error. On one side will be the Lamb
of God, the potency of his truth, the courage and devotion
of his saints; and on the other side, a confede
racy of earthly and infernal powers, "mixing the
coarsest animal with the most subtle spiritual wickedness,"
and using the two-edged sword of demoniacal
signs in order to command the people's faith and
brutal force to put to silence the soldiers of the cross.
"Be!lold, I come as a thief
Blessed is he that
watclleth and keepeth Ids garments lest he walk naked
and t!ley see Ius shame" What can the repetition of
this warning mean, but that this is the particular
juncture of events for which the Church at Sardis was
to watch? In this conflict of truth with demonism
and brute force, Christ is coming in his power and
glory. Great need, amid the complications of these
times, that the people should comport themselves as
Christian men and prove worthy of spotless garments
and the crown of glory in the endless life of God!
14-19.] The Valley of Decision. 175
That early conflict of God's kingdom was to be on the
great broad plain of Armageddon, the valley of
decision-
famous both for the defeat and the victory of
Israel. Locally, and in the first place, it was on
Hebrew ground that heathenism delivered its assault
against the one Almighty God. That fateful struggle
realised all the past associations of the plain of
Armageddon
in Hebrew history. Outwardly there was
every sign of heathen victory. Israel was broken into
pieces under heathen feet; the land was full of mourning;
every family weeping for its victims, dead or
gone away to worse than death. But Judah's desolation
was the revival of Judah's spiritual power. Salvation
was of the Jews to all the world precisely because
Jerusalem was to be no more the centre and sovereign
of Christian life and power. This profounder Armageddon
was both defeat and victory; both of them
decisive not only of a nation's but of a world's
destiny.
The seuentk and last vial also corresponds with the
seventh trumpet. Then the voices of heaven proc1aimed-"
The kingdom of the world is become the
kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ." This last
vial is poured into the air as if to shake the dragon's
power; and then a voice comes from the throne: "It
is done." The last stream of wrath is emptied out, the
last force set in motion which shall bring proud Babylon
to the dust; and the declaration is accompanied
by a sign of what this vial can produce, for there is a
mighty earthquake and" the great city is divided into
three parts." Considerable difference of opinion exists
as to whether this great city is Jerusalem or Rome;
176 Jerusalem FaDen.
[XVI.
and certain expositors have reversed their former
judgements, so nicely does the evidence seem balanced.
This dubiety arises from the fact that all the
, foes of Christianity are here blended in one picture.
At first Judaism stood well to the front, but now it is
almost fully judged, and is receding before the advancing
prominence of Babylon. This" great city " is not
Rome ; since, as the visions proceed, we find the great
city which is the seat of Babylon, comparatively
undisturbed.
It does, indeed, seem clear that Jerusalem
IS In view. The judgement of the
holy land has been
described in this Second Part as until now falling only
" without the city;" and it is therefore to be expected
that we shall hear something of the city's fate.
Here, then, the catastrophe of judgement is complete,
partial as it looks. This tripartite division of
the city is apparently taken from Ezekiel's description
of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. That prophet
took his hair and divided it into three parts. One
part he burned, another cut with a knife, and the third
scattered to the winds of heaven. Said the Lord God
-" This is Jerusalem;" and the prophecy meant, a
third shall die by the pestilence and famine, a third
shall fall by the sword, and a third part be scattered
to the winds of heaven. Such, indeed, was Jerusalem's
fate in the siege of Titus. Politically and sacerdotally,
Jerusalem ceased to be.
The" cities of the nations" might be those Gentile
cities in which Jewish colonies came to grief at this
particular time, but more probably the towns and
cities of Decapolis, Edom, Samaria, and Galilee, called
"Galilee of the nations" in St. Matthew's gospel. In17-
21.] End of the Judaic World. 1'77
deed, these are distinctively called "cities of the
nations" in the history of Josephus.
"Babylon the great was remembered." Surely this
intimation is enough to warn us that Babylon is not
yet broken into pieces nor completely judged. We
are to understand that only the first distinctive foe of
Christianity is gone. The Jewish polity has been
shaken to its foundations. Its people have been
crushed beneath a plague of hail (a favourite symbol
of destructive military visitations in the Prophets and
the Apocrypha), the weight of each of which corresponds
with the stones hurled from the" scorpions" of the
Romans against the bold defenders of Jerusalem. "The
islands and mountains .fled away"-so complete was
the dislocation of the Jewish world, so utterly did God
judge it and its ways. Nothing short of a new heaven
and a new earth were to follow the great day of the
Lord. And no one can doubt that this judgement-day
wrought a revolution in the outlook of the Church.
As Dollinger says-" Christians recognized it as a
providence of God, and a sign that the end of the
ceremonial law was come,-that Christian doctrine was
thereby completely taken out and separated from the
maternal womb of Judaism." A second deliverance
followed. "The church of Christ," says Mosheim, "had
at no period of time more bitter and desperate enemies
than that very people to whom the immortal Saviour
was more especially sent." Likewise Neander: "Jewish
proselytes were often the fiercest persecutors of
Christianity,
and suffered themselves to become tools of the
Jews in exciting the pagans against the Christians."
When the sacred instruments of Jewish worship were
profaned, and the Jew had no longer a home on earth,
10
178 Iclzabod. [XVI.
his wrath might remain as fierce, but he ceased to make
proselytes, and his power to wound was gone. Isaac
was more than able to hold his own with Ishmael.
Solemn lesson! The most favoured Church may
become so corrupt as to be intolerable in the sight of
heaven. It may slay as the enemies
of God his chosen
sons. When exalted to the heavens with pride,
Ichabod may be written on its walls, and its prayers,
its penances, its fasts, its genuflections, and its turning
over the pages of its Bible, be an abomination in
the sight of God.
THE HARLOT JUDGED.
CHAPTERS XVII. AND XVIII.
"La, I begin to work evil at the city 0./
my 1wme, and should
ye be utterly unpunished?"
WE must be careful to note, as we enter on the
I ~ episode of
Babylon, that we are not asked to
look and see an actual event transpiring. Failure to
mark this has led to error. John does not see the
destruction of Babylon by the fire of the breath of God.
He sees what Babylon is, and where she sits in her
self-vaunting pride, and is TOLD what shall be her
end.
I n visions of occurrences, John sees what is immediately
to happen or what is actually in process and will soon
reach its culmination; but, when he is merely told
that
anything slzall be, the event still lies a little
into the
future, and is thereby marked with indefiniteness as
to the time of its occurrence. The fact that John is
told that Babylon shall be hated of the beast and his
horns, and slzall be burned; and that the trafficers
of
the world slzall mourn for her, indicates plainly
that
he prophesies of things a little distant and not of what
is actually transpiring before his eyes. Even the note
in the previous chapter-" Babylon the great was
remembered in the sight of God" is enough to show
that Babylon's destruction is not actually proceeding,
but is decreed and being kept in mind; and that in
the fall of the great city jerusalem (the destruction of
180 Babylon. [XVII.
Judaic hindrances to the triumph of the Gospel) God
is preparing the way for his judgement upon Babylon.
In short, God's judgement on Jerusalem is here set
forth as his pledge to the Church that Babylon will
not be spared. This episode, then, is intended by John
and the angelic host to be an offidal judgement
pronounced
against tltt"s second foe and proleptically
fulfilled. To faith, what God means to do is done.
Indeed, as we have already said-the deliverance of
the Gospel from its Judaic fetters was a sentence of
doom on Heathenism. In such grand creations, the
first hour is decisive. A Gospel for the Gentiles was,
in its very birth, the fall of Babylon.
How are we to think of Babylon, that great city, that
strong dty-which is, "Mystery, Babylon the Great,
the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the
earth?" Expositors have for the most part confined
themselves to one of three suggestions-all of which
have considerable resemblance to the truth. A
few
have found Jerusalem concealed under the guise of
Babylon; and it is surprising how well they can make
certain marks of identification harmonise with the
history and fate of that once sacred city. They say,
Jerusalem was the wife of God, what other city can be
called an harlot? What other city is so chargeable
with the blood of Prophets and Apostles, or has so
plainly ceased to be in fulfilment of this prophecy?
(The ablest word for this view of Babylon will be found
by the English reader in Dr. Russell's
Parousia.i The.
great majority of British expositors have, however,
found Babylon in the church of Rome, or the city of
Rome itself as head and centre of the Roman faith.
That church, they say, is the bride of Christ; but what
1-5.] Where is Babylon? 181
with its worshipping of saints and images, its idolatry
of the host, its assumptions of infallibility and dominion,
it is clearly marked as anti-christian and apostate,
and therefore is destined to the doom of Babylon.
And what have we to answer in return? That we
have no objection to find Babylon in Jerusalem. It
had apostatized from God-lost its grand ideal meaning
-come to worship force, and chose another God when
it cried-" Away with this man; crucify him, crucify
him; we have no king but Ceesar." We have no
objection to find Babylon in the Roman church, if it
be there; and, certainly there are many startling signs
of similarity. Weare prepared to find Babylon in
London or in Paris; or indeed, in Protestanism, with
its error and confusion. Babylon is wherever we find
Babylon's characteristics. Let us, however, be sure of
what Babylon's features are; for if we cannot see
what John is meaning, we are likely to fall into serious
and irretrievable mistakes; and to apply this shameful
name to men and systems who are no more nearly
allied to Babylon than we are ourselves.
Now, John is not thinking specially of Jerusalem,
though she was tainted by the Babel spirit. That city
is already judged and shaken to its base; and after
the woes which have been described, it is impossible
to imagine Babylon sitting at Jerusalem in its fulsome
sensuousness, cool and unconcerned. Nor is John
thinking here of an apostate Christian Church in the
dim and distant future. There is not a syllable in the
prophecies of this book to indicate that Christ's Church
has been apostatizing up to this particular stage of
history. On the other hand, the last vision of the
Church revealed it standing on the glassy sea. Nor
182 Not a Christian Chuyelz. [XVII.
is John concerned with anything that does not exist;
and that cannot afford light and consolation to the
infant Church amid the unparalleled trials which beset
it. At any rate, Babylon does not bear one single
mark of being a Church of Christ, however sinful and
apostate. She is described very literally as a city,
great in population, rich in wealth, given to luxury and
debauchery, dealing in horses and chariots, and keeping
multitudes of slaves. So vast her population and
so expensive are her habits, that she is the emporium
of the world's trade. Her collapse is a serious blow
to every shipmaster and mariner, and all who make
their living by the sea; and her sincerest mourners in
the day of her decline are the merchants who have become
princes by reason of her costly tastes for precious
metals, pearls, fine linen, fragrant woods, marbles
spices, ointmcnts-s-everything that is dainty and sumptuous
to the soul of man. How that describes the
church of the Vatican we utterly fail to see; or who
the transformation of Roman Catholics into Evangelical
Protestants would strike such a fatal blow at the
trade and commerce of the world that all the merchant
princes would stand aghast, and all the fleets of
the nations be disbanded for want of commerce!
If
that really is to be the consequence of the new reformation,
will not our evangelical British merchants
wish the Millennial day to be indefinitely postponed?
We come to far more likely ground, when we take
Babylon to be some heathen, anti-divine organisation
existing in apostolic times; exercising its oppressive
power against Prophets and Apostles, and standing in
colossal magnitude as an insuperable obstacle to the
universal sovereignty of Jesus Christ. If
there was
XVIII.] Found in Rome. 183
And 1st, her sensual
point we shall ask
such a city, then the centre of the world, great in extent,
costly in her habits, into which were gathered the
wealthiest families of the time, a market for all the
expensive luxuries of Arabia and the Indies; if this
city exercised its sovereignty in all the habitable
world, and withal was madly anti-christian and idolatrous-
then this city of John's time must have been
the seat and throne of Babylon. That Rome was such
a city, there can be no dispute ;. and we need not wonder
that when Jerusalem has just been trampled in the
dust, and Judaism blotted out, the infant Church feels
herself to be standing face to face with this gigantic
foe, wondering if it be possible that she can survive
the might of Rome.
Rome answers to her marks.
wantonness (xviii. 8). On this
Gibbon to bear his testimony :-
" The most remote corners of the ancient world were
ransacked
to supply the pomp and delicacy of Rome. . . . . .
The objects of oriental traffic were splendid and trifling;
silk, a
pound of which was esteemed not inferior in value to a pound
of
gold; precious stones, among which the pearl claimed the
first
rank after the diamond; and a variety of aromatics that were
consumed in religious worship aud the pomp of funerals. The
labour and risk of the voyage was rewarded with almost
incredible
profit; but the profit was made upon Roman subjects,
and a few individuals were enriched at the expense of the
public."
Rome was full of palaces, furnished with every
luxury; and built with a splendour that has never
been paralleled in the world's history. Pliny says that
Nero consumed more precious spices at the funeral of
his wife than all Arabia could produce in any year.
184 Rome's Sensuous Religion. XVIII.
This reminds us that we must not fail to note how
much Rome's luxury was connected with the services
of religion, and how deeply" a multitude of lazy and
selfish priests," and the merchants interested, would
deprecate the success of a religion like the Gospel,
without temple, sacrifice, or sacerdotal order. Mosheim
writes :-" The public worship of such an immense
number of deities was a source of subsistence
and even of riches to the whole rabble of priests and
augurs, and also to a multitude of merchants and
artists." As the ascendancy of idolatry was fatally
stricken, well might the merchants and the seamen of
the navies that went everywhere between Britain and
Ceylon be represented as bewailing bitterly the downfall
of the system which made them rich.
Another characteristic, and one which cannot mark
a Christian church, but marks distinctively imperial
Rome, is its traffic in horses and chariots, and slaves,
and lives of men (xviii. 14). As a warlike and imperial
city, and for the circus sports, horses and chariots
were in great demand. The horribly inhuman condition
of society may be imagined from the fact that
of 1,200,000 inhabitants in Rome quite one-half were
slaves-prisoners of war deported from their homes
and sold-males and females brought from every
quarter for the vilest uses. From so small a country
as Judcea, 90,000 were led away after the siege of Jerusalem
to feed wild beasts, or work as slaves till
death brought peace. So absolute was the slave's
subjection, and so worthless was his life, that in one
Roman household 400 were put to death because one
of them under provocation assassinated his master.
They were sometimes cut to pieces to feed the fish in
XVII.] Marks of Identity. 185
their master's pond; or to let some guest see the
dying agonies of a man. In fact, they were not
counted human beings in that Roman world, but only
chattels on their lord's estate; and as such they were
refused all share in the national worship. Never before
nor since have the sanctities of human nature
been so diabolically profaned.
This harlot has also slain tlte saints
and the martyrs
ofJesus. This distinction is frequently made in
the
Apocalypse, and not without good reason. "The
saints," we believe to be "the holy people," or saints
of Daniel, whom the beast was made to break in
pieces and wear out. We see, then, that the harlot is
the common enemy of Jew and Christian. The particular
reference before us is to Rome's cruel annihilation
of Judaic power; and to the Christian blood in
which she had so lately steeped her hands.
Again, this woman's seat is on
the beast full of the
names of blasphemy. That beast is the Roman power;
or the emperor as its representative, with his claims to
be" Divus." The city where her palace is is Rome.
This woman sits upon" seven mountains."
Rome
is often called in ancient literature" the seven-hilled
city;" and indeed had a yearly festival in honour of
the inclusion of the seventh hill in the city's boundaries.
We read that there are "<senen kings"
who reign
successively, and are appropriately designated heads
of
the beast. Of these, the sixth was reigning when
John wrote. That readily corresponds with the succession
of Roman emperors about this time.
Again, the beast John saw supporting the harlot,
" was, is not, and is about to come up from tile abyss."
186 The Beast that was and is not. [XVII.
This curious enigma is hard to solve, because many
solutions have been found. Our first concern should
be to see what John means. The beast he saw was
Rome under that king or head in whose reign the
harlot's ascendancy will have reached its climax of
security, and, with the usual irony of fate, in which
her supremacy will be fatally undermined. A certain
mystery attaches to the person of this king; he was,
is not, and is about to come; he is the eighth, following
a seventh, who reigns a little time, and is from the
seven; and all the heathen world admires his reign.
The marks of identification are dark enough in all
conscience. But let us see.
A favourite interpretation with Preterists is, that
this eighth is the brutal Nero, who was supposed to
have escaped at his dethronement and fled eastward,
and was shortly afterwards reported to be returning
to claim his throne, supported by the Parthians. Beyond
all question, many doubted Nero's death; and
false Neros did arise and claim his crown. We do not,
however, believe that John here prophesies the literal
return of Nero; much less, as some have supposed,
his literal resurrection from the abyss. The most
probable interpretation is, that Vespasian may be
John's sixth emperor, reigning at this point in the
visions, after Jerusalem has passed away. The brief
and partially simultaneous reigns of Galba, Otho, and
Vitellius were the interregnum of the wound, because
all this year the empire was in the throes of continual
revolt. The seventh, who continues a little while, is
Titus, who reigned only twenty-six months; and the
eighth, brother of the seventh, who gathers up into
himself the material splendour, beastliness, and blas8-
11.] Nero's Duplicate. 187
pherny of the whole course of imperial reign, is
Domitian.
There is in the history of Domitian a fact, unnoticed
by expositors, which may have led John to make the
enigmatical remark-" which was, is not, and is to be."
Both Josephus and Suetonius tell us that in the
revolution which deposed Vitellius, Domitian was
brought forth to the multitude, recommended to the
emperorship, "and unanimously saluted by the title of
Caesar," after which he assumed the honours. Titus,
too, all along regarded Domitian as his partner in the
emperorship, although not visibly in power. "After
Domitian became emperor, he had the assurance to
boast in the senate that he had bestowed the empire
on his father and brother, and that they had restored
it to him." Thus Domitian might very literally be
described as the emperor that" was, is not, and is to
come "-the abyss being named to symbolize the
signally diabolical and anti-christian character of his
reign. He is thus, too, an emperor in close connection
with the healing of the deadly wound, inasmuch as he is
the first crowned of the Flavian line; and beyond question,
was the emperor in whom the specially beastly
features of Roman rule reached their culmination.
There was a remarkable resemblance between the
characters and careers of Nero and Domitian ; only, in
the acute judgement of Renan, "Nero had not the
dark wickedness of Domitian, the love of evil for the
sake of evil." Both of them were blood-thirsty, luxurious
and incestuous tyrants. Domitian like Nero had
a craving tv be invested with necromantic powers;
like Nero he commanded himself to be deified, and
addressed in letter or in speech: "Dominus et Deus
188 The Pagan Revival. [XVII.
Noster," Our Lord and God; and like Nero, he became
a violent persecutor of both Jews and Christians. The
likeness between the two was even physical, and is
verified by ample testimony. The common nickname
of Domitian in Rome was" Calvus Nero"-the bald
Nero. (juvenal,
Sat. iv. 38). Tertullian calls him" a
fragment of Nero" and a" sub-Nero"; and Eusebius
says: "he at length established himself as the successor
of Nero in his hatred and hostility to God." In one
thing only did they differ. Nero was little better than
an atheist, and discouraged all religious ceremonies
but the worship of the emperors; Domitian, like his
father, laboured to revive the worship of the gods in
Rome, and succeeded. "It was the boast of Domitian
that in his youth he had waged the wars of Jove in
defence of the Capitol (the temple of Rome); that in
a later age he had scaled the heavens for himself and
family by piously restoring it." (Merivale's Conversion,
etc., 32). Beyond all question, the dying heart of
Paganism was galvanised into a quicker action by the
devouter faith of Vespasian and his sons. There was
no actual revival of pagan faith among the people of
the empire; but official Paganism took fresh heart, and
posed in greater ceremonial splendour to the delectation
of the Roman crowds. It seemed as if the old Roman
world had come to life again; the beast from the abyss
was more aggressive; the dragon again was vigorously
asserting his claim to be supreme in earth and heaven.
Even in the fulfilment of this mark-"and
goetlt
into perdition," Domitian is again a Nero. He ended
his reign by assassination; and as the great Julian line
of emperors closed with Nero, so did the Flavian
dynasty go down with Domitian.
18.] Babylon tile Destroyer of Jerusalem.
189
Last of all, John is most distinctly told that this
woman Babylon is "The great
dry which reigneth over
the kings of the earth]' (xvii. 18). Mark
specially the
tense in which the angel speaks-that
reigneth, that
now reigns, not" that shall
reign," as if speaking of a
distant day. This could mean none other than great
Rome, which then reigned jealously and tyrannically
over the empire and its many provinces; that is, by
symbol, "upon many waters"
which are "peoples and
nations and tongues,"-a Babel multitude.
All these indications most decisively point to heathen
Rome, and that is the interpretation which has found
the widest acceptance among Christian scholars from
the earliest times. There is a certain grand appropriateness
in the introduction of the Roman power at
this part of the apocalyptic drama. The prophets
of the Old Testament no sooner prophesied that Babylon
would destroy Jerusalem for 70 years, than immediately
their prophetic anger burst out on Babylon
with the reproach that although God had employed
her for the punishment of his unfaithful people, He
would nevertheless punish her speedily for her sins,
and reward her double for the intensity of her hatred
to Jerusalem. Correspondingly, when the Roman
power has here ground Jerusalem into powder, the
prophetic spirit of the New Testament turns against
the Roman power, and calls it " Babylon," and in the
repetition of 01.:1 Testament
language, declares that it
too must be punished double for its sins.
This of itself is enough to refute the notion that
Babylon is Jerusalem. But the correspondence between
the Babylon of Isaiah xlviii. and Jeremiah 1.
and li, is to be found at so many
points that the con190
Rome and A ncient Baby/on. [XVIII.
elusion seems inevitable. 1.
Isaiah's oracle concerning
Babylon is of "the wilderness of the sea." The
Romish beast is from the sea; therefore Rome answers
as Jerusalem cannot do. 2. Babylon" sits upon
many waters" (Jer. Ii. 13), jerusalem's grief is that she
sits on the dry mountains. Metaphorically this fits
Rome, but hardly Jerusalem. 3. Old Babylon, like
the apocalyptic, is a "golden" cup of the wine of
fury to the nations, treading them down in her wrath;
and such was Rome, but Jerusalem never was, for
the Jew did not love soldiering. 4. Babylon as she
destroyed old Jerusalem boasted that she was" a lady
for ever," and the same boast is repeated here. 5.
The threatened tribulation is in both cases for the
unmerciful
manner in which Babylon has carried out her
mission of being a whip in the Lord's hand for the
chastisement of nations. 6. This Babylon is called
" a harlot," and here the parallel so far fails. Yet other
heathen cities are called harlots, such as Samaria and
Nineveh. Tyre is charged with fornication; and in
2 Esdras xv. 47, Babylon itself is charged with whoredom.
We must not think that only Jerusalem can be
treated as a harlot in the Scriptures; and that therefore
Babylon is presumably Jerusalem. Babylon is
constantly depicted in harlot character, and barely
falls short of the name itself. These and other points
of identity between John's Babylon and the Babylon
of Isaiah and Jeremiah seem plainly to exclude all
reference to Jerusalem; because the balance of prophecy
requires that this Babylon, like the last, shall
be the destroyer of Jerusalem and the enemy of God.
But why is Rome thus to come into judgement?
] ohn is not the prophet of a new and startling politics
XVIII.] WIdell
Rome is Babylon? 191
but the herald of a new dispensation; and the standpoint
from which Rome is judged is purely ethical and
spiritual. Ancient Babylon was condemned for its
haughty pride and its gross idolatry, and Rome its replicate
is condemned because she sits in her pride a
queen, is wanton in her sensuality, and acts corruptingly
upon all the kingdoms she reduces to her
sway; especially that she tramples with cruel and
contemptuous hoof upon all that is most sacred in the
worship of Christ and God. We must, however, be
careful to keep in view that it is not Rome politicalmuch
less is it the Rome of stone and lime-with
which the Apostle is concerned. Rome is here considered
as the centre and embodiment of heathen
thought and worship; as a woman, that is a church,
priding herself in finding all her exaltation and her
power in her reverence for the gods and the love which
the gods have for her. She is a pretentiously religious
city, a city of temples, of altars, of statues of the
deities;
and thus a wanton, a harlot with many lovers.
Worse than all, she uses her religious sanctities as a
means of perpetuating her dominion and of gratifying
every unholy lust; and so she is the mother of all the
abominations of the earth. Herein lies the Babel
principle-the lust of dominion and worldly gain by
means of religious sanctities. Religion is only a ladder
to the glory of this world. The holiest things
come to be prostituted to the profanest and most infernal
uses, so that the hearts of the people become
utterly corrupt, even in their highest principles. And
such was heathen Rome. Intense as she was in her
religious fervour, she made religion a panderer to her
passions; and instead of being purified thereby, her
192 Rome's Fornications. [XVIII.
people's hearts became" the habitations
ofdemons, and
the hold of every foul spin't, and a cage ofevery unclean
and hatiful bird."
One has but to look at the history of Rome to see
how true it is that she corrupted all the earth with her
fornications. Desiring to be the religious home and
political mistress of all nations, the native gods of
other countries were invited by the Roman Senate to
set up their altars in the capital. In times of war, the
particular gods of the besieged cities were implored to
give them up to the Romans in return for a more imposing
worship in the imperial city. Thus Gibbon
writes, "Rome became the common temple of her
subjects; and the freedom of the city was bestowed
on all the gods of mankind." The Roman people were
thus drawn from their primitive allegiance to their
fathers' God into the abominable dissipation of an
ever-growing, ever-changing polytheism. They fell
into the pernicious custom of worshipping at whatever
altars offered the freshest and most exciting
pleasures.
Not only did Rome receive strange gods, she carried
her own particular divinities to other lands; and
thus intensified the worst evils of idolatry throughout
the world. Especially did she force upon her provinces
the worship of the emperors; and even Rome
herself had a temple erected to her genius, and was
worshipped in every loyal province. This idolatrous
propagandism was part of Rome's settled policy as a
means to the subjection of the world and her own ascendancy.
She attributed to this recognition of all
the gods, her particular right to reign as queen.
" Every distinct nation worships its own country gods;
XVII.] Tile Goddess Roma. 193
we Romans all of them; thus, while we perform the
religious rites of all nations, we deservedly enjoy
universal
empire,"-(Octavius of
M. F., vi.) There was
but one God whom the Romans would not worship,
for whom the public revenues would build no temple,
one God who was despised and hated,-the God of
the]ew and the Christian. Do you wonder that this
imperious city, vaunting of its religious spirit, boasting
of its pantheon of false gods, exalting itself as the
goddess ROMA to a place among divinities; and
then turning upon the holy harmless preachers of the
cross to destroy them and proscribe the name of
Christ, and perpetuate the abominations by which it
lived,-do you wonder that on it should fall the anathemas
of heaven, and that the struggling infant
Church should have been comforted with heaven's own
assurances that this great system of iniquity should
totter to its fall and be utterly consumed?
And whence comes Babylon's destruction?
It comes
from God; it comes from the kings of the East, the
surely growing power of truth in the new dispensation
of the Gospel; and it comes from the people over
whom she reigns. The nations of the earth-the diverse
peoples of the Roman world, grow weary of the
harlot and her pollutions. The provinces had always
maintained a higher morality, and a purer religious
spirit, than had Rome. They first felt the awful burden
of the idolatrous system which had obtained; and
were the first to break away from the religious domination
of Rome. But even Rome itself at last grew
sick of the hateful system that ruled its life, and was
happy to be free.
But this deliverance did not come without a struggle.
'3
19•4
Rome's Destruction. [XVII.
The first instinct of Rome's dependents, entranced by
the mystic glamour of Babel error, was to support the
central power, and war against everything which
threatened to dethrone it. It was a bitter disappointment
to the Jewish revolutionary leaders that neighbouring
provinces, whom they expected to pant for
freedom, and to be ready to take advantage of Rome's
political disorganisation to strike for independence,
rather manifested sympathy with Rome and hatred
of the Jews. The soldiers that should have swelled
the ranks of liberty, flocked to Roman standards,
eager to assist in putting down revolt. So much was
the Jew hated and isolated in that ancient world.
Nevertheless, Jerusalem was to conquer, under the
guise of its defeat. From her went forth subtle influences
that the intensest bigotry could not resist.
The chaos of heathen thought presented no united
front to the solid onset of a more ideal Judaism, and
the diviner" truth as it is in Jesus." The best thought
of the provinces was weaned from its heathen bent.
Polytheistic harlotry was discovered in all its naked
vileness; and from every side there arose a spirit of
intense antagonism to the darker features of its cults
-until at last, even when it had reigned supreme, it
died and passed away. How magnificent is the contrast
here between this wanton Babylon and the New
Jerusalem, the chaste religion of the Gospel. The
kings of the Roman world make Babylon naked and
burn her in the fire of their wrath, when they come to
discover that she works only misery and oppression
in their midst; while all the kings of the earth become
nursing mothers to the Church, and bring the
glory and honour of the nations into it. Yes, all
XVIII.] Decadent Heathenism. 195
wanton love turns at last into fury and hate. There
is that in the Babel system which leads to discord,
strife, and death. Evil is ultimately suicidal. Though
men bind themselves with oaths into brotherhoods
antagonistic to the divinely-appointed order and progress
of society-thank God, such brotherhoods
are not permanent by reason of the disintegrating
character of evil. Truth is not at every moment
mightier than error; but in the end error falls to
pieces by its own repulsions, and then truth triumphs
on its ruins.
And Babylon, the fortress of decadent heathenism,
the eager searcher for new gods, and debaucher of
the nations with a multiplicity of idols, in spite of her
pomp, her pride, her wantonness, her lust of conquest
did fall and her ancient glory pass away. There is no
more telling witness to that fact than that on the spot
where apostolic blood was shed there stands the most
magnificent place of worship in the world, and that in
that harlot city one who, rightly or wrongly as it may
be, was named the representative of Christ, came to sit
in that imperial chair from which a heathen Ca-sar ruled
the world in the name of all the gods. And so every
Babylon will fall in turn; and men, grown wise
through their experience of evil, will learn that there
is no prosperity or joy on earth but in God and his
salvation.
THE MARRIAGE SUPPER & THE VICTORY
OF THE WORD OF GOD.
CHAPTER XIX.
"As the bridegroom. rejoiceth over the bride, so shall th!!
God rejoice over thee."
JOH N has not seen Babylon consumed.
It is
rather a future victory of which he has been
assured. It is, however, a result
contained in the very
advent of the Gospel. The effect is hidden in the
cause; and thus already, by the angels, and all the
heavens, Babylon is seen as fallen. While John is full
of enraptured amazement at this prophecy, he hears a
burst of heavenly voices rejoicing in the righteous
judgements of the Lord. We know that when heaven
rejoices it is not because earth is cursed, and the area
of its sorrow widened. Rather is it because whatever
may corrupt the earth is judged and whatever
may cause sorrow and oppression is sentenced to be
cast down and broken, in order that God's kingdom
may be more fully realized in the hearts and consciences
of men.
These rejoicings could not take place over any
merely mortal city. Mere political overthrows have
little bearing on the moral history of the world. We
must not bring heaven down into the paltry politics of
Whig and Tory j or dream that
heaven is largely in1-
7.] The Marn'age Supper. 197
terested in the transference of trade from Rome to
Constantinople, Venice, London, or New York.
When, therefore, we are asked to see that great city of
apostolic times, imperial Rome, in the Babylon of St.
John, the reader will understand that such a city
shaped itself to John as the very impersonation of the
heathen spirit, and as a standing challenge to the
Gospel's claims to be the only true and universal religion,
and Christ's own claim to be the King of kings.
There could be no revelation of Christ in his glory, no
claim to bring the world its righteous king, without
the distinct assurance that Christ would in due season
" Tread the idols in the dust,
Heathen fanes destroy;
Spread the Gospel's holy trust,
Spread the Gospel's joy I"
Suddenly, John hears a fresh outburst, apparently
of all in heaven and on earth, in sympathy with the
advent of the kingdom of God on earth, rejoicing over
the approaching marriage of the Lamb with his bride
the Church. It is somewhat disappointing that such
a beautiful and promising conception is not wrought
out in the visions of this book. We have only an intimation
meanwhile that the marriage hour is come.
Even this problem is left unsolved-Does the marriage,
scene occur on earth or is it placed in heaven? Our
answer is-It may be in both worlds, because the
Church in heaven and on earth is one.
This marriage may have some real significance on
earth. Those bright and festive robes may well typify
the Church which has faithfully answered to the call"
Come forth, my people out of Babylon." The
Church, we shall suppose, in her early zeal makes a
198 TIle Bn"de of God. [XIX.
perfect separation of herself from every false and evil
way of that Babel system by which she is encompassed.
When the smoke of Jerusalem's judgement is
cleared away, the world' sees this little company of
saints gathered around the name of Christ, worshipping
Him as seated on God's throne, and as having
won a triumphant victory over the evil power. Did
this not also put peculiar emphasis upon the Church's
own divinity, clothe her with the graces of her husband,
identify her with the heavenly destinies of her
Lord? Now she has come forth from the obscurity of
her virgin days; she is no longer confounded with
the beggared Jew, but is seen to pass into the palace
splendours of her marriage with the King of kings.
Clothed was she in mean and humble garments while
Judaism sneered, and asked-Where is the sign of his
coming? and Heathenism proudly stalked abroad in
all its glittering pomp; but when Christ was seen in
his divine ascendancy over human and infernal foes,
the Church appeared in all the grand significance of
her relation to the Eternal One. The time was come
for Zion to put on her beautiful apparel and shine
with all the light and glory of the Bride of God.
But who can those be who are" bidden" to the
marriage supper? The difficulty has been felt-Are
not those who are bidden "saints," and yet they
do not appear to be the Church, the bride? Let
us not press the figure quite so tightly. Those "bidden"
will be witnesess, at least, of the glory of the bride and
her beloved. Now, as the marriage of the Church can
only be beheld by the eye of faith; the blessedness
here spoken of will be the happy fortune of those only
who can discern at this particular time, the Church's
7-9.] Those Bidden. 199
wedded dignities. In short, those bidden are those
who see that the Church of Christ is indeed the bride
of God; a divine dispensation of love to men. These
will unite themselves with the Church and ultimately
enter on eternal life.
Of course, the Church beyond the veil will realise
this marriage in a much more realistic sense. Is it
not possible that this "fine linen bright
andpure" is
akin to the white robes in which we saw the martyrspirits
arraying themselves in preparation for the coming
of their Lord? Is this marriage-day not after all
to them what we prosaically call" the resurrection"the
coming of their affianced Lord to lift them from
their low estate and make them partners with Himself
in the glory which He has with the Father? The place
in heaven has been prepared; the bride sits down
upon her husband's throne.
There is much here that reminds us of the parable
of the wise and foolish virgins; and from that we
mentally swing to the vision of the risen and reigning
saints, who have the first resurrection. Married union
with Christ is the close and intimate life of the risen
saints. Those" bidden" are spirits who are ready
and worthy to share in the first
resurrection. Those
not bidden are the rest of the dead who do not
live as
yet with Christ,-who "cannot enter now." There is
a wonderful harmony; and this may be the actual significance
of the marriage feast, for John plainly tells
us that the resurrection of the saints and the reign
with Christ take place at this point of time.
No wonder that the heavens rejoice-as the rcdeemed
enter on their grand inheritance, and the
Church on earth is seen arraying herself in beauteous
200 John's Fellow-Servant. [XIX.
apparel, and realising her eternal unity with the Son
of God. All this is significant of the departure of
long-reigning fallacies, and widely-corrupting iniquities
from the earth; and of the nations coming to the
feet of Jesus to be taught and healed. With universal
shoutings they exclaim-" Let us be glad and rejoice
for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife
hath made herself ready."
The infinite relief with which John heard the news
of this near and blessed consummation of his hopes
for the Church is well expressed in his instantaneous
prostration at the feet of the nameless one that
assured him of its truth. It was some spirit near him,
closer in sympathy than an angel from the heavens, a
fellow-servant from the human race, one of the prophets
who reckoned himself, as well as John, a witness
for the truth of Christ. The spirit of his prophecies
in the days of old was a testimony to this very Christ
who now initiates this Messianic age . The dead are
not like a burnt-out wick ; nor like men that dream
in sleep; nor is their life what Martensen describes as
that mere "esoterisches Leben in sich seiber leben,"
or " self-brooding," which is sometimes credited to the
Hades state. Here we discover that the Church in the
unseen, before the resurrection life, is in living sympathy
with the Church on earth, keenly conscious of
its struggles, intensely interested in the consummation
of its reign .
" TAe Lord Jesus from heauen. 1citl~
the angels of Ma power
in jlamin.q fire, rendering
eenqeance to them. that know
not Gad."
Once more we come directly upon the person of
our Lord. John sees him riding on a white horse
Diqitrzed byGOOgle
10-16.] God's Word at War. 201
arrayed in garments red with blood, and crowned with
many diadems. The revised translation prefers to
read that his garment was" sprinkled" with blood.
That is the reading also of Origen and the translators
of the Syriac and Ethiopic versions. It would, therefore,
appear that John has Is. lxiii. 3 in view; and the
blood is consequently that of his enemies.
This revelation is the same in character as the
reaping scene of the xivth chapter; only here it is a
judgement of the heathen as yonder it was of the
Judaic world.
Christ's present office is the twofold one of judging
and making war; and as John here exhibits it, it proceeds
for a considerable space of time. To judge is
to separate good and evil in the minds of men ; and
to make war is to combat with evil until it is destroyed.
The just severity of his reign and his implacable enmity
to evil are well-expressed in those two characteristic
sentences-" He shall rule the nations with a
rod of iron; and He treadeth the wine-press of the
wrath of Almighty God." These are terrific words,
and awake suggestions concerning Christ to which
happily we are not accustomed. Have we any reason
to suspect that John is here allowing his own subjectivity
to colour his vision of the Saviour? Is John
still the son of thunder who would call down fire from
heaven upon villagers who refuse to receive his gospel?
Perhaps, indeed, he is; but any way, this description
of Christ's reign is most appropriate to the necessities
of that hateful old Roman world.
"He shall rule them with a rod of iron." In
some respects the imperial Roman government was
tyrannical and severe; but from a moral point of
202 Clmst's Righteous Rule. [XIX.
view, it was loose and easy to a degree. The Caesars
never intruded on the privacy of the citizens, nor took
means to repress free thought. Merivale says :-" It
was generally deemed sufficient to divert the interest
of the people from public affairs by supplying them
with a constant variety of employment or dissipation,
to amuse them in their casual bursts of anger by the
sacrifice of some object of their aversion, to soothe
their discontent by redoubled largesses, to allay their
alarms of plague or famine by the more extravagant
shows and massacres in the circus." The same looseness
was prevalent in religion. It was
lawful to worship
any god or all the gods of the Pantheon, so long
as the national worship was not abandoned. Religion
at its best was a due observance of sacred ceremonies,
and was totally divorced from truth and purity in
daily life. Such was not to be the law of Christ. His
authority would be all pervading and obtrusive-even
into the domain of private thought. His law not
only says-Thou shalt not kill ; but also, Thou shalt
not hate. He not only forbids adultery, but the sensual
look. The common indulgences of heathen life
are abhorrent to the law of Christ; and this new King
will secure obedience not by pandering to men's lusts,
but by constraining them to obey the behests of truth
and righteousness. In His kingdom, the gods shall
not be made down to the measures of men; but the
one inflexible law will be: "Thou shalt worship the
Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."
The other function of this heavenly ruler is "
to
make war." The issue is described as full of horrors.
Weare in the thickest of the carnage of a dreadful
battle-field; and the air is dark with birds of prey that
17-21.] The Gospel Warfare. 203
come to feast upon the dainty flesh of men. We must
not freely take for granted that all this bloodshed is
an allegory. Alas, history will refute us if we do, on
almost every page. The garments of the Gospel are
besprinkled with the blood of friends and foes. The
truth of one God, and one Christ, has not triumphed
without the gathering of hostile nations, and the deluging
of fields with blood. Kings have gone out into
battlefields to war with Christ; and without victory in
war, the Galilean could not have conquered the kingdoms
of this world for God. But for the bloodshed
and suffering of the nations in the march of truth,
Christ is not responsible. His chosen weapons are not
carnal. His sword is the word of truth. His armies
are the prayers and inspirations of his saints. He wars
not against men, but evil principles j
and if kings and
emperors were content to abide by the challenge
which truth throws down to error, then the triumphs
of the Gospel would be the victories of peace. Itis,
indeed, a painful sight to see Christian men warring
with the canon and the sword-" giving their brethren
to be food for the fowls of the air;" but there is this
consolation, that out of every Aceldema there will be
a noble resurrection of new truth, or holier influence,
or fresh-kindled zeal. Where conflicting hosts are
slain, there also will be slain some beastly lie, some
foul ambition, some accursed power, that was tending
to destroy the peace of earth, or the very souls of men.
" God's world has one great echo.
Whether calm blue mists are curled,
Or lingering dew-drops quiver,
Or red storms are unfurled,-
The same deep love is throbbing
Thro' the heart of God's great world.
204 The Victory of the Word.
[XIX.
" Oh God ! man's heart is darkened
He will not understand,
Show him thy cloud and fire,
And with thine own right hand
Then lead him throngh his desert
Into thy holy land."
Let us not forget who is to win this victory: " The
Word of God." Perhaps it was from this vision
John
first learned the secret of this name. "The Word of
God "-significant of clearest light with a background
of profoundest mystery. So much we can understand,
for the Word is the expression and form of truth; but
so much we cannot understand, for" no man hath
seen God." Christ only knows the full significance of
this name. It is too extensive and
intensive for us to
fathom it. This much we know-God is Light without
darkness ; Love without hate. He goes forth to
war with beast and liar-with brutality and error. In
this vision, we 'see the beginning of the conflict in the
beginning of the Gospel ministry to the heathen
world; and symbolically we see the end. The Word
goes forth to war with evil; to slay error, to explode
every fallacy that crushes men; to break up every
tyranny which is inimical to the full development of
what is best in human nature. If
the progress of the
truth and the avengement of fallacy and wrong involve
bloodshed and its attendant horrors, let us
mourn for the perversity of blind and sinful men; but
let us feel assured that God moves on his triumphal
march through history, and that every century sees
some curse abated and some young trees of liberty
and righteousness planted for the healing of the
nations.
SATAN BOUND-THE MILLENNIAL REIGN
-THE JUDGEMENT OF THE DEAD.
CHAPTER XX.
".No one can enter into the house of the 8trong and spoil
his goods, except he fir8t bind the strong; and then
he will spoil his Muse."
T\HE scene before us does not come unexpectedly
- upon the reader. Indeed, it may well be asked:
Should not the first strategical movement in this
war have been the capture of Satan and his ejection
from the earth? It will be found that the actual order
is the divine method. The struggle between good and
evil is depicted in figures of physical warfare ; but we
clearly see that we are looking on a moral contest in
which God respects his creatures' wills and overcomes
them by the persuasive force of truth and righteousness.
The Devil can be ejected from the earth only
when men learn to love the truth, and are willing to
be subject to its power. Therefore, the more visible
enemies of righteousness are first overcome. The
Church has an important share in the heavenly
victory.
The binding of Satan is intended to express the
restriction which the advent of Christ to power, and
the spread of Christian truth put upon the manifesta206
Satan BOU1ld.
[xx,
tion of demoniacal power, so prevalent in the first
century. It is not easy for us to
put ourselves in the
places of those early generations. We cannot feel how
real Satanic action was to them; nor even well imagine
what diabolical shapes it took. We know, however,
that it was" the hour and power of darkness" ;
and from this book itself that the Devil had come
down to earth in great wrath (xii. 12) in order to
crush the infant Church.
Let us go back a moment. What did we read on
that occasion? That the Devil knew that he had"but
a short time" in which to meet the crisis of the
war
between heaven and hell. Here then we have a test
of the principle of interpretation we have followed.
Every system which makes hundreds or thousands of
years to pass between the ascent of Christ and the
binding of Satan must be false; and false in the face
of evidence that amounts to demonstration. The
binding of Satan at the close of his short struggle for
ascendancy, we have the right to say is, the restraint
put upon demoniacal influence by the growing ascendancy
of the Christian Church-and largely, perhaps,
that Church in the invisible world. Heathenism itself
about this time bears witness to the growing silence
or the growing falsity of its oracles. The Church was
in gleeful spirits over its hold on demoniacal
manifestations.
"Men dwelt with exultation on the power
which their prayers and the utterance of the divine
name, and the laying on of hands, had to drive the
demon howling and blaspheming from his usurped
abode."-(Demoniacs, Smith's
Dic.ofAntiq.). Tertullian
asserts that the Christians had become essential to the
safety of Roman citizens: " We could ruin you only
1-3.] Tlte Saints in Power. 207
by dividing from you. If we
retired, who could
deliver you from those insulting spirits, those disguised
enemies that torture and discompose your bodies"(
Apology, xlix.) This common power of the
Christians
over demons was the current crucial test as to whether
Christ or Satan was supreme; it was the sign that the
age of demoniac heathenism was on its dying bed;
that a new age of divine power was begun-the
Kingdom of God and his Christ.
" They that are Christ's at his coming."
We cannot be surprised at what now follows, viz.,
that John should see thrones, and the saints who have
passed through death reigning in their resurrection
life. According to what we have found in previous
visions, we ought to come upon a scene like this-the
symbol of the Christian age begun on earth and the
heavenly reward of the faithful. It
may be a surprise
to some to be told of a resurrection of the saints
occurring in apostolic or sub-apostolic times. Nevertheless,
such is the time appointed for the resurrection
by the uniform teaching of the Scriptures. Indeed
there is nothing new in this revelation given to John.
Paul before taught us that" the saints shall judge the
world." Every Gospel and Epistle tells us that Christ
is about to take his power and
reign, to judge the living
and the dead, to raise his saints to kingly power.
John just sees these promises accomplished. This
unanimity of teaching ought to compel our faith and
to confute those interpretations which throw all this
into the indefinite future.
WHO ARE THESE RESURRECTED ONES? There
are exegetes who resolve the whole transaction into a
208 Who are raised from the Dead?
[xx,
figure of speech-a resurrection of the martyr-spirit in
the Church on earth; others spiritualize it into the
Christian or regenerate life. Poor thin refinements utterly
unworthy of the grand occasion! Here is summed
up the grand result of the struggle of Christ
with Antichrist and Satan-the outcome of redemption,
and it can mean no less than actual immortality
and glory to the saints of God.
Others find here the actual resurrection, some of
three classes, some of two,
and some of only one. Most
clearly, there are neither THREE nor ONE, but TWO.
There is no word here of " caught up and transfigured
earthly saints." John sees on thrones"
souls"-that is,
persons separated from the body of flesh; and these
persons of two classes, differing however only in the
degree of bitterness which their fidelity to Christ
occasioned.
The one became martyrs for their faith; the
other escaped through the great tribulation,-all of
them" faithful unto death." These two classes necessarily
embrace all the Christian dead of apostolic
times; therefore, we have here all who up to this point
of time" had died in the Lord." They at this moment
enter on their rest; become caught up into glory to
be for ever with the Lord.
WHERE DO THEY LIVE? Not upon the earth.
There is not a line in the vision to lead to such a
notion. They are with Christ; and seen by John
in heaven, along with heavenly armies, warring
with the sword of the word, against demoniacal
powers, whilst the destiny of the conquered is the lake
of fire and brimstone. Matthew Arnold complains
that the "Apocalypse replunged religion into the
materialism" out of which Jesus had laboured to de4-
6.] Christ's Coming Visible and Personal. 209
liver it. No book ought to have a more spiritualising
influence upon the Christian faith. Here is John carefully
explaining to the primitive Church that if any
of them cherished carnal hopes from the second
coming of their Lord they would be woefully disappointed;
and yet this carnal idea reigns in the
Church to-day, creating a very carnival of confusion
-a new Babel-and issuing in serious mistakes in
Christian doctrine, not to speak of it breeding
confederations
whose whole atmosphere is polluting to
the inward life. Christ's return is VISIBLE and PERSONAL;
but NOT EARTHLY and MATERIAL. "I will
come for you," He says, "that where I am, there you
may be also." This clearly is the pledge of a visible
and personal return. So is the angelic saying on the
mount of ascension: "This Jesus shall so come in like
manner as ye beheld Him going into heaven." But
mark that it is the Apostles who are to behold Him in
this manner. He is to return to them. They however
have been distinctly told that possibly all of them,
with perhaps the single exception of J ohn, will be dead
before the time of his coming; and they must have
understood that they were to see Him come for them
wherever they were when dead. How this promise
can fairly be transformed into a corporeal descent into
the earth in the 20th century is a mystery to the
present writer. The coming of Christ to this outer
world is but phenomenal and dispensational, in the
signs of a providential judgement and a quickened
Church. These are the tokens of his reign; that is,
of his heavenly power, his true divinity, his functions
as Saviour and King of men. The risen saints live
with Christ in the glory of his Father.
210 The Reign of the Saints.
[xx,
WHERE DO THEY REIGN? Christ reigns on and
from his throne in heaven. He ascended up to the
seat of power; to the centre of the sentient and
spiritual universe; and from thence his power proceeds.
It seems to be a jejune and trivial conception that
Christ must descend and reign like an Eastern prince
on earth. It is falling back upon carnal notions; upon
the rudiments of this world, plainly renounced by
Christ when he refused to be a King, and taught the
Jewish people that by no outward ordinances or
dragooning, or sensuous splendour issuing from a local
source, was the Kingdom of God to come. Christ
reigns in and by his Church. When Satan was cast
down the kingdoms of this world became God's and
Christ's; or in the language of St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 24)
the Son delivered up the kingdom to God the Father.
The authority usurped by Satan was wrenched from
his wicked hands and delivered back to God, and over
this restored kingdom God and his Christ shall reign
for evermore,-Christ the active personal force which
guides its course, subject always to the infinite and
eternal Father whom no eye but Christ's can see.
This restoration of the kingdom involved the destruction
of the last enemy, viz., death-in the re-·
surrection of the saints to reign with Christ. The
government of Christ is not dissociated from the elevation
and sovereignty of humanity. Christ triumphs
over Satan only as men triumph over evil by their
faith. His sovereignty implies the sovereignty of man,
the regeneration of our hearts, the rule of God in the
conscience and life. The sovereignty of the saints, in
its ultimate form, may have its offices of rule over the
cities and kingdoms of a human spirit-world infinitely
4-6.] Tile Nature of tlte Resurrection. 211
vaster than this Monacoan principality of a world;
but certainly we must not despise the posthumous
influence of the saints on earth. There is a sovereignty
exercised by many of the departed saints
which certain living saints would give kingdoms to
possess. Do not the Apostles reign with Christ? Is
it not said sometimes that the authority of Paul within
the Church has deposed Christ from his throne? Do
not our prophets say :-" Paul is now coming to an
end of his reign" (Renan), because the sharpness is
wearing off our Protestant theology, and modern
thought is going back more than formerly upon the
person and words of Christ? All this, with the respect
so justly due to the martyrs and fathers of the early
Church, is no mean fulfilment of the saying-" they
live and reign with Christ."
IN WHAT FORM DOES THE RESURRECTION
TRANSPIRE? Let us be done with the mischief which
arises from the prevalent notion that resurrection is
some form of re-incarnation associated with the graveyard
and the cast-off flesh. Weare on a false track
when the heart of "resurrection" is the idea-"
reembodiment."
Resurrection is not" rising again" as
if of something formerly recumbent. It
is essentially
"upstanding (c:l.vu-crnlcTL,)," and properly implies place,
position, power, in the Kingdom of Heaven. In its
ideal sense, it is the inheritance of the saints alone.
They only are" worthy to obtain the resurrection of
the dead, and arc equal to the angels, and are sons of
God, being sons of the resurrection" (Luke xx. 35-6).
In a looser and inferior sense, all men are to have an
"upstanding" in the unseen world; but the "standing"
of the wicked is on so Iowa plane as to be hardly
212 The Thousand Years.
[xx,
worthy of the name. The question-" With what
bodies do they come?" is entirely aside from the fact
of resurrection; and whatever answer may be given
must not confound resurrection with re-incarnation,
materiality, and sense and time. The resurrection of
these saints indicates no particular change of form,
and certainly no transaction which brings them nearer
to the earth. John had seen some of them beneath
the altar a.id now he sees them in a higher sphere,
and 5ird.,s upon thrones. That is
the essential fact
in resurrection. What has happened in the interval?
The Lord has descended with the shout of a victor,
with the keys of Hades, for his waiting saints and has
led them into the Kingdom of Heaven. They were
caught up into heaven-underwent" the rapture of the
saints" in those seraphic bodies with which the indwelling
Spirit of God had clothed the mystic shrine of
personality.
How LONG ARE THE SAINTS TO REIGN? "For
ever and ever." The thousand years is the usual
period which Rabbinical theology assigned to an age
or dispensation, and does not limit the reign of the
saints; but only marks the period of a fresh Satanic
outbreak (unsuccessful) against Christ's kingdom.
This thousand years period has proved a stumbling
block to many students of New Testament prophecy.
Some feel strongly disposed to place but little weight
upon this prophetic annunciation because it is the only
place in Scripture where a 1000 years are spoken of
as an apparent limit to the Messianic reign. Others
cannot see that the teaching of this chapter is in harmony
with the rest of Scripture (for example, Beet,
4-6.] Tlte Millennium 1VO
Utopia. 213
Symposium, 26-35), especially in the interval
which it
is supposed to place between the resurrection of the
good and bad. All this apparent confusion only shows
that many of our exegetes have not yet found the key
which unlocks this important doctrine and harmonises
Scripture teaching. As to this thousand years limitation,
John neither tells us how he obtained this information
nor betrays its motive. It seems, however, to
be inserted here simply as a note of warning to the
Church. If the vision of an
endless unbroken reign
of holiness alone had been presented, false hopes
would have been raised, only to be dashed in bitterness
to the ground. Indeed, otherwise sensible men,
in spite of the warning here so plainly given, have
entertained
most foolish and unwarranted dreams about
this period of the Church's history, and failing to find
their imaginings realised, assert that this millennial
period is still to come. We believe the millennial term
is introduced, not to encourage such utopian dreams,
but to check them. A long period of growing power
and extended victory is said to lie before the infant
Church. This 1000 years will not be a battle for existence-
that is fought at the beginning of the Christian
age and won-but it will be a period of incessant
and successful work for the extension of Christ's kingdom.
However long these stretches of prosperity, evil
will still exist upon the earth, and the peace will at
times be broken. The beast and the false prophet,
enemies of the infant Church, will be "gone to perdition
;" Satan will be bound and cast into the abyss;
but the evil seed sown broadcast in the world during
the age of Satanic ascendancy still grows and flou214
Gog and Magog. [xx.
rishes outside the Church, stretching over many a distant
continent and shore. Even after a 1000 years,
there is a multitudinous heathenism which the
Church's agencies have not reached, and its existence
wiII be a standing menace to the cause of Christ.
Whilst heathen men are on the earth, there is a danger
of their characters becoming so Satanic that once
more they are in mental touch with hell, and the abyss
again is opened, so that Satanic thought and demoniac
powers swarm into human life and fill it with such
devilish potency that the very Church of Christ is
menaced, and old times when heathen influences
surged like waves around its walls come back again.
With such a state of things there might even be a revival
of the pagan spirit in the Church itself. John warns the
Church against such possibilities of invasion. That
any such danger could exist against a Church of
resurrected Saints, with a Divine Christ visibly reigning
in the midst of them, after a thousand years' triumphant
possession of the earth, is an imagination almost too
preposterous to enter the human mind. Only a reverent
and docile belief that such is taught in Scripture
can keep an idea so essentially insane alive. John's
thought is infinitely far from such an imagination,
and it ought for ever to be dismissed. The Seer describes
the future of the infant Christian Church on
earth, whose history is concurrent with the reign of
the saints in heaven. It will have its recurring outbreaks
of Satanic evil; it must never lull itself into a
false security because half a world is Christianised.
So long as Gog and Magog, heathen peoples, are
allowed to exist on earth, there will be Satanic invasions
of the Church. It is impossible that the gates
9.] The Camp of the Saints. 215
of hell can prevail against it. The fire of the Word
of the Lord-the brimstone breath of his righteousness-
issuing from the altar, will repel the foul invaders
that would desolate her hearth; and in some
more distant day the devil's work will be utterly undone
and consumed in eternal fire.
WHERE IS THE SCENE OF THIS DEMONIAC
WARFARE? It is around" the camp of the saints and
the beloved city." We must remember that John is
not a political historian, but a seer depicting the
strugglings
of the kingdom of God on earth, through certain
"signs" presented to his inner eye. Do not let the
notion of a stone and lime Jerusalem lead you into a
snare. John has shown us that historic Judaism is for
ever gone; its earthly site is even clean wiped out. He
writes with another Jerusalem in his eye-one dearer
than the old; the true home of God's saints; the real
metropolis of his kingdom upon earth. So soon as the
field is clear he will tell us of this Jerusalem; but,
meanwhile, principles must be postponed to persons,
if anything more interesting, and the work of the old
world be completely done before we are fully introduced
into the new.
That this millennial forecast of John's is not beyond
the truth, all history bears witness. The rapid spread
of Christian truth over the Roman world, was succeeded
by a dangerous relapse into heathen thought. The
dark ages, as we call them, was an invasion of the
Church by demoniac thought-a revival of sacerdotalism
with its pretentious claim to rule the heavens, and
its magical appeals to the superstitious fears of men.
The camp of the saints was compassed, the beloved
216 Satan Loosed.
[xx,
city beleaguered by Satanic foes; and only the fresh
fire of God's word-breathed from the nostrils of such
heaven-born souls as Luther-
Miichtiger Eichbaum !
Deutsohen Stammes! Gottes Kraft!
-rolled back the tide of hel1 and saved the world.
Then it is possible that we are living in that
mille'nnial age about which men dream such utopian
dreams! It is: we are. That conclusion may be a
surprise to many of our readers. But let us not forget
that once in the Church's history it was the common
belief that John's 1000 years were gone. Dorner bears
witness that the Church up to Constantine understood
by" Anti-christ" chiefly the heathen state and to some
extent unbelieving Judaism-(System, etc.,
iv. 390).
Victorinus, a bishop martyred in 303, reckoned the
1000 years from the birth of Christ. Augustine wrote
his magnum opus, "the City of
God," with a sort of
dim perception of the identity of the Christian Church
with the New Jerusalem. Indeed, we know that the
1000 years were held to be running by the generations
previous to that date, and so intense was their faith
that the universal Church was in a ferment of excitement
about and shortly after A. D. 1000, in expectation
of the outbreak of Satanic influence. Wickliff, the
reformer, belived that Satan had been unbound at the
end of the 1000 years, and was intensely active in his
day. That this period in Church history is past, or
now runs its course, has been the belief of a roll of
eminent men too long to be chronicled on our pageof
Augustine, Luther, Bossuet, Cocceius, Grotius,
Hammond, Hengstenberg, Keil, Moses Stuart, Phil7-
10.] TIle Jvlillennial Age. 217
lippi, Maurice, etc., etc. Let it be kept in mind that
John is not responsible for the extravagancies so
commonly associated with the millennial age. There
is not a syllable here to justify them. And yet the
millennium Christ has actually given us is better than
the sensuous dreams with which men stupify themselves.
Christianity has changed the world; made all
things new. Weare so accustomed to magnify the
evil in the world that we forget to give God thanks for
the evils which his Gospel has extirpated. Go back
upon that old pagan world into which the Gospel
came-take up such a book as Brace's Gesta Christi,
the achievements of Christ, and read there how Christianity
has changed the life and character of the whole
civilised pagan world. One may well exclaim in the
eloquent language of Farrar,-" What need to tell
you
again how it purified a society which was rotten
through and through with lust and hate, how it rescued
the gladiator, how it emancipated the slave, how it
elevated womanhood, how it flung over childhood the
;egis of its protection, how it converted the wild, fierce
tribes from the icy steppes and broad rivers of the
North, how it built from the shattered fragments of
the Roman Empire a new created world, how it saved
learning, how it baptized and re-created art, how it
inspired music, how it placed the poor and sick under
the angel wings of mercy, and entrusted to the two
great archangels of reason and conscience the guidance
of the young!"
BUT WHAT OF THE "FIRST" RESURRECTION?
This reign of the saints with Christ is the first
resurrection; are there more to follow, and in what
sense? Another subject of bewildering perplexity
218 Tlte First Resurrection.
[xx.
alike to pre- and post-rnillenarians, but which resolves
itself into sunlight when we think in the track of John.
We have not space to refute the many surmises which
are afloat; but hope to make John's meaning plain in
a few sentences.
Paul is our great authority on the resurrection of
the dead. When does it take place? "They that
are Christ's at his coming." This agrees with John,
who has just shown us the Son of Man in the clouds
of heaven, and now shows us the first resurrection in
these reigning saints. It is a simultaneous" upstanding
" of all the dead in Christ; and is signalised as
thefirst resurrection, not by any means, as is
commonly
taught, to empllasise tile idea that there is one or more
similar resurrections still to follow at distant intervals;
but to emphasise the apostolic doctrine that this is
absolutely the first resurrection that has been achieuedthat
even the Old Testament saints Ilad not attained
their final destiny until that Chnst wlzom the Jews
despised and cursed, Ilad by his merits prepared a
place for them in heauen, and led tltem into its final
rest. This resurrection is that which is immediately
anticipated in all the books of the New Testament.
John here assures us that it has taken place.
Every Christian soul at that moment in the intermediate
state was called up into the Father's housesome
one of the many mansions-for service in the
kingdom of heaven.
This however, while it is the first, and perhaps the
last of its kind, does not exclude resurrection in another
manner. The Church exists on earth; men are born
and die, long after the earliest saints have ascended
up to heaven. This too, is clearly enough indicated
5-G·l A re there other
Resurrections? 219
in the Scripture. Paul's interest naturally does not
reach far beyond the first resurrection of the
Parousia
time; but he ventures a step or two. "We shall not
all sleep at the last trump," that is, at the
coming of Christ's kingdom. Of course, it follows that
many of the Corinthians can not be in the first
resurrection, which is only of the dead or those
fallen
asleep. Would not this be a grievous loss to these
Corinthians? Would it not consign them to the Hades
state, a time of waiting in imperfect conditions of
vitality and glory, until perhaps some other and distant
coming of their Lord for their deliverance? No,
by no means. They, in the putting off of their corruption
would not descend to Hades-they would be
caught up to meet the Lord; they would not be sentenced
to a long delay and eager waiting for their
Lord, they would be cllanged as it were in a moment
from the Church on earth to the glorified Church
above. They will have no reason to regret that they
are not dead before the coming of their Lord to take
his saints to heaven, because Christ has henceforth
abolished Hades for his people, and given them imme<
Hate victory over death's most sharp and bitter sting.
Such is Paul's answer; given, alas, if we may judge
by experience, too briefly and obscurely to be easily
seized; but plain enough when the key is found.
The first resurrection is that which takes place of
all
sleeping Christians simultaneously at the Parousia;
afterwards resurrections are not general but particular
-" each man in his own order." The place is ready
for the Christian, if the Christian is ready for the
place; hence death is immediate translation. The
impression seems to be widely spread that Paul held
220 "Caugltt up together witlt thein,"
[xx
that at the moment of the last trump those Christians
living on the earth would be caught up into the mass
of the resurrected dead so as to be partakers in one
common act of ascension. Perhaps this idea is borrowed
from 1 Thes. iv. 15-17. It is, however, distinctly stated
there that what befalls the living Christian is an after
not a simultaneous experience (v.
17) ; and though the
words" together with them," look to be equivalent to
II simultaneously" they are not actually so.
"AjJ-a
(together) may express the idea of place as well as
of
time, and in the New Testament most frequently carries
the idea of identity of quality, and might
well be
translated" likewise." The word is radically identical
with the Sanscrit sauui, Latin simul, Gothic
santa,
English, same. In this light, it is seen that Paul
instructs
the Thessalonians only to this effect, that they,
though not dead at the second coming, will afterwards
be caught up in similar manner to the dead, to meet
them and be for ever in their blessed society. Paul's
teaching is thus in strictest harmony with the intimation
of John: "Blessed are the dead which die in the
Lord henceforth," because they immediately enter on
their rest and the reward of their works. After the
simultaneous resurrection which John now witnesses,
each Christian dying immediately passes into the
society of his Lord. Hence, the doctrine of the
Apostles is far more reasonable and more comforting
than the usual interpretations make it. These point
us to a distant day as the complete realization of our
hopes. "Like the martyrs in Rev. v. 10, we are to be
in eternity waiting eagerly for complete triumph."
(Beet, Symposium,1.53). But the entire New Testament
teaching is, that as soon as the Christian age is
5-6.] " The Rest of the Dead." 221
introduced, the Christian heavens are opened, and the
Christlike worker meets with his reward. Immediate
transition from one life to another, from the Church
below to the Church above-such as will appear to
consciousness as an instantaneous change-is the
wellwarranted
expectation of the ripened saint. Thus
does Christ equalise, as near as possible, the portion
of his saints.
WHAT BECOMES OF THE REST OF THE DEAD?
" They lived not until the thousand years should be
finis/zed." John thus simply severs them from the
peculiar rewards of faithful believers in Christ Jesus.
In the spirit-world at that moment were all the past
generations of the earth. We need not be surprised
that multitudes of them could have no share in the
joys and triumphs of the Christian saints. Many of
them had lived and died in sin; and been" spirits in
prison" before the Saviour's advent. How could they
who were ignorant or unbelieving reign with Cllristhow
even could they li71e with Him?
From the
rewards of the Christian age they are excluded. They
are" not worthy of that alwv (age), nor of'
upstanding'
from among the dead" (Luke xx. 35); and hence,
they" go away into a10vLav separation." John's
language
does not imply that at the end of the 1000 years
they are exalted to the society of the faithful in Christ
Jesus. Their future is somewhat strangely left
indefinite. His eye sweeps along the Christian age,
but not up to the very last does he see them enter into
the communion of the saints. It is with them as with
the foolish virgins. The sentence runs solemnly (as
some might think, with no positive encouragement to
222 The General Judgement.
[xx,
expect a reversal of their doom; and as others might
say, not to the exclusion of some distant hope) :-" Ye
cannot enter now." This, however, is not John's last
word about" the rest of the dead." Here they are only
incidentally bounded off from the saints to give shadow
to the picture. By and bye, he will tell us more, and
when that moment comes perhaps this little ray of
hope may be totally quenched.
THE GENERAL JUDGEMENT OF THE DEAD.
What then is the state, during these 1000 years, of
those vast companies of the dead who have not entered
into heaven with Christ? This is a question raised by
the usual interpretation of this passage-to which it
gives no answer. We know nothing of these myriads
of dead for a thousand years-a curious fact; and still
more strange if we are to spread out this period into
365,000 years, after the usual fashion of the year-day
theory. The Seer is not responsible for the awkwardness
of this eschatology. The puzzle arises from a
fatal misconception of John's meaning. This general
judgement is supposed to take place at tlu end of the
1000 years-to be preceded by a destruction of earth
and heaven-s-and to embrace Christians and 110nChristians,
and the dead who have been in Hades or
Gehenna during the 1000 years. A finer piece of
confusion is inconceivable. It utterly dislocates John's
thoughts; and introduces an eschatology which is
incoherent, and without a particle of support in Scripture.
Such, however, is the finding of such eminent
commentators as Bleek, Weiss, Gebhardt, Dorner,
Godet, Edwards, and, we suppose, all the ordinary pre11-
15.] The Coming and tlte Judgement.
223
millennial adventists. Dorner frankly calls attention
to the conflict which this interpretation raises with the
other Scriptures, inasmuch as they join the judgement
and the consummation of the world to Christ's second
advent, while Revelation interposes a reign of Christ
for a 1000 years before the end arrives
(System, iv, 389).
The contradiction is seen by many, but has to be left
unremedied.
It has to be carefully noted that we must not read
the successive paragraphs of this book as if given in
strict chronological succession. Such an order is
simply impossible in a series of visions covering a subject
so many-sided and profound. Will our readers
be kind enough to extend to us their patience and
attention, while we try to show them now that the reward
of the saints just witnessed and the judgement
scene before us are essentially one transaction. John's
glance forward a 1000 years is no part of his original
purpose, but only an interjected note of neeciful warning
which breaks the continuity of his leading course
of thought. Again we say, what John does not see,
but is only told and tells again to us, lies out of the
direct line of his teaching, and is to be understood as
parenthetical. We must, therefore, as the method of
the book demands, take the vision of v. 11, and link
it
on to the vision of v. 4, because the right
concatenation
of John's thought lies along the line of what is
made visible to the seer, and
not along the explanatory
by-paths into which he may digress. The saints upon
their thrones are therefore closely linked to the judgement
scene which follows.
That this is so, is plain from the corresponding moment
in the first or night-half of the book (xi. 18),
224 Good and Bad judged together.
[xx,
(p. 102-3) when, at the completion of judgement on the
living Judaic world, the time of the dead to be judged
and the Lord's servants to be rewarded is corne. Beth
events proceed together and are inseparably one. So,
too, in the more constructive or day-side of the book,
we must clasp in one the judgement of the living
world in ch. xviii. with the reward of Christ's faithful
ones and the condemnation of the wicked dead. In
doing so, we fall into harmony with all the other
Scripture teachings on the judgement. Everywhere
the judgement is two-fold-of the living and the dead;
and everywhere it is at once of the evil and of the
good. If, for instance, we take the classical passage
in John's Gospel, its meaning seems so clear as to be
unmistakeable. " The hour cometh, and now is, when
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God ; and
they that hear shall live "-cannot be explained away,
as do Augustine and a multitude of successors, into
conversion and its experimental life. The whole passage
is of the nature of a climax, and already Christ
has claimed the power to introduce men to the heavenly
life. Nor could Christ feci any need to say:
" the hour cometh," if he only claimed the power to turn
men from sin. He claims here nothing less than to
be the Lord of the dead. He will especially possess
that Lordship after his own resurrection ; but even
before that time, in special instances, the dead do hear
and obey-these individual cases being signs of a universal
sovereignty about to come. The altogether
future command of the dead which Christ claims in
vv.28-9 is his exercise of Lordship, in an hour
then comparatively
ncar, over the final destinies of all tile
dead.
"The hour cometh when all in the tombs shall come
11-15.] Harmony of Gospel and Apocalypse. 225
forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection
of life,and they that have done
ill unto the resurrection
of judgement."
There is by no means that difference which Westcott
finds,-in the Apocalypse, "an open judgement of
men," and in the Gospel, "a judgement which is
spiritual and self-executing." This interpretation is a
desperate effort to harmonise what otherwise seems
confusion; but the judgements are the same in all
respects. Christ is equally active in them both, and the
harmony is complete. In both Gospel and Apocalypse,
as indeed in all the Scriptures, there is to be an
immediate judgement of the living and the deadboth
saints and sinners. Nowhere in Christ's teaching
is there a separation as to the time of judgement
between saint and sinner, nor is such a separation in
the book of Revelation.
We have already seen, in the preceding chapter,
the judgement of the living Heathen world, as before
we had seen the Jewish, and it is now meet that we
should see the Lord proceed with equal step to the
judgement of the dead. The first part of that
judgement scene is-the saints of Christ upon their
thrones. But why is the saints' reward thus severed
from the general judgement of the dead?
It is only
severed in appearance; "the rest of the dead" are in
this very scene appointed their award-negatively, that
is by exclusion from the honours of the saints. The
saints are, however, of deliberate purpose made to
stand out from the judgement of the wicked. John
here follows a principle with which we are perfectly
familiar. Before the unfolding of every scene of
judgement or trial in this book, whatever is to be
IS
226 Exemption from Judgement.
[xx,
exempted from its severities is exhibited as divinely
saved before the judgement comes. Witness the
sealing of the servants of God before the trumpetjudgements;
the measuring of the core of the temple
before its outward destruction; the Witnesses before
their death declared to be indestructible and immediately
raised from the dead; the woman protected from the
dragon, the 144,000 on Mount Zion from the ravages
of the beast and the reaping of the land, the Church
upon the glassy sea amid the seven vial plagues; the
saints called out of Babylon before her destruction,
the saints called to the marriage supper of the
Lamb before his armies go forth to make war on the
earth; and finally here, the departed saints upon their
thrones before the opening of the judgement books.
Our readers will see that we are introducing no new
principle of interpretation, but only observing the
uniform habit of the book. Good news before bad ;
fears allayed before excited. " God is ready to judge
the dead" but no fear for his saints.. As Christ taught
John, believers shall not enter into judgement. The
saints come forth to a resurrection of life, and not like
the wicked to a resurrection of judgement. They need
no trial, no opening of the books of their inner life, for
their record is too manifest, their character too well
attested by their fidelity to the Lamb to need particular
questioning. Yes, they come to a time of judgement;
but are not judged so much as made the standard
by
which others shall be adjudged their doom. " The rest
of the dead" are not taken up to be for ever with the
Lord. Their judgement proceeds to its issues, as we
read.
John sees "a great white throne." Such was the
11-15.] Earth and Heaven fled away.
227
splendour of the vision, its vastness and solemnity,
that nothing else was seen by John. One can only
smile when expositors gravely find here a
destruction
of heaven and earth. John merely tells us, in a touch
of unparalleled sublimity, that from his sight the old
familiar earth has disappeared; and even the accustomed
heaven is gone. The Seer visually is he knows
not where. His topography is at fault. He does not
seem to be in heaven; nor yet in hell; nor certainly
is he standing on the earth, for God is not visible in
space and time. All he is sure of is that he stands
before the splendid majesty of God, and that all the
dead are there. We are left in doubt about the saints;
but we take for granted that the saints are here, not
among the crowd, but on their thrones. All Hades is
gathered in its mighty mass. Whether men were
buried in graves, burned on the funeral pyre, or tossed
in the restless sea, all are here. No form of bodily
death can keep souls from the judgement bar of God.
They are here in all their nationalities, in all their
faiths, in all their varieties of character,-the men and
the women, the kings and the beggars of that old
preChristian
age. They are to be assorted and put in
order in the eternal world, so as to realise what their
life on earth has been, and what is the essential
outcome of the principles they have obeyed. There
is no partiality in the judgement; no injustice, no
difference of principle in fixing their rewards.
"Every
man according to his works." The issues of this
life, we
see, are different degrees of happiness; different
destin ies, ranging between the two extremes of living
and reigning with Christ in age-long blessedness and
going away into age-long fire-the very fire which
228 Death and Hades destroyed.
[xx.
had scorched so many of them on earth to no apparent
good result-with what fruits in the grand finality of
God no man, but God only knows.
And Death and Hades were cast into the lake offire.
"The last enemy is destroyed." Death and Hades are
overcome for the saints of God. The kingdom of
Christ knows them no more. Christ has abolished
Death; the Christian never dies. Hades cannot hold
the child of God; may be is abolished for dread
Gehenna to the sinner. Blessed are the dead in Christ
from henceforth. Heaven is open to believers. We
that live now immediately reap the fruits of Christ's
mediation. Weare already risen with Christ; and
when death comes, we shall be changed directly from
the Church below into the Church above-caught up
to meet the Lord with all his saints.
THE NEW JERUSALEM.
CHAPTER XXI.
" The name of the cit!! from that day shall be,
The Lord is there."
T\H IS entire drama of the Revelation is the official
- close of the Judaic age or dispensation, and the
official instalment of the Messianic or Gospel age.
This transition point is much referred to by our Lord
and his Apostles as "the end of the age," and its
work is described as a judgement in the visible and
invisible which clears the field for the' advent of a
dispensation of more light and power. Always that
is described as" near," and it was near in the most
honest and human sense that words can bear. We
have seen how cordially Revelation is in harmony
with Gospels and Epistles on the subject of "last
things." We have learned here how the Lord comes
in his kingdom, warring with all the obstacles to its
triumph, judging the earth and consuming its evil
with unquenchable fire; ana now, along with this the
spirit-world, or Hades, is judged of its dead-the
saints raised up into their heavenly state, and the
other 'dead awarded to a condition suitable to their
works.
, There are now only TWO things
lacking. (1.) We
have seen the old dispensation in its typical formJerusalem,
with its temple and altar; but we have
had only the meagrest description of the new dis----------------------
230 Tlte New Jerusalem.
[XXI.
pensation. It has not yet taken shape beyond the
intimation that it is the age of the Gospel for all
nations, and tongues, and peoples. The book cannot
be complete until it has set some definite form before
its reader's mind, revealing what shall take the place
of the old that has vanished away. Our eyes must see
Jerusalem's substitute. (2.) When John ventured for
a moment forward into the history of the new dispensation,
he spoke of "a camp of the saints, the
beloved city," as beleaguered by the demoniac hosts
stirred from the abyss. Then we knew nothing of
this beloved city; and in the keenness of our interest
eager questionings arose-What is it, where is it, to
what does the Seer refer? Patience-the old world
must be judged and put away before the new world
cim be seen; and as soon as John's pen is free he will
make it plain.
The remainder of the book exactly answers to our
wants. John sees a new heaven and new
earth, in
which the sea does not count, because he sees by" a
light that never was on sea or shore." Prosaic commentators
tell us that after the thousand years there
is a great conflagration, by which the structure of the
globe is changed, and something organically different
created in its place. The supposition is not plausible;
it is totally incredible, when we see the grounds
on which it rests. Peter's prophecy (2 Ep. iii. 10)
is made largely responsible for this doctrine. But
why is the Apostle not interpreted by the meaning of
such language in the prophetic books? Why is he
not believed when he says that his generation is
looking for these things, and earnestly desiring them;
and that this judgement is about to begin? Why is
1.] A Re-constituted World. 231
his analogy of the destruction of the flood not kept,
and the revolution limited to the people and the
civilization of the time? If Peter
was mistaken as to
tlte date of this destruction, was
he not still more
probably mistaken as to its nature? And why, again,
is it not observed that before the thousand years
begin, and throughout the larger portion of this book,
the earth is swept by fire, scorching and burning men,
the heavenly bodies shaken, and the fundamental
elements of that old civilization consumed?
It says
little for the visual organs of expositors that, when 'they
have been witnessing this burning earth, they come to
the closing scene so oblivious of what has taken place
that they are not aware that this burning has as yet
begun.
Of course, John expects that we know that Peter's
burning is overpast, We are now temporarily in the
beginning of the Christian age or dispensation. The
old elementary world has perished in a baptism
of fire. "All old things are passed away; behold,
God has made all things new," although it is only as
yet in germ, according to God's method of creation.
Oh, if only we lived for a decade under those old heathen
heavens of Persia, Greece, or Rome, peopled with their
wicked, quarrelsome, licentious deities, until we felt
the curse of them aright; and were then brought from
under their gloomy terrors into the bright and happy
sky of Christian faith, we would know whether or not
a new heaven has been created.' Does the reader who
wants something more spectacular and stunning for
his new earth know what sort of earth was that old
Roman world in which the Apostles shed their blood?
Conceive of an empire in which there were 60,000,000
232 A Re-constituted World. [XXI.
slaves !-where infanticide was practised even by
wealthy families-where empresses were strumpetswives
were husbands' chattels to be lent to other men
-where human sacrifices were offered to the godswhere
emperors were deified - where suicide was
counted virtuous-where fornication and adultery were
religious rites-where sexual acts were openly performed
upon the stage-where men were kept to fight
with swords, and prisoners thrown to lions for public
sport-where the poor man had no rights nor charities
-where almost all the rich were dissolute and princes
almost all oppressive-we say, Look upon that world,
and then-
" How soon a smile of God can change the world!"
look at the world which Christianity has created, and,
with all its shortcomings acknowledged, tell us if,
thank God, we are not living in a new earth to-day.
This new world is initiated by a
city which John sees
come down out of heaven from God. This city is
depicted
with a brilliancy of setting which we dare not
touch. It is all glorious without and within. We,
6'aze and admire, but shall not stain it with the dull
and muddy pigments in which alone we could possibly
limn its features. If tempted to delineate the subject,
it could only be in the hope that our description
would somewhat veil its dazzling glory and let weak
eyes look it fuller in the face. Two mistaken
interpretations
of this city are afloat. One makes it an
actual city of the newly-created and sublimated earth.
We have already disposed of this imagination. The
other view is, that it is the home of the glorified in
2-17.] What is the New ferusaiem ?
233
heaven. Weare surprised that such an interpretation
should find acceptance. Andrew Fuller says, with his
usual sanctified good sense,-" It
seems singular that
the heavenly state should be introduced as a subject
of prophecy... The whole of what is said, instead of
describing the heaven of heavens, represents the glory
of that state as coming down upon the earth!" And
yet this vision does not, as he supposes, attribute a
glorious condition to the earth. This glory is not
universally
diffused; but limited to the area of the city,
found only within its walls. Surely, there need be no
misapprehension. It is the city of
Ezekiel; the ideal
Jerusalem in which God dwells with men; and that
can be only the Christian Church. Indeed, John tells
us it is only such a city as is equivalent co God's
coming down to dwell with men, to be their God, and
to make his peace and righteousness possess the
hearts of men on earth. Such a city is not visible and
tangible as other cities are. It is planted on that
mountain of the Lord which no earthquake can tear
up. It is seated high above the
dank and fetid vapours
of this earth; in those superior realms where float the
heavenly atmospheres of humility and love in which
the angels breathe. I ts dimensions declare it to be
superhuman-1200 miles square and 1200 miles in
height, a perfect cube like the holy place: that part
of the ancient temple measured, because in the end of
John's book as in Ezekiel's it was to be restored as the
New Jerusalem. Well has the author of Ecce
Homo
said something like this: No man built this city, no
architect designed it, no eye ever saw its walls
rising tier on tier, no ear ever heard the click of
trowel or hammer on its stones, for it is a city built
234 The Old and New ferusaiems.
[XXI.
and planned of God and let down out of heaven to be
the metroplis of God's earthly kingdom, the seat of his
throne.
What then is this city? Augustine has made a
noble attempt to answer-and would, but for a too
prosaic literalism, have seized the truth. It is the
Christian dispensation; Christianity in its truths, its
affections, and its potencies: the seat and organism
of God's presence among men. If we
describe it by
what it is to God, it is his temple and throne; or by
what it is to men, it is their light, life, and salvation.
As this city is the new
Jerusalem, it is plainly pointed
out as the successor of the old-a spiritualisation of
that New Jerusalem which Ezekiel describes as to
succeed the Jerusalem of his day. It
will be found to
fulfil corresponding functions, in a degree as much
superior as Christ is superior to Moses, the Son to the
servant of God; or as the holiest of all was superior
to the outer courts in the elementary age of divine
revelation.
1. It was in Judaism that God dwelt and communicated
of his truth and love to men in the last
age of the world; and it is in the Church that God
now dwells on earth and communicates Himself to
men. That Church is spoken of as Jerusalem in other
portions of the Scriptures; and no better commentary
than those texts can be written on the New Jerusalem
of John. The Christian Church, in its truths and
inspirations, brings together into one assembly of saints
and worshippers, the angels, the spirits of the dead,
the glorified apostles, and the saints on earth.
Christianity
unites two worlds, makes one Church, joins the
2-17.] Defences of the Churclt.
235
visible and invisible into one. Heaven comes down to
earth; God is joined to man. This city was to the
writer to the Hebrews an existing reality. "Ye are
come to the heavenly Jerusalem. It is not a distant
terminus-a thing of hope-a glory the Church may
see after a thousand years are gone. Ye have received
it now, and are come into its blessed light, its happy
privileges, its saintly, angelic, and divine communion."
Judaism itself was a revelation and a gift from God to
men, that God might dwell among them; but it was
so only in a distant or elementary way. That dispensation
was ordained" in the hands of angels"; now
God immediately dwells with men in Christ. Christian
truths and principles are no elaborations of human
genius-no clumsy invention of needy priests or crafty
statesmen-no simple out-cropping of the superstitious
leanings of the human heart. Its foundations are still
seen dipping down beneath the strata of naturalism
into a region whither the eagle's eye cannot follow.
Her strong defences are her own divinity. Not by the
arguments of her profoundest theologians, nor by her
array of ecclesiastical laws and councils-not by her
political ascendancy where she has overridden the
State, nor by her political subserviency where she has
been its tool has she withstood the assaults and
batterings of her foes, and gone from one degree of
glory to another, in pursuance of the divine ideal
which she follows and is destined to embody on the
earth. These have been as much her hindrance as
her protection. She has survived as she has lived,
because she is a city of eternal truth and righteousness,
whose soul is God Himself, imparting to her outermost
circumference his own eternity, breathing into her that
236 Light and Life. [XXI.
love whose magic fire encompasses and thrills her, while
it blasts the earthly principles and potencies that in
hatred of her light, come up to assail her bulwarks.
2. This city is a source of light and life
to the nations
of the earth. "It has no
need of the sun nor of the
moon." Clearly, that is no city of this world. "There
is no night there." That is no city subject to the
revolutions of this globe. "The Lord God Almighty
and the Lamb are the light of it." This is " the light
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world"
-"the light of life"-"the true light that now shineth"
-and what is this but the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and
where does it shine but in the Church of God? Then
we read that" the nations shall walk in the light of it."
Notably, it is not said that the nations
dwell within
the New Jerusalem or Church on earth. The nation
as such is not pure enough to come into a city where
every inhabitant is searched and sifted to the core.
Every so-called Christian nation which has yet existed
has been to some extent a harbour of corruption, of
kingcraft, and of priestcraft, rent by feuds of blood
and class, and stained by sins which would defile
foulness itself. One by one we go into the city of our
God. One by one we bring our tribute of submission
to the feet of Christ, one by one we wash our hearts
and garments, one by one we bring our genius, our
talents, or common-place abilities, and yield them up
to the service of the Master. The nations as such will
recognise the city of God; they will receive so much
of its light, and shape their legislation somewhat by
its principles. The Gospel will become the bright
illuminating sun of social life and conduct; and in
22-24.] No Night in Christ. 237
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