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Title: The revelation of St. John the Divine
An interpretation
Author: Alfred H. Ames
Release date: November 6, 2023 [eBook #72047]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Eaton & Mains Press, 1897
Credits: Richard Hulse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE ***
THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE
AN INTERPRETATION
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THE
REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE
AN INTERPRETATION
BY
A. H. AMES, M.D., D.D.
Illustration: (‡ colophon)
NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS
CINCINNATI: CURTS & JENNINGS
Copyright by
EATON & MAINS,
1897.
EATON & MAINS PRESS,
150 Fifth Avenue, New York.
Preface
THE essay which follows is based upon a conviction that the closing
book of the canon of the New Testament, known as the Revelation of
Saint John, presents the thoughts of that holy man and inspired apostle
upon the subject of the kingdom of Christ, as derived by him from the
Old Testament Scriptures and from the teachings of Christ or as drawn
from direct revelations made to himself. The book presents a single
theme and has a well-preserved unity.
With those theories of interpretation which would make of the book an
epitome of history, either as confined to particular epochs or as a
whole, and which presuppose its design to be the prediction of events,
great or small, in the progress of the world or the Church, the writer
of this essay is not in sympathy. It is mainly because of the vagaries
and conceits to which these theories have opened the way, which have
clouded rather than cleared the mysteries of the Apocalypse and been
more promotive of strife than of salvation, that so many thoughtful
and pious minds have been driven from the study of what is one of the
most beautiful, as it is one of the most practical, parts of the word
of God. How readily the coincidences, for such they are, which have
been appealed to as verifications of these theories may be explained
and accounted for will be shown in the course of the essay.
Questions of criticism or scholarship do not lie within the scope
of the essay. It is assumed, not, however, without examination and
reflection, that the Revelation is the work of John, the son of Zebedee,
one of the twelve, and “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” It is also
assumed that he was the author of the fourth gospel and of the epistles
which bear his name.
Commentaries upon the Revelation have been so numerous that their
titles would fill a volume. It is not likely that anything can be said
concerning it which is entirely new and has not been somewhere set
forth. The writer of this essay claims originality so far as that he
has not seen the views here expressed elsewhere presented, although
they may have appeared previously. It is not possible for him to say
whence he has gathered the material which has grown into the essay,
so as to make formal acknowledgment. Alford, Bengel, Hengstenberg,
Wordsworth, _The Speaker’s Commentary_, Ellicott’s _Commentary_, _The
Expositor’s Bible_ have been consulted freely, and also _The Symbolic
Parables of the Apocalypse_, published by T. and T. Clark. The best
commentary upon the Revelation he has found to be the Scriptures
themselves.
_Washington, D. C._
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Rules of Interpretation――The Structure of the Book――Reference
to Old Testament――Emblems Interpreted by Light of Jewish
Scriptures and Ritual――Particular Attention to Numbers
PART I
The Seven Churches of Asia, or the Kingdom as it Actually was in
the Days of the Apostles and is Now
PART II
Fundamental Principles on Which the Kingdom is Based――Emblem of
the Seals――Opening of the Seals――The Sealed Elect
PART III
The Means by which the Kingdom of Christ is Advanced――Natural
Providences――The Two Witnesses, or the Supernatural Scriptures
PART IV
The Foes of the Kingdom――The Dragon――First Wild Beast, or
Spirit of Worldliness――Second Wild Beast, or Spirit of False
Prophetism――Anticipations of Victory
PART V
The Counterfeit of the Kingdom, or the False Church――The
Judgments of God――Vision of the Vials――Babylon and its
Doom――Methods of Success Reiterated
PART VI
Progressive Steps by Which the Ideal Kingdom is to be
Realized――Restraints upon the Power of Satan――Outpouring of
the Holy Spirit under the Emblem of Resurrection――Union of
Christian Believers――Final Triumph over Barbarism under the
Emblem of Gog and Magog
PART VII
The Ideal of the Kingdom――Its Distinctive Features――The Central
Principle of the Kingdom――Negative Characteristics――Fruits and
Results
Introduction
=Rules of Interpretation=
IF the Revelation of Saint John has any right to a place in the canon
of the New Testament, it is reasonable to presume that its intention
was to conform to that general purpose for which all divinely inspired
Scripture is said to be given, namely, to “be profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the
man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”
What peculiarly distinguishes it is that it clothes spiritual truth
with a garb of mystery which, by challenging investigation, stimulates
inquiry; which affords to the mind that solves its obscurities the
satisfaction always to be found in the discovery of the recondite and
difficult; which throws around prose realities the pleasing charm of
poetry and art; and which, by connecting material things with a divine
revelation, and thus linking together nature and the supernatural,
attests the unity of the universe in which we are placed and shows the
world about us and human history to be full of the presence of God.
It would surely argue great presumption in any man to claim a perfect
understanding of a book so marvelous as the Apocalypse, whose teachings
are not for one age, but for all ages. Very confidently, however, it
may be asserted that by the use of certain rules of interpretation many
of its mysteries may be explained and its application to practical life
and conduct be made evident. The reasonableness of these rules would
be readily admitted if applied to any other part of holy writ; and
hesitation to accept them here proceeds solely from that mistaken view
of the design of the Revelation which isolates it from the rest of the
sacred canon as something ♦anomalous and unique. So far is this from
being the case that no book in the Bible can afford to stand by itself
so little as the Apocalypse, inasmuch as there is no other into the
fabric of which so much of the other Scriptures is intentionally woven.
The impression which close study of it makes is that it was designed
by its author to serve as a sacred clasp to bind together and hold in
harmonious coherence the whole of God’s wonderful volume.
♦ “anomaioms” replaced with “anomalous”
The principles of interpretation deserving special notice are four in
number.
1. _The structure of the book itself furnishes some guide to its
interpretation._
The opening chapters comprise brief letters, seven in all, which the
author is directed to write to seven churches of Asia, the number
indicating, not that these comprehended all the churches in that region,
but that in them were represented all phases of religious life. These
letters set before us both the spiritual state and the environment of
the churches, and are advisory, monitory, reproachful, or comforting as
the cases demanded.
The closing chapters present us with a picture of the perfected
Christian Church――a symbolical vision, incomparable in its exquisite
beauty, of the complete and permanent triumph of the Gospel of Christ,
in the individual heart and on the larger field of the world, over
all opposing forces; the realization, in fact, on earth of the ideal
kingdom of God made ready for the Lamb.
The most plausible suggestion, therefore, which presents itself is
that the intermediate portion of the book is intended to present in
its figures and symbols the means by which the last condition is to be
reached from the earlier one, the unformed and fluctuating state of the
beginning developed into the ripeness and perfection of the close, and
that under the guise of metaphor, trope, and vision there are revealed
to us the dangers which the Church of Christ must expect, the enemies
it must subdue, the weapons by which victory must be achieved, the
encouragements upon which it may rely, and, in short, the steps through
which the immature and carnal must be led in order to reach up to the
pure and perfect.
Nor is it with the Church at large that the warnings and counsels have
alone to do. If “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written
for our learning,” each individual disciple of Christ may find in this
book a chart for his own life’s journey and have sufficient warning
against the sunken rocks, the adverse tides, the dangerous headlands
which are to be shunned, and which are here so clearly and plainly
marked out for him that he may, in the close and careful study of the
map, find equal profit and pleasure.
It is very important in this connection to note the statement of the
writer in the first verse of the book, that his commission was “to show
unto” the servants of God “things which must shortly come to pass.”
It is only by a very forced construction of the words that they can be
made to signify a prophecy whose fulfillment is to be delayed for long
centuries indefinite in their number. The most natural construction
surely is that the revelation intrusted to him is one of which the
whole, and not a part only, is to find its application in the times in
which he lived, or soon thereafter, and to continue applicable until
the glorious result is attained of which the closing part speaks.
And if we shall dismiss from our minds all prepossessions springing
out from that view of the book which makes it a syllabus, or table of
contents, of Christian history the force of this remark will more
clearly appear.
2. _Reference must constantly be made to the Old Testament._
This rule, which is of importance in order to understand any part of
the New Testament, becomes of the highest necessity in any attempt to
interpret the Revelation. The writer was evidently a diligent student
of the older Scriptures, absorbing their images and emblems until they
had become a part of himself. Much in his writings that at first seems
obscure becomes plain when we put ourselves in his position and study
the Scriptures, which were evidently in his thoughts.
The prophetical books of the Old Testament especially are to be studied.
Between the relation in which the older prophets stood to the laws and
institutions of Moses and that which the apostles of the New Testament
dispensation sustained to the Lord Jesus Christ a strong similarity
exists. Neither the one nor the other claimed to be originators
or independent discoverers, but rather witnesses to truths already
revealed, which they accepted as primary and fundamental facts. Into
the clear understanding, indeed, of these they were enabled by divine
inspiration to look more deeply than others could, and they were also
supernaturally aided to draw them out into great principles, capable of
application to human thought and conduct in the shaping of individual
and national life and practice. Thus, naturally and by sympathy of
condition, the later writers found themselves led into careful and
profound study of their predecessors. The prophecies of Daniel and
Zechariah deserve to be especially consulted. Written, as they were, at
or near the time of the captivity of Judah, they had peculiar interest
for one who was himself an exile for the truth. Some of the imagery of
the Revelation is drawn from the glowing poetry of Isaiah. And almost
the entire Book of Joel has been worked into the Apocalypse.
But of all helps to an understanding of the Revelation the most
fruitful is a close and careful comparison with the Book of Ezekiel;
especially is this the case in reference to the closing chapters
of both. Between the authors of these two works there were striking
similarities of character and condition. But a more powerful bond of
union is found in the fact that both of them were preëminently prophets
of the Holy Spirit, seeming to have reached truer and profounder views
of his work in the economy of redemption than any predecessors in their
separate dispensations. Isaiah and Paul wrote of Christ and his Church;
but if we wish to learn the fullest development of the office of the
Holy Ghost we must turn to the pages of Ezekiel and John.
In addition to the Old Testament references, the prophetical discourses
of our Lord uttered near the close of his ministry and recorded in the
synoptical gospels will throw much light on the Book of Revelation. The
omission of these from the gospel of John may be accounted for by the
fact that in the Revelation the apostle had made such large use of them.
The important prediction of Paul concerning the man of sin, found in
2 Thessalonians ii, must also be compared with those of John.
3. _The emblems and symbols of the Revelation must be interpreted by
the light of the Jewish Scriptures and ritual._
This, indeed, follows as a corollary form the preceding rule, but is of
so much importance as to deserve special mention. Sometimes a word or a
figure of speech or the connections of a sentence or a passing allusion
to some sacrificial service will afford a clew to what at the time was
in the mind of the writer. Inasmuch as he was a Jew, “taught according
to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers,” familiar with the
Scriptures, traditions, usages, and history of his religion, his
interpretation of symbols and emblems would naturally be such as would
occur to the mind of a Jew. We must place ourselves as near as possible
to his standpoint. Yet, as he was also an inspired apostle of the Lord
Jesus Christ, we must be prepared to concede that he read deeper into
these mysteries than his fellows did and was able to import into them
a richer meaning.
4. _Particular attention must be given to the numbers found in the
book._
Much that is fanciful and extravagant has, it must be conceded, been
written on this subject, and to many persons any discussion of it is
distasteful. Yet it is certain, as the Wisdom of Solomon says, that God
has “ordered all things in measure and number and weight.” Otherwise
there could be no such thing as exact science. Truths lie veiled in
figures, for these represent fixed principles and plans in the divine
mind. As a general truth, it may be stated that the ideas expressed
by numbers, not only in this book, but throughout the Bible, whenever
these are used symbolically, are those of fullness, exactness,
and perfection, on one hand, or deficiency, incompleteness, and
imperfection, on the other.
The numbers which figure most largely in symbolism are seven, twelve,
six, and three and a half.
Seven is called the sacred number, and seems to express the idea of
perfection or fullness to the highest degree and in the most unlimited
sense. As seven days make a complete week, whole and entire, without
redundancy or deficiency, so that to which the number seven is attached
must be taken as perfect, fully developed, as a complete whole. The
expressions “seven spirits,” “seven seals,” “seven trumpets,” etc.,
imply that what they represent must be taken as entire, with no
possible capacities lying in them unexhausted.
Twelve, also, signifies completeness; but its use and application
are more restricted. It is usually connected with the Church of God,
and possibly has some special reference to it. Thus there are twelve
patriarchs, twelve apostles, twelve foundations to the holy city. As
the number is formed by the multiplication of three, representing the
Trinity, and four, representing the world with its quarters, it conveys
the thought of universality as the assured destiny of the Church.
Six is, also, as a symbol, connected with the Church; but, both because
it is less than seven, and only the half of twelve, has a sinister
significance. It represents the malign and baleful influences which
corrupt and disintegrate the Church, shearing it of its power, limiting
and obstructing its mission, and leaving it incomplete, defective, and
corrupt.
Three and a half is a number having special signification and requiring
particular investigation. A correct appreciation of its meaning will
throw light upon some of the most obscure portions of the Apocalypse.
It occurs――and is, indeed, the only number of which this may be
said――in various forms. Since three and a half years comprise forty-two
months, and since forty-two months of thirty days each (the usual
prophetical computation) equal twelve hundred and sixty days, we may
take these three forms, three and a half, forty-two, and twelve hundred
and sixty, as equivalent expressions. So, also, the expression, “a time,
times, and the dividing of times” (1 + 2 + ½ = 3½), is probably but
another form of this number. That some law governs the choice of these
various forms is probable; but what, it is does not appear.
Since three and a half falls short of seven, it designates
incompleteness. But, inasmuch as it is the exact half of seven (in this
differing from six), it signifies an incompleteness which has, so to
speak, a completeness of its own――that is, an incompleteness which is
not anomalous and irregular, such as would be expressed by six, but one
which is, by the appointment of God or as a result of its own nature,
intended to be such. Any period of time or epoch in human history
which has prescribed and well-marked limits or boundaries, any part of
the plan of Providence which has a specified, but only temporary and
partial purpose as related to the whole course and complete plan of the
divine Being, is always designated by one or the other of the forms of
this number.
Judaism, for instance, answered these conditions. It was a
providentially ordered dispensation, but with a specific and limited
object; fulfilling a definite, but not the complete purpose of
Providence; a stage in the movement of humanity toward the kingdom
of God, but not itself the realization of that kingdom; a type which
needed an antitype to round it out, and throughout which ran the
marks that proved it to be only temporary and preparatory to a higher
dispensation into which it was to blossom. It was “a schoolmaster to
bring us unto Christ.” Its glory was something which was “to be done
away,” and consequently falls short of “that which remaineth.” And it
reached the “fullness” of its “time” when “God sent forth his Son, made
of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law,
that we might receive the adoption of sons.” And it will be found that
whenever Judaism is symbolized by a number in the Book of Revelation,
it is designated by one of the allotropic forms of three and a half.¹
¹ See Revelation xi, 3; xii, 6, 14.
So, likewise, Gentilism, to which a definite and distinct character
or purpose is attributed, both by our Lord (Luke xxi, 24) and by
Saint Paul (Romans xi, 25), but which, when severed from its Jewish
antecedents, has the like features of incompleteness and deficiency,
would be symbolically expressed by some form of the same number.¹
¹ See Revelation xiii, 5.
So generally accepted seems to have been this symbolical use of numbers
that it appears even in such pure and simple prose as the gospels. The
evangelist Matthew, in recording the genealogy of our Lord, divides
the period between Abraham and Christ into three cycles with fourteen
generations in each, or forty-two in all. This period is exactly coeval
with Judaism as a distinct dispensation; and forty-two is, as we have
seen, one of the interchangeable forms of the number three and a half.
Inasmuch as the actual number of generations was, as is generally
agreed, more than forty-two, and some principle of accommodation must
have controlled the evangelist in choosing it, we have a right to
conjecture that the symbolism was so well established that no erroneous
impression would be conveyed.
Using these rules of interpretation as a guide, it will be found that
many, if not most of the obscurities which have made this book so
perplexing and incomprehensible will be removed. A unity of purpose
will be seen pervading it. It will no longer appear anomalous and
_outré_, but harmonious with the rest of the oracles of God; a book
for the perusal of every individual believer, no matter how simple and
unlearned he may be; having direct reference to his heart-experience
and his moral conduct; a _vade mecum_ for the journey of life through
whose aid he may safely encounter the dangers and surely overcome the
hindrances he may meet.
The great theme which the inspired writer and apostle here sets before
us is the mediatorial kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. The principles
which lie at the basis of that kingdom――the oppositions, external and
internal, to its beginning and completion, the agencies, divine and
human, upon which reliance must be placed to achieve success, its
superiority to and triumph over all hostile forces, and all these both
in the heart of each individual Christian and in that aggregation of
Christians which we call the Church――are here delineated as they were
revealed to Saint John.
The theories which make of this book an anticipation of history, and
which find in the events of the last nineteen centuries continued
fulfillments of its predictions, or which confine those fulfillments to
the periods either near the primitive age or near the future and final
scenes of the drama of time are regarded as being not wholly erroneous,
but incomplete and partial.
That the great purposes of divine Providence are continually finding
their fulfillment in the history of men and nations is a truth not
confined to this book, but spread throughout all the sacred Scriptures.
The laws of the divine administration are very exact; they can be
neither obeyed nor disregarded without the necessary accompaniments
of legitimate and appointed consequences. There is no improbability at
all that moral and spiritual truths may have their processes and cycles
of development, just as natural things have their seasons and times of
maturity. Whether the events that have occurred, the organized bodies,
secular or religious, that have appeared on the field of the world,
were in the mind of the apostle as he wrote is a question neither
affirmed nor denied. What is meant to be said is that the Revelation
does more than merely predict results. It goes down into the profound
region of causes and reveals the continuity of the plans of the divine
Being. However ingenious or plausible, therefore, the explanations put
upon the prophecies of this book by the theories spoken of above, it
is not confined to them. As long as the world lasts there will be, in
every age and in the experience of every believer, a fulfillment of the
truths here set forth. Its warnings and comforts will never be out of
date. Its promises and its threats are alike imperishable, for they are
a part of that “word of our God” which “shall stand forever.”
A definition of the phrase “kingdom of Christ” is nowhere attempted
in the Revelation. It was not needed in an age when the theme was
the staple of preaching and teaching. To show that it must not be
confounded with the visible Church was the purpose of the epistles to
the churches of Asia with which the Apocalypse begins. The fundamental
principle upon which the kingdom is founded, the universal sovereignty
of Christ based upon his redemptive work, is taught under the emblem of
the seals. The writer then advances to the instrumentalities, natural
and supernatural, by means of which the kingdom is to be brought to
its consummation. The antagonisms which the kingdom must encounter
from foes without and within are next plainly revealed, and, lest
the revelation may cause discouragement, prophecies of sure and final
victory mingle with warnings. The retributive resources of the kingdom,
the just judgments which fall upon its foes, and especially upon the
false and counterfeit Church, are taught under the emblem of the vials.
The next section discloses to us the stages of progress through which
the kingdom ascends to its complete establishment, and the signs by
which we may test its advance or detect its decline. And finally, with
that glowing picture of the ideal kingdom as it shall be realized on
earth when the Galilean shall have conquered, a picture so beautiful
that our highest conceptions of heaven seem embodied in it, the divine
seer closes his rapturous vision.
PART I
The Seven Churches of Asia
Revelation of Saint John the Divine
PART I
=The Seven Churches of Asia, or, the Kingdom
as it Actually was in the Days of the Apostles and is now=
THE chapters which contain the epistles to the churches of Asia need
not detain us long; not that they are devoid of interest, but because
anything like a commentary upon the text lies outside the scope and
design of this essay, whose purpose is to interpret the general intent
of the book itself.
The value of these letters to us lies in the pictures presented in them
of the religious state of the churches to which they were addressed,
and which doubtless were representative of the Christian world in the
days of the writer. The reading of them will dispel any illusion in
which we may have indulged as to the superiority of the apostolical
age over subsequent ones, and will shatter any hypothesis we may
have formed that primitive Christianity was anything like Utopia. The
condition of the churches which they reveal to us was one in which
doubt and faith, loyalty and declension, purity and worldliness,
evil and good were interspersed in varying proportions. The tares had
already begun to grow with the wheat.
And a moment’s reflection will convince us that no other result could
reasonably be expected. Divine grace does not obliterate human nature,
and its operations are always in accordance with rule. The regeneration
of a soul is not synonymous with its entire sanctification. Growth
is an invariable accompaniment of life. It would have been a new and
altogether anomalous state of things if the average of conduct attained
by converts from Jewish and pagan standards of thought and morals
had equaled that to which we may aspire in whom centuries of training
in the family, the State, and the Church have created a Christian
consciousness. Fervor and zeal the early disciples unquestionably had,
but with sad mixture of inconsistency, inexperience, and weakness.
It has always seemed hard for Christians to comprehend and fully
believe the promise which our Lord gave to the Church through the
apostles, that the Holy Ghost, when he should come, should “abide”
with it “forever.” And this abiding presence throughout all ages of the
Spirit of truth is not to be in partial or transient manifestation, but
in all the fullness of his divine offices. And attention must be called
to the fact that John, in unfolding the processes and forces by which
the kingdom of Christ is to be brought to its triumphant completeness,
points us at the beginning of his prophecy (Revelation iv, 5) to the
seven spirits of God “burning before the throne,” as if to impress upon
us the perfection of degree in which the Holy Spirit gives himself to
this work. This does not mean that there is monotonous identity in the
modes of his manifestation, or that the work that he does is the same
in kind with that which he has done in the past. We are expressly told
that “there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. And there
are diversities of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are
diversities of operations, but it is the same God that worketh all in
all.” Some things which God does he never repeats. His special presence
or work at some periods and in some things does not imply that he is
any the less, while not in the same special way, present at all times
and in all things.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” That was done
once for all. From that period up to this time, indeed, the “Father
worketh;” but it is not as Creator, but as Providence, developing and
evolving from that beginning the possibilities that lay in it. What
we call science is the record of this development, aiming only at the
accurate presentation of the facts of providence and the adaptation
of them to human needs and destiny. Nature is the _terminus ad quem_
toward which discovery and invention tend, not the _terminus a quo_
from which they start. Progress in them does not mean adding anything
to nature or superseding it or leaving it behind and moving to
something beyond it, but merely approaching closer to it, bringing us
to better knowledge of and fuller acquaintance with it.
So, likewise, that inspiration of the Holy Ghost by which holy men of
God were moved to speak and write what was specially revealed to them
is never to be repeated. The lines along which and the limits within
which the Christian Church is to be led were laid down once for all,
as those of nature also were. The work of the Spirit now is that of a
Providence to bring to realization the ideal then foreshadowed; and in
doing this he has divine freedom to breathe where and when he listeth.
Pentecost was the commencement of a process of which the closing
chapters of the Revelation disclose the completion. And in order to
attain this end the perpetual presence and indwelling of the Holy
Spirit are promised in all their richness and perfection, but in
accordance with the laws of human nature and with constant increments
of knowledge and power.
It is vain, therefore, to claim commanding authority for any ceremony,
formula, or organization on the ground that it corresponds with
primitive Christianity. The apostles never felt themselves bound to
that first sketch of the Church which they drew at Pentecost, as if
this were among the things supernaturally revealed; but they modified
and revised it whenever they could say, “It seemed good to the Holy
Ghost and to us.” Nor have we any reason to believe that the process of
evolution which continued throughout their lives ended therewith. The
Holy Spirit did not then cease his work of guidance and inspiration.
That is the truest and most apostolical Christianity which, like John,
being “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” holds itself ever ready to
hear and obey the “great voice, as of a trumpet,” behind and above it.
And this is the lesson we are to learn from the seven epistles to
the churches of Asia. They are the record of the beginning of the
kingdom of Christ, repeated in the conversion and regeneration of
every individual Christian. They show the point of departure from
which progress is to be made toward the consummation and perfection of
the ideal. The Christian world as it was then, with its graces and its
faults, is disclosed to us. The apostle, with his clearer eye, was able
to look below the facts and recognize the principles struggling for
the ascendency; and, using these facts as his _data_, he drew from them
a prophecy of the development of the kingdom of Christ of marvelous
interest and instruction for all subsequent ages. Nor is there a single
force, friendly or hostile to the kingdom, which does not appear in
the warnings or encouragements he is directed to write to these infant
churches. Whoever will take the sketch of the kingdom as it actually
appeared to the eye of John, and contrast it with the culmination
of the process so exquisitely pictured in the last two chapters of
the Apocalypse, will have some conception of the field over which he
must travel if he would “come in the unity of the faith, and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of
the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
PART II
Fundamental Principles on which the Kingdom is Based
PART II
=Fundamental Principles on which the Kingdom is Based.
Emblem of the Seals.=
WITH the fourth chapter the symbolical part of the Revelation begins,
and continues to the end of the book. In that portion of it upon which
we now enter, and which includes chapters iv‒viii, 1, the emblem of a
seal is employed so frequently as to make it the distinctive feature.
We are told of a book “sealed with seven seals” which none but the
Lamb is worthy to open. Then we are told of the opening of these seals,
with visions accompanying the successive loosing of them. And, lastly,
a specific number of persons sealed in their foreheads are shown us,
following which an innumerable company is seen gathered before the
throne of God. It behooves us to ascertain the typical meaning of a
seal; and if we succeed in so doing the purpose of the writer will be
disclosed.
1. _The Emblem of the Seals._――The seal has been usually taken as
signifying concealment or secrecy; sealed things have been regarded
as synonymous with hidden things. And very much conjecture has been
offered as to what were the hidden mysteries contained in the sealed
book or scroll. But, whatever secondary meaning the seal may have,
concealment is not its principal one. A seal denotes, primarily and
specifically, ownership, not secrecy. The sealing of anything implies
that it is, or is claimed to be, the property of him who affixes the
seal. The outward stamp is the declaration that the owner makes of his
rights and is the official token of his authority. It is the mark of
lordship or seigniority. Any concealment of contents therein involved
is a secondary consideration.
Some illustrations from Scripture will substantiate this interpretation.
When it is said (Romans iv, 11) that Abraham received “the sign
of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he
had,” it is meant that he then became in a special sense the personal
property of Almighty God and entitled to all the protection of
Omnipotence.
“He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal [‘hath set
his seal to this,’ Revised Version] that God is true” (John iii, 33),
means that the assured conviction of God’s reality and faithfulness has
become the personal possession of the believer, something which belongs
to him of right.
“Him hath God the Father sealed” (John vi, 27) means that God
officially ratifies and acknowledges as his own what Christ does,
and attests it with the stamp of authority.
When Pilate sealed the sepulcher where Christ was laid (Matthew
xxvii, 66) it was meant that the tomb became the property of the
Roman empire and was under the guardianship of its officials, and that
whoever tampered with it must be prepared to try questions with Cæsar.
“Ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit” (Ephesians i, 13) means that ye
received as your own possession, in your own personal experience, the
earnest of your inheritance; the gift of the Holy Spirit attests your
rightful claim to it.
These examples will suffice to indicate the scriptural meaning of the
seal. We have only to apply this meaning to the solution of the problem
before us. “A book written within and on the back side,” that is,
completely, all over, with no blank or empty space, is seen lying
in the right hand of God on the throne. Plainly, this book with its
contents signifies something over which the divine Being asserts
supreme sovereignty, which he claims as his of right and alone. And the
number of the seals――seven――indicates that this sovereignty is complete,
undivided, perfect.
What the contents of the book were we may infer from the preceding
chapter (iv), in which we are shown the court of the Lord God
omnipotent, with his loyal and obedient servants and hierarchies
worshiping him and saying, “Thou hast created all things, and for
thy pleasure they are and were created.” The book with its seals
is a symbol of the fundamental truth of all truths, that all things
and beings in this universe, whatever and wherever they are, belong
originally and normally to the Creator. His sovereignty over his
creatures is absolute, illimitable, and eternal.
It is quite in accordance with John’s cast of mind (and this furnishes
no slight evidence as to the authorship of the Revelation) in unfolding
to us the plan of redemption to take his stand at that period in the
past, far back and without date, when God was all in all, and when
sin had not entered to dispute his supremacy; just as in his gospel
he commences, not with the Christ in the maturity of his powers, or
even incarnate in the flesh, but with the preëxistent Word who was “in
the beginning,” “was with God,” and “was God.” Profoundest of all the
apostles, his mind reveled in the contemplation of beginnings and ends,
of the primeval origin and final consummation of things, of the alpha
and omega of creation.
But along with this vision of sovereignty came the coincident
remembrance of the universe as it is, disordered and in rebellion; of
a sinful world wandering from its orbit, disputing the supremacy of its
Maker and God, and in unequal and hopeless conflict with Omnipotence.
Into whose possession should it pass, and who could assume the reins of
power which seemed to have fallen from the hands of the Creator?
A thought similar to this appears to have passed through the mind of
Isaiah when he turned from the vision of the throne “high and lifted
up,” with the seraphim veiling their faces in the presence of holy
Majesty, to the spectacle of himself and the world, and cried, “Woe is
me! for I am undone.”
So John “wept much” when, after this view of immaculate purity combined
with almightiness, he contemplated a sinful world powerless to dispute
what it would not willingly obey. Who was there worthy to “open
the book” and to “loose the seals thereof,” and thus to bring back
creatures to their rightful allegiance? If they would not submit, yet
could not resist, the result could be only disaster, for the heavens
must rule, and successful rebellion was impossible.
But there came to John hope and help, as there had come also to Isaiah;
and to both from “the altar.” As John looked he beheld the “Lion of the
tribe of Judah,” but in the form of a “Lamb as it had been slain,” take
the book from the right hand of God and proceed to break the seals.
Now, if a seal is the emblem of ownership it follows that the
authorized and permitted loosing of a seal must mean the transference,
or delegation, of proprietorship. And this is the meaning here. There
is an endowment――donation, rather――of authority, and the change in
possession is published. That which belonged to and had been under the
rule of the Father is consigned to and becomes the possession of the
Son. And the change is not simply one of sovereigns, but of the ground
principle of sovereignty; not only of rulers, but of methods of rule.
The song of the “elders” and “living creatures” is now, not “Thou didst
create,” but “Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.” There is
presented to us, in fact, a picture of the mediatorial sovereignty of
the Son of God. We see the inauguration of the kingdom of Christ, the
fundamental principle of which is, “Ye are not your own;” for “ye are
bought with a price: therefore glorify God.” It was written in the
Psalms, “The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I
begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
John was looking upon the fulfillment of that decree.
Of this mediatorial kingdom of Christ, thus presented to us in symbol,
so much is said in the Bible that only a few texts need to be referred
to out of the many which might be cited. Our Lord himself said of it
that the Father “hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John v, 22).
And again, “All things are delivered unto me of my Father” (Matthew
xi, 27). And still again, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in
earth” (Matthew xxviii, 18). So in Hebrew ii, 8, it is recorded, “Thou
hast put all things in subjection under his feet.” And Paul has written,
“Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to
God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all
authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies
under his feet” (1 Corinthians xv, 24, 25).
2. _The Opening of the Seals._――In the exercise of his sovereignty
the mediating and atoning Lamb assumes the authority committed to him,
and the history of redemption begins. We approach the heart of this
wonderful book, and its great purpose begins to reveal itself. But the
unfolding of that history has been so different from the conception of
it that was possible even to an apostle that “blindness in part” would
happen to us all if we had not the revelation of God’s plans made known
to us in order to check despondency and animate to labor.
John was one of those to whom the Master had said, “Behold, I send
you forth.” He had heard and has recorded the prayer of the great High
Priest, “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent
them into the world.” He had received the great commission, “Go ye
therefore, and teach all nations.” He had been taught that Christians
were to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” and
were to “occupy” until Christ comes again. What expectation more
reasonable could he entertain than that redemption, proceeding from
the heart of the Father, consummated in the sacrifice of the Son, and
applied by the ever-abiding Spirit, would move forward without let or
hindrance from its commencement to its glorious realization? And this
is implied in the vision of the opening of the first seal: “Behold a
white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given
unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.” The first
stroke of God’s providence always drives the kingdom well forward. It
is the subsequent ones that try men’s faith.
When the promise of the seed which should bruise the serpent’s head was
given to Eve, and, following that, a son was born to her, was it not
natural that, in the fullness of her faith, she should exclaim, “I have
gotten a man from the Lord?”
When Almighty God, who had just beaten down Pharaoh and Amalek and
written the law with his own fingers, said to Moses, “As truly as I
live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord,” could
the prophet have any doubt that the ark of the covenant would move
triumphantly onward until it came to perfect rest in Canaan?
There is much to show that the apostles of Christ anticipated the
speedy conquest of the world by his kingdom. The conversion of
thousands at Pentecost, the multitude of accessions which followed,
the obedience of a great company of priests, the appearance of miracles
all conspired to foster this expectation. The morning hour of every
reformation is bright and golden. It is later on that clouds gather and
the skies darken. Painful realities soon shake men out of such sunny
dreams, and banish such fond illusions as did the murder of Abel, the
lusting after the fleshpots of Egypt, the imprisonment of Peter, the
defection of Ananias, the martyrdom of Stephen and James. And as the
pendulum of hope swings so easily to the extreme of despair, and every
little Ai seems to our alarmed imagination a walled Jericho, nothing
can be conceived more helpful to faith and courage than to learn that
such things must needs be, and to be comforted at the same time with
the assurance that, though in the world we shall have tribulation, yet
Christ has overcome the world and we must not lose heart.
This is the purpose for which the visions accompanying the opening
of the seals were given to John. The second seal signifies war; the
third, famine; the fourth, pestilence; the fifth, martyrdom; the sixth,
revolutions that seem to “shake the heavens, and the earth, and the
sea, and the dry land.” These are strange instruments to do God’s will,
♦unlooked-for messengers to perform his bidding. But not only all
things, but all events as well, are under the sovereignty of Christ;
and in spite of these obstacles, and perhaps by means of them, his
kingdom moves forward. And when the seventh and last seal shall be
broken, when every messenger shall have been delegated, when the last
needed encouragement shall have been given and the last enemy destroyed,
then will come the unbroken and eternal Sabbath of rest.
♦ “unlookod” replaced with “unlooked”
3. _The Sealed Elect._――The third part of this section comprises two
visions: first, of the “hundred and forty and four thousand,” out of
the twelve tribes of Israel, sealed in their foreheads; and, then, of a
great multitude out of all nations and peoples, clothed in white robes
and bearing palms in their hands. The purpose of these visions is to
show that God’s ownership extends, not only to things and events, but
to persons as well. “The Lord knoweth them that are his.”
There need not be any hesitation in interpreting these visions as
referring to Jewish and Gentile Christians respectively. The same
distinction between the two is made in chapter xiv, 1‒6, where the
hundred and forty-four thousand who stand on Mount Zion singing a song
which no others could learn, namely, the song of Moses and the Lamb,
are marked off from those in every nation and people to whom the angel
flies with the everlasting Gospel.
It is not meant, surely, that the number one hundred and forty-four
thousand is to be taken in an absolutely literal sense. The definite
number in all probability stands for a great multitude. How large the
number of believing Israelites was in the days of the apostle we have
no means of determining. That it was large may be fairly inferred from
Acts xxi, 20. And in the great day of accounts the number may be seen
to be beyond our largest calculation.
Still less are we authorized to impute this separation of Jew from
Gentile to any national exclusiveness on the part of John. No apostle
of the circumcision was any more emphatic than was Paul, the apostle of
the Gentiles, in asserting that the order of salvation is, first, the
Jew, then, the Gentile, and that “God hath not cast away his people
which he foreknew,” although “blindness in part is happened to Israel,
until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” And what part the Jew
may yet play in bringing about that fullness no man is able to predict.
Moreover, there is no inferiority implied in the privileges and graces
which the great multitude enjoys as compared with the sealed elect.
They are kings and priests unto God; they are clothed with the robes of
victory and joy. And the images by which their nearness to Christ and
their participation in the fullest measure of nourishment, safety, and
felicity are expressed are not elsewhere exceeded in the Revelation.
The description of their triumph seems to anticipate the consummation
of the ideal kingdom of Christ, with which the closing chapters of the
Apocalypse are replete.
PART III
The Means by which the Kingdom of Christ is Advanced
PART III
=The Means by which the Kingdom of Christ
is Advanced――Emblem of the Trumpet=
THE section of the Revelation which begins with chapter viii, 2, and
closes with chapter xi, is characterized by the symbol of the trumpet.
In the interpretation of this symbol the key to the understanding of
the section must be found. It must not be inferred, because the vision
of the trumpets follows that of the seals, that it designates events
subsequent to the latter. The seals themselves, as we have seen, are
not intended to be predictions of historical events, but strictly
emblems of truths or principles; and the trumpets must be in like
manner regarded. Succession, coincidence, or any other relation of time
has no necessary connection with them. They represent varying phases of
the kingdom of Christ, and their relation thereto is the only one that
need be regarded.
The trumpet was a familiar instrument in the ritual of Judaism, having
a well-known and prescribed use, and is frequently referred to in
the Scriptures. The mention of the word would readily suggest to the
mind of a Jew its symbolic import, and the writer of the Apocalypse
doubtless employed it in this sense.
The trumpet was used as a means of summons. When an assembly was to
be gathered, when an alarm was to be given, when a message was to be
communicated, it was by the trumpet that attention was arrested and
a hearing enforced. It signified that tidings were to be delivered
to which it behooved men to listen. It increased the range of
the unassisted human voice, with the difference that, while the
intensifying of the sound through the use of the instrument carried it
over larger spaces, there was a loss of that delicacy, flexibility, and
capacity to convey emotions which belong to the unaided human organs of
speech.
It was by the trumpet, sounding long and loud, that Jehovah announced
his presence at Sinai to Moses and the awe-stricken people, and bade
them prepare to receive his law. It was by the blowing of trumpets
that the approach of the jubilee year was announced――that very striking
type of the redemption purchased by Christ. When the Israelites were
marching around Jericho “seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’
horns” went before the ark of the Lord; and on the seventh day, when,
“at the seventh time,” the priests blew with the trumpets, the walls
fell. And the prophet Joel says, “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify
a fast, call a solemn assembly: gather the people.” So familiarly has
this symbolism passed over into the Christian Church that the preaching
of salvation is very commonly spoken of as the blowing of the Gospel
trumpet.
If the seals emblematize the truth that all things belong of right to
Christ as Mediator, the question very naturally follows, How is this
_de jure_ ownership to be made a _de facto_ one, and what instruments
are put into the hands of the Church to enable it to establish the
kingdom of Christ on earth? The vision of the trumpets is designed to
be the answer to this question.
The trumpets, then, signify the instrumentalities by which men are
called to the kingdom of Christ, or the measures which the divine
Being employs to advance that kingdom. Their number, seven, indicates
that these measures are complete and comprehensive, including every
available resource and employing all possible methods of approach
to man. God avails himself of every legitimate device to constrain
a sinful world to accept the proffer of salvation ere he passes from
chastisement and correction to retributive and final judgment. Thus
those who reject the offer will be found without excuse, and the
despisers of the wedding garment will be stricken speechless in the day
of accounts.
The sounding of the trumpets, it will be noticed, is preceded by the
“prayers of the saints;” for that “the effectual fervent prayer of a
righteous man availeth much” with God is one of the fundamental facts
of the kingdom (Psalm xviii, 6‒17). And the token of the hearing of the
prayers is seen in the “voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and
an earthquake” that followed when the seven angels with the trumpets
prepared to sound. The vision doubtless recalled to John’s mind the
remembrance of that day when, as the disciples prayed, “the place was
shaken where they were assembled together;” God revealing himself in
the new dispensation as he had done at Sinai when about to communicate
his law. The grandeur of the preparation suggests the importance of the
tidings to be communicated.
It will be also observed that the episode of the “two witnesses”
(chapter xi) falls within the section marked by the trumpet emblem.
The appropriateness of this and the ease with which it takes its place
here furnish no slight evidence that the explanation of the Revelation
adopted in this essay is correct.
There are two modes by which the divine Being has chosen to communicate
the knowledge of himself and of his will. These are his works and his
word. The one is that manifestation of himself in nature of which Paul
speaks when he says, “The invisible things of him from the creation
of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made, even his eternal power and Godhead.” The other is supernatural,
the revelation of himself as a power above nature and not limited by
its laws. It is of this that Peter says, “We have also a more sure word
of prophecy.”
The most searching and subtle analysis to which knowledge and its
sources have been subjected has resulted in this――that even in the
alembic of modern doubt, after the most biting acids have tried their
solvent power, there is left as the residuum a conviction that, besides
this known and knowable universe, there exists a first cause or force.
At the beginning and basis of all things a duality must be acknowledged.
If human thought by its unaided light is incompetent to go beyond
this, it is not allowed to stop short of it. “The momentum of thought,”
Herbert Spencer says, “inevitably carries us beyond conditioned
existence to unconditioned existence.” “The certainty that, on the one
hand, such a power exists, while, on the other, its nature transcends
intuition and is beyond imagination, is the certainty toward which
intelligence has been from the first progressing. To this conclusion
science inevitably arrives as it reaches its confines.” This power,
which science may know only as “an infinite and eternal energy,” is
the Being whom the Scriptures reveal to us as the Lord God, of whom and
through whom and to whom “are all things: to whom be glory forever.”
From this first Cause knowledge comes to us through two channels――his
deeds and his words. The first of these is accessible to all mankind;
for the Gentiles, which have not the law, “show the work of the law
written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness.” But as
that which is constant and habitual soon ceases to attract attention,
and the orderly and uniform processes of nature excite less interest
and awaken feebler curiosity than the anomalous and occasional,
in like manner it is most frequently by calamities, adversities,
seeming withdrawals of God’s face that men are brought to reflection,
consideration, and obedience. “When thy judgments are in the earth, the
inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” It is this truth
that the vision of the trumpets symbolizes. It signifies the warnings
in the field of natural providence which the divine Being gives to men,
in order to show the evil and peril of sin and thus draw back their
souls from the pit. The second of these channels of knowledge is found
in the oracles of God, the Scriptures committed to the chosen people.
And these are symbolized in the episode of the “two witnesses,” which
forms a part of the trumpet section.
The details of the trumpet scenes are not, it must be confessed, easy
of interpretation. They seem to be selected from various parts of the
Old Testament, and grouped according to some plan not explained to us,
suggesting the thought that the interpretation of them is not to be
found in any single event, but in some common truth embodied in many
events.
The conjunction of “hail” with “fire” (viii, 7) is also found in Exodus
ix, 24; that of “fire” with “blood” (viii, 7) in Joel ii, 30; while
all three of these elements are separately mentioned in many passages.
The moving of mountains (viii, 8) is referred to in Psalm xlvi, 2, and
Isaiah liv, 10; and a burning mountain in Jeremiah li, 25. “Wormwood”
(viii, 11) occurs in Jeremiah ix, 15, and Amos v, 7. The darkening of
the heavenly bodies (viii, 12) is found also in Isaiah xiii, 10; Amos
viii, 9; and Joel ii, 31. “Locusts” (ix, 3) are mentioned in Exodus
x, 4; Nahum iii, 17; Joel i, 4.
But the assemblage of the events in the Revelation differs from
any other in the Bible. It is more systematically arranged than in
the series foretold by our Lord in Matthew xxiv. It differs from
the account of the Egyptian plagues of Exodus in omissions, the
introduction of new details, and in the fact that the plagues occur
in a different order. The hail, for instance, which is the seventh
Egyptian plague, is the first of the plagues in the Revelation. All
this may be explained by the fact that the plagues of Egypt were
confined to that country and were adapted to its local climatic
conditions, while the plagues of the Revelation have for their field
the world itself, and were intentionally diversified in being fitted
to this larger sphere.
That a close connection exists between man and his dwelling place, the
earth, is a truth in which both science and the Scriptures cordially
concur; the dispute, if any, between them is not as to the fact,
but its cause. The doctrine of evolution, which receives such wide
acceptance, rests upon this connection as a fundamental axiom; and
the Scriptures confirm the fact in the accounts of the creation and
the fall. The difference between science and the Scriptures is, that
what evolution attributes to the operation of natural law the Bible
explains by the working of a moral power. As for man’s sake the ground
was cursed and all nature made to suffer by reason of his rebellion,
so do they bear constant witness to his advance or degeneration in
righteousness. As purity is in general promotive of prosperity, so does
sin produce disaster. “As the moral life of the soul expresses itself
in the physical life of the body for the latter’s health or corruption,
so the conduct of the human race affects the physical life of the
universe to its farthest limit in space. The Old Testament is not
contented with a general statement of this great principle, but pursues
it to all sorts of particular and private applications. The curses
of the Lord fell, not only on the sinner, but on his dwelling, his
property, and even on the bit of ground he occupied. The doctrine
of the Old Testament is that man’s sin has rendered necessary the
destruction of his material circumstances, and that the divine judgment
includes a broken and rifled universe.”¹
¹ _Isaiah_, vol. i. chap. xxxviii, pp. 419, ff., in the
_Expositor’s Bible_, New York, A. C. Armstrong & Co.
And these calamities, whether brought about directly by the divine
Governor, or through the operation of general laws, which is but
another mode of his action, are so many trumpet calls from God warning
men to retrace their erring steps and submit to his kingdom. “It was
plague and fire,” Leigh Hunt says, “that first taught the Londoners
to build their city better.” And the divine Being may make use of like
means to forward his moral government.
1. _Natural Providences._――In the _first_ trumpet scene the blow
falls upon the earth itself. Its productive resources were severely
diminished through the destructive agencies of nature, intensified, it
may be, by the horrors of war. The hail and the fire were mingled with
blood. And, since food is essential to life, “the king himself being
served by the field,” such a disaster must sorely oppress mankind. The
apostle had himself witnessed at least one widely-extended famine, and
had noted how the exhibition of Christian benevolence had been made the
means of promoting the kingdom of Christ (Acts xi, 28‒30).
The _second_ trumpet scene deals with disasters affecting “the sea,”
the great highway of commerce, and disturbing the exchanges of the
products of labor among men. More than once in the history of the world
social revolutions have been the plowshare turning up the soil, that
seeds of religious reformation might the better grow.
In the _third_ trumpet scene it is the sources of water supply that are
affected. A star, falling from heaven, turns them to wormwood, which in
the Old Testament is used as a symbol of bitterness and poisoning. It
is in the contamination of these sources that epidemics and pestilences
usually find their commencement, and a merciful Providence generally
spares them until other and milder warnings have been tried.
In the _fourth_ trumpet scene the heavenly bodies are involved,
carrying out the idea, so frequently expressed in the Bible, of the
sympathy which the whole creation seems to feel with the great events
transacted on earth. The universe is so bound together that whatever
touches one part of the great Governor’s empire ultimately affects
every other (Exodus x, 21‒24; Isaiah xiii, 9‒11; Joel ii, 31; Matthew
xxiv, 29; xxvii, 45). Yet the images in this scene may be figurative
emblems of the ruling powers of earthly kingdoms, and the vision may be
interpreted as synonymous with the predictions of Haggai ii, 6‒9, and
Hebrews xii, 26‒29, in which the shaking of heaven and earth is made to
precede the coming of the kingdom of Christ.
The _fifth_ trumpet scene is undoubtedly the most difficult of all to
interpret and requires more elaborate treatment. In striving to explain
its obscurities the only safe and satisfactory method is to search for
what may be regarded as certain and plain in the vision, and from this
as a starting point to essay the more difficult.
Two things seem to stand out prominently and comparatively clearly in
the scene. Assuming the star which fell from heaven, to whom was given
the key of the bottomless pit, and who is closely connected with the
angel of the pit named Abaddon or Apollyon――that is, destroyer――to be a
representation of Satan, then for the first time this archenemy of God
and man is introduced personally upon the stage. In whatever the fifth
trumpet signifies he directly or indirectly has a preëminent share.
Then, again, the mention of locusts points us to the prophecy of Joel,
where the destructive ravages of this scourge are such a conspicuous
figure. If we can reach a satisfactory solution of Joel’s prophecy
we may reasonably expect an understanding of this prophecy of the
Revelation.
In the great prophecy of Joel, brief in extent, but comprehensive in
import, the background upon which the earnest preacher of God paints
his vivid pictures is the alarming condition of spiritual declension
and apathy into which the people had fallen, accompanied with fearful
neglect of the service of God and its ordinances. To awaken the
people out of this deadly state he predicts the approach of an awful
scourge, the ravages of which would be felt in a resultant condition of
extraordinary impoverishment and penury. Poverty of spirit must precede
entrance into the riches of the kingdom of heaven. And so the prophet
is commissioned to promise that, after repentance and renewal of
consecration, there shall be a rich and plentiful effusion of the Holy
Spirit; and he assures the penitent that “whosoever shall call on the
name of the Lord shall be delivered” and shall escape the impending
destruction.
Nothing is more probable, therefore, than that the writer of the
Revelation meant to warn the Church of Christ against a decline in
faith or relaxation in zeal. He assured it that such a lapse would
be followed by the intrusion into its field of some dangerous enemy.
What the character of this enemy should be is indicated by two things.
It will be noticed that, if John deviates from the description of the
locusts given by Joel, it is in the direction of bringing humanity more
into the picture. The locusts spoken of in this fifth trumpet scene are
to have crowns like gold upon their heads; their faces are to be as the
faces of men; their hair to be as the hair of women; they are to hurt,
not as real locusts do, the earth and its products, but men; their
sting, unlike that of other locusts, is to be as the sting of scorpions;
and their work will be, not the destruction of human life, but the
causing of such misery as to make human life unhappy and undesirable.
They are to be under the direction of Satan, whose field of operations
in the warfare he wages against the kingdom of Christ is, not the earth,
but the world of human beings.
The truth, then, which seems to be indicated in this obscure vision
is, that whenever a Christian man or Church declines into lukewarmness
or apathy there may be expected to follow an incursion and invasion by
other and lower forms of religious life and thought. Wherever iniquity
abounds and the “love of many” waxes cold there is sure to be an inroad
of heresy, false doctrine, more or less heterodoxy of creed. The human
heart, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Where true godliness wanes false
religions rush in to fill the void; and the intensity of zeal which
false religions awaken measures the declension that has befallen true
faith. The evil spirit that comes back to a home from which he has
been once expelled, and finds it empty, swept, and garnished, takes
to himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, “and the last
state of that man is worse than the first.” The temperature of religion
when it falls to lower levels never does so equably. The nobler and
more ideal parts suffer most severely, and, like the shriveled idol
of the Philistines, at last “only the stump of Dagon is left to him.”
There can be no question that the advocates of the historical
interpretation of the Revelation have a very strong support for their
hypothesis in the application of this part of it to the rise and growth
of Mohammedanism. It is not to be denied that many of the essential
characteristics of that false religion are quite accurately delineated
in this picture. The rise and rapid extension of Mohammedanism were
possible only because of the dead, formal, and corrupt condition of
the Christendom which it encountered. Its prophet and founder preached
a faith which was purer than that of many a so-called Christian
bishop; and it achieves its triumphs now only in those regions where
Christianity has degenerated into spiritual barrenness and puerile
ceremonialism. But in this, as in so many instances, the historical
interpretation errs, not through incorrectness, so much as through
incompleteness. In claiming any one historical event as the fulfillment
of prophecy it impoverishes inspiration by confining that fulfillment
to a single fact. Mohammedanism is but one illustration of a profounder
truth. The Revelation of John is meant for all ages. It is constantly
finding new illustrations and applications. In setting before us the
causes of decline as well as of growth, the Revelation teaches us to
be looking for these causes at all times, that we may avert the decline
or forward the growth; and thus it is furnishing new examples of its
divine truth and new evidences of its divine origin, without exhausting
its force in any single example or any single evidence.
The _sixth_ trumpet sounds, and the vision which is presented to us is
one of increasing danger and darkness. Warnings unheeded give way to
alarms still more threatening. The noonday bell of invitation deepens
into the curfew toll of departing day. The approach of an immense and
imposing array of horsemen armed for battle strikes deeper terror than
did the invasion of the locusts and indicates judgments more formidable.
The power of Satan to harm is overmastering mercy’s efforts to save,
and the restrictions which had been laid upon his authority are being
relaxed. We are told now that “by these three was the third part of
men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone.” As
there is suggested a spiritual condition which has gone beyond mere
declension and apathy to deeper states of alienation from God, so the
perils threatened end, not with a destruction of the happiness of life,
but in death itself.
It must be noticed that the region from which the new and alarming
scourge proceeds is the “great river Euphrates.” To understand this
we must place ourselves at the standpoint of the apostle. The river
Euphrates was to Palestine what the Danube and the Rhine were to
the Roman empire――the line of demarcation between civilization and
barbarism. The East was the quarter from which the earlier prophets
always apprehended danger. It was in the Euphrates that Jeremiah was
bidden to cast the book with the stone tied to it (Jeremiah li, 63). On
the hither side of the great river lay the kingdoms with which Israel
had mainly had intercourse. On the north of Palestine was Syria, on
the south, Egypt; on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris or near by
were Assyria and Babylon. The peoples of these kingdoms were, indeed,
nations whose God was not the Lord; yet between them and Israel a
_modus vivendi_ had to some degree been established, and some common
rules of international intercourse were recognized. But on the farther
side was the land of barbarians among whom the arts of civilization
were unknown, who acknowledged no code of comity or obligation with
which the chosen people were familiar, whose ways and modes of warfare
were impenetrable and strange, and from whom all possible evils might
be expected.
There is, it must be sadly confessed, in all human beings a latent germ
of barbarism, a survival of the carnal or animal nature. Suppressed,
indeed, it may be by culture, education, or other moral or secular
forces, and its existence hardly surmised, yet it only awaits fostering
conditions to manifest its presence and reassert its power. Without
divine grace no Christian is free from liability to an outburst of
the carnal mind which may destroy the spiritual life of the soul. Nor
does any grade of civilization exempt nations from the possibility
of a reversion to barbarism, if the excitements to it are allowed to
exist or precautions against its inroads are neglected. Bishop Butler
expressed the opinion that whole communities, like individuals, might
become insane. Perhaps it is nearer the truth to explain the sudden
frenzies to which men and nations have sometimes given way as an
uncontrolled irruption of the barbarous element within. Farther on, in
the twentieth chapter of the Revelation, we shall find this tendency
toward barbarism more particularly referred to by John, and the
appreciation of it will help us there to solve one of the most
perplexing problems of the book.
Ethnology either ignores this liability to revert to barbarism or
denies it, and by so doing impairs the value of those hypotheses as
to the primitive condition of the race which it seeks to substitute
for the Bible story. It is not always easy to determine whether any
particular stage of barbarism marks a step upward in the advance of a
growing people or a decline toward animalism from a superior state; yet
the correctness of our inferences depends upon an accurate diagnosis of
this question.
But human experience is constantly furnishing illustrations confirming
the utterances of the word of God as to the possibility of a fall from
high grades of cultivation to the depths of savagery. If the counsels
of God are unheeded and the convictions of the Holy Spirit are resisted
nothing can follow but a descent into lower grades, until the savage
forces that underlie our nature assert supremacy and overleap the weak
barriers which reason and judgment set up to stay them.
Something like this seems to be the warning meant to be conveyed
through the sixth trumpet. A striking commentary upon this was given
but a few centuries after John’s death, when the hordes of barbarians
that had been only waiting opportunity swept with irresistible fury
over the crumbling walls of the corrupt and decadent Roman Empire,
and imposed upon the Christian Church the task of saving civilization
itself from destruction. We may not even now relax our watchfulness or
put off the armor of our faith, lest this may involve a reversion of
mankind to barbaric naturalism. And a return to barbarism is the lowest
condition to which human nature can fall. From such a state recovery
is well-nigh hopeless and repentance an extreme improbability, for the
resources of mercy will have been almost exhausted, and beyond lies
only doom.
It should be noticed that the Revelation speaks of three woes. The
first one predicted is described under the fifth trumpet. The second
one is declared by the sixth trumpet. The third one is not uncovered at
all. It lies in that future world from which the curtain is not lifted
and into which even the light of revelation feebly penetrates. Whoever
has rejected all the warnings of love and descended the moral scale
until he has reverted to the state of sensualism is but a step from
the second death. “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap
corruption.”
2. _The Two Witnesses, or, the Supernatural Scriptures._――The episode
of the “two witnesses,” to which we are now brought, is one that has
sorely tried expositors. Though many and various solutions of it have
been attempted, Alford, in his commentary upon the passage, says, “I
will further remark, and the reader will find this abundantly borne out
by research into histories of Apocalyptic exegesis, that no solution
at all approaching to a satisfactory one has ever yet been given ...
of this portion of the prophecy.” If it shall be found, therefore, that
the principles which have hitherto guided us enable us to penetrate
to the core of this mystery, and evolve a meaning intelligible and
reasonable, and which, while interpreting all the details without
distortion or suppression, is in harmony at the same time with the
Scriptures in general and with the purpose for which they have been
revealed, then we may indulge the hope that these principles are
correct and may advance with some confidence to the problems that still
lie before us. Though long tunnels are yet to be threaded, with only
brief intervals between them of open air, we shall in time, perhaps,
reach the light of day and rest in the sunshine of discovered truth.
It has been already said that through the vast space that intervenes
between the divine Being and man two great lines of communication
stretch. These are his works and his word. It is this truth which
the trumpets symbolize, and we have not yet gotten beyond the section
of the Revelation in which this emblem of the trumpets is the ruling
one. Six of the trumpets have sounded. Whatever can be done by natural
providences to arouse men to spiritual thought and action has been
sounded by them. Nature has no other voices with which to speak to
mankind. But the resources of Omnipotence are not exhausted. God
has yet other means of approach to his creatures. And if, therefore,
because of heedlessness or obduracy or preoccupation of mind or
absorption in temporal things, one of these lines of light from God’s
mercy falls with too light a touch to arrest men’s attention or awaken
them to danger or win their consent to seek God’s favor, there remains
another and more efficient one, namely, his written word; and here is
the place where we should expect allusion to it.
The two witnesses, then, may be reasonably interpreted as signifying
the _law_ and the _prophets_, the titles under which the Old
Testament Scriptures received by John as divinely inspired were almost
universally designated. Should these fail of their purpose, even the
divine Being, we may reverently say, had no other way of reaching
man. It is our Lord himself who says, “If they hear not Moses and
the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from
the dead.” When the great and strong wind rending the mountains, and
after this the earthquake, and after this the fire, have failed, it is
possible that the still small voice will arouse to faith and hope and
duty. Should it not do so, then the case is hopeless.
In order to verify the solution which is here proposed of the episode
of the two witnesses, a careful examination will be made of the facts
as detailed in the text.
The introduction of the two witnesses, however, is preceded by two
visions by way of prelude. This, we shall find, is what we might
reasonably expect. If the witnesses are, indeed, symbols of the sacred
Scriptures, God’s direct revelation of his will and character to men,
it is proper that the scope and purpose of all revelation shall be
plainly laid down, that we may know how far the revealed word of God is
to be regarded as evidence, and also that some criteria shall be given
by which we shall be able to discern what the inspired writings are,
and how to differentiate them from human productions. In other words,
we have here from the pen of John his own views of biblical criticism,
and it would have been well if they had been more carefully heeded in
the discussions of inspiration recently so rife.
In the first of these two visions a “mighty angel” is seen to “come
down from heaven, clothed with a cloud” and with “a rainbow upon his
head.” And he had in his hand a little book open. But, when “seven
thunders had uttered their voices” and John was “about to write,”
a voice was heard from heaven saying, “Seal up those things which
the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.” This prohibition is
distinctly declared to be only for a time. “In the days of the voice
of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God
should be finished, as he hath declared unto his servants the prophets.”
If the interpretation put upon the two witnesses is correct, and if
they symbolize the Scriptures, then the purpose of this prelude is to
indicate what we are to look for in them. It is not the design of the
Bible to communicate all possible truth, but only such measure of it
as has reference to the kingdom of Christ. Although the things which
are revealed belong to us and to our children, there are still secret
things which belong to the Lord our God. He has communicated much, but
he has withheld much, and doubtless the reasons for the revelation and
the reserve are equally wise. There are truths which man’s own powers
enable him to discover. There are other truths beyond his ability to
comprehend even should they be revealed. These are excluded from the
Scriptures as being aside from their purpose. It is only “when that
which is perfect is come,” and “that which is in part shall be done
away,” that we shall know as we are known. Very much that we know
not now we shall know hereafter. But the Bible has specific reference
to the kingdom of Christ and reveals only what has relation to that
kingdom. “The testimony of Jesus” is the spirit of all prophecy. That
which lies within the capacity of man to discover is left to the wisdom
and patience of men. That which pertains to the future life, and would
simply satisfy curiosity to know, is reserved to the time when we shall
have laid aside mortality. The Scriptures reveal to us only what it
is needful for us to know that we may enter and enjoy and forward the
♦kingdom of Christ. Paul was not allowed to utter the words he had
heard in his heavenly ecstasy, and John is likewise prohibited from
uttering things which belong solely to the divine Being and await his
pleasure to publish. It was sufficient for him to be told that, however
bitter and unpalatable his message might be, he must still “prophesy
before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.”
♦ “kingom” replaced with “kingdom”
The second prelude also has reference to the limitations within which
all revelation is confined. “There was given me a reed like unto a
rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God,
and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is
without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto
the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and
two months.”
There are two elements in this which furnish guides to its
interpretation. One is the distinction so emphatically made between
the temple itself, which, as we know, was reserved exclusively for
Israelites, and the outer courts, which were given to the Gentiles.
The other is the use of the symbolical number forty-two.
Now is it not a reasonable thing that the apostle, when about to point
us to the law and the prophets as God’s two witnesses, shall put a
broad distinction between them and all mere human productions? The
temple itself is the field within which they fulfill their office, and
those only who speak from it are God’s accredited messengers. If the
Scriptures are the standard by which truth concerning the kingdom of
Christ is to be tested, if they have authority to bind the consciences
of men, there must be some criterion by which they shall be judged.
And this is the criterion――“Salvation is of the Jews.” God’s messengers
and witnesses sprang from them. And Paul confirms this declaration
when he says that the chief advantage which the Jews had was that
“unto them were committed the oracles of God.” The highest creations
of human genius fall short of the special inspiration which belonged to
the prophets and patriarchs and apostles of Israel. The outer courts,
indeed, were given to the Gentiles. Theirs was the world of art, of
science, of commerce, of literature, of politics, of earthly dominion;
but the temple and the altar belonged to the chosen race. Brilliant
stars brightened the darkness of the Gentile sky, but the sun of
spiritual truth shone only to the teachers whom God called out of
Israel; and Homer and Æschylus, and muse and sibyl, must “pale their
ineffectual fires” in the presence of his seers and anointed ones. And
this is confirmed by the use of the symbolical number forty-two. This
number, as we have seen in the Introduction, typifies a period which
has definite limits and fulfills a specific purpose. It may designate
Judaism proper or Gentilism proper. And the meaning here is that now,
and throughout this present cycle of time, the kingdom of God has been
taken from the Jew and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits
of the kingdom. Neither the temple, nor the altar, nor the inspired
Scriptures belong now exclusively to the Jew. The chosen race has
forfeited its prerogative of exclusiveness, and the foot of the Gentile
treads the inner as well as outer court. The Bible belongs to us as
well as to Israel.
With these important and interesting preludes explained, and the reason
of their introduction in this place accounted for, we are prepared to
investigate the vision of the two witnesses.
It has already been said, but the importance of the matter requires its
repetition, that the paragraph containing the vision of the witnesses
is a part of the section of the Revelation of which the trumpet is the
ruling symbol; for it is not until the close of this paragraph that
the seventh trumpet sounds. It seems, therefore, plausible that what
is symbolized by the witnesses has some continuous connection with that
which is designated by the trumpets. And, inasmuch as the trumpets are
emblems of the instrumentalities which the divine Being employs to call
men to repentance, obedience, and the service of himself, the witnesses
are an emblem of some such instrumentality, having the same end in
view, but operating in a different mode. The six trumpets which have
already sounded represent what the divine Being does by way of natural
providence, approaching men by calamities, distresses, the observed
connection between impiety and moral, as well as intellectual,
decadence, and such like means. But nature in any and all of its modes
of manifestation does not comprise all the modes of communication
between God and man. Nor is the testimony which it bears to God the
highest testimony. The same Being who “formeth the mountains, and
createth the wind,” who “maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth
upon the high places of the earth,” also “declareth unto man what is
his thought.” “The heavens,” indeed, “declare the glory of God; and
the firmament showeth his handiwork.” But the law of God does more.
It converteth the soul. Nature’s witness is given by dumb signs or
inarticulate sounds. It has no speech nor language. Its worshipers
may cry aloud to their Baal from morning until the time of the evening
sacrifice, but there is none to hear, nor any God that regards. It is
to and through the human spirit that the divine Spirit must communicate
his deepest truths; nor has he done all that may be done until he has
given to men his word. “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the
word of our God shall stand forever.”
The two witnesses, human and intelligent, aptly and appropriately
represent this higher mode of communication which God employs to
impress and teach men. By them we are to understand the law and the
prophets, the two component parts of the Old Testament Scriptures,
which at the date of the Apocalypse constituted the only canonical
Scriptures known. In the paragraph which follows there is an intimation
of the New Testament; but as yet it was not in existence as a collected
code. The Bible which Christ and his apostles knew was the Jewish Bible.
The proof of this somewhat novel interpretation of the two witnesses,
if, indeed, any interpretation of any part of the Apocalypse can be
called novel, lies in the fact that it explains all the details of the
vision which are presented to us simply, easily, and without any forced
construction. It is essential to group together the separate details,
and then endeavor to explain them.
The seer says of these two witnesses that they prophesy in sackcloth
twelve hundred and sixty days, which, as has been said in discussing
rules of interpretation, is one of the numbers symbolical of Judaism;
they are identified as corresponding with the “two sons of oil, that
stand by the Lord of the whole earth,” of whom Zechariah wrote (Revised
Version); they have power to devour their enemies and shut heaven
by the miracles of withholding the rain, turning waters to blood,
and smiting the earth with plagues. There is a period when their
“testimony” is finished. When that period is reached their enemy, the
beast from the bottomless pit, kills them, and their dead bodies lie
exposed for three and a half days “in the street of the great city,
which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was
crucified.” At the end of this period “the Spirit of life entered into
them, and they stood upon their feet;” and they finally “ascended up to
heaven” amid convulsions which shake the earth and fill men with terror.
How accurately all these features of the paragraph find their
fulfillment in the law and the prophets, or the Old Testament
Scriptures, may be readily shown:
_First._ It is worthy of consideration as a strong point that the
expression, “the law and the prophets” (sometimes “Moses and the
prophets”), is the one almost invariably employed by our Lord in
designating the older Scriptures (Matthew v, 17; vii, 12; xi, 13;
xxii, 40; Luke xvi, 31; xxiv, 27; as also John i, 45; Acts xiii, 15;
xxviii, 23).
_Secondly._ The testimony of the prophets and writers of the Old
Testament may be truly said to have been given in sackcloth. What one
of these messengers of God ever met with a cordial reception? Well
did Stephen say, perhaps in the hearing of John himself, “Which of the
prophets have not your fathers persecuted?” “They were stoned, were
sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered
about in sheepskins, and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted,
tormented” (Hebrews xi, 37; Luke xi, 49‒51).
_Thirdly._ The law and the prophets found their special embodiments and
representatives in Moses (John i, 17) and Elijah (Malachi iv, 4, 5);
one the unequaled statesmen and legislator, the other the most striking
and, in many respects, the greatest of the long line of prophets. The
miracles ascribed to the two witnesses were actually wrought by these
two extraordinary and typical men. To Moses was given power to turn
waters to blood and to smite the earth with plagues. It was at the
prayer of Elijah that the heaven was shut so that it rained not but
according to his word.
_Fourthly._ Zechariah’s vision of the “two olive branches which through
the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves,” and which
are said to be “the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the
whole earth,” finds its most appropriate and exact fulfillment in the
Holy Scriptures, which testify of Jesus (John v, 39). And it was the
representatives of the law and the prophets, or Moses and Elijah, who
were chosen to stand by our Lord when he appeared in glory upon the
Mount of Transfiguration.
_Fifthly._ The “testimony” of the law and the prophets is distinctly
said by our Lord himself to have been “finished” when his own
forerunner, John the Baptist, appeared. “For all the prophets and the
law prophesied until John” (Matthew xi, 13); “The law and the prophets
were until John” (Luke xvi, 16).
_Sixthly._ Although the Jews professedly acknowledged the law and the
prophets to be of divine origin, our Lord emphatically charged against
them that they had by their glosses and traditions in effect abrogated
them; devitalizing them and making their authority to be a dead letter
(Matthew xv, 6; Mark vii, 13; Luke xi, 52).
_Seventhly._ At no period did this nullification of the power of
the Holy Scriptures reach such extremes as during our Lord’s active
ministry on earth. The dead bodies of the law and the prophets may
be said, without exaggeration, to have lain exposed in the streets of
Jerusalem, where our Lord was crucified.
_Eighthly._ The bodies of the two witnesses are said to have lain
“three days and a half.” As the period of our Lord’s active ministry
has been computed at three and a half years the number may refer to
that. But as three and a half is a symbolical number, designating a
half period, it may be used to designate the same here. The ministry of
our Lord was such a half period, which was not completed until it had
been supplemented by the gift of the Holy Spirit.
_Ninthly._ After the “three days and a half the Spirit of life from
God” is said to have “entered into” the two witnesses, “and they
stood upon their feet.” This was remarkably fulfilled on the day
of Pentecost, when, by the illumination and inspiration of the Holy
Ghost, the apostles were moved to draw from the law and the prophets
those convincing arguments and promises and appeals which led to the
conversion of thousands.
_Tenthly._ The two witnesses after their resurrection are said to
have “ascended up to heaven” in the presence of their enemies. This
finds its fulfillment in the fact that the Hebrew Scriptures, with the
added life given them by the New Testament, have been accepted by the
Christian Church, not as the exclusive property of the Jewish Church or
as the archives of the Hebrew nation, but as the common heritage of the
world and the canonical word of God to the whole human race.
_Lastly._ The convulsions of nature which are said to have accompanied
the ascent of the witnesses to heaven were exactly fulfilled, as John
could testify, in the events that followed Pentecost――the terror and
alarm of Christ’s enemies, the fear that came upon all, the shaking
as by an earthquake of the place where the disciples were assembled in
prayer, and the rapid increase in numbers of those who were slain of
the Lord and raised to a new spiritual life.
If this explanation of the episode of the two witnesses is correct
the depreciation, or rather, perhaps, under-appreciation of the Old
Testament, which exists even among those who do not question its
inspiration, is without ground or reason. In the opinion of St. John
the addition of the New Testament does not in any wise supersede or
render obsolete the older Scriptures. In the education of the human
race the Creator did not begin with the more abstruse and highly
developed teachings of the New Testament, but with the natural,
biographical, historical, and providential facts of the Old. With
the exception of the evangelical gospels, which belong really to both
dispensations, since the Christ whose life and words and deeds are
there recorded is both the consummation of the one dispensation and the
seed and promise of the other, no part of holy writ exceeds in interest,
attractiveness, and simplicity the law and the prophets, in which John
and Peter and Paul were trained.
The Old Testament contains, albeit in embryo, all doctrines and truths
essential to the kingdom of Christ. If for a while it was kept secreted
within the bounds of Judaism, this was not because its revelations were
meant exclusively for the chosen people, but that its sacred treasures
might be guarded from waste and wanton destruction until the rest
of the world was prepared to welcome them. If much of its meaning
was misconceived and misconstrued by the Jewish mind, this must be
attributed largely to the frailty and ignorance of human nature. The
New Testament does not so much add to the Old Testament as illustrate,
explain, and apply it. It is the interpreter, not the destroyer, of the
Old. It opens its secrets, brings to light its truths, reveals to us
the face of Jesus Christ everywhere in it, and enforces its teachings
by the power of the Holy Spirit. But the Scriptures of the Old
Testament are the imperishable record of the foundation of Christ’s
kingdom upon earth. Without them the writings of the New Testament
would be without connection with that continuous chain of inspiration
whose first link was forged when God said, “Let there be light.”
And, equally so, without the New Testament the Old would be merely a
foundation lacking a superstructure, and thus incomplete. Its chain of
inspiration would be without any sure anchorage in the future eternity,
and thus hang helpless and useless, with no power to bridge the gulf
between the alpha and omega, the beginning of time and its end. But
the Old Testament can never become obsolete. Not one jot or tittle of
it shall pass away until all is fulfilled. And the revelation given in
the New ♦Testament can no more supersede or abolish it than science can
supersede nature, of which it is the ordained expositor.
♦ “Testameut” replaced with “Testament”
There is a healthiness, too, about the Old Testament like to the quiet
restfulness of nature. When men are disposed to wander from the safe
path into the vagaries of mysticism or asceticism nothing will correct
the aberrance more surely than diligent and profound study of its sober
realities and its everyday life. The reading of it calms the fevers
and dispels the illusions to which we are prone. It brings to us those
soothing influences which we feel when we look at the
“Good gigantic smile of the brown old earth
On autumn mornings,”
or, lying under forest shades, watch the gentle swaying of foliage, or
listen to the purling of brooks, or catch glimpses of the calm blue sky.
We need its concrete facts to save us from the abstractions of a vague
and unreal idealism.
Thus closes the vision of the trumpets. They represent the messengers
whom God employs to call men to repentance, the methods he avails
himself of to forward the kingdom within and without us. He will not
cease to strive with us until every appeal likely to reach us has been
tried. When nature and the supernatural, the word of God in providence
and the richer word of God in revelation, have exerted their power
the resources of the divine Being have been, we may with all reverence
say, exhausted, and the time is ripe for the closing of the drama of
probation, that he which is righteous may be righteous still, and he
which is filthy may be filthy still.
Yet the writer of the Revelation does not allow us to remain in doubt
as to the result of God’s efforts to save a lost world. The wisdom
of God is not astray. “He will rest in his love.” He has himself
absolute confidence in the success of the plans of redemption. When
the _seventh_ and last trumpet shall sound the curtain will fall upon
a world restored to God, upon a paradise regained, and great voices in
heaven shall say, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms
of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever.”
PART IV
The Foes of the Kingdom
PART IV
=The Foes of the Kingdom=
WITH chapter xii another section of the Apocalypse begins. Two great
truths relating to the kingdom of Christ have been discussed――the
fundamental principle of mediatorial sovereignty upon which it is based,
and the instruments, providence and the written word, by which it is
advanced. It follows very naturally and logically that the antagonists
by whom the kingdom is opposed should also be disclosed to us. Out of
his abundant grace and in tender compassion for human ignorance, God
has made known to us, through this marvelous book, the adversaries with
whom we must contend before the kingdom can attain its consummation in
our hearts or in the world at large.
While no part of the Revelation is easy of interpretation, or can be
made intelligible without very careful study both of itself and of the
whole Bible, there has been added to this part of it the embarrassment
of the _odium theologicum_. Bitter controversial strifes have raged
around the interpretation of it and have raised a cloud of prejudices,
through which the truth has been sometimes dimly seen. From all such
prejudices we must free ourselves. We are approaching holy ground, and
it behooves us to put off our shoes, that nothing of human invention
may intervene between our naked feet and the sacred floor of God’s
temple.
We need this caution the more because from the nature of the case the
interpretation of this part carries us more or less into the field of
history. The foes of the kingdom of Christ are visible foes, as well
as invisible. The contest is not only for the individual man, but for
the race. The commission given to the Church is, “Go, preach my Gospel
to every creature;” and the keynote of the song of triumph with which
the last part closed was, “The kingdoms of this world are become the
kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.”
There is, therefore, a tendency to confine the interpretation to the
field of history, to direct the attention to large and collective
bodies of men, either world powers or religious societies, or to those
historical events and cycles of events which have apparently changed
the currents of the ages, and to insist that in these the fulfillment
of the prophecy lies.
But history itself is only the record of individuals. We delude
ourselves when we fancy that by association anything is created. That
mystical something which is imagined to be in collective bodies more
than in the individuals that compose them is a mere figment of the
brain, and to discuss it is simply to revive the barren conceits of the
schoolmen. A Church is only “a congregation of believing men;” a State
is a coöperative association of individuals, not a corporation; and
neither one has any powers or forces other than those which exist in
the individual members. Man is both the microcosm and the macrocosm.
The chief value of the inspired book which we are now studying lies in
the fact that it discloses to us those forces, spiritual and otherwise,
the conflict between which makes up the life history of each individual
of mankind. It is a chart meant for every navigator of this boundless
ocean of human existence. Its truths will be as precious and important
to the last man on this globe as they are to us. The reefs and breakers
it describes are not perils past which any age can sail and then look
back upon as things done with, but dangers which beset every voyager.
It is true that in the history of large bodies of men, whether secular
or religious in their character――in the temptations, declension, growth,
and triumph of nations and Churches――illustrations of its truths and
fulfillments of its predictions will be found. But these, we must
insist, are merely illustrations. Long as the world shall last the
♦Apocalypse will prove itself to be a part of God’s boon of revelation,
in that each follower of Christ shall find it of inestimable value for
his own private guidance, inspiration, and study.
♦ “Apocalyse” replaced with “Apocalypse”
Looking by the light of God’s lamp through the ages to come, John
was allowed to foresee the successful completion of the life work and
plans of Jesus the Saviour. He who began both his gospel and his great
epistle with “the beginning” also follows the course of the drama of
redemption to its final “amen.” The saint who, leaning on the bosom of
Jesus, looked up to him as the Author of his faith was also permitted
to fall at his majestic feet and worship him as its Finisher. And, from
personal communion with and contemplation of him as the Son of man,
he rose to the grander conception of him as the Christ, the Word of
God, King of kings, and Lord of lords. He was taught, also, that the
progress through which his own conceptions of the Son of God had passed
was but a type and example of that which shall take place in time on
the field of the world and in the hearts of mankind. The cross upon
which Jesus of Nazareth suffered was, indeed, a throne from which he
ascended to the crown of the universe. But John, too, saw that ere that
final consummation can be reached there are foes to be encountered,
hindrances to be removed, antagonists to be overthrown. A great and
effectual door is opened unto us, but there are many adversaries. To
the consideration of these he therefore now calls our attention:
1. _The Dragon, or Satan._――The first of the adversaries with whom the
kingdom of Christ has to dispute supremacy is the devil, the archfiend
and enemy of God and man.
That Satan, the evil one, is referred to in the description of the
great red dragon having seven heads, ten horns, and seven diadems seems
an interpretation so natural that it is hardly worth while to seek
for far-fetched meanings when so plausible an explanation lies near at
hand. The ten horns (Zechariah saw but four――Zechariah i, 18) are the
instruments with which he seeks to scatter and destroy the sheep of
God. The seven heads with diadems represent the pride and haughtiness
of spirit in which he boasts that the power and glory of all kingdoms
have been delivered to him and that he gives them to whom he will.
It is a struggle for life and death between him and the Christ. If
Paul, the man of affairs, with his practical conception of things
in their concrete relations, says, “Our wrestling is not against
flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers,
against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual
hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Revised Version), much
more strongly does John, with his intuition of abstract principles,
recognize and emphasize the power and working of the dark spirit whose
names are Satan and “destroyer.” No writer of the New Testament speaks
oftener or more clearly of the evil spirit than does John. In vivid
imagery and with graphic condensation he sums up the history of the
kingdom of darkness, the long record of Satan’s undying antagonism to
the kingdom of Christ.
The woman arrayed “with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon
her head a crown of twelve stars” (see Genesis xxxvii, 9), represents
the Church collectively and in its most general expression; primarily,
the Jewish Church, inasmuch as Christianity had just begun its mission;
but not confined thereto. Against the Church, against every individual
of it, this murderer and liar from the beginning wages relentless
warfare. His is the power behind all other antagonisms. To devour the
child of the woman in the hour of its birth, to destroy humanity itself
if he can, seems to be the aim of his being. Not a soul is now born
into the kingdom of Christ by regenerating grace but Satan is there to
crush the newly-given life, if possible, in its inception.
When the first gospel of salvation and victory was given to Eve, “Thy
seed shall bruise the serpent’s head,” Satan began his machinations to
defeat the prophecy, even though he knew that he could do no more than
bruise the heel of the promised seed.
When the promise given to Abraham of a posterity countless as the stars
of heaven was about to receive its fulfillment in the extraordinary
fertility of the sons of Jacob in Egypt, it was Satan who inspired
Pharaoh to issue the cruel edict commanding the death of every Hebrew
male child.
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea it was the same dragon that
urged Herod to his mad purpose of slaying every young child throughout
its coasts. “This is the heir; let us kill him, that the inheritance
may be ours.”
And it is against this wily foe, “the prince of the power of the air,”
“the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” that we
all have continually to struggle.
For protection against such an adversary there is certainly need of
divine aid. And that help has never been withheld. “There were given
to the woman the two wings of a great eagle.” Is not this an echo of
Exodus xix, 4, “I bare you on eagles’ wings,” and also of Psalm xci, 4,
“And under his wings shalt thou trust”? And in addition to this we
are told that God prepared “a place” in the wilderness where the woman
might fly and be nourished. Does not this refer to Palestine, that
quiet, secluded land, nigh the great highways of the world and yet
aloof from them, where in comparative isolation Israel might develop
her own resources and grow in strength until she should be ready for
her broader mission? If the purpose of the divine Being fell short of
full realization the fault was not his, but hers, through her lust to
be like the surrounding nations.
The numbers, too, representing the period of this seclusion, “twelve
hundred and sixty days,” and “a time, times, and half a time,” are
forms of three and a half, which, as has been said in the Introduction,
symbolizes Judaism, or any cycle with a definite purpose which is,
however, only a half period.
And further confirmation of the reference to the Church of Israel
is found in the allusion to the archangel Michael, who is always
represented in the Scriptures as sustaining some special relation to
Israel (Daniel x, 21; xii, 1).
Yet, mighty as Satan is and venomous as is his hostility, the believer
is endowed with weapons of offense and defense still more potent.
“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their
testimony” (or “witness” with reference, doubtless, to the testimony of
the two witnesses of the preceding chapter). In other words, the cross
of Christ and the word of God are the conquering weapons with which
believers win the victory over Satan. The Lord Jesus had most plainly
foretold the secret of victory in the hearing of John when he had said,
“Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world
be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all
men unto me.” And, doubtless, these words came with fullness and force
to the memory of the apostle when he heard the “loud voice saying in
heaven, Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God,
and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast
down.”
Not yet, however, is Satan ready to cease his efforts to destroy. He
changes the field of conflict, but does not relinquish the malice of
his assault. If he cannot in heaven, that is, the Church, countervail
the kingdom of Christ, he will attempt it in the earth, on the field
of secular life. “The serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood,
after the woman: that he might cause her to be carried away of the
flood.” There is, perhaps, a reference here to Isaiah lix, 19: “When
the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift
up a standard against him.” Looking back at that chapter, we shall find
that the flood spoken of means an unusual increase of social disorders
and crimes. That is most probably the meaning here. Satan is the foe
alike of God and man. His enmity is directed as much against all order
and morality as against goodness and righteousness. He is that “lawless
one” of whom Paul speaks in 2 Thessalonians ii, 3 (Revised Version). If
he were allowed to carry out his will he would subvert all government,
spiritual or secular. But, says the apostle and seer, “The earth helped
the woman.” For its own protection and existence the State must execute
laws, must preserve order, and must secure itself against anarchy and
unbridled libertinism; and, in so far as it guards social morality, it
fosters spiritual prosperity. In restraining crime and violence it must
needs allow the kingdom of Christ opportunity to grow.
Foiled thus again, Satan does not abandon the conflict, but resorts to
other and more wily means to make war with the “remnant” of the woman’s
seed “which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of
Jesus Christ;” and the history of these efforts must next engage our
attention.
2. _The First Wild Beast, or the Spirit of Worldliness._――In the
chapter of the Revelation which precedes the appearance of the beasts
(Revelation xii, 12) the warning had been given, “Woe to the inhabiters
of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you,
having great wrath.” We are now to witness the fulfillment of this
warning. The apostle saw two wild beasts rise, one from the sea, the
other from the land, both of them formidable foes and intense in their
hostility to the kingdom of Christ. There can hardly be a question but
that these are intended to represent the means by which Satan, thwarted
in his direct assaults, endeavors to carry on his warfare. And just
as Christ, in carrying forward his mediatorial kingdom, makes use of
the two instrumentalities, providence and the written word, so also,
in imitation of him, his fierce antagonist has his two emissaries and
agents. We shall find as we study this part of the Revelation that one
of the most deceptive and dangerous arts which Satan employs is his
manner of counterfeiting the form and aping the methods of Christ, in
hope that he may thereby delude the unsuspecting or heedless. We ought,
therefore, very carefully to note every feature, that we may be able
to detect these dangerous incarnations of the spirit of evil, and thus
escape his snares.
The first wild beast of John’s vision rose from the sea――an expression
which, when used symbolically, designates the secular or temporal
world, in antithesis to the Church. His distinctive characteristics are
intense pride, the possession of vast power, strong vitality enabling
him to recover speedily from severe injuries, insatiable craving after
homage and ability to secure it, outrageous blasphemy, and undisguised
as well as unceasing hostility to Christ and his saints. It is a mooted
question whether by this beast John meant to describe and foretell
the coming of some individual person or some organization of men,
secular or religious, State or Church; or whether the characteristics
he portrays are intended to represent some principle of evil, always
at work, mightier and more enduring than any organization of men, which
manifests itself in various forms and at all times, but transcends all
its manifestations, and against which, because it is one of Satan’s
most successful means of antagonism, every Christian must keep
perpetual watch.
The latter of these hypotheses seems to be more in keeping with the
cast of John’s strongly idealistic and abstract mind, and also with the
purpose of the Apocalypse as intended for the edifying of believers.
And furthermore, as the kingdom of God is not something that cometh
“with observation,” so that men can say of it, “Lo here! or, lo there!”
but is something “within” us, so its opponent is not to be sought in
any particular organization or special event or single individual, but
rather in some abstract principle, all the more dangerous because it
exists separate and distinct from these.
In his description of this wild beast John draws his data from
the prophecy of Daniel; and a study of that book will aid in the
elucidation of this. It is, indeed, true that in the mind of Daniel
the antagonists and allies of God alike assumed the form of kingdoms,
or world powers. But this resulted from the fact that his cast of mind
was essentially concrete, and also because as a statesman and man of
affairs, charged with the administration of finances and politics,
accustomed to the handling of men in collective bodies and to deal with
matters affecting their external relations, his conceptions of religion
regarded rather its outward manifestations than its inward power.
We are not, however, compelled to believe that John, while using the
prophecies of Daniel as his basis, was limited to the conceptions of
the older prophet. He had a better key to the hieroglyphics of the
kingdom and could read their meaning more clearly. Behind the forces
which play their part upon the world’s stage he could recognize the
spiritual principles of which they were incarnations.
The world power which loomed largest to the mind of Daniel, and whose
hostility to the kingdom of Christ was most dreaded by him, was one
that sprang up after the death and among the successors of Alexander
the Great. That extraordinary captain and gifted statesman, the first
ruler who grasped the conception of the essential unity of mankind and
who strove to realize it by the fusion of races into one nation, left
no one at his death capable of comprehending or executing his plans;
and the empire that was formed by his ten generals was a heterogeneous
one, possessing elements both of weakness and strength that were
incapable of being welded into unity. Among the descendants and
successors of these generals was Antiochus Epiphanes, whose hatred
of Judaism amounted to real monomania, and whose insane purpose
to exterminate utterly the customs, usages, religion, and even the
existence of Judaism carried him to such extremes as to arouse a spirit
of revolt which, under the guidance of the Maccabees, defeated his
intent. In him the prophet Daniel foresaw the incarnation of all that
is hostile to Christ and his kingdom.
In the days of John the political sovereignty of the world was wielded
by a still more formidable power, one that combined in itself the
strength of all the four kingdoms of Daniel, uniting the lion, the bear,
and the leopard with the added and imparted authority and power of the
dragon. That power was the Roman Empire, between which and Christianity
had already begun the antagonism which was to leave its decisive and
disastrous effects upon both.
The policy of Rome toward conquered peoples and religions had not
been one, customarily, of harsh severity; indeed, it had been marked
in general by unusual liberality. Having so many gods in her own
Pantheon, it has been said, the addition or subtraction of a few
more or less was hardly worth consideration. But upon one thing Rome
invariably and absolutely insisted――the preservation of public order.
Her administration was one of strict, even stern, paternalism. The
individual existed for the State, and had no rights but such as the
State allowed. The central power did all the thinking; the subject
had only to submit, whatever his personal wishes. Upon the emperor,
as the embodiment of the State, devolved the onerous responsibility of
securing and, if need were, of enforcing peaceful and lawful relations
between men and men. Whenever therefore, the profession of any religion
or the organization of any guild or association interfered with the
prosperity of any branch of trade or commerce or manufacture, the
emperor felt called upon to interpose, in order to redress the injury
caused or wrong suffered thereby. The more conscientious and upright
the emperor, the more he felt the responsibility of administering the
laws; and thus just and righteous rulers, like Trajan and Antoninus and
Marcus Aurelius, were more likely to enforce these rules of order, even
to the point of persecution, than such men as Nero and Caligula and
Domitian, upon whom moral considerations sat loosely.
The early persecutions of Christians sprang out of this fact. There
were things Christian men would not do. They would not eat meat
sacrificed to idols; they would not attend the spectacles of the
theater; they would not worship or own images; and, as the trades and
professions that lived by these things suffered with the increase of
Christians, complaint was made to the emperor, and the power of the
State invoked in behalf of public order. The riot at Ephesus (Acts xix,
23‒41) is a case in illustration.
Very soon, however, the Roman authorities came to see that there was
something back of Christian worship that differentiated it from other
cults. There was a principle of individual liberty, a conviction of
personal freedom, an appreciation of unseen and divine realities which,
if unchecked, threatened the paternalism and the emperor――the worship
of the Cæsars and the continuance of the empire; and so Christians
began to be persecuted simply because they were Christians. Thus began
the antagonism that did not cease until the empire became nominally
Christian, and the Church, striving after the universality of the
empire, became worldly and paternal in its turn. This antagonism John
clearly discerned, and reveals it in the Apocalypse.
But we shall be astray if we conceive that the beast which the
apostle saw symbolized only the Roman or any other empire. There
is an evil principle which was in existence long before that empire
was established, and has continued with unabating energy since its
dissolution; of whose power earthly and worldly kingdoms are but
manifestations; which Satan has employed in all ages as one of his most
successful weapons; and whose deadly hostility to the Christian and the
Church is implacable. It is the principle of worldliness, that spirit
of the world against which the Bible so frequently and faithfully warns
us.
It is not easy to define worldliness. If it could be described
exactly, and its bounds accurately meted, its danger would be greatly
diminished. If we could point to the doing or abstaining from doing
of specified things, or the using or refraining from using of any
particular faculties, and say, “This is worldliness and this only,”
how much easier it would be to avoid it! Worldliness is a principle,
a spirit and temper of the soul. It can find a field for its exercise
anywhere and everywhere, in things essentially good as well as in the
essentially evil. Its intrinsic spirit lies in this――that it disengages
men and things from their normal relation of dependence upon and
subjection to God, and sets them up as rivals to him. It assumes to
displace the Creator from his rightful sovereignty over thoughts and
desires and affections and activities, and transfers allegiance to
some created thing. It substitutes something temporal and earthly for
God and gives to it the worship that belongs undividedly to him. It
manifests itself, John tells us, in “the lust of the flesh, the lust of
the eyes, and the vainglory of life.” This is the spirit of which the
Bible speaks so plainly and forcibly in passages like these: “If the
world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you;” “The
carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of
God, neither indeed can be;” “Know ye not that the friendship of the
world is enmity with God? whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the
world, is the enemy of God;” “If any man love the world, the love of
the Father is not in him.” And every characteristic of the wild beast
which John saw exhibits this spirit of worldliness. It, and it alone,
exhausts the fullness of the description.
Of this beast which John saw, one of the heads was, as it were,
“wounded [or slain] to death”――the very words which were used in the
description of the Lamb (Revelation v, 6), as if there were in this an
attempted, although feeble, imitation of Christ. Worldliness, too, has
its Calvaries and Gethsemanes; but they fall far short in measure and
in purpose of the great sacrifice of the cross. They are compulsory,
not self-chosen sacrifices; they are not redemptive and substitutional
in their design, but retributive inflictions of divine justice; they
involve but a part of the being, and are not, as was Christ’s offering,
the surrender of the whole self.
Many such wounds has worldliness received. The serpent’s head has been
bruised again and again by the seed of the woman. In the judgments
which have come upon the world throughout the course of its history――in
the deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the exodus from
Egypt, the overthrow of Nineveh and Babylon, the fall of Jerusalem――its
spirit has been rebuked, condemned, punished. Indeed, in all the
dissolutions and decay of nature――in the fading of the grass, in the
falling of the flower and of the leaf――the warning is being constantly
given, “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” Most of all,
in the cross of Christ has the world received its deadliest wound. But
how soon is the wound healed, how quickly are the lessons of providence
forgotten! and the tide of worldliness, stayed for a moment, resumes
its volume and rapidity and carries its victims to their destruction.
It is this power of recuperation which contributes to the might of
worldliness and makes it the more dangerous. Success adds to its
fascinations and multiplies its votaries. “All the world wondered
after the beast” whose deadly wound was healed. In comparison with its
triumphs the cross of Christ becomes a stumbling-block to some and
foolishness to others, because of the paucity of its victories. And in
worshiping the beast its followers are scarcely aware, or are oblivious
to the fact, that they are worshiping the dragon himself; for Paul says,
“The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and
not to God.”
Another striking and conspicuous characteristic of the first beast was
his virulent blasphemy. Upon his heads were “the names of blasphemy.”
The voices of his mouth were blasphemy. His fierce, ambitious purpose
to displace God and usurp his throne――and this is what the Bible
defines blasphemy to be――moved him to demand such homage as can be
given rightly to God alone, and to set up his own tabernacle and name
as competitors with God’s. Is not this descriptive of the spirit of
worldliness? How exacting it is of the worship of its devotees! In
place of the Creator, who is blessed for ever, it substitutes the
creature. It enthrones nature in some one or other of its phases as the
rival of the divine Being. It will not admit the visible universe, with
its laws, to be merely the vehicle through which God reveals himself
and his thoughts, but demands for it equality of homage with its Maker.
It does not claim for itself power to work miracles, and will not
believe that any are possible. It does not base its authority upon any
supernatural revelation, and denies that any is needful. Like Absalom,
in the gates it whispers in every man’s ears, “O that I were made judge
in the land!” and thus draws unwary souls into treason against their
King. It arrogates to itself the right to the whole of man’s being――to
all beauty and life, to all literature and art, to all recreation and
enjoyment, to the exclusive and undivided use and administration of all
earthly powers and faculties.
And how ruthless and cruel this spirit of worldliness can be! Does any
human soul, driven by dissatisfaction and heartache, seek to lift the
veil and penetrate to the secret shrine of the universe, or to pierce
the “rose mesh” of mystery that surrounds us and ascend to the divine
Spirit above and beyond it, how quickly is the fascinating smile of the
world turned to bitter scorn, and its smooth flattery to remorseless
persecution! With what haughtiness and assumption does it contend that,
in everything relating to music and poetry, to the æsthetic arts, to
finance and politics and social matters, the question of morals has no
place and God and religion have no right to enter!
To this beast, we are further informed, power, or authority, was given
“to continue forty and two months.” This number, it has been previously
said, is the symbol of an epoch which is limited and fractional, but
which has a definite purpose pervading it.
Throughout the whole period of Judaism this beast raged with all his
ferocity against the Church of the Old Testament. And, although the
wild beast next to be delineated was a more formidable adversary to
religion than even he, yet the temptation to fall into the ways, and
follow the practices, and to drop down to the religious level of the
ungodly world of heathenism around constituted a peril to the Hebrew
faith against which the prophets had need frequently to lift their
voices. And how constant even now is the peril to the Christian Church
and the Christian believer of falling into the worship of the same
beast of worldliness, is so patent a truth that every man’s observation
and experience are sufficient to prove it. The victims of worldliness
are, indeed, many, and to resist sorely tries “the patience and the
faith of the saints.” But its doom is sure and irretrievable, whether
that doom shall come by the sword of God or by captivity. Its own
methods of hostility shall be turned against itself.
3. _The Second Wild Beast, or the Spirit of False Prophetism._――In
attempting to solve the mystery of the second wild beast which John
saw we are confronted with a task much more serious than has as yet
been presented to us. Not only is this antagonist of Christ a more
formidable one than any hitherto encountered, but there seems an almost
purposed obscurity and indistinctness about the description, as if to
the seer himself the beast appeared in so vague and nebulous a form,
or else was of such composite and heterogeneous character, as to be
incapable of more exact delineation. The only way to reach the truth is
to seek out such features of the description as may be regarded plain,
and from them to advance to the more perplexing ones.
It will be noticed, then, that the second beast rises not as the
preceding from the sea, but from the earth; that is, from the Church,
not in its ideal state, but in its actual condition, as the field of
human activity and influence.
Again, it is noticeable that, while in the description of the first
beast the expression “it was given him” occurs again and again (much
more conspicuously in the original than in the translation), in the
case of the second one this expression is, in the main, although not
in every instance, superseded by words suggesting active agency――“he
doeth,” “he maketh,” “he causeth”――these being all various renderings
of the same Greek word. This would seem to imply that, while the first
beast is merely an emissary or instrument executing the will of another,
the second differs from him in that he has, or assumes to have, some
power of originating action, some causative agency, and that he regards
himself as having independent authority. While, therefore, the results
effected by both are the same (“He had power to give breath to the
image of the beast”), those results are brought about in different ways.
Another very important feature of the description is that, while the
distinguishing characteristic of the first beast is blasphemy――an open
and undisguised assumption of the prerogatives of God, with intense and
avowed hostility to him――the properties of the second are duplicity,
deception, and self-deceit――perversion of the truth rather than
antagonism to it; and hypocrisy, if more insidious, is far deadlier
than open opposition. He has the appearance of a lamb, while speaking
as a dragon. He is said to work miracles, or at least is said to
profess so to do, which the first beast did not. And he counterfeits
the work of God, in that by a peculiar mark he stamps upon his
followers his claim to them, as the divine Being affixes to his a seal
in attestation of his ownership.
One further remark may be made. Three times in the subsequent part
of the Revelation (Revelation xvi, 13; xix, 20; xx, 10) these two
adversaries of Christ are brought into juxtaposition, and in these
instances it is the first beast alone who is designated by that name.
The second beast has the synonym of “the false prophet.” The term
seems to mark his superior power or craft; to the malice of a beast
is added the higher intelligence of a man. The combination attests the
formidable character of this wily antagonist.
In this last-named feature lies a suggestion which may serve as a clew
to the interpretation of the symbol and unveil its mystery. A false
prophet can stand only in contrast with a true one. It will be needful,
therefore, to discuss, somewhat in detail, the characteristic functions
of the prophetical office as set forth in the Scriptures.
“The usage of the word [prophet],” says Cremer,¹ “is clear. It
signifies one to whom and through whom God speaks. What really
constitutes the prophet is immediate intercourse with God, a divine
communication of what the prophet must declare. Two things, therefore,
go to make the prophet――an insight granted by God into the divine
secrets or mysteries, and a communication to others of those secrets.
New Testament prophets were for the Christian Church what Old Testament
prophets were for Israel, inasmuch as they maintained intact the
immediate connection between the Church and, not the Holy Spirit in her,
but the God of her salvation above her. The prophets, both in the old
and the new dispensations, were messengers or media of communication
between the upper and the lower world.”
¹ _Lexicon of New Testament Greek_, third English edition,
pp. 568, 569.
“The primary idea of a prophet,” says Ewald,¹ “is of one who has seen
or heard something which does not concern himself, or not himself alone,
which will not let him rest. It wholly absorbs him, ... so that he
no longer hears or is conscious of himself, but of the loud and clear
voice of another who is higher than himself. He acts and speaks, not of
his own accord; a higher one impels him, to resist whom is sin. It is
his God, who is also the God of those to whom he must speak.”
¹ _Prophets of the Old Testament_, vol. i, p. 7. London,
Williams and Norgate.
“That which,” says Oehler,¹ “made the prophet a prophet was not his
natural gifts nor his own intention; and that which he proclaimed as
the prophetic word was not the mere result of instruction received nor
the product of his own reflection. The prophet, as such, knows himself
to be the organ of divine revelation, in virtue both of a divine
vocation capable of being known by him as such, ... and also of his
endowment with the enlightening, sanctifying, and strengthening Spirit
of God.”
¹ _Theology of the Old Testament_, §§ 205, 206. New York, Funk
and Wagnalls.
With these statements the concurrent testimony of the New Testament
is in harmony: “God ... at sundry times and in divers manners spake
in time past unto the fathers by the prophets” (Hebrews i, 1); “The
prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter i, 21).
It was, therefore, essential to the credibility and authority of the
prophet that he should have received some direct revelation from God.
The message intrusted to him to deliver must be from a source above and
outside himself. It was not sufficient that God spake in him; he must
be able to say that God spake to him. When to the student prepared
by the guidance of a teacher to receive them nature reveals its facts
and laws, these come to him as something external to him. They are not
suggestions or inspirations of his own mind, but owe their origin to a
source exterior to it. So likewise with the prophet. How the revelation
came to him, and how his hearers became convinced that God had spoken
to him, are questions that do not touch the truth of his message. The
important thing is that the prophet was the agent and representative of
God in delivering a message which had previously been committed to him.
Herein lay the distinction between the priesthood and the prophetical
office. A priest was a man on whom was laid the responsibility of
appearing before God on behalf of men; a prophet was one who stood in
the presence of men on behalf of God. A priest represented man in the
court of God; a prophet represented God in the court of human life. A
priest was man’s advocate; a prophet was God’s advocate. The function
of the priest was to intercede for his fellows; identity of condition
and tender sympathy with them were therefore prime requisites. The
function of a prophet was to deliver God’s word to man; strict fidelity
to his message and to the truth were his essential qualifications.
As the priesthood, then, was a type of Christ, finding its perfect
realization in him who laid down his life a ransom for us, the
prophetical office was a type of the Holy Ghost, whose work it is
to convey to man the message of God, whether it be of conviction, of
justification, of sanctification, of inspiration, or of assurance.
If, therefore, by a “false Christ” is meant one who usurps the place
of Christ and substitutes himself for him, demanding from men the
allegiance due only to the Son of God, then by a “false prophet” must
be meant one who unconsciously or purposely substitutes himself for the
Holy Spirit, setting forth his own conceptions or visions as the voice
of God.
“The characteristic,” says Oehler,¹ “of the false prophets is declared
to be that they speak that which they themselves have devised. These
latter are designated (Ezekiel xiii, 2) as prophets ‘out of their own
hearts,’ who ‘follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing;’ ‘they
speak,’ according to Jeremiah xxiii, 16, ‘a vision of their own heart,
and not out of the mouth of the Lord.’”
¹ _Theology of the Old Testament_, p. 464.
No stage of history has been free from such presumptuous prophets.
Their existence and the disastrous work they wrought are set forth
again and again in the Old Testament Scriptures. But that their
appearance in larger numbers and under more formidable guises may be
expected in the New Testament dispensation follows from a consideration
of the influence of Christianity upon human nature.
Unquestionably, one marked result of that copious effusion of the Holy
Spirit, which beginning at Pentecost has continued until now, was a
quickening of the human soul to a realization of its individuality.
Fifteen centuries of sad experience and a convulsion which disrupted
Western Christendom were needed to bring any large portion of the
Church to an appreciation of the privileges which inhere in this
individualism. Since the great Reformation of the sixteenth century,
men have come by freer study of the Bible to discern more clearly the
possibilities which it teaches of personal consciousness of sonship,
and of the individual possession by the Holy Spirit of every soul
availing itself of the privilege; although there have never been
wanting those who have discerned the possibility of individual
communion with the spiritual world.
In individualism lurks a danger against which no revelation can
absolutely secure us. I may transgress its prescribed limitations and
become excessive. It may strive after independence from its Creator
and put forth its hands to forbidden fruit. It may assume prerogatives
which the divine Being reserves to himself. It may substitute its
own imaginings and volitions for voices of God, and displace that
real spirituality which only the Holy Ghost can create with an
auto-spiritualism which is deceptive, illusory, and specious, the
precursor of spiritual and intellectual anarchy.
Our Lord gave warning of this peril when, predicting the trials which
should come, he said, “There shall arise false Christs, and false
prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if
it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Paul foresaw it,
saying to the Ephesian elders, “Of your own selves shall men arise,
speaking perverse things, to drawaway disciples after them.” It was
this which led John to write, “Believe not every spirit, but try the
spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone
out into the world.”
The writer of the Revelation had no need to go beyond his own memory to
find symptoms of this spirit. Already it had begun to manifest itself
in the apostolic Church. Simon Magus was a conspicuous but not solitary
example. In the epistles to the seven churches there are cautions
against “the Nicolaitans” and “the woman Jezebel, which calleth herself
a prophetess,” very distinct from those which denounce the pleasures
or the persecutions of the world. In the ante-Nicene age gnosticism,
with its pretensions to a theosophy more profound, a knowledge
more extensive and exact, a code of ethics more consistent, and a
self-denial more rigid than those of the faithful, was a more dangerous
adversary than the Roman empire; and we who appreciate the skillfulness
of its specious arguments realize that nothing but the providence of
God carried the artless and unsuspicious Church safely through the
peril.¹ And throughout the ages since there has been a continuous
reappearance of this spirit, sometimes within, sometimes outside
the Church; not always avowedly antagonistic to Christianity, but
assuming to be a more perfect form of it; not impugning the authority
of the Scriptures, but claiming to possess deeper views of their
esoteric meaning; not openly subverting the foundations of morals,
but superseding them by a show of a more austere and uncompromising
sanctimoniousness. It so puts on the appearance of a lamb that its
dragon nature is hard to detect. It has cropped out in Manichæism, in
Paulicianism, in Albigensianism, among hermits and pillar saints, among
pietists, mystics, occultists, and other professors of a strained and
exalted perfection and illumination to which only the elect initiate
can aspire, and from which the common masses of believers are excluded.
¹ Bigg, _Christian Platonists of Alexandria_, Bampton Lectures,
1886, lecture i, p. 35; Harnack, _History of Dogma_, book i,
chapter iv.
It is hard to describe this spirit by a single name. It wears so many
forms that no one word can comprehend all of them. Even the apostolic
pen failed to depict this adversary clearly or sketch its outline with
distinctness. Deceit seems to be the pervading and controlling element
of its being, and to affect both substance and form. But it has as
its usual accompaniment one mark which it stamps upon its devotees――a
scrupulous and rigid asceticism which deludes itself with the hope
of emancipation from the necessary conditions of earthly life, which
denounces as sinful things proper in themselves, simply because
they are natural or secular, and which aims at the profitless and
impracticable task of anticipating in this life the celestial state of
disembodied spirits. No creature can ever with impunity contravene the
laws imposed upon his nature. The abnormal and excessive development
of one side of man’s constitution is sure to involve a corresponding
atrophy of some other side, and thus the sins excluded by one system
of defenses find entrance through some other avenue left unguarded. And
the constant result of asceticism has been in the end to revive with
new power the worldliness it aimed to destroy; so that in this sense
the second beast gives “life” and breath “unto the image” of the first.
For the termination of all hyperspiritualism has been either in an
arrogant self-exaltation, the very opposite of Christian humility and
love, or in an antinomianism which, under the affectation of liberty,
gives loose rein to sensualism.
To the question, which thus becomes of vital importance, How shall we
“try the spirits” to know “whether they are of God”? John has elsewhere
furnished a sufficient answer: “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth
not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is
that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come;
and even now already is it in the world” (1 John iv, 2, 3).
The central principle of all asceticism, in whatever form, and whether
perceived and acknowledged or not, is that matter is essentially evil
and spirit essentially good. It is in the contact of soul with body
and of spirit with matter that sin lies. Holiness, therefore, means
only the diminution or destruction of this contact. All bodily desires,
activities, and enjoyments, if they cannot be annihilated, must be
reduced to the minimum, that thereby the ascendency of the spirit
may be gained and maintained. Thus human nature is mutilated to half
its capacities. Religion becomes only a “concision,” not a process of
transformation. The problem of redemption is no longer the moral one
of the salvation of the soul from the guilt and pollution of sin, but
the metaphysical one of the liberation of the spirit from matter.¹
By such as hold this view of things the assumption by the Son of
God of the likeness of sinful flesh, his birth, his fellowship with
earthly conditions and experiences, can never be fully accepted; his
crucifixion is attenuated into a figure of speech or becomes a mere
parable, and cannot be the necessary means of our salvation.
¹ Möller, _History of the Christian Church_, vol. i, pp.
152, 153. New York, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892.
Against such a theory the Revelation is one long protest. Its keynote
is salvation through “the Lamb that was slain.” Nor does anything prove
so conclusively that John was the author of the Apocalypse as the fact
that in it, in the fourth gospel, and in the epistles which bear his
name, the central and fundamental truth was the same: “The Word was
made flesh, and dwelt among us;” and, “This is he that came by water
and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood.
And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.”
The acquisition of knowledge depends as much upon a right method as
upon an earnest purpose. Alphabets must be mastered before sentences
can be read. No one can understand the higher mathematics who has not
been grounded in the fundamental axioms. And one of the axioms of the
spiritual life is that the Holy Spirit cannot be given until Jesus is
glorified (John vii, 39). Whoever does not accept, with all implied
therein, the exemplary earthly life and the atoning and sacrificial
death of the Son of God may well pause to reflect whether the spirit
which leads and moves him is indeed the Spirit of God, or whether it
is not the spirit of evil and untruth. We may not set limits to the
spiritual flights of which the soul is capable, but it must have a
solid basis from which to start; otherwise it wastes its strength in
aimless wanderings amid mazy fogs and vagaries.
The path of truth lies between extremes, and from either side of the
ridge along which it winds steep declines lead to dangerous abysses.
If a man, on the one hand, accepts to the full the reality of the
incarnation of the Son of God, and then does not advance to that other
revealed truth, that the Holy Ghost is of equal power and divinity and
that his mission is as wide in its range and as complete in its effects,
religion will be to him a thing of externals, of outward and mechanical
forms and rites. On the other hand, the ascetic who would aspire to
the full heights of the revelation of the Holy Spirit without accepting
what must precede success――the real humanity of our Lord, his cross,
his grave, his resurrection――will surely miss the path and be lost in
abstractions, fanaticisms, delusion, and deceit.
One last feature descriptive of the second beast remains to be
considered――the number of his name. “Let him that hath understanding
count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his
number is six hundred threescore and six.” If John meant to cover a
mystery he has certainly succeeded, for no explanation has as yet been
offered convincing enough to command the acceptance of the Church.
Unquestionably this is the most difficult to solve of all the problems
of the book, and the apostle is thought to intimate this in saying,
“Here is wisdom;” although possibly his meaning is that the special
need for wisdom lies in defense against the wiles of this adversary,
rather than in solving the mystery of his name.
The interpretation which has met with the largest assent is based on
the usage of employing the letters of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets as
numerals. Men have attempted to discover some name the letters of which
when added will give the numerical value six hundred and sixty-six.
The name which has secured the largest number of advocates is Lateinos
(Latin), which, written in Greek characters and numbered, gives six
hundred and sixty-six. By Roman Catholic interpreters who accept this
solution the empire of Rome is supposed to be meant; by Protestants,
the Church of Rome. Dr. Adam Clarke thought this solution to “amount
nearly to demonstration.”
In recent times many German and other scholars, mainly for reasons
based on a special theory of the date of the Revelation, prefer the
words Nero Cæsar, which, written in Hebrew letters, number six hundred
and sixty-six. Irenæus (died about 202), who attempted the problem, out
of many names preferred Teitan, possibly to suggest an analogy between
the attempts of Roman emperors to crush the Church and the unsuccessful
war of the Titans against the gods, without venturing to put forth his
opinions in more definite form. Very many other names of men, ancient
and modern, have been proposed, with greater or less plausibility; for
curiosity to decipher numerical symbols, when it possesses a man, holds
him with almost the fascination of gambling. But it is apparent that
the combination of names possible with only a few letters is so much
beyond computation that almost apostolical inspiration is requisite to
decide upon the right one.
To the word “Lateinos,” strong as are its claims, the objection lies
that the Roman or Latin empire can scarcely be meant, since the beast
John describes is evidently a spiritual power, not a secular one. Nor
can the Roman Church be meant, for it was not known as Latin in the
days of the apostle, nor for centuries afterward; and, as one design
of the Apocalypse was to comfort and instruct the generation in which
John lived, it would have been inconsistent with that design to select
a name which could have no meaning intelligible to it or to many
generations succeeding. There is wisdom in the words of Bleek:¹ “The
discovery that a definite name contains this number as the value of its
letters in Greek would not warrant us to assume the correctness of the
interpretation if other hints in the book respecting the beast did not
agree.”
¹ _Lectures on the Apocalypse_, p. 87. London, Williams &
Norgate, 1875.
Another explanation offered is that the number six hundred and
sixty-six is but a threefold repetition of the number six, John thus
intending to mark in the most emphatic manner that, however mighty the
power or long the duration of the beast shall be, it will inevitably
fall short of the completeness and permanence of Christ’s kingdom, as
six is less than seven.
Still another explanation proposed is that the number was originally
written with the Greek letters χξϛ; χ being equal to six hundred, ξ
to sixty, and ϛ to six. As χ (_ch_) is the initial letter of Christ,
ξ is supposed to be an emblem of Satan, being afterward so used by
the Gnostics, and ϛ is the initial of σταυρός, _cross_. The symbol, it
is said, refers to some Satanic power intervening between Christ and
the cross, some system which honors him as teacher but denies him as
Saviour, which accepts Jesus, but not “him crucified.” The description
accords well enough with that of the second beast; but whether it
can be extracted from the number six hundred and sixty-six is another
question. The monogram, while harmonizing with the symbolism of the
Apocalypse, and also delineating the nature of the beast, does not
explain the emphasis which seems to be laid upon his “name.”
There is, however, one detail in this part of the description of
the beast often overlooked, but which may carry us far on our way
to decipher the secret of the number. The number of the name is not
monopolized by the beast; it does not exhaust itself in any single
individual. We are told that “no man might buy or sell, save he
that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his
name.” The beast has followers who imbibe his spirit and partake
of his characteristics, and to whom his name and number are equally
appropriate. It is more in keeping with this statement, as well as
with other details, to interpret the beast as a principle rather than
a person, as being some spirit of evil which, assuming prominence in
some man or organization, is yet shared by many men and organizations.
The ascetic, false prophetism which fulfills the other details of the
description coincides also with this.
If, following out the rule of interpretation which has guided us
hitherto, and assuming that John drew his prediction of the future
from facts and tendencies existing in his day, we read the epistles
contained in chapters ii and iii, we shall find that among the perils
which threatened the apostolic Church none was more imminent than that
which is called “the doctrine of the Nicolaitans,” which was but a
reproduction of the heresy of Balaam, the gifted and formidable rival
and antagonist of Moses; the name Nicolaus, indeed, meaning in Greek
the same that Balaam does in Hebrew. So deep a mark did Balaam make
that throughout the Old Testament, as well as the New, he stands
as the representative, as he was the first example, of that spirit
of false prophetism which, beginning as ascetism, degenerates into
antinomianism and prostitutes genius to the service of the flesh. Now,
it is certainly true, as Züllig shows,¹ that the words “Balaam, the
son of Beor, soothsayer,” if written in Hebrew letters do make up the
sum six hundred and sixty-six. It seems, therefore, probable that some
embodiment of his insidious spirit, some reproduction of his deadly
doctrine, with its resultant lawless practices, is the solution of this
mysterious symbol, the second beast, against which John earnestly warns
the Church in all ages to guard itself as the most dangerous foe to the
kingdom of Christ. And possibly the archæological researches which are
now bringing to light much of the hidden history of earlier ages may
yet discover to us the sect which served as the basis of his warning.
¹ _Bleek, Lectures on the Apocalypse_, p. 285.
The interpretation which has here been put upon the symbols of the
two wild beasts――namely, that they represent, the one the spirit of
worldliness, the other that autospiritualism or self-centered piety
which, for lack of a more comprehensive phrase, may be designated as
false prophetism or false asceticism――derives some confirmation from
the fact that their resulting effects have been such as the author
of the Revelation predicted. Worldliness seems the baser of the two,
but its dominion is briefer and less stable. As the mind can never
be content with agnosticism, but must by necessity search for some
explanation of the mystery of being until satisfaction is gained, so
the heart can never fully rest in hopes and themes and joys which are
only earthly. The religious instincts inherent in and inalienable from
our nature will assert themselves and cry for God. On the other hand,
asceticism, while it seems to present a loftier ideal and holds men
thereby with a more permanent grasp, is all the more baleful by reason
of its deceptiveness. It veils pride, ambition, malice, selfishness,
under the guise of superior sanctity, which, while imposing on others
by its well-masked duplicity, lulls its victims into almost hopeless
slumber by its hypocrisy. Those whom it allures by its professions
of superior piety it mocks with disappointing dreams. It is the dark
shadow that always waits on holiness and liberty; it is the special
temptation that besets souls seeking after purity and knowledge; while
worldliness is that to which those are most prone who mingle much with
the world and deal with earthly realities. If, on the one hand, it
is easy for men to fall into the danger of using their heaven-given
faculties for the ignoble purpose of gratifying their lower desires
or of turning stones to bread simply that they may live, it is equally
easy, on the other, to wander into the opposite error of presuming
rashly upon God’s providence and mercy, although humility has
degenerated into boasting and love has been perverted to censoriousness.
From neither tendency can the regeneration of the world come; both are
alike enemies of God and of man.
4. _Anticipations of Victory._――It is one of the characteristic
peculiarities of St. John’s literary style to introduce a subject
which for the moment he merely suggests to our notice, returning to
it subsequently in order that he may amplify and complete it. He goes
over his work again and again, each time adding some new touch, with
the purpose of bringing out in greater prominence some detail of his
subject. While each section, therefore, contains in measure an epitome
of the whole, in each one some single point is more specifically and
elaborately discussed. There is, it is true, advance of thought; but
the eagle of the apostolic band moves in circles, bringing into notice
of his keen eye every part of the field over which he soars, while each
swoop of his wing carries him a little beyond his former orbit, so that
his progress is in spirals. The principle which controlled him seems to
have been that of presenting to us in sharp and striking antithesis the
contrasts between conflicting ideas, while he holds them under our
observation.
It is also characteristic of a disposition like St. John’s, and of a
life so contemplative and secluded as his was, to view things in the
light of their essential principles; not as they become, modified by
contact and in relation with each other, but as they radically and
germinally are. By consequence such minds, instead of being occupied
with the intermediate changes, pass at once to ultimate results and see
the end in the beginning.
An instance of this appears in the fourteenth chapter, which is
really but an epilogue to the preceding chapters. In the twelfth and
thirteenth chapters we have had presented to our vision the formidable
enemies with which the Christian believer must struggle. They have
been described most graphically and with a fullness of detail not
subsequently exceeded. The _dramatis personæ_ are all put upon the
stage, and no new actors in the tragedy of existence need be expected.
But these enemies are sufficiently numerous and terrible to excite
apprehension and awaken earnest inquiries as to our means of resistance
and possibilities of success. The seer, therefore, pauses for a moment
to review the resources put within our reach and to assure us of their
adequacy. “Greater is he that is in you,” he says, “than he that is
in the world.” And he fully indorses the emphatic declaration of Paul,
“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to
the pulling down of strongholds.”
In prophesying victory over the dragon and the beasts to the saints of
Christ, John separates them into two classes, as he had done in chapter
vii. This is not in any spirit of Jewish narrowness or exclusiveness.
He had long gotten beyond that and learned to call no man common
whom God had cleansed. Even Paul, the apostle of the uncircumcision,
recognized a distinction between the Jew, who was first, and the
Gentile; so there can be alleged against John no bigotry in recognizing
the distinction, inasmuch as he foreshadows equal victory to both
classes. There can hardly be a question that by the “hundred forty and
four thousand” John meant Israelites after the flesh; for they “stood
on the mount Sion;” they sang a song which none others but themselves
could learn, namely, the song of Moses and of the Lamb ( xv, 3); they
were “the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb” (xiv, 4); they were
without “guile,” with reference no doubt to John i, 47. They were
“virgins,” having the true asceticism――freedom from ungodliness and
worldly lusts. There was reason for rejoicing to a Jew like John in the
fact that, in spite of the opposition of the rulers and Herods among
the chosen people to whom had been committed the oracles of God, and
on the very spots of the crucifixion and resurrection, so many of his
former co-religionists had become disciples of Christ and followed the
Lamb whithersoever he led them.
But the word of God is not bound, nor is it the exclusive property of
any race; and the seer immediately adds the vision of the multitudes
of “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” to whom “the
everlasting Gospel” was preached and among whom it found adherents. The
fullness of the times had come, and Gentiles might “fear God, and give
glory to him,” the one Creator of “heaven, and earth, and the sea, and
the fountains of waters.”
One new feature is now introduced. Babylon, which occupies so much
of the subsequent part of the Apocalypse, is here for the first time
mentioned. Babylon, it will be attempted to show, is not another
adversary, but an apostate Church which has succumbed to adversaries
and thereby become a counterfeit and rival to Christianity. It is here
brought upon the stage by anticipation, and its doom foretold, to give
completer assurance of the coming victory over all forms and results of
sin and evil.
The age in which John lived was an age of martyrdom. How severely
this fact tried “the patience” and faith of the early Christians we
know from hints in other apostolical writings. Paul found it necessary
to show to his brethren in Rome that if they suffered with Christ it
was that they might be also glorified together with him. Peter, too,
comforts those whose faith was being so sorely tried with the assurance
that the trial of their faith was “more precious than of gold that
perisheth,” and would be “found unto praise and honor and glory at
the appearing of Jesus Christ.” And so John gives to the Church of his
day the glad tidings that, although God buries his workmen, he carries
on his work; that they, if they died “in the Lord,” should “rest from
their labors;” and that “their works” should survive and go on winning
victories after their departure.
If it should be asked how or with what weapons they were to overcome,
John gives the answer which is found so often in the Book of Revelation
that it is one of the keys to unlock its mysteries――they overcome
“by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony”
(Revelation xii, 11); by which latter expression is meant, doubtless,
the Scriptures, as explained in the chapter upon the two witnesses.
That the two visions which now follow, the harvest of the world and
the vintage scene, refer to these two weapons of success furnishes an
explanation of them so simple and easy that it is strange they should
have occasioned so much difficulty to commentators.
The prophet Joel, from whose writings these visions are drawn (Joel
iii, 13), probably among the earliest and certainly among the greatest
of the Hebrew seers, appears to have been gifted with a foresight of
the future remarkable even for one of that extraordinary body of men.
The final and complete triumph of God’s cause over all opposing foes in
and through Zion, and the deliverance of the Church from all bondage,
oppression, and danger, preceded by a plentiful outpouring of the Holy
Spirit upon all classes, ages, and conditions, stood out before him
as a certain and assured fact. The details of the methods by which
this result was to be achieved were not revealed to him, nor is it
surprising that, being thus left to himself, he could conceive of no
other instrumentalities than those which in his experience of human
affairs had passed under his own observation. This is not the only
instance in which the apostles of the New Testament, while confirming
the prophets of the Old as to results, have discerned more clearly the
power of spiritual forces, and for swords and carnal weapons and rods
of iron have substituted the more peaceful instrumentalities of the
sword of the Spirit, the breath of the Messiah’s lips, and the staff of
the Good Shepherd.
The writer of the Revelation, expanding and evangelizing the vision of
Joel, saw “a white cloud,” and One “like unto the Son of man” sitting
thereon, “having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp
sickle.” “Out of the temple” an angel came and cried to him, “Thrust
in thy sickle, ... for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” Whereupon he
cast his sickle upon the earth, and “the earth was reaped.”
In these words surely a reference is to be seen to the words of our
Lord himself uttered in the hearing of John and recorded in Matthew
xxiv, 14, 30, 31: “And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached
in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the
end come.... And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a
great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from
the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
This metaphor of the harvest as the result of the sowing of God’s word
is one of the most common to be found in the Scriptures. “The sower
soweth the word” (Mark iv, 14), or “the word of the kingdom” (Matthew
xiii, 19), or “the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you” (1
Peter i, 25). “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed
into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed
should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth
forth fruit of herself [that is, automatically and spontaneously]....
But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the
sickle, because the harvest is come” (Mark iv, 26‒29).
That “the word of God is quick and powerful” (Hebrews iv, 12); that
it has God’s life in it (John vi, 63); that it is the great weapon of
warfare, defensive and offensive, to the Church and the believer; that
it is the incorruptible seed by which men are born into the kingdom (1
Peter i, 23); that it is the instrument whereby we are sanctified (John
xvii, 17), is the concurrent declaration of the Scriptures themselves.
That it is to be preached by apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers
is the commission binding on all: “Go ye into all the world, and preach
the Gospel to every creature” (Mark xvi, 15). This Bible is sufficient
of itself, all other things are only ancillary; “in due season we shall
reap, if we faint not” (Galatians vi, 9). All literature and art and
culture and science are but as “the grass” that “withereth,” or “the
flower” that “fadeth;” “but the word of our God shall stand forever.”
And the martyrs of the apostolical age had the inspired assurance of
John to console them, that if they faithfully bore witness to the word
they might fall, but “their works” would follow on after them. And in
so saying he is only reëchoing the words which he himself had heard
from the Master, “One soweth, and another reapeth” (John iv, 37). And
John shows how completely he had gotten away from Jewish narrowness and
absorbed the Master’s spirit, in his recognition of the fact that the
Bible is for every nation and kindred and people.
The other instrumentality of victory put within the reach of the
Church, namely, the all-sufficient “blood of the Lamb,” is beautifully
illustrated in the vintage vision, which has most needlessly perplexed
commentators.
An angel――not now the Son of man――is seen coming “out of the temple
which is in heaven” with a sharp sickle. Another angel came out from
the altar, who is described as having “power over fire” (the same
combination as is found in Isaiah vi, 6), and at his cry the sickle was
thrust into the earth, and the clusters of fully ripe grapes gathered
and cast “into the great wine press of the wrath of God.”
It is hardly possible to read these words without seeing in them a
reference to Isaiah lxiii, 1‒6. By the great mass of believers the
words are interpreted as an allusion to and a prophecy of the atoning
work of Christ. It certainly seems that the writer of the Revelation
so understood them, not only from the connection of this vintage scene
with the blood of the Lamb, but also from Revelation xix, 11‒16, where
the same connection of the two themes, the “sharp sword” issuing from
the mouth of Christ, that is, the word of God, and the “vesture dipped
in blood,” with the treading of the wine press, is found.
Our belief in the plenary inspiration of the writers of the Scriptures
does not compel us to the conviction that they always comprehended
the full import of their message, or that all the particulars embraced
therein stood out clearly and plainly in their minds. This is one of
the instances in which prophets and wise men desired to see the things
which we in the kingdom of Christ see, but did not see them. Every man
in painting mental pictures must of necessity use colors with which
his own mind is acquainted, and which he has acquired by experience and
observation. And Isaiah and the other prophets, in the age and with the
surroundings in the midst of which they lived, had no other means of
conveying to the minds of men the true revelations which were given to
them of the suffering and victorious Messiah than terms such as they
saw exemplified in the world of history and in the men about them. Any
other terms would have been incomprehensible, and so have failed of
their purpose to help and inspirit. And the divinity of the Bible is
seen conspicuously in this――that the framework in which its glorious
pictures were set is capable of expansion to the times in which we
live and the larger views we have, without fracture or distortion. The
signs and symbols which by divine illumination were presented to them
have come down to us; but we, with the clearer light of the Sun of
righteousness, can read intelligently what were hieroglyphics to them,
and, looking with unveiled face, can behold therein the glory of God.
That John, in thus quoting from Isaiah, has Calvary and Gethsemane in
his thoughts is shown by his specifying particularly that “the wine
press was trodden without the city,” bringing out the truth, of which
Hebrews xiii, 12, is the witness, that “Jesus also, that he might
sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.”
It is true that in the prophecy of Isaiah there appears an element of
vengeance and wrath that does not comport with our ideas of salvation
and redemption, and even repels. The element is still there; but the
New Testament teaches us that all that was lonely, painful, agonizing
in human redemption was borne by the Christ for us. We are “bought
with a price,” but he paid it. He was “made a curse for us.” He “bare
our sins in his own body on the tree,” and by his “stripes” we are
“healed.” However feeble may be the traces of vicariousness in nature,
human life is full of it, is built about it. All love is manifested
in vicarious suffering. Scarce any rise but that some fall; scarce any
become rich but that others become poor; there is hardly a smile or
a laugh of joy for which some pain is not felt or some tear not shed
somewhere. And, if God manifests his love by sending “his Son to be
the propitiation for our sins,” this is but an illustration of the
truth, as apparent in the spiritual world as in that of nature, of the
transmutation of forces; the sum not being increased or diminished, but
the places and modes of manifestation changing.
The remainder of the vintage scene may be easily explained, difficult
as it has seemed to most interpreters, by applying the key which is put
into our hands, if we accept the solution offered above.
We must now for almost the first time take up the prophecy of Ezekiel,
which from this place onward almost singly rules the Apocalypse,
and the careful study of which will throw light upon what seems most
obscure.
We are told that “blood came out of the wine press, even unto the horse
bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”
Turning to Ezekiel, we find that the last chapters of that great
prophecy are taken up with a beautiful description, ideal and
figurative, doubtless, of the restored temple, holy city, and land
of the new Israel of God. In the forty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel the
dimensions of this ideal land are very carefully stated. The boundary
line of it was, on the north side, Hamath, in latitude thirty-four
degrees twenty minutes, and, on the south, a line drawn from Tamar, at
the southern border of the Dead Sea, to Kadesh, a brook emptying into
the Mediterranean. If, now, we measure on a map the distance between
these lines, we shall find it to be two hundred miles, or sixteen
hundred furlongs.
This whole space, comprehending all of the Holy Land, was thus entirely
covered with the blood which flowed from the wine press trodden
by the Son of God. Could there be a more complete statement of the
all-sufficiency of that atoning blood? It is the same truth presented
to us here which John has elsewhere in plainer prose revealed to our
faith: “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
And as if still further to verify the statement he tells us that the
blood reached to “the horse bridles.” There is an allusion in this
to Zechariah xiv, 20, where we are told that in “the day of the Lord”
there shall be “upon the bells [or, as the margin has it, ‘upon the
bridles’] of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord.” The ideal land is not
only covered in its whole extent with the atoning blood, but so deep is
the stream that it buries all beneath it, except where upon the surface
is displayed the significant inscription, “Holiness unto the Lord.”
Surely there is no lack in the provisions of salvation. “Where sin
abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto
death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal
life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Thus, then, in these beautiful visions is it shown that the believer
and the Church are sufficiently armed for the encounter with any
antagonist, however furious or formidable. We are supplied with
“the sword of the Spirit” and “the blood of the Lamb.” Whatever the
tasks may be that lie before us, having these, we have all necessary
equipment. Nothing shall be able to harm us so long as we continue to
be followers of God.
If the harvest scene illustrates the extent of divine grace, and is an
emblem of the living seed which, small in its beginnings, grows into
a great and widespreading tree under whose branches all the nations
of earth may find shelter and rest, the vintage scene illustrates the
depth to which salvation penetrates. The whole extent of human need is
reached. Neither is there a want anywhere which may not be satisfied.
And through the use of the divinely appointed means the kingdom of
Christ may be brought to its ideal of perfection, in us and in the
whole Church, until God shall, indeed, be all and in all.
PART V
The Counterfeit of the Kingdom, or the False Church
PART V
=The Counterfeit of the Kingdom, or the False Church=
THE section of the Revelation which we now reach, and which extends
from chapter xv to the close of chapter xix, may be called the judgment
section. There is a striking parallelism between it and part iii, or
the vision of the trumpets, which symbolizes the methods through which
the kingdom of Christ is furthered. As that section divided itself into
two parts――first, the natural agencies which divine Providence employs,
and, next, the supernatural word――so, also, this sets before us what
may be designated natural judgments, and then those special visitations
of divine justice which await an apostate Christian or Church.
1. _The Judgments of God. Vision of the Vials._――The fifteenth and
sixteenth chapters need not detain us long, inasmuch as the resemblance
between them and the visions of the trumpets is so great that much
of what might be said has already been anticipated. Vials, or basins
rather, were vessels used in the Mosaic ritual as receptacles. The
term is used here to designate the judgments which must fall on men if
the warnings and messages symbolized by the trumpets are unheeded. The
Gospel, we are told by St. Paul, may be a savor of death unto death,
as well as of life unto life. The words of the Lord Jesus will either
become spirit and life to us, or they will judge us at the last day.
From “the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony” “seven angels” are
seen issuing forth with vials containing “the seven last plagues.” The
word for “plague” is the same used in chapter xiii, 3. It was there
applied to a temporary wound which was quickly healed. Its connection
here with the word “last” and with the number “seven” indicates that
the wounds or blows are final and incurable. The judgments are not
corrective and disciplinary, but retributive and irreversible.
The angels with the plagues issue from the temple of the tabernacle
of the testimony. This name is that which is applied to the structure
Moses erected in the wilderness and which contained the ark of the
testimony. Its use here implies that the judgments that follow are
to be found recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures. The old word is
God’s faithful witness, bearing plain testimony to his righteousness
and to his anger at sin and iniquity.
Still further, it was one of the four beasts, or living creatures, who
put the vials into the hands of the angels; and, as the four beasts are
supposed to be symbolical representations of the animate creation, the
truth declared would seem to be that these judgments come as natural
providences, or by the operation of laws which the divine Being has
stamped on his creation.
The plagues fall successively upon the same places that are named in
the parallel vision of the trumpets――the first upon the earth; the
second, upon the sea; the third, upon the rivers and fountains of
waters; the fourth, upon the sun; the fifth, upon the throne of the
beast, darkening his kingdom; the sixth, upon the Euphrates.
It is very instructive to contrast these judgments with the beautiful
figures by which John, in the last chapters of the Revelation, seeks to
portray the glorious privileges and blessings of the perfected kingdom
of Christ.
Thus, in opposition to the “noisome and grievous sore” that fell “upon
the men which had the mark of the beast,” we have, in chapter xxii, 2,
the declaration that “the leaves of the tree” of life “were for the
healing of the nations.”
In opposition to “the sea” which “became as the blood of a dead man,”
we are told, in chapter xxi, 1, that “there was no more sea.”
As a contrast to “the rivers and fountains of waters” which “became
blood,” we are told in chapter xxii, 1, of “the pure river of the water
of life, clear as crystal.”
Over against “the sun” which “scorched men with great heat,” the
statement is made, in chapter xxi, 23, that “the city had no need of
the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did
lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”
And, while judgment fell on the throne of the beast, “and his kingdom
was full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues for pain,” we learn
of the new city that “the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it;
and his servants shall serve him.” “And there shall be no night there;
... for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign forever
and ever.” There seems to be in this a reminiscence of the plague of
darkness with which the Almighty visited Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and
which was the last one before the final stroke of his judgment upon the
firstborn (Exodus x, 21‒23).
The fifth trumpet was interpreted as a prophecy of the blindness, both
of heart and mind, which comes upon men when faith declines and grace
wanes. This interpretation appears to be confirmed by the judgment
which the plague of the fifth vial inflicts.
The locality of the sixth plague is the Euphrates. This river, as has
been previously said, was the boundary line between civilization and
barbarism. The mention of it implies that the last conflict in which
the kingdom of Christ shall engage will be waged to oppose an inroad
or outburst of barbarism. But as John presents this matter with fuller
details in chapter xx the discussion of it will be postponed until that
part of the Revelation is reached.
One new feature, which is introduced for the first time in connection
with the sixth vial, is the singular sentence, “That the way of the
kings of the east might be prepared.” The origin of this expression is
to be found in Isaiah xli, 2, to which it has doubtless a reference. In
that passage, “the righteous man from the east” to whom is given “rule
over kings” is, undoubtedly, Cyrus, whose advent and success are thus
foretold. And the meaning is that, as out of heathenism God raised up
that marvelous man as an instrument to accomplish his purposes in the
deliverance of his people, so there is such fullness of resources in
the reach of divine power that in any emergency or peril he is able
to find, anywhere, means to rescue his followers or his Church out of
danger.
Moreover, the apostle saw coming “out of the mouth of the dragon,
and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false
prophet” “three unclean spirits like frogs.” Over against the divine
Trinity, the kingdom of darkness and sin has its counterfeit trinity.
Each of its component persons has its emissaries and messengers. For
the final conflict all these will summon their entire resources. Behind
all attempts to foil and defeat the development and perfection of the
kingdom of Christ lie these evil powers. But their efforts will be
futile; inevitable destruction and doom await them; and the inspired
seer here merely suggests the judgment of which full particulars are to
be subsequently given.
2. _Babylon and its Doom._――No part of the Apocalypse has given rise
to so much controversy as that which now engages our attention; and as,
unhappily, the controversies have often originated in denominational
prejudices and intensified denominational bitterness, this section has
been made a shibboleth by which to test conflicting creeds. Truth is,
indeed, of paramount obligation. We have no right to accept or reject
interpretations of the Scriptures simply on the ground that they accord
with or are repugnant to our beliefs. It is no part of our prerogative
to sit in judgment upon the word of God or to force it to speak
according to our mind. And nothing is ever really consistent with love
which is not consistent with truth. If, however, the purpose of this
remarkable book is to set before us those spiritual forces which work
in the heart of every individual, as well as in collective masses,
there seems no valid reason why we should in this part of it depart
from those general principles upon which it is elsewhere framed, or
seek for latent meanings when one which lies on the surface is capable
of explaining and harmonizing its mysteries.
Are we to understand by Babylon the Church of Rome, or the Roman
Empire, or any specific body or association of men, religious or
secular? Is the revelation here given us an anticipatory epitome of
history, a foreshadowing of events that have already transpired and
are now recorded among the annals of the race? Is it a prophecy the
fulfillment of which can be known only by learned scholars acquainted
with history, upon whose information the wayfaring man and the
untutored disciple of Christ must depend? Is it a portion of Holy Writ
whose best commentators must be found in Gibbon and Hume and such like
unbelievers? Truly, then, Saul is “among the prophets;” and this book
is singular and anomalous among the revelations of God, whose purpose
has ever been to make wise the simple, who else would be cut off from
access to the sources of truth and light.
If any of the prophecies of this book can be proven to find their
exhaustive fulfillment in any particular and definite body, individual,
or event, so that when we have identified the body or individual or
event we have reached the whole purpose of the writer, then, of course,
its value as inspiration ceases or, at least, is materially diminished.
It may have an archæological interest as a record of past conditions,
but its influence upon the present and future is somewhat like that of
a fossil upon living types.
When the prophets of the old dispensation uttered their denunciations
of the luxuries, the sensualism, the cruelty, the gilded vices, or
the coarser sins of the cities and empires of the ancient world their
purpose was not to vent vindictiveness against conquerors under whose
might the Israel of God was oppressed and trampled down, but to direct
thought and attention to a spirit of evil, a principle of the kingdom
of darkness, which for a while found an embodiment therein, yet was not
wholly comprehended in it. The empires crumbled into dust, the great
capitals became masses of decaying ruins, but the spirit which animated
them lived on, surviving their destruction.
Such was, doubtless, the design of this Apocalyptic vision. Babylon
is a symbol of something that has its fulfillment again and again, but
is never exhausted in any manifestation. The generations of men, down
to the close of time, must watch for and be warned against the spirit
which it embodied, and every individual Christian, as well as the
Church at large, needs the caution which is here given him against such
forms of it as are likely to tempt him from the path of duty or safety.
Of all the hostile powers with which the Hebrew people were brought
into contact and from whom they suffered Babylon seems to have been
the most dreaded, and the animosity expressed toward it by the prophets
was emphatic and marked. Its approaching doom evoked no sentiment
of pity, but was hailed with unmingled satisfaction. What there was
about Babylon which justified such exceptional fear and dislike it
is, perhaps, not possible for us fully to understand, although we may
attain some appreciation of it.
Regarding Nineveh, we have reason to conjecture that its peculiarity
was intense and supreme secularism. No temple has been found amid its
ruins that was not merely the adjunct of a palace. The priest was the
servant of the king. All religious instincts and institutions were
simply tools which the haughty monarch unscrupulously used to carry out
his cruel and ambitious projects. Such a condition of things can never
endure long. It works its own destruction, finding its cure within
itself. It was the demoralization resulting from a similar condition
which sapped the strength of the Greek Empire of Byzantium and, by
isolating it from all allies or sympathy, led to its overthrow.
In Egypt the spheres of the State and of the Church maintained some
independence of each other. Vast as was the sovereignty of the Pharaohs,
it was not such as to encroach upon or absorb the functions of the
priestly caste.
In Babylon, however, still another condition prevailed. Here the
priesthood was the ruling order; the religious element dominated the
secular. The palace was a part of the temple. It is noticeable how
strongly in the prophetic descriptions of Babylon the Chaldean element
is emphasized. It is styled “the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency,”
“the land of the Chaldeans,” marking thus the supremacy of that order
of soothsayers, sorcerers, and professors of magic and occult science.
Babylon was a theocracy, but the god who ruled it was the prince
of darkness, not Jehovah. The Church governed the State, but the
Church was one that incarnated the spirit of worldly-mindedness, not
heavenly-mindedness. So that, in an altogether peculiar and special
sense, it was the rival and counterfeit of the true Church of God,
giving exercise to the religious instincts of men sufficient to satisfy
conviction and quiet conscience, while debasing them by turning them
into the channels of lust and sensual gratification.
Yet, as a matter of fact, the domination of Babylon proved less
hurtful to the Jewish nation than did the hostility of any other of
their great enemies. The form of worldliness which the Israelites
encountered in Egypt was such as almost to make them forget their
bondage in remembering the enjoyments they had found there. Their
actual experience in Babylon during the years of their captivity,
the lessons they learned and the comparisons they drew when brought
into personal relationship with its life, left no lingering love of
idolatry and cured them forever of any desire to worship its gods.
But the Babylon of the book of Revelation comprehends more than the
Babylon of the Hebrew prophets. The dangers which beset the Christian
would be far less than they are if the Babylon of this world, which
opposes itself as a rival to the kingdom of Christ, had no fascinations
beyond those which the great city by the Euphrates could offer. The
wily enemy of mankind is too subtle to depend upon any such powers of
attractiveness as were embodied in the capital of the Chaldean Empire.
And in describing the counterfeit of the kingdom of Christ the writer
of the Apocalypse adds to his portrait of Babylon features which are
used by Ezekiel as characteristic of another great capital, Tyre.
Babylon was never a center of commerce; in no sense could it be
described as a city whose merchants were princes. The same is also true
of Rome, and is thus adverse to the opinion that John meant to describe
the city of the Cæsars and of the popes. His delineation of Babylon
would apply to Corinth or Carthage in ancient times, and to Venice or
Amsterdam or London in more modern days, with greater aptness than to
the metropolis on the Tiber. In this alteration of the emblem in which
the writer of the Revelation indulges, in the blending and interweaving
of details descriptive of both the Babylon and the Tyre of the Old
Testament into the composite figure of the Apocalyptic Babylon, in the
transition from Isaiah’s sublimely ironical shout of triumph over the
metropolis by the Euphrates to Ezekiel’s sad and pathetic dirge over
the fall of the commercial emporium of Phœnicia, a clew is given us to
the interpretation of his meaning.
The influence of Tyre upon the Hebrew people and religion was always
deleterious, almost disastrous. The intercourse which began in the
magnificent Solomon’s love of show and splendid state and luxury,
and which was increased by the intermarriage of the royal houses of
Ahab and Jehoshaphat with Tyrian princesses, was fruitful of moral
degeneration. From the spiritual pesthouse upon the Mediterranean came,
first, Tyrian art, then, Tyrian wares, then, Tyrian idols, and, then,
the unbridled and lawless sensualities for which Tyre was notorious,
until Baal had displaced the golden calves set up by Jeroboam in Bethel
and had well-nigh overthrown the altars of Jehovah in the city of the
great King.
The Babylon which John saw and whose rise and fall he predicts was one
that embraced in itself the unbounded pride, the self-sufficingness,
the love of sorceries and dark arts of magic, along with the
demoralizing practices of a great mart of commerce――a mongrel figure
into which all forms of evil and sin were woven.
The probability, therefore, is that John meant to describe, not
any individual or definite city or Church, but the incarnation of
a spurious and apostate Christianity which, assuming the appearance
of the true, is animated by principles wholly destitute of and
antagonistic to the power and life of Christianity, and thus deludes
only to destroy.
This opinion derives confirmation from the connection in which the
section stands. Up to this point the writer of the Revelation has been
collecting his data, so to speak, summing up the elementary forces,
friendly and hostile, which have to do with the success or failure of
the kingdom of Christ. He has announced its fundamental principles,
the means by which it is to be carried forward, the enemies which
must be encountered. It now remains for him to show in a concrete form
the results. At the close of the Revelation he shows us the result of
success in that exquisite picture of the ideal true Christianity. But
before doing this he also shows the result of failure in the picture of
the ideal false Christianity. The antitheses between the two are drawn
out in sharp contrasts.
In chapter xxi, 9, it is said to him, “Come hither, I will show thee
the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” Here (xvii, 1) it is said to him, “Come
hither: I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that
sitteth upon many waters.”
In chapter xxi, 6, it is written, “He said unto me, It is done.” So
here (chapter xvi, 17), when the seventh angel poured out his vial a
voice was heard crying, “It is done.”
In chapter xii, where for the first time the field of battle is
described and the enumeration of the hostile forces is begun, religion
is presented to us under the figure of a woman who has fled to the
wilderness. Since then the trial is supposed to have been gone through
with, the long war has been fought, the varying moments of the struggle
have been detailed, and we are now brought to the summing up of the
issue.
In chapter xxi, 10, John is carried away “in the spirit to a great and
high mountain,” and there is shown him the woman in the form of “that
great city,” “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out
of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (verse 2). Here
(xvii, 3, 4) he is carried away “in the spirit into the wilderness,”
and he sees the woman; but now she is sitting “upon a scarlet-colored
beast, full of names of blasphemy, ... arrayed in purple and scarlet
color, and decked with gold.” She has failed in the conflict. She has
not come victorious out of the wilderness, as Christ did after his
temptation. She has made peace with her enemies. She has joined with
the flesh, the world, and the devil. She is no longer spotless and pure,
ready for her bridal with the Lamb, but has become a harlot.
Thus, once, Orpah and Ruth stood together by the side of Naomi, while
the Holy Land beckoned them all toward it. Ruth chose that better part
and, sheltered beneath the hovering wings of the God of Israel, found
peace and rest and an eternal portion with the saints; but Orpah loved
the blue hills of Moab and, though sadly and reluctantly, turned back
to idolatry and oblivion and spiritual death.
Such a conflict awaits us all; and the issue must be, either that happy
one hereafter to be more accurately described under the figure of the
New Jerusalem, or else that alliance with the powers of darkness which
John records in the emblem of Babylon.
The details of the description given of Babylon add further
confirmation to the explanation offered above. In chapters xii and xiii
the three great enemies of the kingdom of Christ were enumerated――the
dragon and his emissaries, the two beasts. In the present chapter
(xvii) they are represented as combined. The woman is seen sitting upon
a scarlet-colored beast. She is arrayed in purple and scarlet, but not
in “fine linen,” which is “the righteousness of saints.” She has in her
hand a cup, but instead of the sacramental blood of the Lamb, it is
full of “abominations and filthiness of her fornication.” She is not
“filled with the Spirit,” but “drunken with the blood of the saints,”
for “she hath cast down many wounded, yea, many strong men have been
slain by her” (Proverbs vii, 26).
It will be remembered that, in the description of the first wild beast,
it is said that when the deadly wound which it had received was healed
the whole world wondered after it in astonishment at the recuperative
power which it exhibited. But, at this vision of the woman allied
with the beast, with a commingling of the influence of the second wild
beast, even John himself wondered with great wonder at a corruption of
religion so complete and yet so enticing, a perversion so unexpected
and yet so alluring, a transformation so plausibly and artfully
accomplished. There seems to have been awakened in him something of the
perplexity he had experienced in looking at the second wild beast, as
if its duplicity were a mystery of iniquity beyond his power to fathom.
Once one of the psalmists wondered, as he tells us, at the prosperity
of the wicked, until he entered the sanctuary and there saw their
latter end foreshadowed. So, likewise, was the mind of John relieved
by the angel who came to him and said, “I will tell thee the mystery
of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her;” for as the curtain
was lifted the doom of Babylon was revealed to him and the mystery was
solved.
But, however plain the mystery was to him, it is assuredly not equally
so to us. The explanation which suggests itself to us the most readily
is not necessarily the most correct one; indeed, the words, “Here is
the mind which hath wisdom,” seem to indicate otherwise and to force us
to seek some meaning deeper than that which is most obvious. Although,
therefore, the expression, “The seven heads are seven mountains, on
which the woman sitteth,” apparently identifies Babylon with Rome,
either imperial or papal, it would satisfy all the conditions of the
problem as well, and be more in harmony with the principles on which
the Revelation is constructed, to interpret the expression as referring
to the great world empires which have successively dominated the
human race and cast their shadows across the path of centuries, and in
which John saw the embodiment of the world-principle, essentially and
perpetually antagonistic to the kingdom of Christ.
Of these world empires five had already fallen――Assyria, Babylon,
Persia, Macedonia, and the empire of Alexander’s successors. The empire
of Rome, which was the one existent in John’s days and the most compact
and formidable of them all, was the sixth. “The other,” he says, “is
not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.”
Of this difficult passage many explanations have been offered, but it
cannot be said that they are satisfactory. Whether John anticipated the
fall of the Roman Empire and the establishment of another world empire
to succeed it for a brief period of time we are not able to say.
It would not be any impeachment of the inspiration of the apostles
to admit that upon matters relating to the time of our Lord’s coming
they were not able to predict with certainty. Christ himself said that
“of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are
in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father;” and we cannot concede
that his disciples were more fully enlightened than he. There are
indications that the apostles anticipated the personal manifestation of
the Master at a date earlier than has proven to be the fact, because,
looking through the ages, mountains appeared in their vision to blend
into one which we have found by experience to be separated by valleys
deep and wide.
But, inasmuch as it was revealed to John that prior to the realization
of the ideal kingdom of Christ there is to be a decisive conflict with
the combined powers of evil, as will be more fully discussed when we
shall have reached the twentieth chapter of the book, may it not be
that it is that final embodiment of the world-principle which he here
foretells as the seventh antagonistic kingdom?
“And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of
the seven, and goeth into perdition.” These words seem to imply that
this “eighth” is not a separate and distinct empire, but is that common
principle of worldliness which finds its embodiment in all the seven
and yet is distinct and separable from them. It is both immanent in
them and transcendental to them.
And there is, perhaps, here an intended and striking contrast between
this evil principle and the divine Being with whom it assumes to
contest supremacy. It was said of the Lord God Almighty, in the
adoration of the living creatures (Revelation iv, 8), that he “was,
and is, and is to come.” Of this counterfeit principle of evil it must
be said, “It was, and is not.” God is true, real, the same to-day as
yesterday and forever. He that hath received Christ’s testimony can set
his seal to this assured and blessed certainty. Of the evil principle
it can only be said that it is always vanity, falsehood, a lie. Its
past is all a bitter remembrance; its future a shadow, a deception, a
dream; and he that trusts it is a fool mocked with illusions that are
never realized and cheated with hopes that forever disappoint.
It is not likely that any world-kingdom comparable in extent and power
with those which in ancient times subjugated mankind will ever be seen
again. Christianity develops and cultivates a spirit of individualism
which is inimical to their recurrence. Since the disappearance of the
Roman Empire no successor to it has arisen. The empires of Charlemagne
and Napoleon were narrow and petty in comparison with that of the
Cæsars. Some such thought appears to have been in the mind of John
when he foretold that there shall be “ten kings, which have received no
kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.”
But the spirit of evil which finds temporary embodiment in these
worldly sovereignties does not disappear with their overthrow. It
incarnates itself in other and more dangerous forms. There are subtle
and cunning manifestations of this spirit which, by plausible and
enticing imitations of the religion of Christ, do far more than any
worldly kingdom can to overthrow true Christianity and substitute in
its place the counterfeit kingdom, the deadly rival which is designated
by the emblem of Babylon.
Without violating the spirit of charity, and in fealty to the
obligation of truth, it must be confessed that the history of
the Church of Rome has too often furnished just occasion for its
identification with the Babylon of the Apocalypse. Its worldliness,
its unscrupulous alliances with kings and princes to carry out its
ambitious projects, its disregard of moral obligations in the pursuit
of its policy, its ignoring of the demands of justice, honor, truth
and mercy, its persistent struggle to achieve and maintain temporal
supremacy, its awful claim of present and eternal mastery over the
bodies, minds, and souls of men, its luxury and wantonness, its
bloody spirit of persecution on the one hand, and, on the other, the
duplicity, the false asceticism, the assumption of the appearance of
the Lamb while animated by the spirit of the dragon, the substitution
of its own codes and edicts and ethics for the word of God, which have
specially characterized its religious orders and confraternities, are
sufficiently like the adversary of true religion delineated by St. John
to excite thought and induce self-examination.
But it would be unjust to charge to the account of systems
imperfections and errors which spring out of the inherent frailty of
human nature. And the spirit of evil against which the apostle warns
us has had unhappily a range wider than pagan or papal Rome or any
organization yet witnessed on earth. If that Church has too often
carried upon her forehead the title, “Mother of harlots,” instead of
the motto, “Holiness unto the Lord,” she has many a sister who must sit
beside her as of kindred spirit; and, if the one has been “Aholah,” the
other has been “Aholibah.” If, among her followers, she has numbered
both some of the purest saints who have trodden this earth and some of
the vilest sinners, and these, too, in her loftiest places, she is not
alone in the distinction.
There have been individuals and Churches calling themselves Christians
and Protestants that, like veritable Messalinas, have burned with
incessant lust after every form and fashion of worldliness, and
whose lovers, as Jeremiah says, have not had need to weary themselves
in seeking for them. There is too much truth in the biting sarcasm
of Heine: “Christianity was once based on blood; it now rests on
another basis――money. Wafers of silver and gold are the only ones that
work miracles in modern days.” When the solemn services of the holy
sacraments lose their attraction and are accounted dull and pale when
compared with the brighter light of social festivities; when prayer
meetings are sparsely attended, while glittering parlors are crowded
with guests; when the shouting of souls newly born into the kingdom
is drowned by the “chant to the sound of the viol;” when grief over
“the affliction of Joseph” is far less than the sorrow for the loss
of worldly prestige or patronage; when religion is used simply as
an adjunct to the social propensities or a synonym for liberality in
promoting financial enterprises――then there is need that we read again
the apocalyptic vision of Babylon, that we may avert the doom that is
certain otherwise to come. Destruction must surely be the end of those
“whose god is their belly, and whose glory is their shame, who mind
earthly things.” The vials of divine anger must sooner or later empty
their plagues upon all such.
In the selection and introduction of Tyre as the representative of
a worldly Church the apostle indicates the source from which danger
is to be apprehended. Tyre was a mart of commerce. Upon her ships
the merchandise of the world was transported, and it was sold in
her markets. Her trade extended to the ends of the earth, and by her
mercantile transactions she was brought into contact with the whole
circle of known nations. The close acquaintance and fellowship thereby
wrought with all religions, races, and customs produced its customary
result of lowering the standard of morals and, under the specious plea
of encouraging liberalism of opinion, led to apathy toward all religion;
while, at the same time, the increase of wealth, art, and refinement
created a love for luxury and worldly good. Corrupted herself, she
became in turn a source of corruption to others, and her intercourse
with Israel had a disastrous effect upon the chosen people.
In this lies the peril of contact with the world. It is the scene of
conflict; it may be the field either of defeat or victory. The Lord
Jesus prayed, not that his disciples should be taken out of the world,
but that they should be preserved from its evil. We are placed in it
that we may transform it. It is possible that all beauty, art, wealth,
culture, and commerce may be sanctified and made to contribute to the
redemption of the world. Every thought may be brought into captivity to
the obedience of Christ.
But it may, on the contrary, transform and corrupt us. Without the aid
of supernatural grace the influence of the world upon the Christian
is demoralizing and destructive. Whatever is without God is equally
without hope. Art, for instance, separated from its mission as
an auxiliary to morals and religion and made independent, becomes
artificial, and then degenerates into artifice. The world, instead of
being lifted to a higher plane, drags the Christian to its own level.
It is remarkable that Paul, whose facilities of observation were large
and powers of perception keen, when writing to the Romans, the people
of the eternal city, whose one dream and ambition in all her history
had been power, commended the Gospel of Christ as “the power of God
unto salvation;” but, when writing to Corinth, the busy center of
commerce and merchandise, full of wealth, luxury, and corruption, he
presented as the only influence which could correct these evils this
profound truth: “Know ye not that ye are not your own? For ye are
bought with a price: therefore glorify God.”
There has not been a period since the days of John when the lesson
which he wished to enforce in this vision of apostate and fallen
Babylon was more important than now. Between the age of the apostles
and the times in which we live a stronger resemblance exists than
between any epochs in the annals of man. The rapid increase of means
of transportation by which the ends of the earth are drawn together is
effecting that state of things which the consolidation of the civilized
world under the control of the Roman Empire produced. The boundaries
between nations are being effaced; and their easy communication with
each other makes possible an exceptional intermingling of languages,
usages, moral codes, and religion. There is the same tendency toward
the denial of all supernaturalism, on one side, and, at the opposite
extreme, toward an eclecticism which concedes some truth to all forms
of religion, while questioning the absolute truth of any, as that
with which the apostolic Church was confronted. There is an excessive
liberalism which, in its aversion to narrowness and under the plea of
enlightened culture, would abandon all that specifically differentiates
Christianity. But we will have read the records of the ante-Nicene
period in vain if we have not learned from them that an imperfect
Christianity, while it does not gain the world, does lose its own soul,
and that the regeneration of mankind keeps exact pace with the measure
of spirituality and purity which prevails in the Church of Christ.
Babylon, the counterfeit of the kingdom, is doomed to inevitable
destruction. Over the sad end of a Church dominated by the spirit of
the world and which has finally apostatized from Christ the worldly may
say, in regretful lament, “Alas, alas, that great city;” the “merchants
of the earth” may “weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their
merchandise any more;” but the heavens rejoice. For where there is
permanent alienation from God no real life can survive: “The voice of
the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee.”
There can be no fruitful activity or profitable labor, for “the sound
of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee.” There can be no
inward illumination or safe walking, for “the light of a candle shall
shine no more at all in thee.”
3. _Methods of Success Reiterated._――After a few words of exultant
triumph over the fall of Babylon, and the bright hopes for the future
of Christ’s kingdom opened up thereby, in which heaven and earth unite,
the apostle, before finally leaving the subject, points us again (in
chapter xix) to the weapons by which victory must be won. Repeating
what has been so often said by him that the impression is made on us
that herein lies the central thought of the book, but with a fullness
of detail not previously equaled and with a stress of emphasis which
guarantees the importance of the truth, he asserts again that the
conquering weapons are “the blood of the Lamb” and “the word of
their testimony” (Revelation xii, 11; xix, 15). The cross and the
Bible――these are the means by which the world is to be overcome,
these are the instruments through which the Lord Jesus Christ and
the Holy Ghost work, and with these the Christian and the Church are
sufficiently armed for any conflict or adversary.
John saw “heaven opened (verse 11), and behold a white horse.” Thus
does the Christ appear at the close of the conflict, sitting upon the
white horse of victory, just as he appeared at the beginning when,
armed with the bow, “he went forth conquering, and to conquer” (chapter
vi, 2). He is described by the titles which he had attributed to
himself in his letters to the seven churches of Asia. He is here the
“Faithful and True;” so had he written of himself to Laodicea. “In
righteousness he doth judge and make war;” to Philadelphia he had
called himself “he that is holy, he that is true.” “His eyes were as
a flame of fire;” these very words he had written to Thyatira. “Out
of his mouth proceedeth a sharp sword;” to Pergamos he had spoken
of himself as the one having “the sharp sword.” To Ephesus he had
described himself as the one that “walketh in the midst of the golden
candlesticks [or churches];” and here he is seen in company with the
armies of his followers. He had promised Sardis that the faithful
should walk with him “in white;” here the saints with him are “clothed
in fine linen, white and clean.” To Smyrna he had said, “I will give
thee a crown of life;” and here upon his head are “many crowns.” He
has a name which all can read, “King of kings, and Lord of lords,”
ruling (shepherding) the nations with the iron staff of his power.
But he has also a name that no man knoweth; for he had himself said,
“No man knoweth the Son, but the Father.” He is the Word of God, the
embodiment and utterance of the Godhead’s deepest thought and being,
the “brightness” of the Father’s glory, “and the express image of his
person.”
The weapons which he employs are distinctly said to be the “sharp
sword” that goeth “out of his mouth,” and the blood by which he atoned
for sin. The “sharp sword” means, unquestionably, “the sword of the
Spirit,” the word inspired by the Spirit of truth, the Scriptures which
testify of him (John v, 39), the word by which we are sanctified (John
xvii, 17), the Bible of revelation. By this word, “the breath of his
lips,” he slays the wicked (Isaiah xi, 4). With this, “the spirit of
his mouth,” he consumes the wicked one (2 Thessalonians ii, 8).
And the other weapon is his blood. He is “clothed with a vesture dipped
in blood.” “He treadeth the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of
Almighty God.” In no way could the cross be more explicitly indicated.
Lifted up from the earth upon it, he draws all men unto himself. It is
“Christ crucified” who is the “power” and “wisdom” of God. No weapons
more carnal than these does he employ; none other do we need. By them
the beast and the false prophet are overcome, and both are “cast alive
into a lake of fire.”
PART VI
Progressive Steps by Which the Ideal
Kingdom of Christ is to be Realized
PART VI
=Progressive Steps by Which the Ideal
Kingdom of Christ is to be Realized=
THE twentieth chapter of the Revelation is one full of the most
important matter. It describes the stages through which the kingdom
of Christ must pass in order to attain its ideal state. The key to its
solution is to be found in a careful and close study of the prophecy
of Ezekiel, between which and it so exact a parallelism exists that
neither can be understood without a comprehension of the other. A just
appreciation of this fact would have precluded many of the ingenious
but untenable hypotheses which have based themselves upon this section,
and will now serve to throw light upon what seems obscure and almost
undecipherable.
The Book of Ezekiel consists of two distinct parts, the dividing line
between which is the siege and capture of Jerusalem. The earlier part
of the book is a record of the many and gross idolatries and sins into
which Israel had been tempted and fallen. The sum of these amounted to
a spiritual infidelity and adultery which justly deserved the anger of
Jehovah. And it was the sad and painful task of the prophet to repeat
the solemn warnings with which he had been intrusted of impending and
terrible doom.
Succeeding this are denunciations by the prophet of severe and crushing
judgments upon the surrounding nations, from whose intercourse Israel
has received deadly harm, being corrupted by contact with them, both
in peace and war, and more especially in a lowered spiritual life.
This part of the Book of Ezekiel comes to an end in chapter xxxiii, 21,
where the mournful announcement is made to the prophet that the
predicted blow had fallen: “One that had escaped out of Jerusalem
came to me, saying, The city is smitten.” It was a conclusive proof
of his authority to be considered a true prophet of God, but not less
deplorable on that account.
The remaining part of the book is taken up with brighter themes. Out
of the nettle, danger, God has plucked the flower, safety. The fall of
Jerusalem, which seemed to involve its disappearance from history, is
the means of its salvation. The pages of the prophet are bright with
his predictions of an Israel raised to a new and higher ideal, and
restored thereby to the favor of God. The steps by which this happy
condition is to be brought about are successively unfolded to us and
occupy the book to its close. The false shepherds (chapter xxxiv),
the unworthy and unfaithful rulers who, like the thieves and hirelings
of whom Jesus spake (John x), fed themselves and cared naught for the
flock, are to be removed; and God offers himself to be a shepherd to
Israel, searching his sheep, seeking them out in the cloudy and dark
day, binding up that which was broken, and bringing again that which
was lost――a beautiful predictive type of the Messiah, the good Shepherd
who laid down his life for the sheep.
In addition to this, the false prophets and unsafe guides whom Israel
had followed are to be taken out of the way, and God promises in their
stead to put his Spirit within Israel, cleansing them from all their
filthiness and their idols and giving them a new heart and a new spirit
(xxxvi, 25‒27). This promise of spiritual regeneration is illustrated
by the vision of the valley of dry bones (xxxvii, 1‒14). At the word
of the prophet “the bones” which lay whitening in the valley “came
together, bone to his bone,” assuming the form and appearing in the
likeness of men. But something more than human preaching was required,
for as yet the forms were without life. Then the “breath” of the Holy
Spirit entered into them, like the wind whose sound was heard on the
day of Pentecost, “and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an
exceeding great army” of actual and real men.
The first and closely following result of the spiritual resurrection
thus wrought by the Holy Spirit was the reunion of Judah and Ephraim
(verses 15‒28). These two branches of Israel, unhappily disunited,
always suspicious of each other, often in actual hostility, had by
their division brought reproach upon God’s cause and had subjected
themselves to the disasters, oppressions, and captivities which had
marked their history. Now the schism was to be healed. They were to
become one, so that God could say again, “They shall be my people, and
I will be their God.” Then shall follow a new era of unexampled peace,
prosperity, and productiveness. “David my servant shall be king over
them,” “their prince forever.” “My tabernacle also shall be with them;
yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen
shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel.” The fulfillment of
part of this prophecy is distinctly declared by the angel of God who
announced to the Virgin Mary concerning Christ (Luke i, 32), “The Lord
God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall
reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall
be no end.” Now it is a remarkable fact, of which use will hereafter
be made to clear up the mystery of one of the obscurest parts of the
Revelation of John, that the reign of David and his descendants over
the throne of Jerusalem was exactly one thousand years. In the year
1063 B. C. David was anointed king by Samuel and won his first triumph
in his memorable overthrow of Goliath; and in 63 B. C. Judea became
subject to Rome, and the royal supremacy of David’s line came to an
end.¹ The “scepter” then departed from Judah, and the “lawgiver from
between his feet.”
¹ Dr. William Smith, _New Testament History_, p. 731.
Immediately following this remarkable prophecy of Ezekiel is that
concerning “Gog, the land of Magog” (chapters xxxviii, xxxix). He is
instructed to say to Gog, “After many days thou shalt be visited: in
the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back
from the sword” (xxxviii, 8); “Thou shalt ascend and come like a
storm” (xxxviii, 9); “Thou shalt come up against my people of Israel”
(xxxviii, 16); nevertheless, in the thirty-ninth chapter it is recorded,
“I am against thee, O Gog” (xxxix, 1); “Thou shalt fall upon the
mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that is
with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort,
and to the beasts of the field to be devoured” (xxxix, 4); “Then shall
they [that is, Israel] know that I am the Lord their God” (xxxix, 28);
“Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have poured out
my Spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God” (xxxix, 29).
Ezekiel closes his prophecies (chapters xl‒xlviii) with his pictures of
restored Israel, its new ideal temple, and city, and land.
The lines of thought thus laid down by the prophet of the Old Testament
are so closely followed by the author of the Apocalypse that there
seems no other conclusion left to us than that the parallelism of
subject is intended to be as exact as is that of language and imagery.
In the Apocalypse, too, “the faithful city” (Isaiah i, 21) has
forfeited her faith and “become an harlot.” The dire catastrophe which
the seer of the old dispensation saw falling upon corrupt and apostate
Jerusalem has also fallen upon Babylon, the unfaithful Church of the
new. So, also, before the eyes of the apostle, as well as those of the
prophet, there gleamed a vision of a restored Church, pure and clean,
descending from God out of heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband.
How this vision is to be made real, how that splendid city is to be
brought into existence of whose glories the eloquent figures of the
closing chapters inspire such lofty conceptions, it remains for him to
tell us, in order that in all ages to come Christian men may discern
the paths along which they must labor and the steps through which they
must ascend if their efforts are to be crowned with favor and success.
How valuable a help the study of Ezekiel affords us in the
interpretation of the Apocalypse may be seen in the light which it
throws upon the subject of the “thousand years.” The foundation of
those theories of a millennium which have taken such hold upon the
minds of men as to have perceptibly modified language and to have made
the word one of the commonplaces of thought lies in the few verses
which make up the first half of the twentieth chapter. There must be
something peculiarly attractive about these theories and very much in
them accordant with our instinctive hopes, since the paragraph in the
text furnishes but a narrow basis upon which to build a superstructure
so large. It is not easy, moreover, to understand why, in a book so
allegorical as is the Apocalypse, this paragraph should enjoy the
exceptional distinction of demanding a literal interpretation, as would
be the case if these theories are admitted. Nevertheless, it is true
that, from very early ages in Christian history until now, a belief
in and expectation of a personal and visible appearance and reign
upon earth of the Lord Jesus Christ, inaugurating with his saints a
period, stretching through a thousand years, of inconceivable peace and
prosperity, has been entertained by many of his purest and most zealous
followers, and has even been made the distinguishing tenet of large
bodies of men. Whether these opinions are legitimately based upon the
text and how far a correct exegesis compels us to accept them we must
now inquire, endeavoring in all fairness and candor to so interpret
the inspired words as to make the various details of the paragraph
consistent with each other and with the rest of the sacred Scriptures.
Referring once more to the prophecy of Ezekiel, we find the order of
events there described to be, first, a resurrection of dry bones and a
vivification of them into men, then a united Church and people of God,
an undefined period of happy prosperity, a restoration of the kingdom
of David, a combined assault upon this kingdom by hostile nations under
the name of Gog and Magog, and the complete and final victory of the
kingdom over them.
In the Apocalypse the same order is followed, with variation only
in some details of the picture. The only feature which can be called
new is that of the binding and loosing of Satan; and even this, by
implication, at least, is in Ezekiel. It is certainly a reasonable
presumption that the same truths, whatever they are, were in the mind
both of the prophet and the apostle, and were intended to be taught by
both.
Now, if anything in the interpretation of the Apocalypse may be relied
on as valid and beyond question it is that the reign of Christ is not a
future event, to be expected at some day which has not yet dawned upon
earth, but is a present and existent fact. That kingdom was inaugurated
when the Lord Jesus, having risen from the dead and ascended to heaven,
led captivity captive and bestowed upon his followers the gift of the
Holy Spirit. When St. Paul in writing to the Corinthians says, “He must
reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet,” surely the meaning
is that he does now reign and shall continue so to do until the result
is accomplished.
The mediatorial sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ is, indeed,
the one theme of the whole book of Revelation. The consummation and
undisputed supremacy of the kingdom has not been reached. It is in its
militant, not triumphant state. But imperfection within and hostility
without no more affect the reality of its being, although they may
militate against its well-being, than did treason within and war
without contravene the fact of the sovereignty of David and his house
over Judah. Into this kingdom not a select number, but all the true
followers of Jesus are introduced. They are “a royal priesthood.” They
are “joint heirs with Christ.” “We see not yet,” indeed, “all things
put under him;” but we see Jesus “crowned with glory and honor;” and
“he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for
which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.”
Again, it may be accepted as almost an axiom of interpretation that
the resurrection referred to in the words, “They lived and reigned with
Christ,” means a spiritual change, and not a physical or bodily one.
It is synonymous with that epoch in the Christian’s life when he is
delivered “from the power of darkness” and translated “into the kingdom
of God’s dear Son,” that crisis of spiritual existence which is called
conversion or regeneration, when one is “born from above” and raised
with Christ into newness of life. The resurrection spoken of is stated
to be that of “the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of
Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshiped the beast,
neither his image.” It is also called “the first resurrection,” thus
differentiating it from another and subsequent resurrection of “the
rest of the dead.” This first resurrection, moreover, exempts those who
partake of it from the power of “the second death,” which is defined
as the being “cast into the lake of fire.” It separates them from “the
rest of the dead”――those who are dead “in trespasses and sins,” as they
themselves once were――who live not again until “the thousand years” are
finished.
We are now on sure ground. The meaning of this vision is that the
mediatorial kingdom of our Lord is to be established on the earth, and
that by the proper use of those instrumentalities which have been given
into our hands, namely, the word of God and the blood of the Lamb,
it shall advance in spite of all opposition and hindrances, until all
worldliness and false prophetism shall be eliminated, until Christ
“shall have put down all rule and all authority and power,” until “the
kingdoms of this world” shall become “the kingdoms of our Lord, and of
his Christ,” and “he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even
the Father,” and the prayer shall be fulfilled which daily ascends to
the throne of grace, “Thy kingdom come.” The millennium is now. We are
living in it. Its light shines but dimly, it is true, but it will shine
more and more until the perfect day.
The period during which the saints shall live and reign with Christ
is stated to be “a thousand years.” Conjecture has been rife as to
why this number should be selected. Manifestly, here, at least, the
year-day theory, that which makes every day mentioned in the book the
symbol of a year, breaks down. Otherwise, the period would be too long;
and none have been found to maintain the opinion that the millennium is
to last three hundred and sixty-five thousand years. Yet, to interpret
the expression literally, as if it meant exactly a thousand of our
years, would be to depart entirely from the rule of the Apocalypse, in
which numbers are taken as symbols of epochs, not as a measurement of
duration. There is no reason given why in this case exception should be
made to the constant and unvarying use of days and months and years in
this book.
Here, again, reference to the book of Ezekiel will dissolve the
obscurity and present us with an explanation simple, consistent, and
entirely in accordance with the usage which elsewhere prevails in the
Apocalypse.
In the description which Ezekiel gives of the happy results which were
to follow the resurrection of the dry bones and the reunion of Israel,
one of the particulars which tenderly touched every Jewish heart was,
“David my servant shall be king over them; and they shall all have
one shepherd.” Whether the prophet was himself conscious of the full
meaning of these words or not, it is nevertheless the fact that it was
not in any merely earthly descendant of David that this prediction was
to be realized, but in the Messiah, “great David’s greater Son.” So,
doubtless, the apostle of the Apocalypse accepted it. And, inasmuch as
the sovereignty of David’s house was, as has previously been said, just
one thousand years, what more natural than that John should see in this
number the signature and symbol of the reign of Christ? He does not
mean that the duration of that reign shall be limited to a thousand
years, but that, be it longer or shorter, this number is its symbol
and emblem. Whatever he mentions as taking place during the thousand
years is to be understood by us as occurring during the progress of the
mediatorial kingdom of Christ from its commencement to its culmination.
In the sight of the divine Being the period between the establishment
of the kingdom and its complete and final triumph over all its foes,
be it longer or shorter, is the day of Christ, and “one day is with the
Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
The moments or stages in the growth of the kingdom are now to be
specified.
1. _Restraints upon the Power of Satan._――There is one item in the
revelation made to John, and through him to us, which is peculiar
to him. It is, indeed, implied in the book of Ezekiel, but is not
explicitly communicated. This is the restraint which is put upon the
power of Satan. An angel is seen to “come down from heaven, having
the key of the bottomless pit [the same mentioned in chapter ix, 1‒11]
and a great chain in his hand [see 2 Peter ii, 4; Jude 6]. And he laid
hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan,
and bound him a thousand years.” “When the thousand years are expired,
Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive
the nations;” but this loosing of him, it is said, will be for only
“a little season” before his final destruction. As the thousand years
are a synonym for the reign of Christ, the meaning is that during the
existent mediatorial sovereignty of Christ Satan is debarred his full
liberty. His judgment has not, indeed, come, and he still exists, but
his activity is circumscribed, and his power to hurt is limited and
curbed.
It will be remembered that in the twelfth chapter Satan was described
under the emblem of the dragon and his futile hostility toward the
woman was depicted. At the close of the chapter we were told that “the
dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant
of her seed.” Since that time he has seemed to disappear from mention
and is directly alluded to only occasionally. His place in the drama of
warfare has been taken by the two wild beasts, his emissaries, in whom
all enmity against Christ and his followers has been concentrated. Now
that these have been judged and consigned to their doom and have in
turn passed from the stage, the apostle reverts to the evil one behind
and within them, whose subordinate agents they were.
One of the noteworthy facts of the universe brought to light mainly
by this book of Revelation, but fully corroborated by other scriptures
when attention is directed to its quest, is the ambition of Satan to
copy and travesty the divine Being, both in modes of manifestation and
methods of work. His abilities seem to lie, not in the direction of
originality, but of imitation. He is not a creator or inventor, but a
consummate actor and a master of the art of mimicry. As the Deity is
revealed to us in the triune personality of Father, Son, and Spirit, so
also there is a trinity of evil――the dragon, the beast, and the false
prophet.
And, again, during the continuance of the mediatorial sovereignty
of Christ established for the elimination of sin from the universe
the Father does not directly interpose, but has delivered all things
into the hands of the Son, and through him to the Holy Spirit, whose
instruments are the cross and the Bible, and whose witnesses and
memorials are the two sacraments. In like manner, there is an attempted
imitation of this on the part of Satan. His personal agency in human
affairs is confined within narrow limits, not of his own will surely,
but by reason of him who hath subjected him. Whatever influence his
malignity and deep-seated hatred of God can exert in order to defeat
the plans and purposes of redemption is wielded mainly through his
subordinates, the two wild beasts. He himself is incarcerated in the
abyss of darkness at the will of his Master and Lord. He seems to have
been allowed personally to tempt Christ; but his arts were wasted, he
lost the field of battle, and must pay the penalty of defeat. Referring
to this, the Lord Jesus said, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from
heaven;” and again, “Now is the prince ♦of this world cast out;” and
again, “The prince of this world is judged.”
♦ duplicate word “of” removed
While, therefore, the opposition which the Christian encounters, the
temptations which beset him, the evil against which he must struggle
proceed incipiently from the great adversary, it is only the emissaries
and agents of the ruler of this world’s darkness whom he is called
on personally to encounter. As God, in order to save man, must become
incarnate in human flesh, so must Satan, in order to tempt, embody
himself in some earthly form.
The comforting assurance which Paul administered to the brethren of
Corinth was, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common
[that is, moderated] to man.” The work of the Lord Jesus Christ extends
some of its blessings to all the race of mankind, to the disobedient
as well as to the faithful, and tempers the vicissitudes of our mortal
state to our capacity of enduring them. It exempts us, though it did
not him, from exposure to Satan’s unshackled power. Satan himself is
bound and shut up in the pit. God’s seal is on him, for he, too, is
the property of the divine Being. And he deceives “the nations no
more” till the thousand years are fulfilled. Then he is to be “loosed a
little season,” as we shall see, prior to his overwhelming discomfiture
and irretrievable defeat.
2. _Outpouring of the Holy Spirit under the Emblem of Resurrection._
――What has already, in the interpretation of this part of the
Apocalypse, been said upon this question will obviate the necessity
for any long discussion of it. Holding the prophecy of Ezekiel in
mind, we cannot but conclude that what was meant to be taught by
the resurrection of the bones in the valley of vision is likewise
indicated by the expression, “They lived and reigned with Christ.”
“This is the first resurrection.” As the resurrection spoken of in
Ezekiel was a striking emblem of the power of the Holy Spirit to effect
spiritual regeneration, so are the words to be taken here. The usage
of describing regeneration by the emblem of a resurrection is so common
in the Scriptures that there is no need to adduce illustrations of it.
Nor is there any need to dwell upon the analogies between the two or to
draw out the important lessons suggested thereby.
One truth, however, is so vital that it must detain us a moment,
namely, the absolute necessity for the supernatural agency of the Holy
Spirit in the inception of spiritual life. No one who believes in an
actual resurrection――that is, in one that is more than figurative and
spiritual, in a resurrection which extends to man’s complete being, in
a resurrection of the body, and not a mere continuance of the life of
the soul――conceives that any natural agents in existence, or, at least,
within our knowledge, are competent to produce it. The bodies we have
here are “terrestrial,” brought into and continued in existence by
the operation of natural laws. The body of the resurrection, whatever
its connection and continuity with the present one, is confessedly
“a spiritual body.” No forces within the realm of nature are able to
create life or to restore it to that which has lost it. The experience
and observation of all the centuries fully establish this truth.
Whether our present bodies or souls come into existence by traduction
or direct creation is another question; but all Christians are agreed
that the resurrection of the body must be effected by the direct action
of God.
So, likewise, analogy would teach, must it be with regeneration of
the soul. That change by which we are raised from the death of sin to
the life of God, that transformation by which we cease to be merely
citizens of earth and become citizens of heaven, can be effected only
by the direct and supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit. No material,
earthly, or human forces are sufficiently mighty to bring it to pass.
Here God must specifically act――not as in other modes of his work,
but by a distinct exercise of power. Nor are we allowed to conceive
of entrance into the spiritual kingdom of God as the resultant of any
process of evolution or growth; whatever preparation is made for it,
the spiritual life of the soul begins in a special operation of the
Holy Spirit as specific and distinct as that by which God “breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
The closing chapters of the sacred Scriptures are in unison with the
opening ones of Genesis, and from the prelude to the final “amen” there
is one harmonious melody.
It must be remembered that John was a witness to and a participant in
the extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
He speaks, therefore, of that which he knew and testifies to that which
he had seen. While the results of the transformation wrought in him are
apparent to us, the fact of it was to him a matter of consciousness.
It is because he had experienced the power of the Holy Spirit that he
declares the necessity for its exercise. And the stress laid upon this
regenerating agency of the Spirit in order that we may be made to live
and reign with Christ is no slight evidence that the man who wrote the
Apocalypse and he who recorded the words of Christ, “Except a man be
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” were one and the same
person.
There is no warrant in Scripture for the assumption that the descent
of the Holy Ghost upon the band of disciples in Jerusalem was intended
to be an anomalous event and incapable of repetition. In the form of
manifestation possibly it was, and in the accompanying signs; but not
in its spirit and power. Our Lord plainly promised to his disciples
the abiding presence of the Comforter to the end of the ages. But
that promise was and is conditional. The Holy Ghost was not given
until Jesus was glorified, neither can he be now. The recognition
and reception of Christ as our only hope and Saviour is the measure
according to which the Spirit now imparts his life. Nor can any
definition or theory of Christianity be accepted as correct in which
the atonement of Christ does not hold the place of central principle.
And in proportion as the crucified Christ is believed on and accepted
as the only name “given among men, whereby we must be saved,” may
richer and more abundant outpourings of the Holy Spirit in his offices
of regeneration and sanctification be expected.
3. _Union of Christian Believers._――There is one particular and
important item relating to the coming of Messiah’s kingdom which is
described with greater minuteness and fullness of detail by Ezekiel
than by the writer of the Apocalypse. This is the unity of the Church
of God――a point upon which the older prophet lays great stress. This
unity is set forth both as a direct result of spiritual resurrection
and as an essential element of preparation for the final conflict with
evil. By symbol and in word he strongly emphasizes the declaration that,
as the sticks which he took became one stick in his hand, so should
Judah and Ephraim be made one in God’s hand. “I will make them one
nation.... They shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be
divided into two kingdoms any more at all.” All the wounds of division
shall be closed and the scars of schism healed.
It cannot be said that this same truth is so patent in the Revelation,
but it is there by justifiable inference. The fact that the saints live
and reign with Christ implies that the kingdom is a united one. The
union and fellowship of the saints with each other, without division
or alienation, is assumed. The obviousness of the truth was sufficient
reason for less explicitness of statement. At any rate, if the apostle
can be accused of any omission here he made ample amends in the
prominence given to the subject in the fourth gospel, in which he
records the prayer of our great High Priest, “That they all may be one;
as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in
us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
The subject which thus opens out to us is one of such absorbing
interest as to demand ample consideration. If it be true, as the words
of the prophet and, indirectly, of the apostle seem to indicate, that
one result of that spiritual quickening by the Holy Spirit called
conversion or regeneration is to bring about union between all who
call themselves disciples of Christ, then that regeneration cannot
be regarded as complete or normal which does not produce fellowship
with all other believers; neither can any Church be said to have
attained a state in any great degree approaching its ideal which is
not in union with the whole Church of Christ. And, in addition, any
instrumentalities we may employ in order to bring about the conversion
of the world must be ineffectual, or, at least, greatly shorn of their
influence, until there exists in the Christian world a unity which
finds its example and the source of its power in the divine nature.
Upon this important question there is entire consentience of opinion
among the inspired evangelists and apostles of the New Testament. They
record their conviction that Caiaphas was speaking as a true prophet
of God, however faulty his motives in so doing, when he said that Jesus
should die in order to “gather together in one the children of God
that were scattered abroad.” Appreciating the immense loss of power
which had resulted from the schism between Judah and Ephraim, a loss
felt even more severely in the moral than in the political world, they
strove with all their might to prevent a like division between the
Jewish and Gentile converts to Christ. Nor did they cease their efforts,
although laying themselves open to the imputation of inconsistency,
until finally the matter became one of life or death to Christianity.
With a tenacity which appears to us akin to obstinacy, they clung to
the hope that the Jewish nation would accept Christ as Messiah and King,
that the old Church would, under the transforming power of the Holy
Spirit, merge into the new as the dawn melts into the day, and that
thus the continuity of history would be preserved.
There can be no question that the rejection of Jesus as Saviour by his
own people was a serious disaster. It created a division among those
who believed in a living God, a personal Providence, and broke the
unity of their testimony in the court of mankind. It sent Christianity
out to its work heavily handicapped; and acute opponents, like Celsus
and Porphyry, were not slow to avail themselves of the advantage it
gave them. Nor has the loss of power therefrom accruing been recovered
to this day. The event is sufficient justification for the wise
conservatism which marked the actions of the apostles.
As little room can there be now for question that the divided,
distracted, segmentary condition of Christendom, with the animosities,
envies, sectarianism, undue exaltation of non-essentials, concentration
of efforts upon things of minor importance, and cultivation of bigotry
caused thereby, operates as a most active factor in shearing the
religion of Christ of its legitimate influence. Nor could increase
of power within and superiority to the world without be brought about
so quickly by any means as by a unity of believers――such unity as the
New Testament inculcates. This statement in no degree conflicts with
the uniform declaration of the Scriptures that the word of God and the
blood of Christ are the two all-important and all-sufficient agencies
for the furtherance of the kingdom; it only asserts that the Bible and
the cross will not have accomplished their purpose until such unity
shall have followed their acceptance.
Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, no less emphatically affirms with
all his authority the necessity of this union. A careful study of his
epistles will show that he divides the religious history of the world
into three distinct periods――Judaism, Gentilism, and a final period in
which these shall be united.
First was Judaism, which began with Abraham, the pioneer and father of
such as believe in a living, personal God. It ran its course, fulfilled
its mission, and had attained what Paul calls “the fullness of times”
when “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to
redeem them that were under the law.” The office of Judaism in the rôle
of redemption was to bear witness to the supernatural. The Jew believed
thoroughly in God as the Creator, the Providence over nature, the
Ruler and Judge of mankind; in God as a person distinct from nature and
supreme over it. He fully recognized the obligation of the commandment,
“The Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”
But he exalted the supernatural so highly as to put an impassable chasm
between God and his creatures. The immanent presence of God in nature
was lost sight of in the conception of his transcendency over it. An
incarnation of the Deity and, above all, any such contact of God with
humanity as to admit of the possibility of his suffering was abhorrent
to the mind of the Jew. And so when Christ came to his own as the Word
“made flesh” his own received him not. And, with his foot almost upon
the throne of the world, the Jew stumbled and fell.
Following this period, in Paul’s conception, was that of Gentilism,
which has also its peculiar mission, runs its destined course, and has
its times of fullness toward which it tends (Romans xi, 25). This was
also the conception of Christ himself; for he had said, “Jerusalem
shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles
be fulfilled” (Luke xxi, 24).
The mission of the heathen Gentilism lay in the sphere of nature and
humanity. With all the beauty, grace, order, motion, and life of the
world the Gentile was in sympathy. His defect was that he rose no
higher. The gods he believed in were simply human and natural forces
personified and exalted. His need was to be impressed vividly with the
conception of the reality of the supernatural and to recognize the
divine Being above and beyond man and the world.
To meet the needs of all classes of humanity God has employed those two
great instrumentalities to which reference is so constantly made in the
Revelation of St. John――on the one hand, the Bible, the written word,
the sword of the Spirit, with its intense realization of the presence
and power of God in nature and history; on the other, the cross, the
blood of the Lamb, with its rich testimony to the fact that “God so
loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
It was Paul’s confident and inspiring belief that when the fullness of
the Gentiles should have come there would be a union of all believers
in God; “and so all Israel shall be saved.” And this is the truth to
which the writer of the Apocalypse bears witness in his vision of the
saints who “lived and reigned with Christ” in one united and concordant
kingdom.
If, then, the attainment of so desirable and blessed a result as that
of the consummation of Christ’s kingdom upon earth is contingent upon
the unity of believers it surely behooves the disciples of Christ to
labor more earnestly than ever before for this unity. The magnitude of
the result is worth the sacrifices needed to gain it.
In what this unity shall consist, in what sense believers are to be one,
is a question upon which lawful difference of opinion may be allowed,
and it is to be settled only by a sympathetic and careful study of the
Scriptures. But as to the mode of its attainment and as to what must
precede its realization the Bible is sufficiently precise and ♦explicit.
It will not be secured by a conventional agreement to accept any common
and universal symbol, sacrament, or organization; unity means something
too vital for that. It will not be founded upon the basis of any past
fact, upon any historical creed or institution or order of ministry;
unity is something akin to life, and life is progressive, anticipative,
not retrospective. The Jewish people were of one common lineage, having
the same fathers, the same oracles, the same institutions, but it was
by no chain descending from past times that they were held in unity; as
soon as the hope of a future Messiah vanished their past associations
became a rope of sand.
♦ “explict” replaced with “explicit”
The Lord Jesus Christ has himself most plainly and authoritatively
announced to us the processes by which alone this unity can be attained.
In the ever memorable words of his prayer as our great High Priest
he said, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth,” and
then almost immediately added, “That they all may be one.” The unity
which he anticipated and now desires is one that must be preceded
by sanctification. This is fully in accordance with the prophecy of
Ezekiel, for the union by which Judah and Ephraim were made one was
preceded by the resurrection to life which occurred when the dry
and withered bones had been breathed upon by the Spirit. And, in the
paragraph of the Apocalypse now under consideration, it was only after
the souls of the witnesses and followers of Jesus had been raised by
the first resurrection that they lived and reigned with Christ. Nor
can any unity be real which is not preceded by a spiritual resurrection
from the death of sin into newness of life through the power of the
Holy Spirit.
What is here said of unity as applied to the body of believers is
equally applicable to each individual. The kingdom of Christ does not
reach its designed consummation in the individual until the heart is
united to fear the name of the Lord. The exclusion or omission of any
part of our composite nature from the sanctifying influences of the
Holy Spirit in so far mars the integrity and concord of the kingdom and
is below its ideal. Entire sanctification is, as has been said by John
Fletcher, a constellation made up by the union of all the graces in a
glorious galaxy. And St. Paul teaches us that it is only when we shall
“come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of
God,” that we shall have attained “unto a perfect man, unto the measure
of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
4. _Final Triumph over the Carnal Mind, or Barbarism. Emblem of Gog
and Magog._――With this glorious picture of the outpouring of the Spirit
and the complete union of the Church of Christ in his mind, the apostle
passes on to the decisive conflict and crowning victory of the kingdom.
“When the thousand years are expired,” he says, “Satan shall be loosed
out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations.”
It is worthy of note that the word which is used by St. John for
“expired” is the same used in the fourth gospel in several important
and significant places, although differently translated. It is found
in the prayer of Jesus (John xvii, 23) in connection with the thought
of unity, as in the section of the Revelation just considered, and is
there rendered “may be made perfect.” It is found in the same prayer
(John xvii, 4), and is used by our Lord in speaking of his active work
upon earth, being there translated “have finished.” It is also recorded
by St. John as being one of our Lord’s exclamations while on the cross
(John xix, 30), and is there also rendered “finished.”
From these uses of the word the inference is very reasonable that it
signifies, not so much the termination of a period of duration, as the
completion of a process. The thousand years may be said to have expired,
not at the close of any number of years of time, but whenever the ends
for which the kingdom of Christ is established are attained. Until
those purposes are accomplished the power of Satan is restrained and
he is not allowed to exercise the full measure of his strength. He who
makes “the wrath of man” to praise him, while “the remainder of wrath”
he restrains, guards his Church and his servants as “a garden inclosed.”
History and experience furnish many an example of the providence
that shelters and shields the infancy and immaturity of Churches and
believers until adult strength has acquired power to resist. The storm
that bends the reed will not move the sturdy oak; and one “rooted and
grounded in love” can withstand blasts that would be disastrous to the
growing and tender shoot. All progress in human laws, in fact, tends
to surround the evil-disposed with increasing restraints, in order that
the weak and helpless and inexperienced may have an equal chance to
develop their individuality.
But at the expiration of this period, we are told, Satan is allowed to
go forth to deceive the nations. The writer of the Apocalypse describes
the final assault of Satan upon Christ’s kingdom under the emblem, so
often quoted and so much misunderstood, of Gog and Magog. In so doing
he draws again upon Ezekiel; and if we wish to ascertain the meaning
of both the apostle and the prophet we must revert to the circumstances
under which the prophecy was originally given, and must, in this
instance, have recourse to history.
Not long prior to the time of Ezekiel there had occurred a sudden
and terrible irruption of barbarians into the civilized parts of the
world, which had caused widespread alarm and terror and shaken to its
base the fabric of society which had through preceding centuries been
laboriously built up. An immense horde of Scythians, in the rudest
stage of savagery, without pity or regard for class, sex, age, or
condition, with intense contempt for and hatred of those arts of
refinement which they were incapable of appreciating, broke loose from
their primitive home and, sweeping down through Asia, overwhelming
cities and empires, threatened to destroy every vestige of literature,
order, and religion and to turn the world back to chaos and anarchy.
Happily their onward course was arrested before the injury they caused
had become irreparable. From this circumstance the name Gog, which was
that of the horde, became the symbol of barbarism, and was used as such
both by the prophet of the Old Testament and the apostle of the
Revelation.
The truth which is intended to be presented is the possibility of
an inroad of that barbarism from which no age is free and from which
the most imminent peril to Christianity is to be dreaded. There is in
every human being, however civilized, a germ of barbarism, a strain
of savagery, which though repressed by education, by culture, or by
law, is not destroyed by them, and which under favoring conditions may
become the ruling principle of life. In every community of men there
will be found some who represent the highest stage which the community
has reached; but there will be found some who remain in the most
rudimentary condition of barbarism. It is the struggle between these
opposing elements which makes the life of the community.
Gog and Magog do not represent heathenism, which is simply a lower form
of religion capable of being improved by the increased light of the
Gospel. They represent the spirit of barbarism, which opposes itself to
every form of religion, lurking as the dark shadow which waits upon all
civilization, ready to manifest itself whenever the power which hinders
its manifestation relaxes its vigilance. And unhappily there are, even
in civilized and Christian countries, institutions allowed to remain
whose only result is to foster the tendency toward barbarism, whose
purpose is to feed the lower sensual appetites and passions that are at
war alike with law, education, culture, and religion, and between which
and the kingdom of Christ must be perpetual antagonism until one or the
other shall be exterminated. The study of history will reveal the fact
that times occur in the life of nations when the tendency to revert to
barbarism asserts itself in unusual strength, when the normal movement
upward and onward is arrested, and the forces which drag men downward
predominate temporarily.
It is such times and conditions of which Satan avails himself to show
his most malignant power. With all such tendencies he is in closest
alliance, and in the effort to intensify them finds his most congenial
employment. It is a mournful fact that the impulse toward the higher
and better is not the only one to be found in man or in any creature;
we must take into the account the opposite fact of the tendency to
revert to lower and baser levels. Indeed, it is not uncommon to notice
that an unusual movement in one direction seems to originate an almost
equal one in the opposite. Nor can there be any guarantee that the
higher and purer faculties shall assert their legitimate sway except
in the promised guidance and help of God. In individual experience,
even after long and faithful service and growth, there will come at
times sudden suggestions and temptations which reveal the existence
of desires and passions we had supposed extinct, but which have been
kept down only by God’s grace and our unceasing watchfulness; such also
is the case with the larger aggregations of men into communities and
societies. And the price we must pay for liberty is eternal vigilance.
The barbarian is, indeed, a man; the essential elements of humanity
lie in him as in all men. But there are properties which belong to the
lowest states of society which constitute a differential characteristic
and which disappear or, at least, become dormant when growth and
culture take place.
The barbarian is an intense realist. He dwells in the region of
facts――such facts as are discoverable by his physical nature only.
Of sentiment, of ideals, he knows nothing and cares less. Such things
as these are spiritually discerned, and he is a natural man only. Of
that unseen ether which lies around the bare and bald facts of life,
connecting them with the divine and eternal source of things, of those
loftier visions of the true, the beautiful, the good which fill the
mind of the cultured with intensest delight, he has no conception. His
delights and employments are sensual and low, and the end of all of
his energies is to gratify them. Arcadian simplicity fades away with
increased geographical and ethnological knowledge.
The only forces which the barbarian appreciates, therefore, are the
mechanical and physical. With him might is right. Of the power of
spiritual forces he has the most inadequate notions until he finds how
weak his cunning and artifice are in the presence of civilization. Of
that sacrifice and renunciation of self for the sake of love of which
the cross of Christ is the summit and crowning example and in which
is the demonstration of the power and wisdom of God he is incapable of
appreciation until the Holy Spirit breaks the chain with which Satan
has bound him; and then he ceases to be a barbarian. Clovis spake the
real feeling of the savage, even when baptized, in exclaiming, “Had
I been there with my Franks they should not have nailed Jesus to the
cross.”
By profession the barbarian is a soldier. He knows somewhat of the
power of weapons of war and but little else. The mechanical and
industrial pursuits by which society is bound together are objects of
scorn to him. He has profound contempt for labor as beneath his pride.
The aristocracy he admires is built on idleness and bloodshed, not on
toil or skill or honest work.
Barbarians divide themselves on national lines alone. The broad
humanity which overlaps territorial boundaries, or a patriotism which
can embrace all mankind and recognize a universal brotherhood, the
barbarian is not able to comprehend, or else he despises the notion as
silly and puerile. He has no consideration of any ties save those of
kinship, if, indeed, fully of these. All within this limit may not be
friends; but certainly all without are enemies, for whose welfare he
need have no regard and whose rights he does not recognize.
And because of these things the stage of barbarism is politically that
of socialism, of that form of it in which the individual has no value
or right of independent thought or action, except as the clan or tribe
or community may confer them. The discernment of the real worth of
man is the gift of the religion of Jesus. In its teaching that the
blood of Christ has been shed for the redemption of all mankind, that
the manifestation of the Spirit has been given to everyone, and that,
therefore, it is not allowed to call any man common or unclean, it has
laid the only solid foundation upon which true liberty, independence,
self-respect, and the highest enjoyments of life can be based.
How rife this spirit of barbarism is, even in societies and States
called civilized and Christian, a moderate degree of observation
will prove. It is to be understood, of course, that to say a tendency
exists in mankind to revert to barbarism is far from saying that such
a tendency is likely to predominate. In pointing out the dangers which
beset civilization the Bible does by no means countenance despondency
or encourage doubt as to the future of history. It indicates perils for
the purpose of inciting us to the use of the means which it suggests
for avoiding them. The spirit of the Bible is one of most cheerful hope
as to the outcome of the conflict between good and evil; and nowhere is
the tone of assurance stronger than in the Revelation.
But we shall be very unwise if we shall neglect to guard against those
symptoms of danger which are manifesting themselves. The persistent
attempts to reduce literature and poetry and art to a barbaric realism,
dragging into light lusts and passions which modesty, culture, and
religion hide from view; the disposition, which seems to increase,
to make the boundaries of States and empires coincide with kinship
of race, and thus to limit men’s interests and aspirations to their
own nationalities; the multiplication of armies and the conversion
of kingdoms into camps, in which every citizen must be a soldier; the
fearful increase of destructive dynamitism and anarchy; the employment
of the most advanced science and education in the invention and
improvement of machines of war; the growth of that form of socialism
which denies all individualism of property, family, and labor――these
are indications of that proneness to barbarism from which mankind is
not yet free, and from which it will not be free until the world comes
into the enjoyment of the liberty of Christ.
The keen eye of the apostle discerned, even in the apparently secure
age in which he lived, the signs of coming perils and dangers; and
against these, men and Churches of all ages have had to struggle. The
battle of Christ with Magog is part of that conflict with the carnal
man that rages in the heart of every Christian, as well as in the world
at large. Happily, however, we know from the pen of inspiration the
full measure of danger to be apprehended, and may rest in the assurance
that Satan has no other appliances of mischief in reserve when these
are exhausted.
It will be noted that the apostle says, in describing the assault
of Gog and Magog upon the kingdom of Christ, “They went up on the
breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and
the beloved city.” A distinction is made between the “city,” which
symbolizes the Church, and the circumjacent “camp,” which is interposed
as a bulwark between it and the enemy, and which may be regarded as
representing law, education, government, and other conservative forces
of the world. There lies in this a thought characteristic of the
profound mind of the beloved apostle. In a sense most true and deep,
Christians are “the salt of the earth.” The interests of humanity
are bound up with the welfare of the kingdom. In fighting the battles
of God the Church is guarding the welfare of mankind. The bark of
Christianity carries man and all his fortunes. Barbarism is the common
enemy of government and of religion, and in striving to injure one
strikes at the other. Gog and Magog are antagonistic to the “city” and
the encircling “camp” alike. In resisting the emissaries and allies of
Satan Christianity is struggling for the benefit of civilization and
safeguarding all earthly good, even as its Master died not for his own
nation only, but for all men dispersed over the globe. For its own sake,
if not out of regard for religion, society should jealously prohibit
any infringement of divine law. “Happy is that people, whose God is the
Lord.”
On the other hand, it is a matter of profoundest importance to the
cause of religion that it shall maintain the order and prosperity of
the community. No Christian can be indifferent to the welfare of the
State in which he lives. As he dares not allow himself in his own
personal experience to watch without concern any indications of the
growth of the carnal mind, neither can he be listless or apathetic when
opinions destructive to society are spreading abroad. The attacks upon
governments are but the prelude to assaults upon religion. Again and
again has “the earth helped the woman,” and resistance to lawlessness
and anarchy been preservative of the existence of the Church. However
far any established government may fall below the ideal, it is yet
better than none. “The powers that be are ordained of God,” although
Nero may wield the scepter. Forms of government are subject to change
and may be altered in order to conform to higher ideals; but the
existence of government itself is essential to the fulfillment of the
purposes of God.
But, however formidable the assault, the apostle does not allow any
fears of defeat to eclipse his hope for the future. Victory, however
long deferred, is sure to come at last to the Christian and to the
Church. “Be of good cheer,” the Lord said; “I have overcome the world.”
The weapons he has put into our hands are amply sufficient for our
needs, nor are any agencies necessary beyond those with which he has
supplied us.
“Fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.” The “fire”
here is undoubtedly the fire of the Holy Ghost, the baptism from above
of which John the Baptist spake when he said, “He [the Christ] shall
baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” There came, it may be,
to the apostle, when he wrote these words, memories of an incident of
his life (Luke ix, 51‒56). In his anger at the inhospitable Samaritans,
with a spirit of vindictiveness at the insult to his Master, he had
said, “Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven,
and consume them, even as Elias did?” How quickly followed the sharp
rebuke of the Lord Jesus, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are
of.” The weapons Christ uses are not carnal, but spiritual. The fire
which is to devour Gog and Magog is the Holy Spirit who descended upon
the Church at Pentecost. The destruction which awaits them is that of
their sins and animosity, not of their persons. The Spirit of truth
when he comes reproves the world “of judgment, because the prince of
this world is judged.”
And both the struggle and the victory are for each individual believer,
as well as for the Church at large. “We know that whosoever is born of
God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and
that wicked one toucheth him not.” “Ye are of God, little children, and
have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that
is in the world.”
Thus the consummation to which the apostolic seer looked forward
is reached at last. The Lamb into whose hands the dominion of all
things was committed has prevailed. He has “put down all rule and all
authority and power.” “He [that is, God] hath put all things under his
feet.” Principalities and powers are “subject unto him.” He who was
lifted up upon the cross is now on the “great white throne.” The Father,
he himself had said, gave him “authority to execute judgment also,
because he is the Son of man.” The time of the fulfillment of this
promise has come. Death, “the last enemy,” is destroyed. The gates
of Hades have no longer power to resist the forces of the kingdom of
Christ. Nothing that is hostile to him can look upon his face. Daniel’s
prophecy has been brought to pass. “The iron, the clay, the brass, the
silver, and the gold” are “broken to pieces together,” and become “like
the chaff of the summer threshing floors;” and the wind has “carried
them away,” that no place is “found for them.” The kingdom which the
God of heaven has set up has consumed all other kingdoms and stands for
ever (Daniel ii, 35, 44; vii, 13, 14).
But there is one thought developed in the closing paragraph of chapter
xx which deserves a moment’s consideration. It is that in the relation
which men and things sustain to the Lord Jesus Christ lies the true
test of character and the standard of future, as well as present
judgment. “Set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel,”
through him “the thoughts of many hearts” are revealed (Luke ii,
34, 35). He is, as has been aptly said, the touchstone of human hearts.
And it will be by the “inasmuch as ye did” or “did it not” unto him
that the final sentence on men will be determined.
This truth is set forth in the expression, “the book of life.”
“Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the
lake of fire.” In the prophecy of Daniel, to which there is evidently
reference in this paragraph, mention is made of “books” that “were
opened.” The writer of the Apocalypse also alludes to the “books” that
“were opened.” But he adds to this that “another book was opened, which
is the book of life;” and in chapter xxi, 27, he calls it “the Lamb’s
book of life.” It is apparent that this additional standard of judgment
belongs to the New Testament dispensation and is something having
relation to the specific work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul has this
in mind in saying (1 Corinthians xvi, 22), “If any man love not the
Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran-atha.” The Saviour had
given a foreshadowing of the same truth in telling his disciples,
“Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess
also before my Father which is in heaven.” We hear an echo of this in
the epistle to Sardis (Revelation iii, 5): “He that overcometh, the
same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his
name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my
Father, and before his angels.” The same truth is indicated by John in
his first epistle (1 John v, 12): “He that hath the Son hath life; and
he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
The character of men is not to be estimated solely by their actions,
and to make destiny depend upon them would hardly be just. Every act,
whether of word or deed, has its own standard of judgment. That which
determines its quality as good or bad is its fitness or unfitness to
its designed end; in this consists its conformity with its ideal. A
moral agent has, however, another standard of judgment. Goodness or
badness in his case is determined by the conformity of his motives,
purposes, and intentions with his ideal, which is the fulfillment of
the will of his Creator. Not only what he does, but why he does it,
enters into the estimate of his moral character. A perfect man would
be one in whom faith in the Son of God and experimental knowledge of
him are in unison, one whose conduct springs out of a living faith,
and in whom a correct faith is translated into actual and complete
righteousness of conduct.
It is a fact that upon the fundamental principles of ethics the
great religions of the earth do not differ so much from each other as
presumption leads us to anticipate. This agreement of the moral codes
occasions surprise and even perplexity upon the first appreciation
of the fact. But the explanation is simple and easy. These codes are
largely the result of observation upon the established and permanent
laws of the universe, deductions from facts with which testimony,
reason, and consciousness make men acquainted. The data being the same,
the conclusions reached are closely similar.
It is the motive power which they bring to bear upon men in order
to induce them to actual realization of and conformity to their
moral convictions that determines the superiority or inferiority of
religions. That which constitutes the distinguishing characteristic of
Christianity and gives it its immense preëminence over all other forms
of religious belief is that it reveals to us the cross of Christ as the
greatest motive power that can operate in human nature. To depreciate
or ignore the atonement is to leave out the differentiating element of
the religion of Jesus. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting
life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the
wrath of God abideth on him” (John iii, 36). “We must all be made
manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; that each one may receive
the things done in the body” (2 Corinthians v, 10, Revised Version).
Wherever, indeed, the full revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ has not
been given to men they are to be judged by “the law written in their
hearts, their conscience also bearing witness” (Romans ii, 15). But
where the revelation has been made it is in likeness to him that the
test of character lies. And for the final determination of destiny
there must be, not only the books of words and deeds, but also the
“Lamb’s book of life.”
PART VII
The Ideal of the Kingdom
PART VII
=The Ideal of the Kingdom=
BY these long steps has the holy apostle brought us, through this
wonderful record of perils, conflicts, defeats, victories, judgments,
and blessings, to the conclusion toward which he has from the
commencement been tending; and in the two chapters which close the book
he depicts the ideal and perfect kingdom of Christ as it appeared in
his conception of it. As Ezekiel in his lonely captivity by the Chebar
was comforted with anticipations of a new Canaan and a new temple,
wherein Israel, purified by its sufferings and cleansed from idolatry,
should enjoy renewed and uninterrupted communion with Jehovah, so was
the exiled apostle of Patmos gladdened with a prophetic foresight of
new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness shall dwell, not
as a wayfarer or one that tarrieth for a night, but as a permanent
and eternal inhabitant. For the instruction of all the generations
to follow John presents his inspired conception of what the kingdom
of Christ in its purest and final form is, whether it be conceived as
existing in the heart of an individual believer, or as synonymous with
the Church, the body of believers.
We are certainly not compelled, and it may seriously be questioned
whether we are allowed, to interpret the concluding chapters of the
Apocalypse as a vision of the future heaven which awaits the just,
of the glorified and celestial state of believers who have passed
through the trials of earth and have entered into their final reward.
The probabilities are very strong that it is rather the vision of a
redeemed and purified earth, the victory which shall result here from
the complete ascendancy of Christ, which is presented to our faith
and hope. This interpretation of the vision would give consistency
and unity to the book. It would account for the discrimination which
is certainly made between the “city” and the nations which “walk in
the light thereof,” and also for the statement that the leaves of
the tree of life are “for the healing of the nations;” and it is
confirmed by the fact that in his first epistle, which was probably
written subsequently to the Apocalypse, John declared that it had not
been revealed or made manifest to him at that time what we shall be
when Christ shall be manifested to us in his heavenly glory (1 John
iii, 2)――a statement hardly to be reconciled with truth if the vision
of the Apocalypse is to be taken as a revelation of the heavenly state.
The careful student will not fail to observe that upon all questions
relating to the life beyond the grave the Bible preserves a marked
reticence; nor is there any more impressive evidence of its divinity
than this. To gratify a curiosity which might easily become morbid
is no part of its object and might defeat its more practical purpose.
While, therefore, it shows us the rent veil and opens the curtain
sufficiently to reveal to us a world lying beyond, it does not allow
us to penetrate further or uncover to us the mysteries hidden therein.
It is enough for us to know that a way leads from the holy place to
the holy of holies, and that Christ is that way, the life of the world
beyond as he is of this, and the truth and reality of both alike. It
is not certain that a revelation to us of the glories of the celestial
state would realize to us the satisfaction we anticipated. Even
were a revelation made to us in terms which we were able to grasp
and comprehend, that which would be blissful to our glorified and
transformed faculties might not seem so to our earthly ones, and the
revelation might become rather a stumbling-block than a stimulus. We
know that the prophecies concerning the Messiah in the Old Testament
were not only obscure, but even seemed to involve contradictions, which,
however, his advent in the flesh explained and reconciled. This may be
the case also in regard to the future state of the blessed. And God is
no less merciful, doubtless, in what he withholds than in what he
imparts.
It is the ideal kingdom of Christ here in its perfect and completed
form, and not the glorified realm above, which John so exquisitely
describes. The imagery he uses to adumbrate it may be glowing, but it
is not beyond what may be gathered, though in less poetic dress, from
other parts of the Scriptures. Even should it be conceded that the
picture is simply an ideal one, a dream of beauty not meant to be
realized, in fact, something the attainment of which lies beyond the
possibilities of this mortal life, still the presentation to us of the
perfect state can not be without its uses of help and comfort.
But it was not the cast of John’s mind to be pleased with imagined
fancies. It has been well said (in _Guesses at Truth_) that “in
character, in affection, the ideal is the only real.” It is not without
reason that John has so elaborately described the agencies with which
Christ has so amply endowed his Church and his disciples, and which are
sufficient, if rightly used, to reduce to actual experience all that is
portrayed as ideal.
In one of those graphic sketches which connect the Apocalypse so
closely with the gospels John convinces us that it is fact, and
not fancy, which has been engaging his pen. At the beginning of his
ministry upon earth Christ, we are told, was taken to “an exceeding
high mountain,” whence “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of
them,” were shown him; and Satan said to him, “All these things will I
give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” From this temptation
the Master recoiled with indignant rebuke. Instead thereof, he chose
deliberately the path of suffering and privation, the path that led
to the garden and the cross, to Gethsemane and Calvary. With full
appreciation of all it involved, he took the cup put into his hands
by the Father. In the closing scenes of the Apocalypse the battle is
supposed to have been fought, the conflict has ceased, and now John
himself stands, as Christ had stood, upon “a great and high mountain;”
and, behold, there was shown him “that great city, the holy Jerusalem,
descending out of heaven from God.” The cross has conquered, and the
kingdoms of the earth have become the possession of our Lord and of his
Christ. And he who himself overcame the world has given assurance to
all his followers, however humble, that they, too, may be victors.
Theories of the Church and kingdom of Christ, definitions of their
nature and mission, abound. Many have taken on them to specify
the notes or characteristic marks by which the true Church may be
identified. It cannot, therefore, fail of interest or profit to learn
what the holy St. John, the inspired apostle who leaned on the bosom of
Jesus, has to say of the tests by which we may try the spirits to see
whether they are of God. Under the veil of figure and metaphor, we have
the profound and long-studied conviction of one who was competent to
decide, and to whom the wisest of mankind may look up with reverence
for instruction. Nor need anyone have difficulty in determining for
himself whether the kingdom of Christ finds its realization in his own
soul, or long hesitate in identifying the true Church of Christ, which
is simply the kingdom of Christ ruling in society.
1. _The Distinctive Features of the Kingdom._――The first mark of the
kingdom upon which John lays stress is that it is supernatural in its
origin. The holy city that he saw descended “out of heaven from God.”
It came “down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for
her husband.” It is not the resultant of any process of development or
growth from a prior state. Whatever preparation may precede and make
ready a basis for its reception, the kingdom itself is inaugurated
by the direct and personal agency of the Holy Spirit. Whatever
instrumentalities the Holy Ghost may use as his media, his is the
undivided quickening power. In this declaration the writer of the
Apocalypse and the author of the fourth gospel are in agreement. It is
he who records the words of the Lord Jesus, “Except a man be born of
water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John
iii, 5).
Another feature of this kingdom is that its mission lies specifically
in the realm of divine things. It has “the glory of God.” The name of
the city is, “The Lord is there” (Ezekiel xlviii, 35). Its God is its
glory. It is God’s witness in nature and to men of a power above and
beyond nature and man. There are natural means and agencies endowed
by the Creator to carry forward earthly work; but he has planted the
kingdom in the midst of mankind, and its one great business is to
testify of him. For the doing of this work the Church is accountable.
In whatever other tasks the Church may engage or whatever methods
it may employ in fulfilling its mission, its one supreme office and
distinct characteristic is to bear witness to a divine presence and
a divine power in the world. “In his temple doth everyone speak of
his glory.” All art, ritual, discipline, philanthropy, and economies
that do not directly lead to God, and have not for their purpose to
emphasize the need, the presence, and the inward experience of the
supernatural, are aside from the purpose of the kingdom and below its
ideal.
A third mark of the kingdom is that it has to do primarily with
the religious faculties. As the distinction between nature and the
supernatural is permanent and ineffaceable, so the Church and the
world can never be made to coincide, however widely the Church may be
extended or however thoroughly the world may be permeated by the spirit
of the Church. “The nations of them which are saved shall walk in the
light” of the new Jerusalem, “the kings of the earth do bring their
glory and honor into it;” but the distinction between it and them
exists and abides. It will be as true in the last days as when our
Lord first spoke the words, “My kingdom is not of this world.” However
omnipotent and omnipresent God may be in nature and the universe, he
can never be made identical with them; and, however thoroughly they
may be penetrated by his Spirit and come to perfect accord with him,
they can never be so lifted up as to rival or supersede his supremacy.
And, although common life and work may be sanctified by being done in
the spirit of Christ, and religious life may flow out from the central
source through all the ordinary and natural channels of our being, the
religious and the secular can never be made one. “Out of Zion shall
go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem;” but the
discharge of earthly duties and the reformation of earthly conditions
can never exhaust the obligations of man. There will still remain those
relations to the supernatural of whose existence and sovereignty it is
the preëminent mission of the Church to testify. The kingdom of God is
“righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
2. _The Central Principle of the Kingdom._――The central figure in this
kingdom is Christ crucified. It is the Lamb around whom all the imagery
of the apostle’s description gathers. The light――luminary, rather――of
the kingdom was “like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper
stone, clear as crystal.” That this refers to Christ seems probable
from Revelation iv, 3, where it is said that he that sat upon the
throne “was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone,” and is
further confirmed by Revelation xxi, 23, where the Lamb is said to be
“the light” of the city. Moreover, it is said, “The first foundation
was jasper,” which is but confirmatory of what Peter had said in the
presence of John to the “rulers, and elders, and scribes:” “This is
the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the
head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other.” (Acts iv,
11, 12.)
Still further, “The building of the wall of it was of jasper.” Christ
crucified is the defense and the bulwark of the kingdom. The atonement
of Christ is the most powerful argument the Church can use and
constitutes its strongest claim upon the reason and heart of men. It
is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” It is Christ crucified
that makes the separation between the kingdom and the circumjacent
world. It is not in its ethics that the distinguishing peculiarity of
Christianity lies, but in the preaching of the cross. In the opinion
of John any other definition of Christianity throws down Christianity’s
only wall of safety and separation.
Yet there is no exclusiveness about the kingdom. The city has three
gates on each of its four sides, facing the four quarters of the globe,
that all men may find ready access. “Every several gate is of one
pearl”――that pearl of great price which Christ said a man should be
willing to sell all that he has to buy, becoming eternally rich by the
exchange.
Nor is there any narrowness. Its length and breadth and height exceed
even those large measurements which Ezekiel thought to be ample enough
for the ideal temple he saw. “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise”――all these
things belong legitimately to the kingdom. The kings of the earth may
“bring their glory and honor into it;” only that which “defileth” or
“worketh abomination” or “maketh a lie” is excluded. When once a man
in the center of his being is rightly adjusted to the Lamb of God, the
center of all being, he may unfold all his powers and give exercise to
every faculty of his renewed nature safely, wisely, completely, without
fear of infringement upon any other being or of going astray from his
Creator.
3. _Negative Characteristics._――Not less remarkable is the negative
side of the kingdom, the absence from it of many things with which we
are familiar. When an ideal has been attained much that was necessary
in the process of attainment falls away as obsolete; the scaffolding
which is used in the erection of a building is removed when the
building is completed.
There is a noticeable avoidance in the closing chapters of the
Apocalypse of any reference to the sacraments, to ritual, or to such
like means of grace. John saw “no temple therein; for the Lord God
Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.” “When that which is
perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” When
the consummation of the kingdom has been reached the relation of the
soul to its Creator shall not be through intermediate agencies, but
direct and intuitive.
There is no mention made of any special priestly class, for the promise
shall have its complete fulfillment to all, “Ye are a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood;” and all life shall be a priestly work and service.
Nor is there any allusion to the prophetic office as a separate
function. “They need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord
God giveth them light.” “The anointing which ye have received of him
abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you” (1 John ii, 27).
The prediction of Jeremiah (Jeremiah xxxi, 34) has reached its time
of fulfillment: “They shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and
every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know
me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord.”
Yet upon this point, more almost than upon any other, it is of the
utmost importance that we shall “distinguish the times.” We must
not assume, because these aids and appliances are not needful in the
perfected state of the kingdom, that they are not essential in the
formative period, and thus, at great risk and with imminent peril,
neglect or depreciate those means of grace which the Creator has deemed
necessary for our present condition.
4. _The Fruits and Results of the Kingdom._――They in whom the kingdom
rules shall have access to the tree of life, that heavenly wisdom of
which Solomon says, “She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon
her: and happy is everyone that retaineth her” (Proverbs iii, 18).
“This is life eternal,” One greater than Solomon says, “that they
might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast
sent” (John xvii, 3). Their lives shall abound in fruitfulness. Their
ministry shall be, like the Lord’s, “for the healing of the nations,”
a remedy for all the spiritual and earthly maladies of mankind.
The curse of sin shall be destroyed, “and there shall be no more
curse.” “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made
a curse for us” (Galatians iii, 13). “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son
cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John i, 7). And walking “in the light,
as he is in the light,” and being “pure in heart,” his followers shall
“see God.” “They shall see his face; and his name shall be in their
foreheads.”
* * * * *
Thus with this sublime vision closes this marvelous book. There is no
truth revealed elsewhere in the sacred Scriptures that may not be found
in its pages. So complete is it, indeed, that “if any man shall add
unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written
in this book.” Nor is there any truth revealed in this book which
may not be found elsewhere in the Scriptures, so perfectly does it
harmonize with all divinely inspired truth. Therefore, “if any man
shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall
take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city,
and from the things which are written in this book.”
The Apocalypse of St. John fitly closes the sacred canon; for, drawing
so much, as it does, from all the rest of God’s wonderful book, it
holds the truths derived therefrom in a coherent union never to be
dissolved or broken.
Index
Albigenses, 137.
Apocalypse. See Revelation.
Apostolic and present age,
resemblance between, 198.
Asceticism and worldliness contrasted, 148‒150.
Asceticism,
prevalence and danger of, 138, 139.
Atonement,
all-sufficiency of, 164, 165.
Babylon,
destruction of, 199;
relation of Church and State in, 179‒181.
Balaam, 147, 148.
Barbarism,
characteristics of, 244‒247;
possibility of reversion to, 74, 75, 243.
Beast,
scarlet colored, 186‒188.
Bible,
reticence of, 263.
Christ crucified,
the central figure of Revelation, 270, ♦271.
♦ “171” replaced with “271”
Christian liberty, 272.
Christianity,
antithesis between true and false, 184, 185.
Church and State,
interdependence of, 110, 249, 250.
Church,
conquering weapons of the, 110, 155, 202;
the ideal, 266, _ff._;
notes of the true, 266, _ff._;
separable from world, 269, 270;
supernatural origin of the, 267;
a witness to God, 268.
Church unity, 228, _ff._;
an apostolic hope, 230, 231;
how attained, 236, 237;
importance of, 232.
Daniel,
prophecy of four beasts in, 115.
David,
duration of dynasty of, 209.
Dragon, the;
divine protection from, 108;
hostility of, to the church, 107.
Dry bones. _See_ Ezekiel, vision of dry bones.
Emblem,
of seal, 39‒41;
of trumpet, 56, 57.
Epistles to seven churches of Asia,
their lesson to us, 34.
Euphrates,
reference to, in sixth trumpet, 72, 73.
Ezekiel,
prophecy of, 163, 164, 205, _ff._;
vision of dry bones, 207, 208.
False prophet,
marks of, 133.
False prophetism,
second wild beast a symbol of, 126.
Fifth trumpet. _See_ Trumpet fifth.
First trumpet. _See_ Trumpet first.
Forty-two,
symbolism of, 19.
Fourth trumpet. _See_ Trumpet fourth.
Gentilism,
mission of, 234.
Gnosticism perilous to Christianity, 136.
God, knowledge of;
how obtained, 59‒61.
Gog and Magog, 209, 240‒243, 252, 253.
Harvest scene,
meaning of, 157‒159.
Holy Spirit,
his work preceded by that of Christ, 141, 142.
Individuality an outgrowth of Christianity, 134, 135.
Inspiration and human genius, 84.
Interpretation,
principles of, 10;
reference to Old Testament necessary in, 13‒16;
structure of book a guide to, 11‒13.
Jewish ritual a key to emblems and symbols, 16.
Joel,
prophecy of, 155‒157.
Judaism,
its office in the plan of redemption, 233.
Knowledge of God through his works and word, 59‒61.
Lamb’s book of life, 254, _ff._
Lukewarmness,
evils of, 69, 70.
Man and the earth,
close connection between, 63, 64.
Manichæism, 137.
Mediatorial sovereignty, 45, 46, 214.
Michael the archangel, 109.
Millennium, 211, 212, 217, 218.
Mohammedanism illustrative of fifth trumpet, 70, 71.
♦Nicolaitans, 136.
♦ “Nicolaitanes” replaced with “Nicolaitans”
Nineveh,
special characteristics of, 178, 179.
Numbers,
importance of, 17.
Old Testament,
its relation to the New, 93‒95;
reference to it necessary in interpretation, 13‒16.
Palestine,
geographical seclusion of, 108, 109.
Paulicianism, 137.
Peculiarities distinguishing the Revelation, 9.
Plagues, the, 170.
Prophetical books,
importance of study of, 14.
Purpose of the Revelation, 9.
Resurrection,
spiritual, 224, 225.
Revelation,
general purpose of the, 9;
limitations of the, 81, 82;
theme of the, 23;
unity of the, 22.
Roman Empire,
policy of administration, 117, 118.
Rome,
Church of, 192, 193.
Sacraments,
absence of allusion to, 273.
Satan,
his power restrained, 219;
loosing of, 238.
Sea,
emblem of secular world, 113.
Seal,
emblematic meaning of, 39‒41;
loosing of, 44.
Sealed book,
meaning of, 41, 42.
Sealed elect, 50‒52.
Second trumpet. _See_ Trumpet second.
Second wild beast,
number of, 142‒148.
Seven churches of Asia,
spiritual condition of, 30.
Seven seals,
opening of, 46.
Seven,
symbolism of, 18.
Seventh trumpet. _See_ Trumpet seventh.
Simon Magus, 136.
Six,
symbolism of, 19.
Sixth trumpet. _See_ Trumpet sixth.
Theme of the Revelation, 23.
Third trumpet. _See_ Trumpet third.
Three and a half,
symbolism of, 19‒22.
Tree of life, 274, 275.
True prophet,
marks of, 129‒131.
Trumpet,
emblematic meaning of, 56, 57;
fifth, explanation of, 67‒71;
first, explanation of, 65;
fourth, explanation of, 66;
second, explanation of, 65;
seventh, explanation of, 97;
sixth, explanation of, 72‒76;
third, explanation of, 66.
Twelve,
symbolism of, 18.
Twelve hundred and sixty,
symbolism of, 19, 88, 109.
Two witnesses,
interpretation of, 79.
Tyre,
deleterious influence upon religion, 182, 183;
emblem of commerce, 181, 182, 195, 196.
Unity of the church. _See_ Church unity.
Vials,
vision of, 169.
Victory,
anticipation of, 150.
Vintage scene,
meaning of, 159‒165.
Witnesses, the two;
fulfilled in Law and Prophets, 87‒92.
Woes,
the three, 76.
World empires, 189;
recurrence of, impossible, 191.
World religions,
agreement of moral codes, 256, 257.
Worldliness and asceticism contrasted, 148‒150.
Worldliness,
blasphemy of, 123, 124;
definition of, 120;
first wild beast, a symbol of, 112;
recuperative power of, 122.
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