03.11. Chapter 3. The Prophetical Future Of The Church And Kingdom Of Christ
Chapter 3. The Prophetical Future Of The Church And Kingdom Of Christ
UNDER this general head may be comprised all that requires to be said, in an elementary treatise like the present, on what the prophecies unfold respecting other topics connected with the Christian dispensation. These topics all stand related in some manner to the condition and destinies of Christ’s church and kingdom. They are presented, however, under different aspects and relations; and it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory knowledge of the general purport of what is written, without either going through the prophecies in order and giving a regular exposition of their contents, or endeavouring to exhibit, in connection with a few leading points, the light they collectively throw on the tendencies and results of gospel times. Either way it were scarcely possible to avoid a certain degree of complexity and repetition, as both the prophecies themselves, and the subjects of which they treat, frequently run into each other. But by being viewed in a definite order and connection, there will be found less of repetition than might otherwise be possible, and there will also be secured a more distinct continuity and progression of thought. We, therefore, adopt this latter method, and, in following it, shall take the latitude that is indispensable to a proper investigation of the subject—not confining our survey to what may still with some confidence be reckoned the prophetical future of the gospel dispensation, but embracing also what might be regarded as future from the era of its commencement.
Section I. The Church and the Kingdom of Christ in Their Relation to the Kingdoms of this World THE prophecies which relate to this subject are, in one sense, of great variety and compass, but, in another, of comparatively limited extent. They are the one or the other, according as we have respect to prophecies of a general, or to prophecies of a specific and determinate nature. Those of the former class begin with the times of David, when the great promise of blessing, originally given to Abraham, first assumed a distinctly personal shape, and became linked with the expectation of one in David’s line, on whom the hopes and destinies of the world were to depend. In the series of predictions originating in this covenant with David, and unfolding its prolific import, whatever other topics are introduced, the kingly character of the expected Messiah always holds a prominent place; and not only that, but also the sure and final ascendency of His kingdom over all the rival powers and kingdoms of the world. His right to rule in the affairs of men was to be alike absolute and universal; and however resisted for a time, and left apparently to struggle for existence, the destination of this king was to be that of one “conquering and to conquer,” till everything was subdued, and all became subject to His hand. There is not one of the more properly Messianic Psalms in which this progress and result are not exhibited, though some dwell more particularly on one phase or aspect of the history, some on another. And such also is the character of those predictions scattered through the prophetical books, which, on the ground of the promise made to David, point to the future establishment of Christ’s church and kingdom. In general, they begin by exhibiting an inherent contrariety in spirit between the things pertaining to this Divine kingdom and those of the world—the one being of God, therefore holy, just, merciful, and blessed; the others of the earth, and partaking, in consequence, of its selfishness, carnality, and corruption. Then, as the natural result of this inherent contrariety, the mutual antipathy and death-like struggle for the mastery is depicted, and that with infinite fulness and diversity—the kings of the earth, with their carnal weapons and material resources, appear combining together, taking counsel, and, with consummate malice and energy, striving to crush the person and arrest the progress of the heaven-appointed King. But all in vain. It is not He but they who suffer in the conflict; He goes on like a resistless hero, lifting up the head, while they fall under the arrows which He sends forth in the cause of truth and righteousness; so that but one of two alternatives is before them, either to yield themselves to His sway, or to perish under the stroke of His indignation. And, finally, in the last lines and issues of the prospective delineation, the cause and kingdom of Messiah become everywhere triumphant. The kings of the earth, in so far as they have not fallen under His wrath, are seen walking in His light, and doing homage to Him; their kingdoms have become, in a manner, His kingdoms; all the ends of the world turn to the Lord, and the families of the nations worship before Him—throughout the earth “one Lord, and His name One.”
Now, in respect to the substance of these prophecies, only a comparatively small portion of them can be said to belong to what is still the future of the Christian church—that, namely, which relates to the absolute completeness and universality of the kingdom of Christ. The other and larger, as well as more circumstantial parts of them, which describe the mutual antipathy and struggle, the rise of the personal Messiah and His cause from small beginnings, and in the face of the most violent and long-continued opposition, till the greaterpart of the old civilized world owned His supremacy, and many kings, nominally at least, did homage to His name:—All these belong to the past; their fulfilment is legibly inscribed in the records of the world’s history. And in regard to what still remains to be accomplished, though we cannot but see in the present state of the world, and even of the professing church, many great and discouraging obstacles in the way of success, yet when viewed in the light of what has already been achieved, they cannot with certainty be pronounced insurmountable to Christian effort and resources. The small mustard-seed has sprung up into a lofty tree; and whatever hindrances there may be tending to impede farther progress, and prevent ultimate success, they are of the same kind with those over which the truth has in a considerable degree prevailed, and which no one has a right to say it cannot wholly overcome. Besides, who can tell what special providences may be in store to favour the advancement of truth and righteousness? How many changes and revolutions, even of a civil and literary kind, may arise fitted to strike at the root of prevailing errors and superstitions, and prepare the way for the triumph of the cross? Above all, as living Christianity spreads, and the feeling grows among enlightened and earnest minds, that the highest well-being of the world is bound up with the diffusion of the gospel, what seasons of refreshing, in aid of their exertions, may not be sent from the presence of the Lord? In such considerations there is enough to make the contemplated issue probable, even without any great departure from the regular course of events; and that it shall somehow take place is the united testimony of all the predictions referred to. Christ shall reign till His enemies have become His footstool, and shall cause the knowledge of the Lord to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. The word of prophecy can never reach its full accomplishment till this result is attained. But while the result is very distinctly and frequently announced in this class of predictions, nothing very particular is intimated in them as to the relation of Messiah’s kingdom to the kingdoms of the world individually. These kingdoms are viewed in the general, as all alike opposed to the character and claims of Messiah, and alike also destined to submit or be destroyed. It is not doubtfully indicated of some of them, that, in process of time they would renounce their hostile for a friendly position, and help forward the cause they at first sought to withstand; as when David speaks of “princes coming out of Egypt, and Ethiopia stretching out her hands to God “(Psalms 68:31), and when Isaiah makes promise to the church, of kings being her nursing-fathers, and queens her nursing-mothers, of the forces of the Gentiles coming to her, and kings ministering to her (Isaiah 49:23, Isaiah 9:10-11)—with many more of a like kind. Such passages plainly imply, that while the struggle was still pending between the cause of Christ and the powers of the world, while the people of God were still in need of help for the conflict in which they had to engage, different nations with their rulers, would successively give in their adherence, and contribute their aid to the final result. But in what way, or to what extent this might be expected to take place, we can learn nothing from such general predictions.
We turn, therefore, to the other and more specific class of prophecies, which, as we said, are comparatively limited in number. Indeed, they are peculiar to Daniel and the Apocalypse; and in these, again, are so related to each other, that those of Daniel form the foundation of what is written in the Apocalypse; the latter simply resuming the subject, as it had been left by Daniel, and prosecuting it farther into detail. We shall, therefore, glance first at the prophetic outline which is exhibited in Daniel, and then consider the subsequent and related visions of the Apocalypse. The view, presented in both respects, must necessarily be brief and confined to the more leading features.
§ 1. Prophecies in Daniel concerning Messiah’s Kingdom in its relation to the Kingdoms of the World. The prophecies in question are found in Daniel 2:1-49 and Daniel 7:1-28—the one containing Nebuchadnezzar’s vision of the great composite image, with the interpretation of it by Daniel, and the other, the vision and dream, given to Daniel himself respecting the five monarchies. That the two visions relate to the same subject, and differ only in presenting it under diverse aspects, can admit of no doubt. The diversity also (as previously noticed, p. 114), has its foundation in nature, and is in perfect accordance with the relative position of the parties, through whom the visions were given. It is the external aspect of the matter that is presented in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, while the internal is brought out in that of Daniel. The heathen king sees such a symbol of the kingdoms of this world and of the kingdom of Christ, as was adapted to the carnal eye, which has a capacity for apprehending the appearances rather than the realities of things. The man of God, however, has an eye that looks beyond the surface; he must see things as they really are; and so, the vision presented to him, while it may be said to follow in the same track, and cover the same field with the other, lays open the actual nature of the different kingdoms—the minuter shades of difference in the worldly kingdoms themselves, and their collective and fundamental difference from the kingdom of Christ.
(1.) This contrariety, however, and those differences are not entirely overlooked in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar; they are indicated there also—but only on the external side, and from the point of view, in which it was natural for the Chaldean monarch to contemplate them. It is in this light that the various materials of a natural kind in his vision are to be considered. They are symbols—but not of the relative worth and greatness of the several kingdoms respectively; for then the fourth kingdom, imaged by the iron, must have been inferior to those which preceded it, and the fifth, the Divine kingdom, having only a stone for its emblem, still again inferior to it. Nor, for the same reason, could the progressive descent in the value of the materials be intended to mark a progression in the world’s degeneracy and rooted opposition to the work and kingdom of God.
Let us see how admirably they do it. In the first place, as standing at the top of the list, and representing the idea in all its freshness and majesty, Nebuchadnezzar and his dynasty are fitly represented by the head of gold. Then comes the Medo-Persian, physically, indeed, stronger at the time of its appearance, than the monarchy it supplanted, yet inferior (as it is expressly called, Daniel 2:39), in respect to the main point under consideration; because in its very foundation it was of a divided nature; formed by the junction of two races who differed considerably in their religion and other characteristics; and never properly cohering together in its several parts, nor presided over by heads fitted to consolidate its interests: therefore not less fitly represented by the secondary metal of silver, and by the breast and arms of the image—in which not compact unity, but rather doubleness and divisions are prominently exhibited. Brass is remarkable for its pliancy, for the fine polish of which it is susceptible, and the brilliant glitter it emits. As such, therefore, nothing could more appropriately symbolize the third great kingdom, which began with the splendid achievements of Alexander, and carried in its train the high intellectual culture of Greece. But withal, it betokened little durability or consolidating strength; and the part of the image that was formed of this material, the belly and the thighs, gave indication of a loose, disjointed, heterogeneous state of things, that could not hold well or long together. How exactly emblematic throughout of an empire which aimed at universal sovereignty, and seemed as if, by a few brilliant efforts, it should succeed in the enterprise, but which fell asunder at the death of its founder, and became henceforth the prey of intestine divisions! Where it failed, however, the gigantic Roman empire, which comes next upon the stage, particularly excelled, and far outstript all its predecessors. The slow and steady growth of ages, Rome struck her roots deep, wherever she obtained a footing, and left the impress of her sovereign will, and of her imperial laws and institutions on every region of the ancient civilized world. “The arms of the republic,” says Gibbon, as if writing the interpretation of this part of the vision, “sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war, advanced with rapid strides to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean; and the images of gold and silver or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome.” Yet, while it could break and beat down every thing opposed to it in the existing powers and dominions of the earth, growing even and prospering till it had become co-extensive with the known world, it could not secure for itself the eternity which it so ambitiously aimed at. There was in it, indeed, the strength of the iron; but the legs of the image, which were composed of that material, themselves indicated division—a division strikingly exemplified by the partition of the empire into the two sections of the East and West; and still farther, when, as symbolized by the toes and the feet, part of iron and part of clay, the irruptions of barbaric hosts entirely broke up its unity, and with the introduction of fresh races upon the theatre of the world, brought in also new elements into its social arrangements and civil institutions.
Thus as regards the component parts of the great image in this vision, and their several application, every thing finds its striking verification in the annals of history. Indeed, the verification is so striking, and the parallel so exact in all its parts, that we cannot but discern the impress of the same Divine hand in both; the very conception and distribution of such a symbolical image was as manifestly from God as the successive rise and the varied characteristics and fortunes of the gigantic empires, which fulfilled its prophetic import. Nor does the correspondence fail, it becomes, if possible, still more wonderful, when we look at the aspect presented of the last, the only truly universal, and everlasting kingdom in the world. It is from this point of view that the subject is still to be contemplated; as thus only can we see the fitness of the material chosen to represent the divine kingdom. A stone is, indeed, a poor emblem of such a kingdom, if viewed with respect to the proper nature of the kingdom, and the high objects it is designed to accomplish—the one gross, earthly, rigid, dead; the other spiritual and heavenly, all instinct with life and blessing, and with pliant energy adapting itself to every relation and circumstance of being. But in the particular respect now under consideration, in the fitness and destination of this kingdom to supplant the other kingdoms, and attain to the universality and permanence of dominion which they vainly strove to possess, what better emblem could be found than that of a stone! Massy, firm, compact in structure, crushing in the dust the looser and softer materials with which it comes in contact, and itself, not only retaining its original unity, but growing into a huge mountain, and filling the whole earth with its vastness! Here at last was the sublime idea of the Chaldean monarch realized; but realized in a very different way from that in which his fond ambition was prompting him to attempt it Existing altogether apart from the image, which symbolized the kingdoms of the world, this stone evidently pointed to a kingdom entirely different in its origin and nature from theirs: a stone, not graven like the other by art or man’s device, but cut out from the unhewn rock, and cut without hands—how expressive of a kingdom formed by the immediate operation of the Great Architect of nature! and, as such, partaking of the irresistible might and the endless duration of its Divine Author! Every thing, therefore, gives way before it; it destroys in its progress whatever is contrary to it, and itself at length possesses and fills all.
It remains to be asked, how much of this prophetical outline belongs to the past, and how much to the future? The question has been variously answered, according to the different views entertained by writers on prophecy, respecting the character and prospects of Messiah’s kingdom. But, looking simply to the language of the symbolical prediction, there are, it will be perceived, two points in which the description appears indefinite—the one is as to the precise time when this divine kingdom, represented by the stone, should make its appearance; and the other, the precise manner in which its establishment should actively press on the other kingdoms, and cause their annihilation. In regard to the first of these points, it is merely said, that “in the days of these kings shall the God of Heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44). By the “days of these kings” have sometimes been understood the latter stages of the fourth monarchy, when it became subdivided into many separate states. But, while this rent and broken condition is plainly referred to in the vision, it is not described as being distinguished by separate kings or kingdoms; and, therefore, the only reference to which the days of the kings can legitimately apply, is the collective period of the kings or kingdoms symbolized by the image. The language is purposely indefinite. It does not indicate at what particular time, or even under which worldly dominion, the kingdom represented by the stone should begin to develop itself on the theatre of the world—though, from being mentioned the last in order, and from the fourth worldly kingdom being the one with which alone it appears coming into collision, the natural inference obviously is, that the commencement of the heavenly kingdom is to be assigned to the fourth or last form of the earthly one. The whole of these successive monarchies of the world are taken together as but different phases of the same worldly principle; in a somewhat different form the old always lived again in the new; so that the image which represents the entire series, appears still standing in its completeness—the several successive kingdoms which it symbolized were to the last ideally present; but, from the nature of the case, they could only be so as seen in that which was more immediately represented by the legs and feet of the image. Even here, however, there is an indefiniteness; for, while the stone is spoken of as pressing with irresistible force upon the image first when the history had reached to what is symbolized by the feet, it is not said that the stone then for the first time appeared. On the contrary, before the stone smote the image, we must think of it as taking form in the world; it must be viewed as coming into substantive existence, as being cut out, before it began to act aggressively; the rather so, as it is not the simple appearance of this divine kingdom, and its universal establishment, that is the subject of the vision, but its growth from small beginnings onward to complete and ultimate success. The moment of the bruising, therefore, is not necessarily, nor even probably the moment of the actual formation of the stone; and a period seems to lie there of indefinite length—the period of the rise and early progress of Christianity, when, by an agency altogether its own, and holding directly of God, it gradually advanced to a distinct organization, and a form, in which it could act extraneously upon the affairs and destinies of the world. The other point mentioned had respect to the manner in which the establishment of Messiah’s kingdom was to tell on the worldly kingdoms. This is described in the action of the stone, as that of bruising the image, so as to render its component elements, the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, which the wind carries away. A sublime image truly of their evanescent nature, as compared with that which destroyed them, and of their utter disappearance from the face of the world! But if we ask, in what respect, or by what kind of operation was this work of demolition to be wrought, nothing definite is indicated; nor, indeed, could it be from the nature of the representation; for it is only (as we have repeatedly stated) the external aspect of the matter that is here presented to the view—the appearances and effects of things alone are described. So far as these are concerned, we are distinctly informed that the whole of the magnificent image, which engrossed the vision of Nebuchadnezzar—or, in plain terms, that a world-embracing monarchy, such as he contemplated, presided over by one human will, and directed for the glory of its earthly head, in every shape and form, which it might assume, was doomed to perpetual destruction. And that, not as a thing of itself dying out, but as a thing put out, and for ever abolished by the establishment and the progress of that divine kingdom, to which alone the real universality and the absolute right of governing upon earth was to belong. This, it is well to be noted, though it is too commonly overlooked, is the only kind of abolition spoken of in the vision. It is not the subversion of constitutional government, and the dissolution of earthly states and kingdoms (a subject not brought into consideration here), but simply the extinction of those ambitious monarchies which grasped at the dominion of the world, and the causing them to disappear for ever by the establishment of a higher kingdom, in which the idea they sought to embody was to be, and alone could be realized. Has, then, the introduction of Christ’s kingdom wrought such an effect? We answer, unhesitatingly, that it has. And if we are asked how? we reply, in the only way, in which such gigantic and self-deifying schemes could be effectually abolished—by rendering men familiar with divine realities, with elevating principles, with heavenly aims and prospects. It has spread through humanity a regenerating leaven—the sense of God’s redeeming love to man; and by the wondrous acts of mercy and gifts of grace, therewith connected, has diffused far and wide the feeling of the brotherhood of man, yea, and breathed the spirit of a new life into the history and aspirations of the world. It has thus, even with the manifold imperfections that have attended its working and progress on earth, for ever antiquated the idea of a universal monarchy, in its old and grosser sense; and shewn this to be alone possible in the hands of Him, who, as at once God and man, Lord of heaven and earth, combines in his person the qualities, and holds at command the gifts, necessary to the establishment of such an empire. Since the diffusion of Christianity, the only thing in a wrong direction that has properly aimed at, or has ever seemed in any measure to possess, the character of a world-embracing dominion, is the parodying by corrupt doctrine and a false usurpation of this divine kingdom itself. But that is an essentially different matter from the old world-monarchies, and falling as it does within the domain of spiritual things, is brought out, as we shall see, in another connection.
(2.) So much, then, for the first great prophecy of Daniel on the point before us—the relation of Christ’s church and kingdom to the kingdoms of the world. Like those previously noticed, it speaks chiefly of the past, so far as anything definite and particular is concerned; but points also to the future; inasmuch as it declares the absolute universality of Messiah’s authority and rule among men, His unlimited and everlasting sway. This is yet far from having been established: while the stone has broken in pieces the image, which sought to pre-occupy the entire ground, it has not yet itself grown so as to fill the whole earth. Let us turn, then, to the other prophecy in Daniel—the vision and dream recorded in the seventh chapter—and see if any further insight is furnished on the subject. Here, as already noticed, it is the internal aspect of the kingdoms to which prominence is given—their respective characteristics and differences, first in regard to each other, and then in regard to the kingdom of Christ.
Strong as this empire was, compact in its organization, and spirit-like in its power and influence, it contained, like everything earthly, the elements of dissolution and decay. This was indicated in the former vision by the legs of the image, the feet of iron and clay, and the toes of the feet. And here it is brought out by means .of ten horns, which were seen on the beast, and which are afterwards explained as the kings (meaning thereby kingdoms), which were to arise out of the fourth empire. By arising out of it must be meant, that they were to be historically connected with it, and to be in a sense its continuation; as there can be no doubt that the various kingdoms, which sprung up after the irruptions of the barbarians into the Roman empire, had much in common with Rome, while in policy and character they were diverse from it; they still had her laws, her language and literature, her institutions and customs, for the basis of theirs.
It is evident, then, that this part of the vision is framed with a view to one great object—to render prominent the moral element in the history of God’s dispensations. The delineation of the worldly side of the picture is carried on continuously (as very commonly in prophecy) till it reach its culminating point; the iniquity of the worldly power, in its last and most aggravated phase, grows till it becomes full; and then the righteous kingdom, with its Divine head, comes forth to condemn and cast out the evil. It were quite a mistake, however, on this account, to suppose that the kingdom of God had no existence in the world till this terminating part of the process; and would evince as great a misunderstanding of the proper import in one respect as it had been in another, to suppose the continued existence of the three first kingdoms as actual powers in the world, down to the time that the judgment is represented as taking effect upon the last of them. It is, throughout, an ideal representation, formed so as to exhibit, in the most effective manner, the real tendencies and final issues of things; and, as a natural consequence, matters are compressed into a single act which might be the product of ages, and events appear in close juxtaposition, which, in actual history, might stand ever so far apart. So was it, for example, in Isaiah’s vision of the doom of Babylon (Isaiah 13:1-22), and Ezekiel’s vision of the destruction of Tyre (Ezekiel 26:7, sq., Ezekiel 28:1-26); the work which it was to take centuries to accomplish, is presented as a thing devised and executed at once. We are not, therefore, to suppose here that because the doom of the worldly power is represented in a similar manner, that it is to fall by a single stroke; or that the kingdom, through which the consummating act is to be inflicted, then for the first time enters upon the stage of history. Indeed, the reverse is manifest, from the dream-part of the vision given in explanation of that which was seen. In the vision itself the prophet saw thrones set (so it should be rendered at Daniel 7:9; not cast down, but set or placed down) for kingly persons vested with power and authority to pronounce judgment, implying that the judgment was not to be the act simply of the Eternal, nor the inflicted doom to proceed straight from the bolt of Omnipotence. But who were those assessors in judgment? By whom was it that the powers of evil were to be judged and cast out? By looking to the explanations in Daniel 7:19-27, we learn that they are not the angels, as has too commonly been supposed (these are never represented as judging, always only as ministering spirits), but the saints of the Most High, the same saints who, along with the Son of Man, are to possess the kingdom. It is to them that the work of judgment on the worldly power is committed (Daniel 7:21); it is they who sit in judgment, and take away his dominion, and consume and destroy it to the end, and, in turn, receive the kingdom for an everlasting possession, of which the other has been dispossessed (Daniel 7:26-27). But whence should these saints have come? How have they attained to such numbers, and such authority and power? Not, we may be sure, of a sudden, or by any miraculous intervention of Providence. They can be none other than the members of the kingdom which has been in existence since the Lord came from heaven to found it by His incarnation and blood. And their appearing here in such numbers, and with such judicial authority and power, merely indicates that the kingdom to which they belong has at length acquired the mastery; the cause of righteousness and truth, with which it is associated, has become triumphant; and the interest opposed to these vanishes from the field, as smitten with irrecoverable perdition. So long as that interest appeared to prevail and prosper, it seemed as if God’s rectitude slumbered; and men were disposed to sigh with the Psalmist, Oh! that He would awake to the judgment, that He would establish the just! But when the reverse takes place, and they see the cause of wickedness going down, they are equally ready with devout gratitude to exclaim, Thou satest in the throne, judging right; Thou hast destroyed the wicked (Psalms 7:1-17, Psalms 9:1-20).
§ 2. Prophecies in the Apocalypse concerning the Kingdom of Christ in its relation to the Kingdoms of the World The views now exhibited from Daniel again re-appear in the Apocalypse. Indeed, the grand drama unfolded in that mysterious book is little else than a simple expansion of this part of Daniel’s vision, by following it out into detail. There, in the opening vision, we have presented to our view the Ancient of Days on the throne, with the Son of Man (as the Lamb) in the midst of it, and round about the central throne four-and-twenty other thrones (so it should be, not seats), for the four-and-twenty crowned elders, the representatives of Christ’s royal priesthood, or entire membership of a redeemed church. The scene is, in truth, an ideal representation (precisely as in Daniel) of the Lord, and His assessors in judgment, the saints, whom He exalts to sit with Him on His throne, and destines to possess with Him the kingdom. These appear together in the attitude of dealing judicially with the ungodly world, and preparing the way for the final occupation of the inheritance. Hence thunders, and lightnings, and voices proceed from the midst of them (Revelation 4:5), the awful signs of coming wrath; and the seven-sealed book is opened, which contains in successive stages the world’s doom and the church’s victory; and scene after scene follows, with sounding of trumpets and pouring out of vials, during which the same action is constantly proceeding to its proper issue. The whole ends, as here, with the utter destruction of the beast, and with the saints living and reigning with Christ upon the earth; in other words, possessing the kingdom. So that, were it otherwise doubtful, the scheme and arrangement of the Apocalypse would put it beyond a doubt that the brief and vivid representation of Daniel in reality covers an extensive field of operations; that it embraces the general progress, as well as the final result of Christ’s cause upon earth, and includes the main substance of the Book of Revelation. Only, while Daniel, for the reasons already stated, points more directly to the close of the action, St John unfolds the numerous stages by which it was to be reached, the many windings and evolutions in the work of judgment upon the world, till judgment is brought forth into victory.
(1.) We notice first the representation that is given in the Apocalypse of the worldly power. In Daniel this appeared under a succession of beasts, each symbolizing a new and somewhat different form of the great monarchies of the world. But now it appears simply as a beast (Revelation 13:1-18), a beast, however, that had the same origin with those of Daniel, like them rising out of the sea, and a composite creature, uniting together the several forms of the three first in Daniel (the lion, the bear, and the leopard), and possessing also the ten horns which were seen in the fourth. These points of coincidence with the vision of Daniel, plainly indicate a fundamental agreement, and, at the same time, such a difference as is obtained by the compression of a diversity into a unity. The beast of the Apocalypse, accordingly, is the worldly power, not in its several parts or successive forms of manifestation, but in its totality. Having already passed through its earlier phases, and reached its last regular form, it is naturally represented as one, or rather, as a composite whole, possessing still all that it ever had of a beastly, grovelling, God-opposing character, and combining them together in its present visible realization. There is no essential difference in this from the view given in Daniel; for there also, as we have had occasion to notice, both the four beasts, and the several parts of the image, were represented as at once successive, and in a sense also co-existing. The seven heads in the beast of the Apocalypse, present more of an apparent dissimilarity, and may seem at variance with the notion of an essential oneness between it and the monarchical symbols in Daniel. For these were only four, corresponding to the number of kingdoms, in which the general idea exhibited in them was attempted to be realized. How, then, if referring substantially to the same thing, should John have seen seven heads upon the beast—heads with crowns, consequently denoting so many kingdoms? The main reason, no doubt, must be sought in the reality, which the symbol represents, and which must somehow have been contemplated in a sevenfold aspect by the Evangelist. He afterwards tells us in Revelation 17:9 (for, we hold it as a settled point, that the beast there discoursed of, is identical with the one here), that “the seven heads are seven mountains”—which may certainly have some reference to the seven-hilled city of Rome, where the beast then bad the seat of his dominion; but it cannot possibly rest there, or have that for its chief reference; since in a description otherwise entirely symbolical, the term “mountains” cannot be taken in a merely literal sense, nor without respect to its usual emblematical import of states or kingdoms. We have no doubt, however, that it does carry, in the first instance, an allusion to the seven hills of Rome. But to prevent our resting in this literal sense—to lead us rather to regard those Roman hills as themselves the symbols of something higher, a kind of natural indication of the concentrated worldliness of Rome, as in a manner combining in her dominion all the phases of the worldly power, it is immediately added, “and they are (not “and there are”) seven kings”—meaning thereby, so many kingdoms, according to the uniform import of the word in this connection. There is, therefore, a double reference; and hence it is introduced with the saying, “Here is the mind which hath wisdom,” to intimate that there is something peculiar and enigmatical in what follows—and that it contained, if rightly understood, an important key for the understanding and application of this part of the vision.
Still, with this explanation of the language, the question recurs, why should the worldly power have appeared to the Evangelist in a sevenfold aspect? To suppose that it has respect to seven forms of government which successively appeared in the Roman commonwealth, from its commencement, is entirely arbitrary and fanciful. Any changes of a merely political kind, Rome might have undergone, and before it came into contact with the church, are of no moment as regards the subject of this prophecy; they mark for it no epochs, and lie altogether outside the territory on which it moves. It treats of the worldly power only in its relation to the kingdom of God, and of that in a collective aspect, as it has existed and manifested itself throughout history. The sevenfoldness ascribed to it, therefore, must be, not seven forms of government in one state, but seven different states or forms of dominion, in which the worldly spirit, in its self-idolatrous and God-dishonouring form, successively embodied itself. And these the Evangelist finds by simply taking a wider range of view than Daniel, as he was naturally called to do, and contemplating the matter in its whole historical compass. Thus surveyed, the number seven readily occurred by adding to the four of Daniel, first, the Egyptian and Assyrian kingdoms, which preceded, and which, as regards their own character and their relation to the Divine kingdom, were essentially one with the others; then the new and divided state at the close into which the dissolved Roman empire fell. As it was of these chiefly that the Evangelist was called to treat, and as they were to hold, in some respects, a very different relation to the kingdom of God, from that of heathen Rome, they quite naturally came to be represented as an additional head of the beast. Indeed, Daniel himself gave a sort of occasion for their being so regarded, by representing them under the emblem of clay, which did not properly assort with the iron of ancient Rome; in one respect they belonged to it, but not in another. In what respects their relation was to differ, will appear in the sequel; but, meanwhile, as it was one leading object of the prophecy of this book to exhibit the difference, and to reveal the peculiar part those kingdoms were to play in the history of God’s church, the state of things they were to introduce might well be entitled to rank as a new and final phase of the worldly power.
(2.) We turn now from the apocalyptic representation of the adverse or worldly power, to that of the church and kingdom of God. Here, also, while we have a fundamental agreement with the visions of Daniel, we have important and characteristic shades of difference. Indeed, we may say, it is the kingdom only, and not what we more properly understand by the church, that has any representation in the two visions of Daniel. He speaks simply of the kingdom that was to supplant the worldly monarchies, and obtain the everlasting and universal dominion they aspired after. And we must attend for a little to the form, under which he presents it, as this not only contrasts in a striking manner with the representation given of the other kingdom, but also lays the foundation of the more special language used in the Apocalypse, and in other parts of the New Testament. The other kingdoms have their emblematic representation in so many wild beasts, because they were to be in their pervading spirit and operations more beastly than human. But when the divine kingdom appears on the field, the form that represents it is one “like a son of man,” and “coming with the clouds of heaven.” Though the form is simply human, there is evidently connected with it a superhuman elevation. For it comes, not like the base representatives of mere earthly rule, from beneath, but from above, and riding in the peculiar chariot of Deity, the clouds of heaven; and it might seem but the fair conclusion that here also the form was indicative of a higher nature than outwardly appeared—that the human likeness, to be properly human, required to be associated with the divine. It is, therefore, to give but a poor and partial exposition of the subject, to say, that it meant the Messiah “would be a human, not an angelical, or any other kind of being; for, in the oriental idiom, Son of man and man are equivalent.”
Such seems the fair and natural explanation of the epithet, “Son of Man,” as originally and prospectively used in the vision of Daniel. And it is fully confirmed by one of the first recorded appropriations of it by our Lord. This occurred in the course of his conversation with Nicodemus, when he said, “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven” (John 3:13). It sounds like a contradiction, and might, at least, have seemed an unintelligible enigma, but for the vision in Daniel, to which it manifestly refers, and which fully justifies and explains its meaning. No man, it is thus found to declare, who simply is a man, fallen and degenerate, as mankind now are, ever has ascended to heaven; his progress is all in the contrary direction—not upwards to heaven, but downwards to earth and hell. The Son of man, however, in whom the idea of humanity was to be realized, in whom it is found according to its original type and destination, as the living image of God,—He belongs to the heavenly; that is His proper region; and when he appears (as he now does) on earth, it is because in what properly constitutes his being and character, He has come from above. This thought, too, it should be observed, respecting the head of the kingdom of God, was most fitly introduced in connection with a discourse on the necessity of regeneration from above, in order to admission into the kingdom. The head of the kingdom, the realized ideal of humanity, is Himself from above; He is emphatically “the new man,” “the Lord from heaven;” and so, all who hold of Him, and are to participate in the rights and blessings of His kingdom, must be made new; their humanity must be regenerated after the pattern of His, and by virtue of the divine power with which He is replenished. Thus only can there be a proper correspondence between the head and the members; and thus only can the earth be filled and possessed, according to the promise, by a kingdom of saints, in room of the corrupt and brutalizing powers which have so long held possession of the field. In the same way is to be explained another application of the term, which, from overlooking the reference made in it to the original prophecy, has very commonly had a mistaken or inadequate sense put on it. The passage is in John 5:27, where our Lord speaks of Himself as having received authority from the Father to execute judgment upon men, “because He is the Son of Man.” Taken by itself the passage contains a seeming incongruity. But connect the assertion with the prophecy of Daniel—regard it as indicating the divine-human (perfectly human, because, at the same time, really divine) person and character of Messiah, through whom the everlasting kingdom of righteousness was to be brought in, and by whom, along with his elect people, the powers of evil were to be adjudged and cast out; and then the meaning and reason of the statement become obvious. He now announced Himself as the new man, to whom was to be “put in subjection the world to come,” and who, therefore, held at his command both the regenerating grace necessary to establish the good, and the judicial power and authority commissioned to expel the incorrigibly evil. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt, that it was mainly on this account He so commonly designated Himself in His public discourses by the title of the Son of Man, rather than any other. He would thereby lead men to regard Him as the type of what humanity should be, and as come on purpose to found the kingdom in which, according to ancient prophecy, it was to be generally exemplified. And, doubtless, also, it was a reference to the same prophecy which led to the so frequent designation of the kingdom of Messiah as that of “the kingdom of heaven.” This expression also has respect to certain representations in Daniel; and was employed rather than “the kingdom of David,” because more directly pointing to the divine and spiritual character of the kingdom, and thereby fitted to correct the mistaken notions of the Jews respecting the Messiah’s reign. But as Son of Man, applied personally and emphatically to Jesus, was all one with Son of David, so what in accordance with some prophecies was called the kingdom of God or of heaven, can be no other than that elsewhere identified with the throne of David.
Turning now to the Book of Revelation, we find the whole of its representations regarding the affairs of the New Testament church based upon the same views. The book speaks throughout of the kingdom and coming of Christ. And in the opening vision, which presents us with an ideal delineation of Him from whom all its revelations came, his appearance is described (precisely as in Daniel) to be that of a “Son of man,” while the great theme of the revelations is to make known, how, as such, he was to proceed in bringing into subjection “the world to come.” We have thus at the outset a clear indication of the close relationship between the Apocalypse and the visions of Daniel. When viewed in this connection, also, the Book itself is seen to be of a piece—made up of two equally necessary, and though different, by no means heterogeneous parts. The symbolical description of Christ’s person at the beginning, and the addresses to the seven churches, unfold the nature of the kingdom, over which as Son of Man he presides, and shew how far the idea had begun to be realized, how far it had failed in a series of particular churches. This portion is in reality the foundation of all that follows, and supplies the standard by which its other descriptions are to be ruled; for it brings fully and distinctly out the mind of Christ on such important topics as these—what kind of persons he would recognise as “the saints,” who were to possess with him the kingdom—in what manner they were called to make good their title to the character—what seductive influences and threatening dangers should strive to hinder them from attaining it—what prospects of bliss and glory awaited them, if they did attain it; what condemnation and judgments, if they failed. It is by what is written on these points in the direct addresses, that we are to interpret what is afterwards symbolically written concerning the church; we have here the criteria for determining her proper character, and discerning between the true and the false.
Then, in regard to the other and prospective part of the book, we find a striking divergence in the form of the representation from that of Daniel, but one that naturally arose from the different and more advanced position of the Evangelist, and necessary as a cover, under which to present the more minute and varied aspects of the future that were now to be unfolded. Standing at a point so far removed from the Messiah’s kingdom, Daniel could only have revelations given him of its general character and destinies. Even the form under which it was imaged to his view, was symbolical rather than personal—symbolical of the whole in the first instance, and only by inference admitting of personal application to an individual. But now that that ideal form had become embodied in a glorious personality, that the foundations of the kingdom also had actually been laid, and matters were in a train for reaching the destined consummation, it became necessary in some way to distinguish between the head and the members of the church, as also between the church in a militant and imperfect condition, and the church prepared for her final inheritance. This is done without any essential, but only by a relative, change in the symbol: the human form is retained for the new prospective delineation of the church, but the female, not the manly, type of the human. Taken complexly, the human still makes up the representation of the kingdom, but as the kingdom now falls into two parts, so does the symbol, which represents it: Christ, the Son of Man, the male son (
We should note, however, how careful the Apocalyptist is, before he exposes the perils and defections of the church, with their sad and fearful issues, to exhibit ideally the church’s perfection; he first of all unfolds what she is in calling, what she should ever aim to be in character, and what in the consummation she is destined to be in the reality. We have this description at the beginning of Revelation 12:1-17. There she appears as a woman in heaven—in the same blissful and elevated region with her Divine Head; for there her citizenship lies, as well as His (Php 3:20). Not only so, but her condition is in full accordance with her place, she is clothed with the sun—the grand luminary of heaven, and the uniform emblem of a truly divine and celestial glory, as contrasted with the darkness and corruption of the world. Ideally, therefore, the church has heaven’s light and glory for her own—according to Isa., Isaiah 9:1, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord hath risen on thee.” And as a natural consequence, she stands nobly superior to the corrupt attractions of what is reckoned glorious on earth; she feels that she is called to higher and better things. Hence she appears, not only clothed with the sun, but having also the moon under her feet—the comparatively little orb, which has, indeed, a measure of light and glory, but such only as is derived from the earth, and which altogether belongs to the earthly sphere—fit emblem of the riches, the culture and the honours of the flesh, which all perish with the using. These the true church keeps beneath her feet; they are not her real glory, or her proper portion. Finally, her head is emblazoned with a crown of twelve stars—emblems of her proper representatives, the twelve apostles—emblems of them and those they represented, as called to shine and rule with Christ. Their position, also, is in the heavenly sphere; they are, one and all, by their Christian calling, bearers and dispensers of the light of heaven; placed aloft, and endowed with their respective gifts, that they may exhibit the mind and truth of God to those who are sitting in darkness and corruption. What a lofty idea! Would that the church had from the first kept it stedfastly before her eye, and striven with unflagging zeal to have it realised! How innocuously should the darts of the adversary then have fallen upon her, and from what sloughs of corruption, and seas of blood, should she have been preserved! And would she but do it yet! For, the moral pestilence still wastes within her borders, and the work of judgment for apostacy is far from having run its course. But in this we are anticipating what belongs to another department.
(3.) We turn, then, to a third point, the last we shall advert to in connection with this branch of the subject—the representation given in the Apocalypse of the relation of the spiritual to the worldly power, or of the kingdom of Christ to the kingdom of the prince of this world.
Proceeding on the deeper insight he has obtained into the spiritual region, and the more detailed aspect which it thence became necessary to present of spiritual things, the apostle here divides between the church and Her divine Head. He gives, first, (Revelation 12:1-17), in the case of the latter, a compressed view of the nature and issue of the conflict, as carried on in the entirely spiritual sphere, of which that afterwards to be carried on through the church, on the visible theatre of the world, was to be, on the whole, though not without many grievous back-slidings and partial failures, a reflex. The representation in this first part has necessarily a retrospective, as well as a prospective, aspect—a circumstance not unusual in visions, which require to connect the past with the future, in order to give a comprehensive view of the reality (for example, in Daniel’s visions of the image and the beasts, and St John’s account of the seven-headed beast). The appearance of the head of the kingdom is sketched from its commencement. As he was to be born of a woman, and through her made under the law, so the church is represented as a woman travailing and in pain to be delivered of what was at once her great burden and her great hope—the long-expected man-child. But while she is in this position, the dragon (who is simply the devil, in his relation to the powers of this world, Psalms 74:13; Ezekiel 29:8; and personified for the time in Herod) stands ready to devour—his chance of success being now suspended upon the destruction of this child of hope, and his whole energy in consequence directed to the accomplishment of the object. How likely, to human view, that he should succeed! He, on the one side, being possessed of such enormous power, that seven crowned heads are needed to represent his might on earth, and in heaven the third part of the stars are carried off by the sweep of his tail (i.e., a large proportion, like a third, of the world’s spiritual lights and rulers, corrupted and destroyed by his influence); while, on the other, all that appears is a feeble and helpless child, seemingly an easy prey to the devourer! But the destiny of this child is to rule all nations with a rod of iron—to rule them so as to break their hostility, and bring them into subjection to God. And the destiny must be fulfilled; for it is of God. Therefore, the power and malice of the adversary are defeated; the child, having escaped the dangers, and triumphed over all the difficulties that encompassed it in the earthly sphere, is caught up into the heavenly sphere, and seated in the very throne of God. And now, in this higher sphere, everything is reversed; with the rise of the Son of Man, on the ground of His perfected redemption, to be the Head of all principality and power in the heavenly places, the fall of the prince of darkness follows as its proper counterpart. He is, therefore, cast down from the higher region of power—the conflict having been fought and won against him, in regard to its fundamental principles—and he is reduced to the position of a mere earthly head; so that all he can even appear to do of evil, is in respect to the body of Christ, the church, during her continuance among the relations of sense and time. This is, of course, to be understood as an ideal representation, like the rest of the vision, though resting on an historical basis. It seems, therefore, entirely out of place here (with various writers, both British and Continental), to draw from this passage, in conjunction with some others of a like nature, the conclusion that, up to the time of Christ’s ascension, Satan was allowed to mingle freely with the angelic hosts, while afterwards that liberty was withdrawn. Nor is there any better foundation for the idea expressed by some, that the transition of Satan, from heaven to earth, indicated an enlargement of his influence and operations in the affairs of men. The reverse is plainly meant; as, throughout the prophetical Scriptures, the symbolical action of falling, or being cast down from heaven, always denotes a loss of power and authority. It is Satan’s downfal, therefore, which must here be understood, necessarily bringing with it a restraint to his operations, not the giving of an additional licence or effect to them. If an increase in any respect might be thought of, it could only be in the greater bitterness and guile which he would endeavour to infuse into his policy, on account of the defeat he had sustained on the high places of the field. In respect to this, he is said to have come down, “having great wrath.” And when our Lord declared, even while on earth, that by reason of the mighty power He exercised, and the work of perfect righteousness and mercy He was performing, “He saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,” and that “the prince of the world was judged and cast out” (Luke 10:18; John 12:31), he plainly teaches, that what is to be understood, and the whole that can justly be understood, by such language, is this capital abridgement of power and dominion. We say the whole, for, if taken more literally, the different passages would manifestly run counter to each other—what in one place is described as the result of Christ’s ascension, being, in the others, represented as taking place before it.
But, now, this sure foundation being laid in the heavenly sphere, and the triumph on the side of good secured once for all, personally, by the Redeemer, the Apocalyptist proceeds to set forth the progress and issues of the conflict in that lower sphere, which was still open to the adversary, in the history of the church in the world. Here the comparative advantage of the adversary is indicated in the very symbol used to represent the object of his malice and guile—the woman, humanity in its weaker division, over whom he so fatally triumphed at the commencement of the world’s history. Some allusion is, doubtless, made to the circumstances of the fall in this part of the representation; but the mystical drama that follows has rather for its historical basis the relations of Israel under the old covenant, and the manifold experiences and transactions through which they passed. For the evil as well as for the good, the materials of the representation are found there. It is with the exhibition of the good that the story begins and also ends. It discloses what should pertain to the true church (the chaste and faithful spouse) in her preservation from the assaults of the destroyer, her trials, her victories, and final deliverance and glory; but much of the intermediate portion is taken up with the other and darker side of the picture—the history of the false church (the adulterous mother of abominations), her apostacy and corruption, deserved and irrecoverable doom. It is, however, with the former and better portion alone of the prospective delineations that we have at present to do, as the things written of the other belong to what properly lies outside the Christian church, though nominally within—the anti-christian apostacy—and will fall to be considered under our next division. The church, then, as represented by the woman, the true spiritual mother of children, when pressed with the dangers raised against her, flies into the wilderness—that is, into such a hiding-place as might be found in some secure and silent retreat,—a flight that had its first historical exemplification in the temporary withdrawal of Mary, and the infant Jesus, to Egypt, to escape the persecution of Herod. This original withdrawal was the sure prelude of many similar expedients that should need to be resorted to in the future. And, accordingly, no sooner did the members of the church become large enough to attract the public notice of the world, than they were scattered abroad, reviled, buffeted, driven from the public walks of society, and glad often to find an asylum in what were comparatively the dens and caves of the earth. Speaking generally, however, her place of retreat might be regarded as what is called in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 20:1-49), “the wilderness of the peoples”—the moral deserts of the earth—in the first instance, Rome and the other cities of heathendom, which were the world’s deserts as compared with the land of Judea, where Christianity had its birth, and afterwards, when the earlier places of refuge had themselves become theatres of danger or bloodshed for the followers of Jesus, the more obscure and unenlightened parts of the empire. Such places of retreat from the world’s thoroughfares were to be to the true church in Christian times much what the wilderness of old was to Israel, refuges of safety at once from outward violence and from moral pollution; and with evident allusion to this, it is said that the place was prepared for her by God, and that the wings of a great eagle were given to bear her to it (Revelation 12:6, Revelation 12:14, comp. with Exodus 19:1-4; Deuteronomy 32:11). In former times, the Lord had borne His people, as on eagles’ wings, away from the violence, oppression, and contaminating influence of Egypt, to a place of safety and of wholesome discipline in the wilderness; and the same was to be done also in the case of the Christian church. The old was substantially to recur again. In spite of all the efforts of the adversary to strangle her in her birth, she should be preserved, and nourished, as with food from heaven, for a certain space, the mystical period of 1260 days.
Such was to be the result of this new phase of the worldly power—what was to come from the healing of the wound of the beast; a new, and master-stroke of Satanic policy. The dragon would no longer openly devour the woman, which had ceased any longer to be possible; but by bringing her into subjection to his own power, would rather, through her instrumentality, carry on his purposes of mischief. And the plot has wonderful success; in this new form, the beast is found to have even more than recovered what he had lost by the wound. For now it is said, “Power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:7-8). An all but universal dominion! in struggling and holding out against which, it is immediately intimated, the faith and patience of the saints were to have their grand trial (Revelation 13:10). And we have no doubt, with reference to the same, the apparent anomaly in Revelation 17:11, is to be explained, where we read, “And the beast that was, and is not, even he (or, he also), is the eighth (viz. kingdom), and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” So great was the power and success to be gained by the change of policy, and especially by the Lamblike beast which was to come to his aid, that the last head of the beast has the appearance of more than a mere head; it is like the beast itself in its entireness, a concentrated form of the whole, and so less properly the seventh as originally formed out of the ten horns into which the Roman empire fell, than an eighth, though it was still of the seven, because it sprang out of them, and was in reality a prolongation of their complex being. Not only was the clay of Daniel’s vision to take a distinct form; but the clay itself, as with plastic powers, and by the reception of certain Christian elements, was to undergo a transformation, such as should give it a new and more formidable character.
If in this part of the representation we find a characteristic difference between the Apocalypse and the vision of Daniel, it becomes still more marked in what immediately follows. St John not only saw farther than Daniel into the changes which the worldly power in its later stages was to undergo, but he also had a revelation given him of an ally which that power was ultimately to obtain, and of which no trace is to be found in the earlier and more compressed predictions of Daniel. This ally is described under the symbol of a second beast coming up out of the earth, having two horns like a lamb, but speaking as a dragon (Revelation 13:11). The rest of the description refers to the doings of the power symbolized by this image; but it is by the image itself that the essential nature of the power is to be determined, and the relation in which it was to stand to the other powers mentioned in the vision. Now, as it is a fundamental principle in the interpretation of prophetical symbols, that there must be uniformity of meaning ascribed to them in the things wherein they agree, there are certain points in the description given above, which from their coincidence with things going before, leave little room to doubt as to the proper character of this power. The first is the name—a beast; which proves it to be entirely of a worldly character—like a beast looking downwards to the earth, having the world for its god. Throughout the visions both of Daniel and the Apocalypse, the beasts are symbols of what belongs to the earthly and human, as contradistinguished from the divine and heavenly sphere. The several beasts in Daniel denote simply human governments, or the worldly power in its successive phases (as is done also by the other beast in the Apocalypse with its many heads and horns); and when a power rising up among them, and aspiring to something higher, laying claim (though unjustly) to the spiritual and divine, had to be indicated, it is described as so far differing from the others, that it had eyes like those of a man. Here, however, there is no such appearance; the form is altogether beastly, and consequently the power represented by it is only human and worldly. A second point is its origin; it came up out of the earth—from beneath, not from above; and so, like the first beast, was to be entirely terrene in its character.
It differed, however, in this respect, that it appeared to spring not from the sea—image of the world in its heaving, disordered, and tumultuous state—but from the solid earth; that is, the world in a state of settled order and fitness for civilization. Terrene, therefore, as this power was going to be, it was yet to possess earthly elements of a higher kind than the other—properties more refined, and distinctive of humanity in its advanced and orderly condition. Thirdly, it had horns like a lamb—horns, the symbol of power, but the horns of a lamb, among beasts the emblem of what is gentle, harmless, and engaging:—and, therefore, disposed to exercise the power, not in deeds of violence or with overawing displays of majesty and force, but by methods of a suasive kind, and suited to a peaceful and settled state of things. Perhaps, something even more specific is indicated—a studied imitation of the lamb with seven horns, formerly mentioned (Revelation 5:6), an affectation of Christ-like virtues, or a striving after the lamb-like qualities, which appear in their highest perfection in Christ. We can scarcely doubt, indeed, that this more specific reference was intended. But, lastly, notwithstanding this lamb-like appearance in regard to the form which this power was to assume for its exercise, the spirit directing and animating it was to be widely different: “He spake as a dragon.” It was to be by speech that the beast was to give indication of what it was, and by the character of its speech it was to be found in the strictest sense from beneath, an instrument of Satan, not of God; earthly, sensual, devilish.
There can be no certainty in the interpretation of symbols, if these traits do not determine the power here described to be simply a power of this world—not spiritual or ecclesiastical, which necessarily infers either a real or an assumed connection with the divine—but one both actually and ostensibly holding of the world. It has been, we think, the great error of writers in this country, to give too little heed to such fundamental and decisive characteristics in the appearance of the symbol, and to make account rather of dependent and subsidiary points. They have hence commonly adopted the opinion of its being an ecclesiastical power, and have sought to identify it with the priesthood of Rome. Indeed, this opinion very naturally grew out of a previous misapprehension—the identification of the first beast with the papal sovereignty of Rome; and there are not wanting things in the description now before us, which admit of being readily applied to the Romish priesthood—if only a proper foundation existed for such an application. But it is there precisely that the fanciful and groundless nature of the opinion discovers itself. And the more fundamental and strictly exegetical treatment, which the subject has received on the Continent, has led to the general adoption (among others by Hofmann, Hengstenberg, Auberlen) of what seems to us the correct view (though Gaussen and Ebrard still hold to the other). According to this view, the power here symbolized is that of worldly wisdom, comprehending every thing in learning, science, and art, which human nature of itself in its civilized state can attain to—the worldly power in its more refined and spirit-like elements—its more gifted sages and seers. There can be no doubt, that it is the same power, which in three subsequent passages (Revelation 16:13, Revelation 19:20, Revelation 20:10) is called expressly “the false prophet;” so that, as was already indicated by the power of speech ascribed to it, it belongs to the intellectual and moral, not to the physical or political sphere. But the marked separation in those passages between this false prophet and the whore, or the corrupt church, and the equally marked intimacy of connection between the false prophet and the beast, point to the conclusion we have otherwise arrived at, of its having to do with prophecy, not in the ecclesiastical, but in the worldly sense. The things which concern the whore, as forming a class by themselves, have a distinct representation; though nearly connected with the beast, and for a time serving herself of this, she still is judged and destroyed apart. But the false prophet never appears separate from the beast; he comes upon the stage as the mere servant and tool of the latter, and the two both work together, and perish in the same condemnation. They are alike, therefore, in origin, in character, in aim, and in destiny; an embodiment, only in different respects, of the sensual, grovelling, ungodly, spirit of the world. This second lamb-horned beast, then, is a personified representation of the world’s gnosis—“the gnosis, falsely so called,” of the apostle Paul; and hence the power professing and exercising it, is emphatically the false prophet. False—not because always or necessarily propounding things in themselves untrue, but because actuated by a wrong spirit in its investigations and pursuits—cultivating the talents, studying the works, plying the manifold resources of nature in a state of practical divorce from God and the interests of salvation, as if those were alone sufficient to bless the soul, and render the world a scene of satisfaction and delight. The teachings of such a spirit of prophecy are false, even when setting forth what is in itself true, because they ignore the existence, or belie the testimony, of what is emphatically the truth. Yet a formal opposition to this truth, though it might certainly be expected in part to characterise the operations of this power, is what it should rather, by the description given of it, seek to avoid. The lamblike horns imply as much—indicating that the power in question would strive to conceal its base origin and character, and even work upwards to a resemblance of that which has its true embodiment in the Divine Author of Christianity. The same thing is also implied in the note given of the relative period of its manifestation; the period, namely, of the last times of the worldly power: “He exerciseth,” it is said, Revelation 13:12, “all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth, and them that dwell therein (all the worldly-minded), to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.” If the deadly wound of the beast be, as formerly represented, the professed reception of Christianity by the ruling powers of the world, by which they went, or seemed as if they went over to the side of Christ; and if the healing of that wound be their return-to an essentially ungodly state, a kind of Christianised Paganism, then this second beast’s appearing in connection with the healed condition of the other, presents it to our view as a power more especially of the latter days, attaining to strength when the world itself had attained to the likeness of a formal Christianity. It was only then, indeed, and by reason of this very connection with the Christian name, that the wisdom and learning of the world could come to be peculiarly dangerous to the people of Christ, and be apt to supplant the truth that is in Him. In its old, and avowedly Pagan form, it was too palpably antagonistic in its nature to possess much of this character; and hence the philosophic class in ancient times, either stood entirely aloof from Christianity, or hatched abortive schemes of doctrine, which met with the strong and stedfast reprobation of the church. But matters have presented another aspect, since the kingdoms of the world came to assume somewhat of the Christian type. Since then, a comparatively sober, refined, and softened spirit, has been widely diffused. The prophets of the world have in many respects caught the reflection of that which is from above; and the literature, art, and science, which they have been giving to the world, not only render many a formal homage to Christianity, but partake much, also, of the elevating influence which has flowed from it.
Yet with all this change to the better in the world’s prophets, they are the world’s still—breathing its spirit, working for its interests, and, out of regard to its ends and objects, evacuating or setting aside the more essential truths of the gospel. The speech is ever such as befits the dragon’s mouth; and the grand tendency of its teaching, of its discoveries and inventions, is to lead men to worship the beast—to make a god of this present world. It even teaches them that dwell on the earth, as St John most characteristically described it beforehand, “that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed,” etc. (Revelation 13:14-15). The image here spoken of, which was undoubtedly suggested by the image of the Roman emperors, “denotes,” as Auberlen has excellently interpreted, “the deification of the world, and the worldly power. And the false prophet’s breathing living breath into this image, with much felicity describes how the false teaching has skill to give to the foolish idolatry of the creature’s deification, a kind of spiritual, reasonable, philosophical impress: the worldly spirit, with its revelations, is this dead and now again life-breathing idol deity, before which the whole world does homage. It is (he means in its actual tendencies and final outgoings) the new heathenism, sinking down again to the deification of nature and humanity: and it is impossible to predict what foolish and beastly forms it may yet assume.” The extraordinary workings ascribed to this power in the prosecution of its aim, which are designated miracles, and in which it is even said to call down fire from heaven, point to its great achievements in nature, and also to its lofty pretensions, seeming to rival those of the real witnesses of God’s truth, and the faithful expounders of His will to men (Revelation 11:5). Nothing in heaven or earth should appear to be above the reach of its inquiries and the skill of its hand. And the exclusion from merchandise, the assignation even to death (by which must be understood, not literal, but social or political death, civil martyrdom, for in this sense only could death with any propriety be ascribed to the speech of a prophet), which it should have power to appoint to as many as would not worship the beast, disclose the extreme eagerness, and the wonderful success, with which this last and highest form of the worldly spirit should drive after its object. The saying, that “the world loves its own,” should receive through it the most striking exemplification; and those who were not of the world, and held by the faith of Christ, would be disliked, shoved into corners, maligned, and vilified. Who that is but moderately acquainted with the history of modern Christendom, or has any discernment of the signs of the times, can fail to perceive how much the tendency of the world’s culture is in this direction! how little it commonly sets by the interests of salvation! nay, how jealously it eyes such as give these their proper place! And rising, as it continually does, in its achievements and consciousness of power, growing incessantly in its command over the elements of nature, and the materials of earthly comfort and enjoyment, who can but fear that its future progress may be marked by times yet more perilous than hitherto, and more audaciously opposed to the claims and spirit of the gospel! It would only require an intensifying of powers already in extensive operation, and a quite conceivable development of the world’s culture, to make the unswerving profession of Christianity, and the carrying out of its heavenly spirit into the various relations of life, a matter of constant sacrifice, and of virtual exclusion from all the more prominent positions of worldly life. So far we can without material difficulty find our way to the import and application of this part of the Apocalyptic vision. On the number of the beast, and of his name, we refrain from making any remark at present; as indeed, we have little more to offer than an analogical probability, which may be better noticed, in connection with other numbers, at the close of Section in. The result, however, as regards the church’s relation to the power and kingdoms of the world, is sufficiently humiliating as to the past, and not without some anxious forebodings in respect to the future. The last, and in some sense Christianised form of the beast, has already proved, in accordance with the view presented beforehand in the Apocalypse, a more dangerous and formidable opponent to the cause of God than it was in its earlier and more palpably antichristian manifestations. And what is afterwards said of this beast itself, in Revelation 17:14-17, Revelation 19:11, sq. (of which particular notice will be taken in the next section), together with what is here said of his ally, the false prophet, seems plainly to indicate, that the warfare of the church with this dragon-like power, is far from being ended, and, probably, in some of its aspects, has not yet reached its climax. It may be doubted whether there be any just foundation for the idea entertained by some, and among others by the writer recently quoted (Auberlen), that days of active and violent persecution still await the church, and that only by the suffering of blood she must expect to win her latest, as she did her earlier, victories. In so far as this apprehension is based on the description of the false prophet, it seems to be without any just foundation; as it is against the proper nature of the symbol to connect it with acts of external violence and corporeal infliction. The conflict in its later stages is more likely to occupy itself with the higher region of thought and feeling, and to be primarily a war of opinion, though it may also carry in its train certain political and social disturbances. The tactics of the adversary may henceforth be expected to grow in subtlety and refinement. The more Satan succeeds in transforming himself into an angel of light, the more he can lead his servants to exchange obsolete notions and brute force for weapons more accordant with the views of cultivated minds, and less directly opposed to the nature of the gospel, the more disastrous is likely to be their effect in impeding the progress and thinning the ranks of genuine Christianity. But however that may be, the issue of the struggle is not doubtful. The same inspired pen, which has so wonderfully traced its general character and progress unfolds in the most distinct manner the triumph of the kingdom of Christ, and the irretrievable ruin, both of the beast and the false prophet. We reserve what is written on this point for the next section, where we must consider the judgment of Babylon, which is so intimately connected with that of the other two, that they can with no propriety be examined apart. But the most cursory glance into the representations which follow, is enough to satisfy us, that if the seer of Patmos was a watchman of the night, he was also a herald of the approaching morn, and that, amid all the combinations of malice and guile, which were to be arrayed against the church of God, he foresaw the higher elements of power were still to be with her. Nay, no sooner has he described the appearance and proceedings of the lamblike beast, than he points attention to the real Lamb on Mount Zion, with his noble army of 144,000 tried and faithful followers (Revelation 14). By these are represented the truly effective forces, powers, and agencies, mightier by far than those which were symbolized by the beast and false prophet. And by means of them, changes are accomplished, and processes of judgment carried forward, which terminate only with the final overthrow of the adversary, and the exaltation of a pure and faithful church to the possession of the inheritance.
Section II. The Prophetical Future of the Church and Kingdom of Christ, in Their Relation to the Character, Working, and Fate of the Antichristian Apostacy WHEN the church or kingdom of Christ, and the kingdoms of this world, are viewed in their original character and relative positions, the connection between them, as we have seen, is one simply of antagonism. They meet on the stage of the world’s history, but only to contend with each other, not to coalesce, or to merge their respective properties in a state of things common to both. The relation, therefore, when so considered, is necessarily of an external nature. It is that of kingdoms moving in different spheres, animated by a different spirit, and embracing not only different but conflicting interests, so that the progress and triumph of the one inevitably carries along with it the conquest and subversion of the other. But there is also another and more internal relationship, of which we have already had occasion to notice several intimations in prophecy, and which was to arise from an unnatural coalition between the two parties—or, rather, between the apparent, not the real, power on the one side, and the antagonistic power on the other. The kingdom of God, like its Divine Author, cannot change in respect to its essential elements, or cease to be opposed to the powers which are Satanic in their origin, and bestial in their character. But it might appear to do so, after it had obtained a distinct organization, and assumed an outstanding position in the world. It might, in the hands of its ostensible representatives and agents, renounce its opposition, and become more or less identified with the operations of the worldly power. Nor was it from the first by any means unlikely that such a result should take place, for Satan’s policy has always been to corrupt what is of God, when he has failed to destroy it. And situated as the church of Christ is in the world—beleaguered, on every hand by the powers of evil—within, liable to be drawn aside by the remains of indwelling sin—and without, alternately pressed by the violence and the blandishments of those in power—it was not to be wondered at if the world should make encroachments upon the church, and the adversary should find for himself an interest and an agency under the very banner of heaven.
§ 1. The Antichrist as represented in Daniel both Typically and Antitypically The prophecies of Daniel, which, in Old Testament Scripture, contained the most distinct and varied perspective of the more public relations of Christian times, did not fail also to exhibit this feature of the distant future. As might have been expected, no indication is given of it in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, which, in accordance with its general character, presents merely an external aspect of the different monarchies; and as regards the relation of Messiah’s kingdom to the others, gives prominence only to its prevailing might, absolute universality, and endless continuance. But it is otherwise in respect to the vision of the seventh chapter, which was communicated to Daniel himself. Under the last worldly monarchy, in the times of which the kingdom of heaven was to begin to lay claim to the world, a representation is given of a remarkable change that was to take place in the former, by which it was to a certain extent to throw off its bestial appearance, and become assimilated to that of the divine kingdom, though still retaining its essential contrariety to it. Before, however, looking at this representation, we may glance at another in the subsequent visions of Daniel, which is so far related to it, that the things it describes formed the nearest approach to a typical exhibition of the more distant future to be found in ancient times. Generally speaking, the kingdoms of the world, with which the covenant-people came into contact, aimed only at an external supremacy and control over them; they did not interfere with the internal affairs of the religious polity of Israel, or set their hearts on establishing a conformity between it and the religions of heathendom. But in the periods intervening between the return from Babylon, and the coming of Messiah, the worldly power was to quit its outward position and force its way within. It was, in one remarkable instance, to lay its hand upon the very life and spirit of the theocratic constitution of Israel, with the view of bringing this into formal agreement with the state of things in its own territory. And both because it was to form a somewhat singular turn in the affairs of the old covenant, and to afford the nearest parallel these were to present to the most singular and perilous evolution in the future history of Christ’s kingdom, a very prominent exhibition was given of it in the later visions of Daniel. We meet with it first in Daniel 8:1-27, in the vision of the ram and the he-goat, which are explained to mean, the one the kingdom of the Medes and Persians, the other the kingdom of Greece. Then, after quickly passing over the subjugation of the former kingdom by the latter—the rapid conquests of the Grecian kingdom, and its division, on the death of its founder, into four smaller monarchies, a power is described as going to rise up out of one of these, symbolized by a little horn, which was to wax great and do extraordinary things, especially toward what is called the pleasant land or the land of beauty. By this is undoubtedly meant the land of Canaan (compare Ezekiel 20:6, Ezekiel 20:15); and of the operations of this power there it is said, Daniel 8:10-12, “And it waxed great to the host of heaven, and it cast down of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them. And he magnified himself even to the prince of the host; and by him the daily (or continual, viz., burnt-offering) was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. And the host (so it should be rendered) was given (viz., to him) along with the daily sacrifice, because of transgression, and the truth was cast down to the ground; and it (viz., the horn) practised and prospered.” The host in this last verse must be the same as in Daniel 8:10-11; it must be the Lord’s host, the covenant-people, considered in their ideal character, as possessed of a theocratic constitution, and forming, amid the heathen kingdoms of this world, a kind of heavenly constellation. Notwithstanding this elevated position, however, violence was to be done to it by the bold and aspiring power represented under the little horn: it was to suffer a humiliating prostration, though, as is presently explained in Daniel 8:13-14, only for a comparatively brief season. And in regard to the reason of this dreadful reverse and temporary invasion of the worldly power on the Divine order and prerogatives, it is said in the explanatory verses toward the end of the chapter, that it was to take place “when transgressors should have come to the full;” that while his power should be mighty, yet it should “not be by his own power,” plainly meaning that the iniquity harboured and practised among the covenant-people was what should call forth the visitation, and that the power which was to work so disastrously was really lent by God for the occasion as an instrument of vengeance. And, again, in Daniel 11:1-45, where the operations of the same power are chiefly detailed, the king in question is not only described as having “indignation against the holy covenant,” but also as “having intelligence with them that forsake it” (Daniel 11:30), and “corrupting by flatteries such as do wickedly against the covenant” (Daniel 11:32); while the design of the whole, on the part of God, is “to try them, and purge them, and make them white” (Daniel 11:35).
It is evident, by a comparison of all the passages bearing on the subject, that the period referred to was to be one of deep backsliding and apostacy among the covenant-people, and that this was to be taken advantage of by the worldly power, then in immediate contact with them, for the purpose of breaking up the commonwealth of Israel, and reducing it internally to a level with the states of heathendom. Such certainly was the occasion and aim of the proceedings carried on against the people of Israel by Antiochus Epiphanes, as described in the books of Maccabees. The origin of the whole is ascribed to a Hellenizing party in Israel, who introduced the Grecian culture and games, and thought that strength and safety were to be acquired by assimilating their manners and customs to those of their more polished neighbours (1Ma 1:11-15, 1Ma 11:43-53; 2Ma 4:7-20). This spirit of defection had invaded also the priesthood; so that some of the priests even assumed Grecian names, and the office of high-priest was made matter of merchandise. It was the world in its baser forms entering into the sanctuary of God; and in Antiochus, a fitting representative of the world, it reached a climax of presumption and wickedness. He is, beyond doubt, the power, that in connection with the Grecian monarchy, was to act so lawless and violent a part against the covenant. It is hard to say what precisely was the object of this man in many of his proceedings; for they not unfrequently resembled more the doings of a madman, than those of a reasonable being; on which account the epithet Epimanes (the mad), was often substituted for Epiphanes (the illustrious). But from his applying to himself on some of his coins the epithet of Theos (God), and on the reverse of others, exhibiting the likeness of Jupiter, taken in connection with the general character of his reign, it would seem that he identified himself with the Olympian Jupiter, and thought himself justified in resorting to any measures for the purpose of establishing the worship of this deity, and along with it his own absolute supremacy. He prosecuted this design also among the Jews; and in the course of his operations succeeded, not only in inflicting the most revolting cruelties, but also in polluting, through the instrumentality of the Hellenizing party, the altar and temple at Jerusalem with the foulest abominations. “He did according to his will, and exalted himself, and magnified himself above every God, and spoke marvellous things against the God of gods, and prospered till the indignation was accomplished” (Daniel 11:36). It was, therefore, quite a peculiar relation which the worldly power held for a season, in the person of this Antiochus, to the kingdom of God in Israel. It occupies essentially the same relative place in the third worldly kingdom, that antichrist was to do in the fourth, and has hence been generally designated the typical antichrist. There is the more reason for viewing it thus, as in some of the descriptions of antichrist in New Testament Scripture, in that especially of 2 Thessalonians 2:4, sq., the very words are used, in which Antiochus and his outrageous proceedings are described by Daniel. But of this occasion will be found to speak afterwards.
We revert, then, to the description of a similar kind, though pointing to a later period, which is found in the seventh chapter of Daniel (Daniel 7:6, Daniel 7:20-21, Daniel 7:24-25). The period is that of the latter stages of the fourth kingdom, subsequent to the tenfold division into which it was to fall; and so the power described must be posterior to the Christian era; it must be not the typical, but the real antichrist. This power is described, precisely as the other, under the emblem of a horn—at first a little horn; but presently waxing great, so as to pluck up by the roots three of the horns out of which it sprang; and differing also from the others, nay, approximating in appearance to the kingdom which was from above, since it had eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things (Daniel 7:8). How far, however, the reality was from corresponding with this appearance, how much similarity of form (as might naturally have been suspected from the manner of its origin), was assumed as a cloak to mask the most intense contrariety of spirit, was plainly brought to light in the explanation given in the subsequent parts of the vision. There we find, that this horn or power was to be entirely of the same spirit with those, among which it should come up, and was to form, indeed, the concentration of all the enmity and ungodliness by which they were, in common, characterised. While he was to be diverse from them in having eyes like a man’s, his look was to be more stout than his fellows, and he was to make war with the saints and prevail against them (Daniel 7:20-21). “He shall be diverse from the first,” it is added, Daniel 7:24, Daniel 7:26, “and he shall subdue three kings. And he shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws; and they shall be given into his hand until a time, and times, and the dividing of time. But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion to consume and to destroy it unto the end.” In this description much is purposely left vague and mysterious; but there are a few points which admit of being clearly determined from it. 1. It is first distinctly intimated, that the power of which it speaks, the last offspring and development of the fourth worldly monarchy, was to be distinguished by many of the higher qualities of earthly goodness; by human-like culture and adornment. The eyes as of a man bespeak this; for the spirit of life and intelligence is in the eye; and if the eyes had been altogether those of a man, then the power symbolized would, in spirit, have realized the proper ideal of humanity—it would have been the Divine kingdom itself. But since the eyes were not actually man’s, but only like those of a man, it indicates an approach merely to the true pattern—such a resemblance as fallen human nature by the cultivation of its own powers, and the skilful use of its means and opportunities might of itself accomplish. So that in respect to art and science, general culture and refinement, and the various elements of social order and enjoyment, this last development of the earthly power should constitute an advance upon those which preceded it. Nay, considering that before its full formation, at least, if not as the very condition of its existence, the truly Divine kingdom, represented by Him who had the proper being, as well as likeness of a Son of man, must have begun to diffuse itself in the world, it was but natural to infer, that the human-like power would avail itself of many elements presented to its hand by this higher kingdom, and through these work up the appearance of things to a closer resemblance of the true pattern. The more it could take into its system of the forms of the Divine, the more would its aim be accomplished of looking like this. And the mouth speaking great things, or making high claims and pretensions, seems not doubtfully to indicate, that such would be the case; for, after the introduction of those things, which were to constitute the proper greatness and well-being of humanity, no power could well arrogate to itself the title, or possess the appearance of the truly human, without assimilating to itself much that bore this loftier impress. The higher qualities, therefore, which were to distinguish this singular power, must have derived something from the heavenly, as well as the earthly, so as to form a peculiar compound of flesh and spirit. 2. On the other hand, there comes plainly out, as a second point in the description, the intense worldliness and God-opposing character of this power; it was to have still the essential spirit of the beast, and that in a state of the greatest virulence and energy. This appears, first of all from the manner of its origination and growth—springing up simply as a fresh horn of the beast, and with such vitality as to pluck up by the roots three of the existing horns. Worldliness in full life and vigour is evidently the least that can be understood by such a symbolical representation—the earthly, sensual, self-idolizing spirit in its ripeness. But the same thing appears also from the actions ascribed to this power; making war with the saints and prevailing against them, even wearing them out by the keenness and constancy of its opposition, and, in the highest spirit of self-deification, speaking words against the Most High, and changing times and laws. Such things plainly bespeak, not only an unabated, but even an increased contrariety to the mind and will of God; the higher culture, and the nearer approach in appearance to the Divine kingdom, which this power was to assume should but serve, as it were, to whet its appetite and inflame its zeal against the real interests of that kingdom. But the very circumstance of its having assumed something of an apparent resemblance to the higher power, and by dint of cultivation and art, changed the original beast-like form into a kind of human aspect, necessarily implied the adoption of a different sort of policy in the prosecution of its ungodly measures, from what had been practised in the earlier stages of its history. If the old spirit of opposition to God and divine things was to be continued, and become more intense than ever, it could no longer be in the rough and undisguised form of heathenish antagonism to the claims of Jehovah and the higher interests of men; the circumstances of its condition would manifestly oblige this power to keep up the appearance of a regard to these, while the reality was maintained of a deadly and inveterate opposition. So far one might easily go in reading the interpretation of this part of Daniel’s outline of the distant future. And the certainty of an ultimate failure of the objects aimed at by the worldly power in this last form of its existence—of the downfal of the power itself, and the rise, in spite of its malice and persecution, of the saints of the Most High to the place of power and dominion; these also are points so clearly unfolded, that there is no need for dwelling particularly upon them. But with so much that is plain in the vision, there is much also that is left in darkness and uncertainty, especially in regard to the probable period in the church’s history, when this mysterious power should arise, and the manner and degree in which it should seek to cultivate the human aspect of the divine kingdom, and thereby prove itself to be diverse from the more grovelling worldly kingdoms that preceded it. On such points as these it had been premature to give any specific information in the time of Daniel; and in so far as they might be prophetically given, it is only in the Scriptures of the New Testament that we can be warranted to look for them. To these, therefore, we now turn; and though it is only the visions of the Apocalypse which properly resume and fill up the symbolical perspective of Daniel, yet it is necessary in the first instance to refer to certain direct intimations of the coming evil, which are found in the earlier portions of New Testament Scripture. For thus only can we gather with certainty and precision the light which is furnished to the Christian church respecting the last and most dangerous form of the worldly power.
§ 2. The Antichrist as represented by our Lord and his Apostles
1. Here, we naturally look first to the discourses of our Lord; but as these were chiefly intended to lay the foundations, as to doctrine and duty, of the Christian church, and unfold the calling and prospects of her real members, they contain comparatively little that bears on our present subject. Not unfrequently they point, though in a quite general way, to the difficulties and dangers through which his genuine followers should have to pass, the violence and oppression they should have to meet, and the corruptions and counterfeits that should rise up in the midst of them and continue till the time of the end. Such, in particular, are the parables of the tares and the wheat, the labourers in the vineyard, and the importunate widow. Almost the only information of a more specific kind contained in our Lord’s discourses regarding the usurpation of the world upon the church, is to be found in what he says of the false pretenders to divine light and power, and the dangerous ascendency they were to acquire. A warning on this head had been thrown out in the Sermon on the Mount: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheeps’ clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew 7:15). But it is repeated, and more pointedly pressed in the discourse respecting the last times in Matthew 24:1-51; first at Matthew 24:11, “and many false prophets shall arise, and deceive many;” and again at Matthew 24:24, “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.” From the connection in which the words are spoken, there can be no doubt, that they taught the disciples to look for the appearance of such characters among the signs of the approaching downfal of the old Jewish constitution; and from the relation which this bore to the time of the end, in the more extended sense, we are warranted to expect, that the sign would repeat itself in the latter stages of the world’s history. Both points, however, are so much more fully brought out by the apostles of our Lord in their addresses and epistles, that we pass at once to what proceeded from them upon the subject.
2. There is an historical passage, which it is not unimportant, at the outset, to notice, since it serves to throw some light on the import of one of the terms used by our Lord. In Acts 13:6, the Jew, Barjesus, who was with Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus, and who there withstood the preaching of the gospel, and sought to turn him from the faith, is called a false prophet (
It was Jesus alone who foretold the appearance of false Christs. By such can only be understood false pretenders to the name and character of Messiah. Precisely as false prophets are those who laid claim to gifts they did not really possess, false Christs must denote such as would assume to be what Jesus of Nazareth alone was. In the strict sense, therefore, false Christs could only arise outside the Christian church, and among those who had rejected the true; and in so far as they did so, they verified the word of Christ, “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye received me not; if another should come in his own name, him ye will receive “(John 5:43). The most noted example of the kind, as well as the earliest, was the case of Barchochbas (the son of a star), as he chose to designate himself, with reference to the prophecy of Balaam, and who drew multitudes after him to destruction. False hopes and pretensions, however, of a similar kind have been ever renewing themselves among the Jews, though circumstances have not admitted of their reaching such an imposing magnitude, and entailing such a common disaster. But we cannot altogether limit our Lord’s declaration respecting false Christs to such merely Jewish pretenders, especially as it was a declaration made more immediately for the instruction and warning of His own disciples, and for them the danger of being seduced by persons of that description must have been comparatively little. We are rather to conceive that in this, as well as in other things noted in His discourse of the latter times, He wished them to regard the immediate future as but the beginning of a remoter end—a beginning that should in substance be often repeating itself, though the particular form might undergo many alterations. It matters little, any one may perceive, whether men might or might not call themselves by the name of Christ, and openly set up a rival claim to the faith ofmankind. If they should assume to be, or to do what by exclusive right and appointment belongs to Him, they then become, if not in name, at least in reality, false Christs. Should any one undertake to give a revelation of divine things higher than that communicated by Christ, and different from His—to propound essentially other terms to the favour and blessing of heaven than those which proceed on the foundation of His perfect atonement—or to conduct the world to its destined consummation in light and blessedness otherwise than through the acknowledgment of His name and the obedience of His gospel—such an one would as really act the part of a false Christ as if he openly disallowed the claims of Jesus, and challenged to himself what rightly belongs to the Son of God. Hegesippus, therefore (in Eusebius’ Eccl. Hist. iv. 22), had perfect right to include, among the false Christs predicted by our Lord, the early heresiarchs and their followers—the Simonians, Marcionists, Valentinians, Basilidians, etc.—“from whom,” he says, “sprung the false Christs, and false prophets, and false apostles, who divided the unity of the church by the introduction of corrupt doctrines against God, and against His church.” While, in the teaching of such parties, a certain deference was paid to Christ, and some elements of the truth of His gospel were embraced in their views, yet in the general aim and tendency of these views they undoubtedly sought to supersede Christ and contravene the spirit of his gospel. And the same substantially may be said of not a few persons and systems of later times—such as Mahomet, and the advocates in every age of nature’s sufficiency to reach for itself a position of acceptance with God, and of honour in His kingdom. These, in reality, disown the claims of Jesus, and set themselves up in His room as the guides and saviours of the world. And we cannot fail to perceive an indication of the varied forms such characters should assume, and the many different quarters whence they might be expected to arise, in the warning of our Lord respecting them, “If they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert, go not forth; behold, he is in the secret chambers, believe it not.”
It is Christ alone, however, as we have said, who speaks of false Christs. Elsewhere, we read of antichrists or the antichrist, and have various descriptions given us of the corrupt and pestilential power which the term denotes. What, then, precisely does it denote? Does it imply that the power or party indicated by it should, in some form or another, arrogate Christ’s peculiar office and work, or does it simply express a spirit of contrariety and opposition to His doctrine or kingdom? Nothing, in this respect, can be gathered with certainty from the word itself, for the preposition (
We arrive, then, at the conclusion, that in St John’s use of the term antichrist, there is an unmistakeable reference to the early heretics, as forming at least one exemplification of its idea. Such, also, was the impression derived from the apostle’s statements generally by the Fathers; they understood him to speak of the heretics of the time, under the antichrists who had already appeared. For example, Cyprian, when writing of heretics, Ep. lxxiii. 13, and referring to 1 John 4:3, asks, “how can they do spiritual and divine things, who were enemies of God, and whose breast the spirit of antichrist has possessed.” On the same passage, Œcumenius says, “He declares antichrist to be already in the world, not corporeally, but by means of those who prepare the way for his coming; of which sort are false apostles, false prophets, and heretics.” So John Damasc. l. iv., orth. fid. 27, “Every one, who does not confess the Son of God, and that God has come in the flesh, and is perfect God, and was made perfect man, still remaining God, is antichrist.” And Augustine, in the third Tractatus on 1 John, in answer to the question, whom did the apostle call antichrists? though he extends the term to comprehend every one who is contrary to Christ, and is not a true member of His body, yet he places in the first rank, as most directly meant, “all heretics and schismatics.” It is plain, indeed, that the existing antichrists of John, the abettors and exponents of the
Assuming this, however, the question still remains, whether we are to regard the idea of the antichrist as exhausted in those heretical corrupters of the gospel in the apostolic age, and their successors in future times; or should rather view them as the types and forerunners of some huge system of God-opposing error, or of some grand personification of impiety and wickedness to be exhibited before the appearing of Christ? It was thought from comparatively early times, that the mention so emphatically of the antichrist, bespoke something of a more concentrated and personally antagonistic character, than the many antichrists, which were spoken of as being already in the world. The Fathers generally were of opinion, that those were but preliminary exemplifications of some far greater embodiment of the antichristian spirit, and commonly thought of a monarch (like Antiochus) of heaven-daring impiety, and unscrupulous disregard of everything sacred and divine, who, after pursuing a course of appalling wickedness and violence, should be destroyed by the personal manifestation of Christ in glory. The Fathers, however, were in an unfavourable position for taking a comprehensive view of this, as well as of other points belonging to unfulfilled prophecy.
Even at the comparatively early period when the apostle wrote, it had begun to work, and in his ordinary ministrations he had forewarned the disciples concerning it (2 Thessalonians 2:5, 2 Thessalonians 2:7); plainly implying, that it was to have its rise in a spiritual and growing defection within the Christian church. Then, as the term antichrist evidently denoted some kind of antithesis in doctrine and practice to Christ, a certain use of Christ’s name, with a spirit and design entirely opposed to Christ’s cause; so in the passage before us, the power personified and described, is designated the opposer (
Another view, however, has of late been rising into notice, which, if well founded, would also save the Romish apostacy from any proper share in the predicted evil; and which, we cannot but fear, if not originated, has at least been somewhat encouraged and fostered by that softened light, which the mediaeval and antiquarian tendencies of the present age have served to throw around Romanism. The view we refer to would make the full and proper development of the antichrist an essentially different thing from any such depravation of the truth, as is to be found in the Papacy, a greatly more blasphemous usurpation, and one that can only be reached by a pantheistic deification of human nature. So Olshausen, who says, on the passage in Thessalonians, “The self-deification of the Roman emperors appears as modesty by the side of that of antichrist; for the Caesars did not elevate themselves above the other gods, they only wanted to have a place beside them, as representatives of the genius of the Roman people. Antichrist, on the contrary, wants to be the only true God, who suffers none beside Him; what Christ demands for Himself in truth, he, in the excess of his presumption, claims for himself in falsehood.” Then, as to the way in which he should do this, it is said, “Antichrist will not,” as Chrysostom correctly remarks, “promote idolatry, but seduce men from the true God, as also from all idols, and set himself up as the only object of adoration. This remarkable idea, that sin in antichrist issues in a downright self-deification, discloses to us the inmost nature of evil, which consists in selfishness. In antichrist, all love, all capability of sacrifice and self-denial, shows itself entirely submerged in the making of the I all in all, which then also insists on being acknowledged by all men, as the centre of all power, wisdom, and glory.” The proper antichrist, therefore, according to Olshausen, must be a person—one who shall be himself the mystery of iniquity, as Christ is the mystery of godliness, a kind of embodiment or incarnation of Satan. He can regard all the past manifestations and workings of evil, only as serving to indicate what it may possibly be, but by no means realising the idea; and he conceives, it may one day start forth in the person of one who shall combine in his character the elements of infidelity and superstition, which are so visibly striving for the mastery over mankind. Some individual may be cast up by the fermentation that is going forward, who shall concentrate around himself all the Satanic tendencies in their greatest power and energy, and come forth at last in impious rivalry of Christ, as the incarnate son of the devil. Dr Trench appears substantially to adopt this view, though he expresses himself more briefly and also more vaguely on the subject. With him the antichrist is “one who shall not pay so much homage to God’s word as to assert the fulfilment in himself, for he shall deny that word altogether; hating even erroneous worship, because it is worship at all; hating much more the church’s worship in spirit and in truth; who on the destruction of every religion, every acknowledgment that man is submitted to higher powers than his own, shall seek to establish his throne; and for God’s great truth ‘God is man,’ to substitute his own lie, ‘man is God.’” (Synonyms, p. 120).
It is certainly not to be denied, that there are tendencies in operation at the present time, fitted, in some degree, to suggest the thought of such a possible incarnation of the ungodly and atheistic principle; though nothing has yet occurred which can be said to have brought it within the bounds of the probable. But, at all events, it is an aspect of the matter derived greatly more from the apprehended results of those tendencies themselves, than from a simple and unbiassed interpretation of the passages of Scripture under consideration. Such an antichrist as that now depicted, the impersonation of unblushing wickedness and atheism, has every thing against it, which has been already urged against the view, that would identify the description with the enmity and persecutions of heathen Rome. Instead of seating itself in the temple of the Christian church as its own, and arrogating there the supreme place, that antichristian power could only rise on the ruins of the temple. And whatever audacity or foolhardiness there might be in the assumptions and proceedings of such a power, one cannot, by any stretch of imagination, conceive, how, with such flagrant impiety in its front, it could present to God’s people the appearance of a mystery of iniquity, and be accompanied with signs and wonders and deceitful workings, destined to prevail over all who had not received the truth in the love of it. Conscience and the Bible must cease to be what they now are, cease at least to possess the mutual force and respondency they have been wont to exercise, ere so godless a power could rise to the ascendant in Christendom. It may even be said, the religious susceptibilities of men, in the false direction as well as the true, would need to have sustained a paralysis alike unprecedented and incredible. And besides, the historical connection would be broken, which the passages, bearing on the antichristian apostacy, plainly establish between the present and the future. In what already was, the apostles descried the germ, the incipient workings of what was hereafter more fully to develope itself; while the antichrist now suggested to our apprehensions, if it should ever attain to a substantive existence, would stand in no proper affinity to the false doctrine and corruptions of the apostolic age. It would be a moral phenomenon altogether novel. The tendency, we believe, on the part of evangelical writers, to fall into such mistaken views of the antichrist, has arisen in good measure from isolating too much some parts of the apostle’s description (particularly 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4), and overlooking as well the agreements, as the necessary differences, between the ultimate and the typical antichrist. The part of the description more immediately referred to, consists almost entirely of Daniel’s words and imagery; and when the two are viewed in their proper relations, considerable light is thrown on the import of the later revelation. In the first place, it holds alike of both, that the opposing and blaspheming power was to have its root and the occasion of its manifestation within the professing church. Even in the case of Antiochus, though he stood outside, yet the party whom he represented, and through whom alone he obtained the power and the opportunity to practise his enormities, had their place within; he merely gave a head to the evil that had been working in Israel, and brought it forth into full efflorescence. So also in the apostle’s description all is connected with the rise and progress of iniquity in the church; viewed complexly it is “the apostacy,” beginning in men’s failure to receive the truth in love, and having pleasure in unrighteousness; so that the revelation of what is called emphatically “the wicked,” or “the man of sin,” can be nothing but the growth of the internal corruption to its proper magnitude—assuming, as it were, its head and crown. The distinctive characteristics, therefore, must have been the same throughout. Then, in regard to the more offensive part of these characteristics, the one power also was the prototype of the other; and in neither case is absolute atheism or utter irreligiousness meant to be ascribed to it. It was said of Antiochus, the typical antichrist, that he should do according to his will, should exalt himself, should magnify himself above every god, and speak marvellous things against the God of gods; though we know, that he did all as a professed and zealous religionist. His course is described, after the common manner of prophecy, not by its formal, but by its real character; so that his fiery zeal for Jupiter is resolved into its true source—his own arbitrary self-will and frenzied devotion to the false religion and corrupt manners of Greece, which only sought for itself a cover in an affected regard for the honour of a particular god. He really magnified himself above every god, because in the service of heathenism he did what was contrary to the genius of heathenism itself, as well as outrageously dishonouring to the God of heaven. And it is undoubtedly in the same way, that St Paul’s application of those terms to the New Testament antichrist ought to be understood; they should be held descriptive of its real, rather than its formal character. The self-exaltation of this power above all that is called God or worshipped, so far from excluding a show of religion, might rather be expected to involve this as its necessary condition—the direct and naked exhibition of such a spirit being,-from the nature of things, fitted to provoke indignation and ensure defeat. The more lofty and towering its pretensions, the more indispensable should it find a religious pretext to carry them out. And hence the scene of its operations is expressly laid in the temple of God, as something essentially significant of their nature: “So that as God he sits”—not simply “and he does sit,” as a distinct part of his proceedings, or an aggravation of their impious character, but of necessity he takes this course, in order to make good his self-exalting projects: “So that, as God he sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” In short, the church was the requisite sphere for such a power developing itself; in this alone could it reach the height of presumption and God-dishonouring worldliness it aspires after; and consequently, the opposition to God and assumption of divine prerogatives must be virtual only, and not formal or professed; there must needs be the show of religion, as well as the setting up of a standard, and the encouragement of practices, that are opposed to the spirit of the Bible.
§ 3. The Antichrist as represented in the Apocalypse In turning to this last division of the New Testament writings, we find no use made of the more peculiar part of the phraseology we have recently been considering. The terms “antichrist,” “man of sin,” “son of perdition,” or “apostacy,” are never met with—though there is no want of terms and representations, which coincide with them in meaning. In the first part of the book, which describes the things that were in connection with the seven churches of Asia, and through them presents us with the Lord’s idea of a true church, we are furnished with many proofs of an already begun apostacy, and see a prevailing tendency towards the forms of evil, the anti-christian spirit of error and corruption, of which we have been discoursing. In almost every one of the churches addressed, there appears an intermingling of the false with the true; Satan already had something of his own in them. And in some the evil had assumed the precise form of a mystery of iniquity, or a course of deep and deadly defection, under the guise of lofty pretensions, and a crafty ensnaring policy. Not only do we read of an Ephesus, where the first love was lost, of a Sardis, where little more than a name to live continued to exist, and a Laodicea, where fleshly ease and self-confidence generally prevailed, but we have also a Pergamos, and a Thyatira, where false prophets or teachers, designated Nicolaitans and followers of Balaam, plied their arts of seduction, seeking with their false gnosis to draw men away from the true; and the false prophetess Jezebel (whether an individual, or, as may rather be supposed, an influential party) through whom the community were being enticed to spiritual whoredom, or led to couple with the profession of the faith a heathenish looseness and carnality of spirit. In these disclosures respecting the existing state of things, we have presented to our view, as already in active operation, the antichristian spirit—the mixture of false doctrine with true, of corruption in practice with swelling words of profession—of the world, in short, with the church, which constitutes the distinguishing peculiarity of Paul’s apostacy, and John’s antichrist. And so essential was it, according to all Scriptural views of the condition and calling of the church, for her to resist and stand free from the elements of corruption, which were thus striving to press in upon her from the world, that the Lord, throughout the whole of these epistles, threatens with the sorest judgments such as might yield to the pernicious influence, and declares His purpose to recognise now as His real people, and hereafter reward with the honours of His kingdom, none but those who should overcome, and hold fast the purity and stedfastness of their allegiance to him. All besides were of the wicked one, and not of Christ; deceitful workers and children of perdition, not temples of the Spirit, and heirs of glory.
Now, in these representations of the things which were, we have a key to the general object and meaning of the symbolical revelation given in the remainder of the book of the things which were to come. In respect to the church at large, and its coming fortunes, we have there exhibited the same tendencies conflicts, and results. We see the church, by reason of her connection with Christ, destined to conquer and reign, but meanwhile greatly marred by the darkness and corruption which were ever making way upon her from the world. In consequence of this, she is by the visitation of God chastened and purged; in her worst part judged and tormented by having her sin turned into her punishment; for, calamities and woes are brought upon her in manifold succession from that world which she sinfully coveted and embraced; until the work of purification being accomplished, and a church in holy beauty being prepared for the glories of the Lamb, the full and proper union between her and her Divine Head is consummated, and the mystery of God concerning His work on earth finished amid songs of triumph and scenes of ineffable delight. In the evolution of this singular and complicated symbolical history, the anticipated degeneracy of the church, and the formation in her of a vast antichristian power of the kind already described, is continually implied, and sometimes more, sometimes less explicitly alluded to; but there are two portions more particularly, in which it is distinctly and formally represented. The first of these is introduced at Revelation 11:1-19, in connection with the sixth trumpet, and is presented under the image that had been previously used by the apostle Paul (2 Thessalonians 2:4), that of the temple of God. “There was given me,” it is said, “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.” We can regard this remarkable passage in no other light than as an expansion of St Paul’s description, indicating more particularly how the antichristian power was to sit in the temple of God, and the relation in which it should stand to the true church. Romish writers, and latterly, also some Protestants, have laboured hard to impose the same interpretation upon this, as upon the passage in the Thessalonians, and to understand by the two parties described, the Christian church, on the one side, and on the other, the opposing and persecuting power of heathen Rome. But the attempt must ever appear fruitless to those who understand the symbolical language of Scripture, and would give it a consistent and impartial application. The words manifestly delineate, not merely two different and opposing parties, but two classes of worshippers—parties alike professing to belong to the same visible temple of God, though one of them alone really and properly abiding in it. This latter class are those who are symbolized by what was to be measured, as that which had its appointment of God, and was under His careful guardianship—“the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.” They are, in a word, God’s living temple—his “spiritual house,” or “holy priesthood,” whose duty and calling it is to “offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” The other portion, though also, in a sense, belonging to the same sacred building, only lying outside the strictly sacred territory, was to be left unmeasured, as wanting the right connection with God, and a real interest in His faithful keeping. It is called “the court without the temple,” and is represented as “being given to the Gentiles,” with reference to the uncircumcised condition of those who of old worshipped in such a court, and, without doubt, to indicate the uncircumcised, or really unsanctified state, of those whom it imaged, however holy they might externally seem. That they were to have, more or less, the semblance of this, their position in the temple-court clearly denotes; but that it was to be only a semblance, that it was to want the reality of divine grace and life, the merely external, essentially heathenish or worldly nature of the position, not less clearly demonstrates. The characters indicated, therefore, were of necessity to form a church party, but the false as contra-distinguished from the true—the world in the church; and so, coinciding in character with the apostacy of Paul, and the spirit of antichrist in the epistles of John. And when it is said of this corrupt party that they should “tread the holy city under foot forty and two months,” we are plainly informed, that they were, notwithstanding the false position they occupied, to have the ascendency in the professing church of God; nay, and should trample on and oppress those who alone rightfully belonged to it. The “holy city” is but another name for the church, the true members of which are said to have their names written among the living in Jerusalem; and to tread down the city is, in other words, to rule with proud domination over the sincere people of God, and treat them with persecuting violence. The period during which this unnatural state of things was to last is described by the mystical term of “forty and two months,” which, whether it may be capable or not of being definitely determined, must have been meant to comprehend a period of some continuance. For, in another place, it denotes the time during which the church was to be in the wilderness (Revelation 12:6), that is, in a tried, humbled, and afflicted condition; a state, into which she began to enter, shortly after the Lord’s ascension to the heavenly places, and out of which she is only to come to possess with him the inheritance. Here also it embraces the whole time between the rise of the corrupt and apostate party in the church, and their complete overthrow, which takes place at the sounding of the seventh trumpet, when the kingdoms of this world are declared to have become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ (Revelation 11:15). During this time the real church is represented as occupying chiefly a witnessing condition. Precluded from outwardly ruling in the things of God, she can only deliver a testimony—and is, therefore, symbolized by two witnesses, the legal number for such a purpose; implying that God would still continue a succession of faithful persons, adequate, though but barely adequate, it may be, to such a purpose. And as the testimony they should utter was that of God’s own word, it could not be without effect; the protest it delivered against reigning error and corruption, and in behalf of the truth of Christ, must make itself heard, like the testimony of old on the tables of the covenant, alike in the ear of Heaven and in the consciences of men. It is on this word, which is the expression of God’s mind and will, that all blessing and cursing is found to turn; by it the windows of heaven are shut or opened, and life and death (spiritually) are administered among men (Revelation 11:5-6). No wonder, therefore, that the ungodly dominant party, who are said to have their dwelling upon the earth (Revelation 11:10), because they belonged entirely to the earthly sphere, should seek to stop the mouths of those who had such a testimony to deliver, and even proceed to the last extremities against them, by utterly silencing them, or, as it is called, putting them to death, killing them as witnesses. To make it more apparent, how, and by whom this should be effected, it is said to take place “in the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified;” that is, it was to be done by an apostate church that had formally joined hands with the world, as when the Jewish church combined with Pilate and Herod to destroy Jesus, and had become like the most reprobate portions of the world itself. But still it does not succeed in its object; the tormenting testimony cannot so be quenched; it revives again, all the louder and more impressive in its utterances for the violence that has been done to it; the old saying is anew verified, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church; and thus, by striving unto blood, and holding fast the word of her testimony, the cause represented by her faithful children grows and prospers by means of suffering, and after it they rise, like their Divine head, to the higher region of power and influence, until at length the system of antichristian error they opposed falls under the doom of heaven, and the world in the church comes to be exchanged for the church in the world.
Such briefly, and without reference to explicit times or periods (of which we may afterwards speak), is the tenor and import of this first symbolical representation in the Apocalypse of an apostatizing and corrupt, as contra-distinguished from the true church. So closely does it join itself to earlier revelations upon the subject, especially to the passage in the second epistle to the Thessalonians, that it seems much like the turning of what had been there written into a parable, or presenting it in the form of a symbolical narrative—only with less regard, than in St Paul’s description, to the means by which the antichristian usurpation was to be effected, more to the manner in which it should be met and overcome by the remnant of a faithful church. And it should be well noted in respect to this latter point, which is here, for the first time, distinctly exhibited, that no mention is made of any instrumentality on the part of the church, or in behalf of the cause of righteousness, but the unswerving and devoted use of the testimony of God’s word. The operation and effects of this are described (in accordance with the general character of the vision), under material imagery, such as the power of the witnesses in opening and shutting up heaven, fire going out of their mouth, and latterly the occurrence of an earthquake, shaking, to its foundations, the corrupt city, and partly destroying, partly leading to the conversion of its inhabitants. But all these are manifestly images, not of agencies employed, but rather of effects produced, by the one grand agency of a living church, plying the mighty weapon of God’s testimony. As the result of her doing this, undoubtedly, many external and even political changes must ensue, such as cannot but carry the aspect of woes and judgments to the apostate and worldly power. But the primary and fundamental result—that also which carries all else in its train, is the success of the testimony itself; it is this alone which can secure a moral victory, and, in such a case, nothing but a moral victory can be either adequate or permanent; it, and nothing else, lays the axe to the root of the tree, and cuts it down for ever. Apart from this, outward calamities or temporal judgments, at most effect but the removal of a few branches. The other formal representation given of this subject in the Apocalypse is founded upon a different image; upon the Church’s relation to Christ as His bride or spouse. It was especially for the purpose (as noticed in last section) of obtaining a symbolical foundation for unfolding the false and unfaithful part, which so large a portion of the professing church was to play in the future, that the symbolical representations of St John, while coinciding so much with those of Daniel, split here into the two parts of humanity, what in the former case had been preserved in its unity. With John as well as with Daniel, the Divine kingdom as a whole, in its ideal grandeur and perfection, has its representation in one, who had the appearance of a Son of man, and that irradiated with a brightness and glory altogether divine. But since this representation had been embodied, before the writing of the Apocalypse, in a living personality, and the idea involved in it was there realized in all its completeness, it became necessary, when tracing out the perspective of the church’s history amid the imperfections of a present life, and the defections of an unfaithful and apostate spirit, to divide between the head and the members. This was done by choosing the female side of humanity for the symbol of the church, viewed in connection with the bonds, obligations, and prospects of the marriage vow. The real church, therefore, is the woman clothed with the sun—the chaste virgin without spot or wrinkle, pure and glorious, therefore fit to be the Lamb’s wife, and to share with him in the blessings and honours of His kingdom. But there is another woman, a harlot, who stands related to the true church precisely as an unfaithful and profligate spouse to one of unshaken probity and worth: not, therefore, a simply unrighteous and wicked party, but such a party with a Christian profession; a church degenerate, faithless, sunk in the mire of worldliness and sin. Such, precisely, is the sense in which this symbol is employed in Old Testament prophecy; and in designating the false and corrupt church a harlot, or mother of abominations, St John only followed a precedent that had been given in a multitude of prophetical passages (Isaiah 57:3-5; Jeremiah 2:1-37, Jeremiah 3:1-25, Ezekiel 16:1-63, Ezekiel 23:1-49, Hosea 1:1-11, Hosea 2:1-23, etc.) There the terms adulteress, harlot, or whore, with scarcely an exception, denote the backslidden and apostate community of Israel. Our Lord also makes a similar use of the image (Matthew 12:39, Matthew 16:4; Mark 8:38). And in the earlier part of the Apocalypse, the incipient evil in this respect, the declension that had begun in certain churches, by falling into the corrupt ways and practices of the world, is characterized as whoredom and the committing of fornication (Revelation 2:14, Revelation 2:20, Revelation 2:22); as, on the other hand, the true and faithful church is afterwards represented as a company, who retained their virgin-purity (Revelation 14:4), while immediately in contrast to them, the faithless portion is brought into view as the great whore (Revelation 14:8). So that both the general usage in prophecy, and the usage in particular portions of this book, can leave no reasonable ground to doubt as to the sense meant to be conveyed by the figurative expression.
Very striking, also, and still farther confirmatory of what has been said, is the manner in which the image is introduced, and the place and appearance ascribed to it. The apocalyptist represents himself as carried in the spirit, for the purpose of beholding this sight, into a wilderness (Revelation 17:3). Had it been the worldly dominant monarchy of Rome, which was to be exhibited in vision, this had certainly been a strange place to be taken to see it; the marts of commerce or the conspicuous heights would have been the more fitting scenes. But it perfectly accords with the view we have given of the subject, and is no doubtful link of connection between the present representation and a former one. The prophet had left the true church, as symbolized by the woman that was clothed with the sun, in the wilderness, whither she had fled for safety, and whither, also, she was followed by the dragon with his flood-like hordes. We already saw, in what is said at Revelation 12:17, of a remnant only of her seed being said to keep the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus, evidence of a certain success having been won by the adversary in the efforts he was thus going to put forth against her. And now, when the prophet is again borne in the Spirit to a wilderness, instead of seeing the woman he had seen in such a place before, he beholds a woman, indeed (there is no article), but one so unlike the former, that the name only remained: one so far from being all radiant with celestial brightness and glory, like the other, that she was immersed in the foulness and degradation of earth; sitting on a scarlet-coloured beast, and herself arrayed in purple and scarlet-colour, decked with gold and precious stones and pearls—the best, no doubt, of a worldly attire, but still all of the earth, earthy. While the woman is so different, the beast is the same as before—the same seven-headed, ten-horned monster, full of a spirit of blasphemy (Revelation 17:3, comp. with Revelation 13:1); in plain terms, the worldly antichristian power in its last great embodiment; so that a woman sitting on this, must be a church sunk in spirit to the world’s level, yet in power rising to the ascendant over it, and having it for her leading ambition to direct and rule in the worldly sphere. But of necessity she could only do this by entering into the beast’s hostility to the kingdom of God, and warring with the real members of that kingdom, who should hold the faith and testimony of Jesus. Hence the woman appeared also “drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:6). This explains why the prophet wondered at the spectacle, even with a great admiration! Had it been merely a heathen power, or one that stood altogether apart from the things of God’s kingdom which he saw thus represented before him, there had been no great reason for astonishment; the ungodliness, corruption, and persecuting violence exhibited were precisely what might have been expected. But such a transformation—a power spiritual in its origin, and claiming by its appearance still to possess a spiritual character—for such a power to have sunk so low, and come to act so atrocious a part, might well awake the most profound astonishment. It was the same thing substantially, but with far greater aggravations, which, in Old Testament times, led the prophets to call both upon heaven and earth to express amazement as at an unheard-of enormity (Isaiah 1:2; Jeremiah 2:10, Jeremiah 17:13).
We pass now to this fall itself—the judgment to be executed on the apostate and worldly church. Here it is necessary to mark the order of the issues described, the succession, as well as the connection, of God’s dealings with the guilty parties. These are altogether three, the beast, the false prophet, and the whore; all of them so many wicked parodies and usurpations of the Divine in Christ, and his true church. And they are all so far connected together that they have one and the same worldly foundation, one and the same carnal interest at heart; so that it is not possible to conceive of a complete destruction of one of them, which should not involve also the destruction of the others. Yet in the representation given of the final issues respecting them, there is a marked prominence and priority in the case of the false church. Let us mark the successive stages of the process, as seen in vision by the prophet. First, after it has been said, that the kings or kingdoms into which the Human monarchy was to fall, and which were to constitute the seventh phase of the beastly power, should have given their power and strength to the beast, it is intimated in what is plainly a general announcement (Revelation 17:14), that “they shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them; for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings; and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful.” This brief statement covers, we may say, the whole of what follows, to the end of Revelation 19:1-21; for it is only with the close of this chapter that we have the victory of the Lamb over the kings and the beast, brought to an absolute termination. The whole, therefore, of the intervening part must be regarded merely as the filling up of the picture, briefly sketched in the verse above quoted; it presents in detail the process of overcoming the adverse powers. Then, secondly, in this vanquishing process, the whore is the party that occupies both the first and the most conspicuous place. It is said, at Revelation 17:16, “And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, shall hate whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire. For God put it into their hearts to do His mind, and to do one mind (so it literally is), and to give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.” There was to be a certain unity of sentiment and action among the kingdoms, after they had passed through the stage of a temporary conversion (when the beast seemed as if it were killed), which should show itself in their giving their kingdom to the beast, or exhibiting in their general principles and behaviour much of the beastly nature. And they should do this till the words of God should be fulfilled—but only, it is implied, till then; and when the divine purpose required it, they should turn their mind against the whore, and utterly abolish her existence. The remarkable thing here is, that it is not said they changed their relation to the beast, while they so entirely changed it to the whore: the destruction of the false and apostate church, which had played into the hands of the godless, worldly power, and leant for support on this, as this again on that, is represented as taking place by itself, while still the conflict between the kingdoms and Christ, if begun, was by no means concluded. Lastly, after the description of Babylon’s downfal, or the infliction of judgment and ruin on the false church, and the shouts of triumph raised over her in heaven and earth (detailed at length in Revelation 18:1-24 and Revelation 19:1-6) comes an account of the prosecution of the war with the kings or kingdoms of the earth. In this representation, the scene is transferred from earth to heaven; for it concerns Christ and the true church, who all along, as to position and character, vital power and influence, have been contemplated as belonging to the heavenly sphere, in contrast to the inhabiters of the earth, who belong to the beast and his agencies. The Divine King of Zion, therefore, who in this heavenly sphere has the direction of all the power and the instrumentalities connected with it, appears foremost in the field—he goes forth in battle array, with many crowns on his head (the symbol of complete and universal sovereignty), and in the character of the word of God, with the sharp sword (that, namely, of the word) going out of his mouth. The name and weapon alike proclaim him to be a spiritual warrior, who was to prevail through that word of truth, which is the grand instrument and manifestation of him as the Personal Word. But he does not go thus alone; the armies of heaven follow him on their white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean; in other words, the representatives of the true church, spoken of a little before, as the Lamb’s bride, arrayed in fine linen, which is the righteousness of the saints (Revelation 19:8); and the same, doubtless, that were mentioned in Revelation 17:14, as the called, chosen, and faithful band that appeared with Christ as the leader of victory. It is not Christ directly, therefore, but Christ in and through His faithful church, by whom this battle was to be waged, and the victory won. His personal appearance to the eye of the prophet no more necessitates His visible intermingling in the actual conflict, than His opening the seven-sealed book bespoke his personal manifestation among men, to announce or perform the things it contained; or than the appearance of an angel flying through heaven with the everlasting gospel (in Revelation 14:6) necessarily implied the outward spectacle of such an apparition. What was seen here by the evangelist in the heavenly sphere, like everything else of a like kind in this book, was but a representation in vision of what was actually to take place in the earthly sphere,—a representation of it as going to be accomplished by virtue of a power, and through means of an instrumentality, that hold not of earth, but of heaven—that belong truly and properly to God. It informs us that a living and faithful church, sustained by the presence, and replenished with the power and spirit of Jesus, shall rise to the ascendant as the false and apostate church goes down. With the Lord upon her side giving effect to her spiritual armoury and her work of righteousness, the powers of darkness and corruption shall be driven away; and the beast and the false prophet, with all their misguided followers, shall share substantially the same fate with Babylon; that is, their interest shall perish, and the saints shall enter on their millennial reign of blessedness and peace, holding undisturbed possession of the inheritance which they have at length vindicated from the serpent’s brood, and converted into a habitation of righteousness.
We have said, that there is nothing here necessarily implying the visible and personal manifestation of Christ upon the earth. But neither, of course, is it absolutely excluded. Whether he shall actually appear for the decision of this conflict must depend upon the general question whether the Divine economy shall then have reached such a stage of advancement as will render such an appearance fit and proper. It rather belongs, therefore, to the subject of our last section, where we shall have to treat of the kingdom of Christ, in relation to His own second coming, and the nature of the millennium. The questions, which here more immediately call for consideration have respect to the kind of judgment to be executed upon the doomed parties, and the manner of its execution. What, precisely, is its nature? Is it simply the conversion of the world to right thoughts and feelings respecting the things of God? Or is it something of a more outward and fleshly character? And, whether the one or the other, how should the judgment upon the whore come to be represented as done by the kingdoms, while these kingdoms still appear to be in opposition to Christ, and to be subdued by Him only at a later period? To refer to the latter point first, we think it would be a hasty, and perhaps fake conclusion from the place given to the judgment upon Babylon, were we to infer (as is very commonly done by writers in this country, also by Auberlen), that Popery and other forms of a corrupt Christianity are certainly to be repudiated by the kingdoms of the world before the work ofconversion has made much progress amongst them, and that a considerable interval may elapse, possibly for the church a very trying and perilous interval, between the doom of the false church, and the doom of the worldly power itself, or the destruction of the beast and the false prophet. It may be so; on such a point we would not speak with confidence. It certainly is not a new thing in the history of God’s dealings, for the world, even in its unconverted state, to be made the instrument of punishing and humbling to the dust a corrupt and apostate church. Such was signally the case at three great epochs of the past—when Assyria acted as the rod of God’s anger in scattering backsliding Israel, when Babylon led captive the people of Judah, and when, in the last and worst stage of Jewish impenitence and guilt, the Romans took away their place and nation. In accordance with a great principle in the Divine government the Lord in these, as in many similar cases, made the people’s sin their punishment; the staff on which they unrighteously leaned pierced their hand; the same world through which the old serpent beguiled them into unfaithfulness to God, turned against them with the fury and might of an Apollyon. And in one sense, we have no doubt, the same principle will ever be exemplified anew, in so far as the same course is pursued. But there may be different modes of accomplishing it; and it may not be necessary, that the world, when employed in the work of retribution, should always remain in precisely the same state as it was, when used as an instrument and occasion of sin. This must depend on circumstances; and manifestly the circumstances in respect to the church’s relation to the world at the period of the ancient judgments referred to, differed very materially from those which belong to the carnal and apostate church of modern times. In the one case the two parties stood formally apart from each other, and the relation, however close, was still only political and outward; in the other there is an actual amalgamation, the church having in its degeneracy given itself to the service of the world, and the world in its several kingdoms identified itself with the church. So that from the very nature of the case the execution of a work of judgment now upon the church by the world must involve much more than a mere change of external relationship; it must imply a revolution in the world’s own sentiments on the subject of religion; since what, in this respect, it embraced before, it is now to hate and repudiate. Here again, it is necessary, not to look merely into the agreements between Old and New Testament things, but to take account also of the differences; and especially to bear in mind, how very greatly more every thing in connection with the affairs of God’s kingdom has come to assume an inward and diffusive character, than it formerly possessed. It is also to be borne in mind, that in the pictorial delineations of prophecy, the moral element often discovers itself, even in the mode of representation adopted; and that to give prominence to this, the place of priority in judgment is sometimes assigned to the party which has been the worst in guilt, though it may not actually be the one that has first to fall. Thus, in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, the great stone is represented as smiting the image first upon the toes, and proceeding upwards till the whole was crushed to atoms, the head last; although, in the reality, the order was the reverse; and the last is placed first in the vision, merely because it seemed ripest for destruction, and stood most prominent in the eye of the mind. These considerations ought to be taken into account here, not as of themselves disproving the notion of a priority in point of time in the world’s execution of judgment upon Babylon, before it is itself either judged or converted; but as showing the necessity of cautious and careful inquiry in determining the probable sequence of such events.
Indeed, it might seem to accord best with the nature of the case, viewed in respect to its singular complexity and interconnected relationships, that no precise order should be marked out definitely beforehand, as necessary or certain in every case to be followed. Amid the prevailing unity, there could not fail to be a manifold diversity in the degrees of apostacy and guilt adhering, at different-times and places, to the false church; and there naturally would be a corresponding diversity in the way and manner in which the destined judgment should take effect. History, too, confirms the impression; for it shows, in the partial judgments already executed upon the apostacy, a very considerable diversity, both in respect to the relative time, and the precise manner of its accomplishment. In many communities at the Reformation, it was through a process of enlightenment and conversion, that the world was brought to hate the whore, and shake itself free from her abominations. But in the France of last century, this work of hatred and judgment was carried on, while the kingdom gave its strength and power even more than ever to the beast; it had light enough from its own oracles to repudiate a false Christianity, but none to receive and cherish the true; and so, we cannot doubt, would it be with many papal regions of the present day, if circumstances should allow them to embody their opinions in action. In Spain and Italy it is much more the worldly power of the kingdoms, than the false church in them, which has hitherto been smitten with judgment. Such ascertained diversities in the past may readily be supposed to extend into the future; and if so, then sometimes the worldliness and corruption of the church, sometimes those of the kingdoms shall appear to be the first to be judged and cast out. But, in truth, from the connection subsisting between the two, a complete work of judgment cannot be conceived to take place, without both being alike involved in it. Any priority that may be practicable, can belong only to the beginning, not to the consummation of the process. On the one side, the existence of the whore implies the existence of the beast, or the ungodly state of the world; and, on the other, so long as the beast has a horn left, human nature being what it is, the whore will find means somehow to hang by it.
Accordingly, in the Apocalyptic representation, nothing of a very definite kind in this respect is indicated. While the judgment upon Babylon has a fearful prominence assigned to it, and is brought to a close before the war against the kings of the earth, as identified with the beast and the false prophet, is particularly related, still the notice of this war has so far the precedence given to it, that it is cursorily mentioned, even before the kings are said to have turned against the whore (Revelation 17:14). It may, therefore, be supposed to have, at least, commenced, and made some progress before the period of Babylon’s destruction. At the same time, if the war itself is essentially a spiritual one—if its grand characteristic and object is to stand in overcoming their hostility to the cause of Christ, and bringing them from the service and interest of Satan to those of the living God—if this is the nature of the conflict indicated, and the victory to be won, then, in the very nature of things, the doom of Babylon, that is, the general hatred and repudiation of a false and corrupt Christianity, must always, more or less, precede the subversion of the worldly spirit itself. All experience testifies, how much easier it is to detect and abhor hypocrisy, than heartily to embrace the truth—to abjure the pretensions of a false religion, than to become dead to the world, and alive to the interests of God’s spiritual kingdom. In the social as well as the personal sphere, there will naturally be some interval between the two—not unfrequently a very considerable one, and one attended with struggles and dangers peculiar to itself. Nor, when the general course of events, and the particular tendencies of the present age are duly considered—especially when it is reflected what advances the world is making in science, literature, and philosophy, how, in every department, the knowledge connected with its own earth-sprung culture is growing, and rising continually nearer in its assimilation to the Divine; can it be deemed otherwise than probable, that light may very generally be diffused, sufficient to beget a hatred of Popery, and the false forms of Christianity, while the idolatry of self and the world holds its place as before, or even waxes bolder for a time in its pretensions. In the negative part of the process, profane science and learning may do the part they have often done already; they may expose and reject the falsehood, corruption, and hypocrisy, which enter into the religion of an apostate and spurious Christianity, and thereby prepare the way for its formal abolition. But higher elements will assuredly be required to complete the process. Worldly negations can never wholly uproot what has so many grounds of support in the constitution of society, and the condition of the human heart. And only the reception of that divine truth, which reunites the soul to God, and effectually expels the world from the heart, will be sufficient to work the final extirpation of the antichrist. So that the judgment of the whore can only in part precede that of the beast and the false prophet, or of the world itself in its self-exalting and God-opposing tendencies. They have been too closely united in their lives to be in their deaths far divided. But is the war, with its final issues on the side of Christ’s cause and kingdom, of the kind referred to? Is this great conflict to be carried on and decided mainly by the use of spiritual weapons, and not rather (as is very commonly conceived) by some obtrusive and overwhelming displays of divine power and glory? Is it not by the compulsion of resistless might, rather than by moral suasion, that the evil is to be driven out, and the field won for the saints? To answer such questions, we must call in the aid of collateral considerations, as there is nothing in the representation of St John, which can fairly be regarded as absolutely decisive on the subject. He distinctly enough intimates, that the judgment of one of the obnoxious parties—the repudiation and downfal of Babylon—certainly one grand object and result of the war, is to be mainly accomplished by the instrumentality of the kingdoms, which had formerly given her their homage; by a change of mind on their part, or a healthier tone of thought and feeling, the judgment written is to be enforced. And if so much thus, one naturally asks, why not more? why not the whole? Yet possibly, it might be wrong to extend the inference so far, as the means capable to a large extent of subverting the false, might fail in establishing the true; while they may go far to procure the fall of a corrupt church, they yet may come short of reforming an ungodly world. But there are not wanting considerations to show, that the spiritual element is chiefly to prevail in the matter, and that all else can be little more than incidental and subsidiary.
First of all, the very nature of the conflict points in this direction. It is a conflict with the error and hypocrisy, the selfishness and corruption of the world; and these are to be driven from the souls of men, and cast into the bottomless abyss, not by any mechanical process, or external emanations even of divine glory, but by the truth of Christ established in the heart and conscience. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith”—the only victory that is real and enduring. Then, secondly, the victory achieved by Christ himself, and the judgment executed by Him directly upon the adversary, was entirely of this description; it was obtained exclusively by the manifestation of the truth of God, and, in doing and suffering, fulfilling His righteous will. Now, in the progress and issues of the divine kingdom, everything takes its impress and direction from the personal Saviour; and the conflict which is to be waged by the church in the world, in so far as it is properly maintained, is but the reflex of that, in which Christ has himself engaged and overcome. It would be to quit the higher field for a lower, and make the spiritual give way to the carnal, were the church to be indebted for her success chiefly to the application of external force or physical suffering. She triumphs far more nobly, and executes judgment greatly more thorough and complete, when, by the aid of spiritual appliances, she causes the truth to be felt in its proper force and magnitude. So is it also in nature: “The light in its silent, beneficent operations, is far mightier than the lightning, notwithstanding the roar that follows it.” It was the weak element in the conquests won, and the judgments wrought upon the ungodliness of the world through Israel of old, that they had in them so much of what was merely outward, so little of the Spirit’s internal power of conviction to penetrate the heart, and sky its enmity to God in the root. And it is only by having what was then comparatively wanted—by the beneficent operation of the Spirit of truth and holiness in the church and through her instrumentality, not by calling down fire from heaven, or shewing wonders from the deep, that the effectual overthrow may be expected of the adversary’s dominion in the world. Thirdly, there is the remarkable circumstance mentioned in Revelation 14:6-8, of the appearance of an angel (emblem, beyond doubt, of the church in her active ministrations) speeding his way with the gospel among all nations, and calling on them to fear and worship God—and this as the immediate precursor of Babylon’s doom, carrying in its train the downfal of the great apostacy. For immediately on that being done, the cry is reported to have been heard, that Babylon was fallen. What can this action import, but that the church was to look back for the driving back of the evil that oppressed her, not to any miraculous interposition in her behalf, but to the revival of that testimony, which had been so shamefully abandoned in the apostacy, and the virtue of that blood, which had been so much buried out of sight? She must grasp anew, and with fresh energy display the old banner of the faith, that was delivered to the saints, and in God’s name make war with all the powers of darkness and the forms of corruption. Were there but faith for this among the people of God—faith to realize, that the title to the inheritance is already won for them, and that it is their calling and destiny to make it good against all opposition, who can tell what results might be accomplished! what spring- times of life and blessing might yet burst forth upon the world! That in the circumstances in which the world is placed with so many powers of evil working in it, and forms of corruption established on every side, the struggle may be long and arduous, is only what may be expected. And there may also be expected in its progress many interminglings of external judgment; political convulsions, desolating wars and tumults, which the fermentings of opinion and the operation of the truth themselves will naturally tend to bring on; and besides these, perhaps, also pestilences, famines, fearful troubles, and disturbances in nature, to discomfit the worshippers of nature, and drive them to seek for other means and resources than it can supply. Nay, it is far from improbable, that before the world is cured of the distempers that rage in it, and brought heartily to embrace and carry out the principles of the gospel of Christ, times of uproar and distress may have to be appointed for it, such as have not been witnessed in the past; such times as are spoken of by our Lord, when all things shall seem pregnant with evil and involved in gloom—when it shall be as if the sun were darkened, and the moon did not give her light, and the stars dropt from the firmament, and the powers of the heavens were shaken. We need not be at all surprised, if such a time should come in the course of this great conflict; and especially, when it is drawing toward its close, and the adversary knows that his time is short. Though the battle by that time may have been in great part won, yet he may not quit his hold without more fiercely than ever rending his victim. And how but amid great agitations and convulsive movements, can the basis be laid of a new and permanently good order of things? The turmoil, however, shall not last; the days of evil shall be shortened; and whatever there may be connected with them of external appliances, whether in the higher or the lower sphere, can only come to second and enforce the grand agency of a living church with her armour of righteousness and the Spirit of grace making it effectual. May we not appeal for confirmation to the history of the past? What great deliverance has ever been wrought for the kingdom of God apart from this spiritual agency? What did even our Lord’s personal appearance and astounding miracles effect, compared with the showers of grace and blessing that came down at Pentecost, and after it? Or compare the spiritual work of the Reformation with the outburst of the French Revolution. Viewed in an external aspect, this last event, no doubt, with its convulsive throes and fiery ebullitions, its merciless retributions for abused power, its confiscations of church property, and summary proceedings against a corrupt clergy, and a superstitious worship, had most the appearance of the execution of a work of judgment on apostate Rome:—And yet how little ultimately did it effect compared with the other? The Reformation struck less violently, but it struck far more powerfully; it was a blow at the root. The secret of its strength lay in resorting so little to physical force, and so much to divine truth and principle. It was distinguished only for the free and copious use made in it of the instrumentality heralded by the angelic precursor of Babylon’s fall—the preaching of the everlasting gospel. On this account pre-eminently it proved a season of refreshment to the world, scattered everywhere the seeds of faith and love, undermined the strongholds of error and corruption, and breathed a healthier tone through the whole framework of society. This, therefore, is the kind of work, refreshing times like these are the operations, on which more especially the issue of the conflict is to turn: for them the long-suffering of God waits, suspending, that they may proceed, the time for the final executions of judgment; for them the risen Saviour continues to abide within the veil, that He may dispense of the Spirit’s fulness of life and blessing, to help forward the cause of the world’s regeneration. And for the church, in any of her members or branches, to stand aloof from such operations—to neglect the word of God and prayer, to allow abuses to remain unrectified, to lay down her testimony against prevailing corruptions, to leave unoccupied any available channel, at home or abroad, for shedding forth the light of the gospel, and advancing the interests of righteousness—for the church so to act, in the hope that the work, which might and should be done by her, shall somehow be done for her by an outward and judicial display of divine power, were but to prove herself unworthy of her calling, and to continue in sin, not that grace, but (still worse) that iniquity first, and then judgment may abound.
Section III. Supplementary: Containing an Outline of the General Plan of the Apocalypse, from Chap. 5 to the Close of Chap. 19, with Reference More Especially to the Distinctive Character and Relative Order of the Three Great Series of the Seals, the Trumpets, and the Vials
1. The parts of the Apocalypse more particularly referred to in the two preceding sections, are those which indicate generally the character and relations, the dangers, struggles, and triumphs of the church, from the planting of Christianity to the introduction of the Millennium. They are comprised mainly in the chapters which reach from the beginning of Revelation 11:1-19, Revelation 12:1-17, Revelation 13:1-18, Revelation 14:1-20, Revelation 15:1-8, Revelation 16:1-21, Revelation 17:1-18, Revelation 18:1-24, Revelation 19:1-21. But there are other things also in these chapters, the actions especially of the vials, in part also of the trumpets, and the times and seasons mentioned, of which no special notice has yet been taken. Before proceeding, therefore, to the consideration of the topics embraced in the three concluding chapters of the Apocalypse, we propose to attempt a brief synopsis and explanation of the Apocalyptic scheme, as contained in Revelation 5:1-14, Revelation 6:1-17, Revelation 7:1-17, Revelation 8:1-13, Revelation 9:1-21, Revelation 10:1-11, Revelation 11:1-19, Revelation 12:1-17, Revelation 13:1-18, Revelation 14:1-20, Revelation 15:1-8, Revelation 16:1-21, Revelation 17:1-18, Revelation 18:1-24, Revelation 19:1-21; which may be passed over by those who are disinclined to enter into such an investigation. Our main object in it will be to arrive at the proper reading of the symbols themselves, and their mutual relation to each other, as therein must be sought the key to the structural arrangement and general design of the whole scheme, and the ground of its more particular application to specific movements or results in Divine Providence.
2. The first thing that presents itself to our notice is the account given in Revelation 5 of the seven-sealed book, remarkable not only for the number of its seals, but also for the marvellous difficulty connected with the opening of them. After the challenge had been thrown out to the wide universe for any one to attempt it, no one, it is said, was found capable of undertaking the task, but the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and the Root of David. It is clear from this, that by the opening of the book, something more must have been meant than the mere disclosure of its contents; it must have involved, besides, the personal appropriation of these, with a view to their actual accomplishment. Nothing else could have created so gigantic a difficulty. It is clear, also, from the designation of Christ on the occasion, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and the Root of David, that the book must have borne respect to a work of war and conquest—a work in which heroic energy and lion-like strength should require to be put forth, and that too for the purpose of vindicating the peculiar honour and blessing secured in covenant to the house of David. What, then, was this? No other than the universal possession and sovereignty of the earth, the right to reign over it, to its uttermost bounds, in the name of the Lord (Genesis 49:9-10; Numbers 24:9; Psalms 2:1-12, Psalms 22:1-31, etc.) The book, therefore, with which none but this royal personage could intermeddle, was, in other words, the book of the inheritance—laying open the way by which the possession must be made good. And it was a sealed book—seven times sealed—not only because there were to be successive stages in the course, such as might fitly be distributed into that number, but because the course itself was to be a hidden one—not patent to men’s view, nor one they could beforehand have anticipated, but a complicated mystery, lying under the secrecy of a sevenfold seal. Hence, as if to explain where peculiarly the mystery lay, it is in the character, not of a lion-like hero, or royal personage, but “of a lamb as it had been slain,” that Christ is seen approaching to take the book, and enter on the task of disclosing and fulfilling its burden. The songs of praise, also, that are presently afterwards ascribed to Him by the redeemed, celebrate His worth and goodness, especially on this account, that He had “redeemed them by His blood;” and they declared Him to be worthy to take the book, and open the seals thereof, because of his having been slain, and redeemed to Himself a people, whom He has made kings and priests unto God. When they farther add, “And we shall reign on the earth,” they point, not only to the expected realisation of their hopes, but also to the assurance, which the action with the book had brought in respect to that expectation; they now see the end desired and looked for, clearly in prospect. Plainly, therefore, the mystery of this book is the mystery of Christ’s cross and crown: all that is wonderful and arduous in the working out of His claim to the conquest and dominion of the earth, has its explanation in the difficulty of getting men, within the professing church and without, to receive the doctrine of a crucified Redeemer, as the foundation of all blessing, and to carry out the spirit of humble, holy, self-sacrificing, and devoted love which it breathes. To bring this doctrine and this spirit to the ascendant in the affairs of men, is the mystery and the burden of the seven-sealed book.
3. Though it is our object rather to explain the symbolical structure and meaning of the prophecy before us, than to discuss the topics which it embraces, yet we pause here for a moment to state, that the sealed book having such a purport as we have now stated, there necessarily arise two great aims to be prosecuted in the sequel. There must be first the gathering out and preparing of a people, on the ground of the doctrine of the cross; and then the preparing of the earth for their inheritance, by the dispossessing of the powers of evil, who resist or corrupt the doctrine, that it may become an abode of righteousness. In the typical relations of ancient Israel, we see precisely the same twofold aim prosecuted. An elect people had in the first instance to be found; found both in sufficient numbers to occupy the destined inheritance, and in such a moral condition as might in some measure fit them for accomplishing the ends designed by its occupation. This itself required a long period of preparation, during which alternately trial and blessing, judgment and mercy, now the oppression and again the protection of the world, were brought into play. And when, through the operation of such varied and conflicting forces, the result, as regards the people, had been in good part attained, then followed the prosecution of the other branch of the divine scheme—the occupation of the inheritance by judging and dispossessing the adversaries. The same, substantially, in both respects, falls to be done now by Christ, in connection with his redeemed people—only with the usual differences that distinguish the relations of the antitype from those of the type. All has now to be conducted on an immensely larger scale, and in the sphere more immediately of spiritual realities rather than of sensible transactions—by means, also, of the Word and Spirit of truth, not of fleshly weapons and political arrangements. What in the earlier line of things was done but imperfectly, with defection and failure adhering to the last, and marring the completeness of the work, must now, by reason of the higher agency employed, and the more advanced stage that has been reached in the divine economy, be perfectly realised; the result must be one altogether worthy of Him who conducts it to its destined completion; it must provide both a people thoroughly prepared for the inheritance, and an inheritance completely won and beautified for their possession. But such a result will inevitably require a most complicated machinery of operations to effect it; and the history may well be expected to be marvellous, both for the good and the evil, the processes of judgment as well as of mercy, with which it is sure to be intermingled.
4. To return, however, to our more proper business. From the very nature and objects of the sealed book, it would seem that its symbolical contents must cover the entire field of the future militant condition of the church, and reach down to the time when the mystery of God shall be finished by the installing of the church with regal power and glory, in the possession of the inheritance. Such being the case, any other prophetic symbols, or series of prophetic symbols, that follow, must stand to it in the relation of synchronal, not of continuative and posterior developments. To this conclusion, also, the analogy of other portions of prophetic Scripture points. It is a general characteristic in the structure of prophecy, that of its delineations in any particular line or class of relations, each picture stands complete in itself. In that specific direction the prophetic outline is conducted to a close. Many of our Lord’s parables are striking exemplifications of this—those, for example, of the sower, of the wheat and tares, of the talents, of the ten virgins, since they, one and all, present the divine kingdom under so many distinct images or aspects, and, in connection with these, disclose its progressive advancement and final issues.
5. We turn, then, to the three great series of symbols, for the purpose, in the first instance, of ascertaining whether what has now been suggested seems to be the case. In doing so, we look simply at the symbolic representations themselves, and take them in their broader aspect—as such representations ought always to be taken
6. The connection between the series of the trumpets and that of the vials, is of a still more palpable and pervading kind, and has many more points of contact, than those noticed, between the seals and subsequent visions. The two series, indeed, run throughout so closely parallel in regard to the objects and operations described in them, that it is scarcely possible to believe they can relate to two disparate and consecutive lines of procedure. The first trumpet has for its scene of action the earth, on which it represents fire and hail mingled with blood being cast; and, in like manner, the first vial is poured upon the earth, causing a noisome and grievous sore to those that dwell on it. The second trumpet turns the sea into blood; the second vial is poured into the sea, and it becomes as the blood of a dead man. The third trumpet brings the visitation of the star wormwood upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and renders them deadly; the third vial is poured upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and they become blood. When the fourth trumpet sounds, the sun is smitten to the extent of a third part, as also the moon and the stars; the fourth vial is poured upon the sun, and he scorches men with fire. At the sound of the fifth trumpet the bottomless pit is opened, and hordes of scorpion-locusts issue forth with most destructive power; the fifth vial is poured upon the seat of the beast—which is but another name for the bottomless pit, as it was from thence he ascended after his wound was healed (Revelation 11:7, Revelation 17:8), and the reference here is undoubtedly to a period subsequent to that. The sounding of the sixth trumpet looses the four angels in the great river Euphrates, who presently send forth their armed myriads, riding on horses with breastplates of fire, with heads like lions, and fire, smoke, and brimstone going out of their mouths; the sixth vial is also poured upon the great river Euphrates, so that its water was dried up, and the way of the kings of the East was prepared, and unclean beasts, the spirits of devils, issued out of the mouth of the dragon, and of the beast, and of the false prophet. Finally, with the sound of the seventh trumpet great voices in heaven are heard, for the day of God’s wrath is come, the final retributions of good and evil are to be awarded, and the sovereignty of the world passes into the hands of Christ; so, when the last vial is poured into the air, a great voice comes out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, “It is done;” for the day of recompense has arrived, and great Babylon comes in remembrance before God. It is surely against all reasonable probability, to suppose that these two lines of symbolic representation, touching at so many points, alike in their commencement, their progress, and their termination, can relate to dispensations of Providence wholly unconnected, and to periods of time separated from each other by the lapse of ages. It is immeasurably more probable, that they are but different aspects of substantially the same course of procedure—different merely from the parties subjected to it being contemplated in somewhat different relations. Nor would it be possible, if two entire series of symbolical delineations, following so nearly in the same track, were yet to point to events quite remote and diverse, to vindicate such delineations from the charge of arbitrariness and indetermination. On the whole, therefore, we deem it morally certain, from a simple comparison of the prophetical visions before us, apart altogether from any specific sense or application that may be given to them, that each is in itself complete, and in the particular province it occupies, leaves nothing more to be done. They cannot, therefore, refer to consecutive periods in the history of God’s dispensations, the next always beginning where the previous one ends; but must be viewed as indicating parallel, though, in some respects, diverse operations. Each alike ends with “a great earthquake” (Revelation 6:12, Revelation 11:19, Revelation 16:18), which shakes everything to its foundations, and prepares the way for a new and better order of things. Let us, then, look at each series separately, that by a consideration of the symbols themselves, and the actions respectively connected with them, we may (if possible) learn the distinctive nature of each, and their relative place and object in the Divine dispensations. We shall find, that by this closer survey other parallelisms will discover themselves than those yet noticed.
7. The first series, that of the seals, contains (as has been already stated), a representation of the unfolding, not theoretically merely, but practically also, the actual progression of the Lord’s mysterious work of conquest, whereby the earth becomes his possession. It is mysterious, because of the character in which He addresses Himself to the work, as a Lamb that had been slain, or the crucified Redeemer; and from the peculiar manner in which He proceeds to make good His title to the possession. The opening of the first seal presents the proper claimant, the only party that has the right and destiny to the dominion of the world—namely Christ, and His body the church. They have their representation in a warrior on a white horse, having a crown given him, in token of universal sovereignty, and “going forth conquering and that he might conquer” (
8. There are no more riders heralded by the call to come; for the four sufficiently represent all the powers that were to be in visible and active operation during the pending history. But the opening of the fifth seal discloses another power, one not belonging to the visible sphere, and not regarded by the world, but still mighty and powerful, because entering the ear of God: the cry, namely, of his own elect—not the cry of their prayers merely, but the cry of their blood, which had been shed for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.
It discloses by implication, rather than by direct discourse, the history of the real church in the world, the true followers of the Lamb, who, like Him, are meek and suffering, using no weapons of violence, but simply holding by the word and testimony they had received from Him, and for its sake loving not their lives unto the death. In such the Lamb and His cause had their proper representatives; and now the cry of their blood ascenda to the highest heavens, and demands the recompense that was meet upon the world, which had so wickedly shed it—a cry that must be heard by Him who loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity. It began, indeed, to be heard before it was finally answered—so that a period must elapse from the time it seemed to be listened to, till the whole company of faithful witnesses and martyrs had completed their testimony, and the world’s iniquity had become full. In other words, the same work of testifying and suffering for the truth of Jesus was to go on, longer than the church herself thought and expected it should—not, however, because the Lord was indifferent to the evil, but because the efficacious means of testifying and suffering must be plied till the divine forbearance with the world is exhausted, and the proper time of recompenses for evil has come. That time, however, must assuredly come; and so, without any thing farther being indicated as to the operations of the church, the next seal exhibits the cause of the Lamb triumphant, by the world giving way, as it were, beneath the feet of those who had hitherto held possession of it, all its foundations getting for them out of course, and filling them with overwhelming dread and dismay. They at length find the Lamb whom they had despised too mighty for them. But lest the members of the church, being themselves in the world, and liable to share in its calamities, should also feel appalled by the prospect of such things going to come on the world, the episode in Revelation 7:1-17 of the sealing vision is introduced, which represents an 144,000, a perfect number, symbol of a complete church, as sealed for God, and thereafter glorified in the heavenly places; and that before even the winds were allowed to blow upon the earth to hurt it: not, therefore, pointing so much to the future, as to the past, showing how even from the very commencement of the tribulations, which were to come on the world, and of which every seal but the first had only disclosed successive stages, the Lord had His eye on His own people, and would both keep them in perfect security, and conduct them to final bliss. It is impossible, we think, by any fair or natural interpretation of the scenes described, to understand this sealing vision otherwise than of past and present times—of what was to take place in reference to the troubles, which had been long in progress, and were to reach their culmination during the sixth seal. By these unquestionably the earth was to be hurt, with all that naturally belonged to it, nay, brought to utter shame and confusion. And then, the work on both sides being finished—the number of the elect being made up, and the resistance of an ungodly world effectually subverted and overthrown, the seventh seal discloses the state of thorough subjugation and repose that should ensue—all keeping silence before the Lord, as now everywhere acknowledged governor among the nations. As previously remarked, the representation in this first series is a general one; the wonderful march of Providence and the prospective history of the world are exhibited only in their grand outlines: Christianity is there as a whole, the church as a whole, and so also the world in its deeds of evil, its instruments of mischief, its judgment and doom. It must ever appear arbitrary to limit to single epochs or particular individuals what has purposely been left indefinite in these respects on the sacred page. Nor can it by any possibility be done so as to produce general confidence and satisfaction. For anything of a more special nature, we must look to subsequent revelations.
9. The next series by the very symbol employed to characterize it—the trumpet—bespeaks an active and stirring agency; for the trumpet was peculiarly the instrument of warlike preparation; its loud shrill sound was the immediate call to battle; and, employed here in connection with the great struggle, which was to be carried on by the Lamb of God, as the head of the divine kingdom, with the powers and kingdoms of this world, it must be regarded as the Lord’s war-note, proclaiming successively that another and another instrumentality was to be employed by Him for the purpose of bringing the world under Him. The things indicated, therefore, by the trumpets, should not have formally the character of judgments executed upon doomed and incorrigible offenders, who were reserved only unto wrath. They should rather be of the nature of mixed dealings—on the one hand chastisements on account of sin, which should form so many calls on men to repentance, and on the other, revelations of mercy to lead them from sin to salvation. It is by this combined twofold instrumentality, that the Lord always strives to overcome, or in effect does overcome the obstinacy and wickedness of men. And when we look both to the beginning and to the close of the series, plain indications discover themselves, that they were to be of the character, and designed for the purpose now stated. They are preceded by the action of an angel at the golden altar offering much incense, (i.e. carrying with it, embodying) the prayers of all saints; and the smoke of the incense with these prayers, it is said, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. This denotes their acceptance with God; they came up as a sweet memorial, which He could not fail to regard; and the actions that follow are the answer that He gives to them. But “the prayers of all saints” are the united cry of the Lord’s people, His royal priesthood, not for the destruction, but for the salvation of the world; for judgment, indeed, in so far as that might be necessary to hold in check the power of the adversary, and bring home to men’s bosoms the knowledge and conviction of sin; but still, in the midst of this, and through this for mercy, that the way of peace and blessing may be found. Then, when we look to the end, we hear as the termination and result of the whole, the joyful announcement pealed forth, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ”—a result, which shews the gracious design that must have pervaded the entire series, and which could only have been reached by such a combination of severity and goodness as we have described. Bent on overcoming the world, by subduing its sinfulness, and bringing it into the obedience of His truth, the Lord comes forth as a man of war; the successive trumpet-notes herald the different means and agencies He employs in the conflict; and partly moved by fear, but partly, also, and much more drawn by the word of grace and truth, the hearts of men yield, and the field is at length won from the grasp of the enemy.
Such appears to be the general character and aim of this series of symbols, very fitly following on the former, as tending to show how the conquest more generally unfolded there, was to be wrought out and brought to a successful issue. And a glance at the particulars confirms this view. The series is divided in the vision itself into a four and a three. The four so far stand by themselves, and coincide with each other, that the things indicated by them are of the nature of inflictions on the outward territory of nature; as a whole they travel the round of that territory, and turn it in all its departments into the occasion of trouble and calamity to those who cleave to it as their portion. First, the earth itself is visited, not by fertilizing showers, but by hail and fire mingled with blood; so that a third part of the trees and grass are burnt up. Then, the sea is to the same extent turned into blood by a burning mountain being cast into it; whereby a third part of the creatures in it, and the vessels sailing on its bosom, were destroyed. Next the rivers and fountains of waters by the star wormwood are, to the extent also of a third, rendered so bitter, that many died of them. Lastly, the higher region of nature is visited, and again in a third part the sun, moon, and stars are so smitten, that for a third part of the time both by day and by night there was only darkness. All the departments of nature, or rather what might correspond to these in the political and social sphere, were thus to be successively visited, and rendered instruments of affliction and trouble. Yet still with a marked reserve, as if only for chastisement and warning; in each case only the third part was affected, as a proof how loath God was to proceed to extremities—how he restrained even while he afflicted—and by the very character of his rebukes discovered his unwillingness to destroy, his desire that men should repent and live. By such means, however, no effectual result is accomplished; though the world is stricken in all its sources of natural sufficiency, multitudes still cling to it as a portion, and for its sake continue to disown Christ, and reject the gospel of his salvation. Therefore, other and more effectual measures must be brought into operation; and these are represented by the three last, the woe-trumpets, as they are called. It must be remembered, however, in what respect it is they are so called; it is merely because of their power to bring to an end the beastly, grovelling God-opposing character of the world; to pour confusion and ruin on the worldly interest, as such, that the interest of truth and righteousness might take its place. It is said, therefore, at the commencement of these trumpets, “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth,” on account of them; by the inhabiters of the earth being meant those whose proper home and portion was there, such as entirely belonged to it, the earthly-minded, and hence aliens from that church, the true members of which have their names written in heaven, who are contemplated as ideally with the Lord in Zion. The woes to the persons described, therefore, were woes merely in respect to their earthly-mindedness and devotion to the world; but instruments and occasions of blessing, if they would but see in them the chastening hand of God, and abandon the worse for the better part. Now, of the three woes, the first is described as the action of a fallen star—fallen from heaven to earth—emblem of a degenerate power, an angel of light, become one of darkness; and as such sent on the bad errand of opening the bottomless pit, and letting out, amid the smoke of hell, a horde of scorpion-locusts, whose commission was not to touch the herbs and trees of the field, but to torment men, all such as had not the seal of God in their foreheads—the men simply of the earth. These locusts, the direct emanation of the world of darkness, were also in their personal characteristics a strange compound of the beastly and the human (shaped like horses, yet with faces like men, and crowned, as if somehow destined to rule), of the soft and the savage (the hair of women, and the teeth of lions), of the courageous and the vicious (rustling as with chariots and breastplates of iron, yet stinging as with tails of scorpions). What an image of the emissaries of Satan, who sometimes with high pretensions and king-like authority, sometimes with winning gentleness, and again with bold effrontery, teach the doctrines of devils—doctrines which tend to make men the slaves of corruption and lust, to bind them up in strong delusion to believe a lie; and so, in reality, amid all professions and appearances to the contrary, acting a beastly, savage, and vicious part, and involving their followers in many sore and grievous troubles! Apollyon, the destroyer, is their king; for it is his interests they serve, to the cruel bondage and manifold miseries of men. Though confined to no particular age, yet undoubtedly they had their most exact representation, and their largest embodiment, in those corrupters of the Christian doctrine, who gradually brought on the murky atmosphere of the dark ages, and formed into shape the great apostacy which converted the new Jerusalem into Babylon, and entailed numberless evils upon Christendom. Hence also, as having its grand impersonation in an apostate and degenerate church, the work is ascribed to a fallen star. The next woe-trumpet, the sixth in the whole series, presents us with a phenomenon, in its earlier part, somewhat similar in kind, and in some respects even more threatening and formidable than that which preceded. The scene here is laid in the Euphrates, which implies that Babylon, which stood on the Euphrates, and from which the Euphrates derives all its symbolical value and significance, has anew sprung into being. Euphrates by itself is nothing in Scripture, no more than any other river, excepting as “the great river” (here emphatically so called) on which Babylon stood, and which ministered so much to the wealth and security of the city; it is hence so far identified with Babylon, as to share with it in symbolical applications. This mention of Euphrates, also, and by implication of Babylon, confirms what has been said of the preceding symbol; as it plainly betokens that corrupting influences had been at work, and had even formed a new Babylonish power. And now when the call is given, under the sixth trumpet, to loose the four angels that had been bound in the great river Euphrates, and when, as the result of this loosing, myriads of horsemen rush forth, and come with such destructive energy, that the third part of men are represented as killed by them, a power must be indicated which, as to its origin, was very closely connected with the Babylon understood, was even one grand source of its strength and prosperity, but which now was to turn with prodigious force and destroying might against it. The very waters that nourished her were to become her plague and her destruction. And what these were, we learn from Revelation 17:15, “The waters which thou sawest, where the whore (Babylon) sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues,”—in other words, the kingdoms of the world, represented by the beast, on which the whore was seen sitting, because on their carnal power and influence she leant for support. So that this Euphrates-host of warriors are instruments of mischief issuing, as it were, from her very bowels, from the ground of worldliness and corruption on which she stands, and making her the object of their hatred and rapacious violence.
10. But this was not the only agency to be employed in connection with the sixth trumpet. Beside severity, there was also to be mercy, as there was indeed a purpose of mercy running through the whole of this series; only now, when the final issues are approaching, it is more fully and distinctly exhibited. It might have seemed, from such a long and dreadful succession of afflictive dealings, as if severity and judgment alone were to prevail during this series of symbolical actions—precisely as during the former series it might have seemed, up till the sealing vision of the sixth seal, that the Lord’s own people were to have no defence and security above others. Here, therefore, under the sixth trumpet, as there under the sixth seal, a long and precious episode is introduced, which should have formed, as in the other case, a separate chapter, but which is thrown into Revelation 10:1-11 and Revelation 11:1-3. Like the sealing vision, it is of a regressive as well as prospective character; and is intended to exhibit the better agency which all along had been in operation, in connection with the severer measures employed, and which was necessary to carry out the design of these by leading men to repentance. The one was like the law, intended, by its awful utterances and deadly wounds, to penetrate with a humbling sense of guilt and danger; while the other, the gospel, with its gentle and persuasive voice, entreated men to arise and flee from the wrath to come. The representation of this better agency is introduced by the appearance of a mighty angel (who, by what follows, can be understood to be no other than Christ), with a cloud and rainbow about His head, the symbol of mercy after judgment; indicating that, notwithstanding the floods of wrath which He had been making to pass over the world, He still had a purpose of grace, and that His design was not to destroy but to save. His whole appearance and manner denote great determination of purpose, and irresistible might, in carrying His design into execution. To show what the design was, He plants His right foot upon the sea, and His left upon the earth, to indicate His sovereign right in respect to both, and His firm resolve to put that right into execution. He farther, by a solemn oath, declares, that, viewed in respect to the stage of operations marked by the sixth trumpet, no more delay should take place in having the whole carried into execution. He swore that “time should no longer be (i.e., there should be no farther delay), but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when He shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished.” And then follows the instrumentality more especially to be employed for the accomplishment of the intended result. This is the little book given to John to eat, a symbolical action to denote that the contents of that book must be received into the heart and soul of those whom John represented, the confessors and witnesses of the truth,—as only by being so received on their part, and then proclaimed before “peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings,” could the end in view be attained. The book is called little, much for the same reason that faith, even in its mightiest operations, is compared to a grain of mustard-seed, because it is small and insignificant in the estimation of the world and in the eye of sense, as compared with the gigantic and obtrusive forces it has to contend with, and the vast results it must achieve. It is simply the gospel of the grace of God, which becomes, in respect to those who cordially embrace and own it, the word of their testimony. This is the one grand weapon of the Lamb, the sword that goeth out of His mouth to bring the people under Him, or else consign them to destruction as finally impenitent. This, believingly received, and confessed and handled by a faithful church, is the chosen instrumentality by which the tide of evil in the world is to be turned, and the inheritance rescued from the power of the adversary. After the brief indication of the weapon and the instrumentality comes the vision of the measurement of the temple, and the history of the witnesses, retrospectively connecting the past with the present, showing how the character of God’s temple or church had been outwardly transformed—how that which apparently was such, and had become dominant, was really the reverse, an essentially heathen or worldly party under a godly name and profession—how this spiritual Egypt, or Babylon, had sought to corrupt the truth, and trample under foot those that believed and proclaimed it—how they had even, for a time, utterly suppressed the open testimony of the faithful, and violently made away with them—but how the Lord, notwithstanding, stood by His servants, gave testimony to the word of His grace, and, at last, rendered it so mighty and powerful that the respective parties altogether changed places, the faithful witnesses being exalted to heaven, the place of power and influence; while the proud and persecuting city (Babylon) falls as by an earthquake, multitudes of her people are slain, and the rest are affrighted and give glory to the God of heaven. We only indicate here the train of thought, as the subject has been formally discussed in the preceding section. But it should be noted how different the result now is from what it was at the close of the more judicial parts of the process. By these many were left who did not repent of their sins and evil deeds (Revelation 9:20-21); but now that the instrumentality of life and blessing is brought distinctly into view, the work of repentance is accomplished; the terror produced by the severer measures disposes men to embrace the mercy offered in the gospel, and embodied in the testimony of the witnesses; the remnant, even in Babylon, believe and are saved. And then comes the end; not, indeed, without many heavings and agitations, convulsions of various kinds, caused by the truth of God rising to the ascendant. But still it comes; and when the seventh trumpet sounds amid those complicated disturbances, it is only that the joyful announcement may be proclaimed, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom (so it should be read) of our Lord and of his Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever.”
Thus it appears that the series of the trumpets constitute a clear and decided advance upon that of the seals. They exhibit the train of causes and effects by which the marvellous results unfolded in the seals were to be brought about; the twofold kind of agencies by which the Lamb and His followers should at length come to change places with the world—viz., the rod of chastisement and the word of reconciliation; afflictive providences and retributory judgments, on the one hand, and, on the other, the gospel of salvation, unflinchingly and perseveringly proclaimed by a chosen band of witnesses till it should become everywhere triumphant. In this way the cause that went forth at the first to conquer does conquer, and secures for itself a universal dominion. But one point still remains to be cleared. It has come out in the course of this last series that, in the work of conquest to be achieved, it was not simply the world in its original and palpably heathenish form, which had to be brought into subjection. A professedly religious, though really intensely worldly and antichristian domination, had come into the field, and, indeed, so extensively occupied at last that field, that it is with this latterly the struggle appeared to be more especially conducted. Whence, then, this extraordinary change? How did such a worldly Christianity rise into being; and what precise measures were to be adopted in respect to it?
11. Now, it is chiefly to provide an answer to these questions, which most naturally present themselves, that the visions reaching from the close of Revelation 11:1-19, Revelation 12:1-17, Revelation 13:1-18, Revelation 14:1-20, Revelation 15:1-8, Revelation 16:1-21, Revelation 17:1-18, Revelation 18:1-24, Revelation 19:1-21, eight whole chapters, have been introduced. This portion occupies so large a space because it more directly concerned the church’s dangers and difficulties, and was required to put her fully on her guard against the coming evil, or to leave her inexcusable, if she became involved in it. Like the visions already noticed, it embraces an extensive range, and, as we have previously had occasion to show, points back to the past, as well as onwards to the future, in order to show how the evil originally sprung up, and how it was to develope itself till it reached the gigantic magnitude and formidable character it ultimately assumed. This is done more particularly in Revelation 12:1-17 and Revelation 13:1-18, where the matter is represented in connection both with the personal spite and malice of the tempter, on account of the victory gained over him by Christ; and with the beast, or worldly power, in its varied forms and manifestations, more especially in the times following the general spread of Christianity, after the deadly wound caused by this gospel had again been healed. Out of the healing of the wound came Babylon, which consists of an unnatural conjunction of the church and the world, the church having thereby become essentially antichristian; and because of the greatness of the guilt, and the heaviness of the doom, incurred by such a degeneracy, it has a very large and prominent place given to it in the prophecy. In Revelation 13:1-18 we are told how the introduction of Christianity led the worldly power to assume a form corresponding to the altered state of affairs; and the success following its altered policy implied, that the church, to a large extent, had sacrificed its character, and joined hands with the world. Accordingly, in the next chapter, Revelation 14:1-20, the true church, as contra-distinguished from the false, is brought prominently into view. The apostle sees an elect and faithful company with the Lamb on Mount Zion; while he hears, and, for the first time, hears the name of Babylon proclaimed as the object of divine wrath, and as destined to fall by the preaching of the everlasting gospel (Revelation 14:6-8). At the same time, to show the essential agreement of the power designated Babylon, with that previously represented by the beast and his image, the wrath of God is also proclaimed (Revelation 14:9-11) against all who receive the mark of the beast and worship his image—that is, against all who surrender themselves to the lusts and interests of a present evil world, though they may gild it over by a Christian name. For all such, it is declared, the fiery indignation and final judgments of God are reserved; while, in marked contrast, is brought out (Revelation 14:12-13) the safe and everlastingly blessed condition of those who, crucifying the flesh through the Spirit, renouncing the world for the better part, keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Then follow an entire series of visions, each containing representations of God’s judicial proceedings and closing acts toward those adherents of earthliness and sin. The first is a quite general one (Revelation 14:14-20), and appears under the image of a vine to be reaped and trodden, an image similarly used in Old Testament prophecy (Isaiah 63:1-19). It is called the vine “of the earth”—earth’s own spontaneous production—and so a fitting representation of those who had nothing about them savouring of a higher world, but were the slaves of sense and time. No distinction, therefore, is here made between one class of doomed sinners and another; they are considered in the mass; and being, without distinction, lovers of a corrupt and perishing world, they are regarded as growing together till they become ripe for judgment, when they receive the heritage of a common destruction.
12. The next series, however, is of a more specific kind; it consists of the seven vials; and has somewhat of the same relation to the trumpets, that the trumpets had to the seals. The trumpets, as we have shown, disclose God’s dealings with the world in order to bring it to repentance, and the faith of Christ; they are, therefore, of a mixed character, and partake alike of chastisement and mercy. But the world is here contemplated simply in its guilt; not its natural guilt merely, but that far deeper and more aggravated guilt which it had incurred by rejecting the salvation of Christ, and even turning his scheme of grace and truth into a huge Babel of falsehood and corruption. The dealings here, therefore, are strictly judicial; they bring jut the severe aspect of God’s character, and end only with the utter destruction of the party against which they are directed. That party, precisely, as in the case of the trumpets, is the sinful world at large, but viewed with a more especial reference to its condition after the introduction and general spread of Christianity, and still more after the formation of the Babylonish counterfeit. Hence, the general subject being the same as in the case of the trumpets, though contemplated and dealt with under a somewhat different aspect, the one series runs uniformly alongside the other, and does not so properly represent a diverse and separate order of things, as the dark, the judicial, the simply punitive character and operation of the same things. In accordance with this character and design, the distinctive symbol here used is that of the vial, a round cup or goblet, into which ingredients of a deleterious kind are supposed to be put, that they might be poured out upon the subjects of vengeance. The action of pouring out in this sense, and sometimes also with the mention of a cup from which the contents were to be poured, is frequently used in Old Testament prophecy (Psalms 75:8, Psalms 79:6; Jeremiah 10:25, etc.); it denotes the full, resistless, overwhelming energy with which the visitation of evil should come. The vials here are hence called vials “full of the wrath of God;” and are represented as belonging to the seven angels who have “the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God:” not that the things here represented were absolutely posterior to all that had gone before, but that they belonged to the procedure of God in its terminal processes of judgment upon the guilty world—processes that should not run out till the worldly, God-opposing interest of the adversary was effectually put down, and all its adherents were scattered to the winds. As being the last actions of this description, God’s judicial proceedings against the worldly power in its ultimate forms of manifestation, the heavenly inhabitants are represented as singing in contemplation of them “the song of Moses and the Lamb,” coupling together the victory to be won over the last, with that won over the first great embodiment of the anti-righteous worldly power; spanning, in their notes of triumph, the whole field of struggle and conquest. And finally, the work of judgment to be executed is represented as emphatically a work of holiness, by the seven angels appearing to come out of “the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony”—that is, out of the temple, which contained the tabernacle of the testimony; in other words, they came forth as representatives of that holy law of God, which was called the testimony of the tabernacle, because it testified against all unrighteousness of men, and called for Divine judgment against it.
Looking now individually at the vials, the first four have formally the same immediate objects, and perform exactly the same round as the trumpets: first the earth is smitten, then the sea, then the rivers and fountains of waters, and last of all the sun. There is this difference, however, that here, in accordance with the strictly penal character of the series, the effects appear more extensively and directly hurtful, and are also more explicitly connected with the sins which called them forth. Instead of only the third part of the objects immediately affected being mentioned, it is the effect upon men themselves, which is brought specially into notice, whose sin and punishment are expressly linked together. In the first case, a grievous and noisome sore falls upon the men who have the mark of the beast and worship his image; in the second, the sea becomes blood, and every soul in it dies; in the third, when the rivers and fountains have been made blood, the Lord is praised as righteous in His judgments, because He had given those blood to drink, who had shed the blood of His saints; and in the fourth, power was given the sun to scorch men with fire, on account, as is plainly implied, of their still daring and growing wickedness, which was such, that they even blasphemed His name, while suffering under the direful visitation. It is manifestly impossible to understand such things literally; they never could be meant to be so taken. But the general sense is obvious; the men whose souls clave to the dust, who, in spite of all that the Lord had done to reclaim them to Himself, continued to reject or corrupt His truth, that they might live on in conformity to the flesh and the world, should find the whole circle of worldly powers and influences, so far from keeping a covenant of peace with them, often turned into instruments of evil: So that from the world in its more settled state (the earth), distressing sores should come upon them; from its heaving agitations and troubles (the sea), violence and bloodshed; even from its more refreshing and gladdening influences (the streams and the sun), tormenting and pestiferous effects, which they should be powerless to resist. Such things ever and anon occurring, and as might be supposed, at certain periods occurring in more marked and dreadful visitations, would tell how far the world, in its antichristian and ungodly portion, was from having gained by its contrariety to God; how little it could do to avert the deadliest evils from its followers; and how much it lay under the frown and chastisement of an angry God. The vexations and disorders coming on it while under antichristian rule, and on this very account coming on it, must be ever rendering it a valley of Achor to those who perversely cling to and worship it.
13. These, however, are only the more general forms of divine judgment (though, if the world perseveres in guilt, and high-minded opposition to the truth, it is by no means improbable they may find more specific and marked exemplifications than have yet been given them); the more peculiar and decisive ones are exhibited in the three last vials. The fifth was poured upon the seat of the beast, which (as before observed under the fifth trumpet) is all one with the bottomless pit. It is not said here what came forth from it, for that had been fully described under the fifth trumpet; but as the result of the smoke and the scorpion-locusts which issued forth, the kingdom of the beast, it is said, was filled with darkness, and men gnawed their tongues for pain, and went on blaspheming the God of heaven: involved in darkness and misery, and yet cleaving to their idols and abominations! in their stricken and miserable condition manifestly lying under the rebuke of God, and yet continuing in the things which dishonoured and provoked Him! Of this the comfortless, ignorant, deluded, and enslaved state of Papal kingdoms generally, during the night of the dark ages, formed the most extensive and striking exemplification. The next vial is poured upon the great river Euphrates, and the result is, that the water thereof is dried up, that the way of the kings of the East might be prepared. The waters of the Euphrates, as already noticed, were the source of Babylon’s riches and security; she relied on these to the last, when the judgment of heaven was overhanging her—fatally relied on them; for by diverting their course, and drying up their wonted channel, the Medes and Persians entered and took possession of the city. These Medes and Persians were actually the kings of the East, coming, as they did, from the country east of Babylon, and coming with such royal might and plenitude of resources, that the proud mistress of the nations fell an easy prey into their hands. Here, however, the epithet, “Kings of the East,” precisely as Euphrates and Babylon, is used symbolically to denote powers and influences of a kind, that, in their relation to the mystical Babylon, should correspond with those of the Medes and Persians to the literal. They are none other than the dreadful Satanic agency, symbolized under the sixth trumpet by the myriads of horsemen, whose horses had tails like serpents, and sent forth fire, smoke, and brimstone from their mouths. Another, but not less appalling representation is given of them here, under the “three unclean spirits like frogs,” which the prophet 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.” They are farther described as “the spirits of devils (demons), working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” The description here, as well as in the parallel passage, points to the last, the most wreckless, antichristian, and blasphemous manifestations of the beast and the false prophet, when impregnated to the full with the spirit of Satan, and acting as his agents in the final effort he makes against the kingdom of God. It is on this account, that the evil spirits, likened to frogs from their low, unclean, and loathsome character, appear as coming out of the mouth, first of all of the dragon, being, so to speak, direct emanations of the prince of darkness, and ready to give vent to his foul blasphemies, and intense malice against the truth. They proceed also from the mouths of the beast and the false prophet, because the power and wisdom of the world supply the immediate instruments—the wonder-working skill, the lofty achievements in art and science, the daring speculations, lawless doctrines, resolute energy and might—by which the work is to be carried forward. Babylon, or the corrupt and apostate church, is not mentioned as having directly to do with the issuing forth of these moral plagues; for they belong to a stage beyond hers, and are to have their great use in tearing up her foundations and overthrowing her confidences. It is through this agency of evil that the kingdoms come to hate the whore; or in the symbolical language of this vision, that the waters of the great river Euphrates (the multitudes and peoples), on which Babylon sat, and to which she looked for her security and strength, are dried up—nay, are made to send forth against her hosts of adverse forces, which shall do to her substantially what the kings of the East, the Medes and Persians, Babylon’s own tributaries, did to the ancient city. Had these relations been perceived, and the real character of the conflict been understood, there would have been little difficulty in understanding the remaining feature in the description; in which it is said, that the conflicting hosts were to be gathered together for a final decision in a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. It is another allusion to the history and relations of Old Testament times, and indicates that the Old was virtually to return again. Armageddon is simply the hill of Megiddo; and in sacred history the neighbourhood of Megiddo is celebrated for a very memorable and mournful event, the overthrow of Josiah’s army, and his own death by the host of Egypt (2 Kings 23:29-30)—the discomfiture of the professing church of God by the profane worldly power. The reason was, that though Josiah was a good man, the church itself had become a Babylon; corruption of every kind continued to nestle in it; the prophets were at the time uttering in the strongest terms their denunciations and threatenings against it; and not only was the step taken by Josiah a false one, betokening too superficial views of the evil within, and the difficulties to be contended against without, but the event proved that the world was now the stronger party, and was used as God’s instrument to rebuke a corrupt church, and warn her of her approaching downfal. There, therefore, was the type of the mighty and portentous future now under consideration: the great battle of Armageddon is to be on the grand scale, what the old battle of Megiddo was on the small one: the world, as animated by the spirit of darkness, is to rise up with such fresh might, and to bring into the field such potent and effective instruments of its own, that the false church shall be unable any longer to control, or even to cope with it: Babylon shall be worsted. Hence the propriety and importance of the call in Revelation 16:15, uttered immediately before the final conflict: “Behold, I come as a thief: Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.” It virtually points to the case of Josiah, and warns against its imitation in the future. The corrupt and antichristian church must go down—the world shall prevail against it. Let all, therefore, who would be found on the Lord’s side, and avoid a shameful exposure, take heed how they have to do with it; let them see, that they occupy the right position, and stand only in the truth and purity of the gospel.
Thus the whole of this part of the vision receives a quite natural explanation; the peculiar references to ancient history couched under the terms “Euphrates,” “Kings of the East,” and “Armageddon “are found to be most appropriately and consistently applied; and the numberless arbitrary and far-fetched interpretations which have been employed regarding them, are no longer needed.
14. After this comes another and more specific series, representing the guilt and doom of Babylon by itself—contained in Revelation 17:1-18 and Revelation 18:1-24. The remarkable prominence given to this subject, shows the singular place it held in the mind of God, as deserving of his special reprobation. Babylon in many respects stood alone in guilt. Instead of correcting and reforming the world, the false church had fallen in with its corruptions and lent the name of God to these, for her own temporal aggrandisement. It was meet, therefore, that her shame should be fully exposed, and her overthrow portrayed with the greatest fulness of detail and vividness of colouring. But as this part of the vision has been exhibited in the preceding section, there is no need to enlarge on it here.
15. The same also may be said of the last and concluding series of this portion of the book—that which occupies the greater part of Revelation 19. We have there a revelation of the final dealings with the kingdoms of the earth. The series of the vials, which has to do merely with judgments, leaves a portion of the history untold. While God’s work upon Babylon, and His work also upon the beast and the false prophet, that is, the world viewed in respect to its ungodliness and corruption, comes to a close with the destruction of the evil, it is otherwise with the kingdoms of the world viewed in respect to their inhabitants. These, as already exhibited in the series of the trumpets, are to be transferred to the dominion of Christ. And so, to wind properly up this part of the marvellous history, a representation is given of the conquest of the kingdoms to Christ, which, like all His conquests over the hearts and consciences of men, is accomplished by the power of the truth, wielded by a faithful church, and rendered efficacious by the power of His Spirit. External troubles and social evils no doubt contribute to the result; but it is still the sharp sword of the word, and the spiritual energy and faithfulness of the church, by which all is more immediately .effected. Thus the spirit of error and iniquity which had corrupted and destroyed the world is put down; the beast and the false prophet, as well as Babylon, are cast into outer darkness; and the saints with their Divine head possess the kingdom, and enjoy together a reign of millennial blessedness and glory.
16. It remains only to notice the indications of time contained in the portion of the Apocalypse we have been surveying. These appear to be simply three, though one of them is expressed in a threefold manner. It is the period of the church’s tried and oppressed condition—denoted first in Revelation 11:2, as a period of forty-two months, during which “the holy city is trodden down of the Gentiles,” during which also the beast was to continue in its power to blaspheme and injure (Revelation 13:5); then as consisting of 1260 days (forty-two months multiplied by 30 days), during which the witnesses, representatives of a faithful, but oppressed and persecuted church, were to prophecy, Revelation 11:3, and the church was to abide in the wilderness, Revelation 12:6, having a place and food prepared for her by God; and finally, as a time, times and a half (corresponding to one year of twelve months, two of the same, and a half-year of six, or to forty-two months, or again to 1260 days), during which the church was to remain and be fed in the wilderness, Revelation 12:14. In Daniel 7:25, where the expression first occurs, it is the time during which the saints of God were to be given into the hand of the power that was to speak great words against the Most High. These are manifestly but different modes of expressing one and the same period, as the state of things also to which they are applied is substantially identical, though variously represented. For the sojourn in the wilderness on the part of the faithful and proper spouse, the treading down of the holy city by those who belonged only to the court of the Gentiles, and the testifying for the truth of God by a faithful remnant clothed in sackcloth, and wrestling against error and corruption; these are obviously but different symbolical representations of the same abnormal and dislocated state of things. The other two periods mentioned are both very brief, as compared with the one just noticed. The shortest is that during which the bodies of the faithful witnesses are represented as lying dead, though unburied, three and a half days, Revelation 11:12; and the other is the five months during which the scorpion-locusts were to have power to torment the followers of the beast, Revelation 9:5.
Now, it is scarcely possible to avoid being struck even on the most cursory inspection of these periods, with a peculiarity that is common to them all—the broken and incomplete aspect they present. A certain whole was evidently in respect to each of them in the mind of the Divine author of the vision, as that toward which the parties spoken of were aiming, but were arrested midway in their career. This is particularly observable in the largest and by much the most important number, which in every form—whether as time, times and a half, or as the months and days that make up three and a half years—is most expressive of an unfinished course, a period somehow cut off in the middle. In like manner, the three and a half days of rejoicing over the unburied corpses of the slain witnesses, betokens the same violent and abrupt termination of the course indicated; in their ungodly triumph, the adversaries could not complete more than half of one of the briefest revolutions of time—one of the smallest cycles of the whole period allotted to the ascendency of evil. The incompleteness may appear less palpable in the five months specified for the plague of scorpion-locusts; but it will scarcely do so to those who have attended to the use made in Scripture of ten with reference to certain kinds of totality. The five is simply the broken ten. So marked a peculiarity in the use of all these numbers is itself a strong presumption in favour of their symbolical import It seems to stamp their value as indications of relative, rather than of absolute periods of duration—relative both as regards each other, and also as regards an ideal whole. And it will appear to do so the more convincingly the more the periods are viewed in reference to the parties mentioned, which are the entire spiritual church throughout the world, on the one side, and the whole antichristian power on the other; for in regard to such vast bodies, and their wide-reaching interests, what could such periods avail in their natural sense! They could obviously afford but a mere fraction of the time necessary for the accomplishment of the results connected with them; nor could such results in actual history be shut up into any periods consisting of such exact and definite measures. Another, and very powerful consideration in favour of the same view is the place of these historical numbers—surrounded on every hand, not with the literal, but with the symbolical. The woman that is persecuted, and the dragon who persecutes; the wilderness into which she flees, and the floods sent after her; the beast that rages against the truth, and the two witnesses who testify for it to the death; the holy city that is trodden down, and the Egypt or Babylon by whom the treading is effected; all are symbolically used, and shall the periods of working be otherwise than symbolical? In that case there would be the violation of one of the plainest laws of symbolical writing, and confusion and arbitrariness, as a matter of necessity, would be brought into the interpretation.
Giving all these considerations their due weight, we cannot avoid arriving at the conclusion, that the periods mentioned, in accordance with the general character of the book, are to be chiefly, if not exclusively, understood in a symbolical manner, as serving to indicate the times of relative length or brevity which the operations described were destined to occupy. If anything further is implied, it should only, we conceive, be looked for in some general correspondence, as to form, between the symbol and the reality, such as might be sufficient to guide thoughtful and inquiring minds to a more firm assurance of the realisation of the vision. But all precise and definite calculations respecting the periods, as they necessarily proceed upon a disregard of the symbolical character of the book, and upon a too external and political contemplation of the events to which it points, so they must inevitably be defeated of their aim in the future, as they have continually been in the past. The prophecy was not written to give men to know after such a fashion, the times and the seasons, which the Father has put in His own power.
Section IV. The Prophetical Future of the Churck and Kingdom of Christ in Their Relation to His Second Coming, and the Closing Issues of His Mediatorial Kingdom THE portions of the Apocalypse, and of other prophetical book-which have already passed under our review, reach down to what is known as the millennium, or the thousand years’ reign. That the things written concerning this belong to the still undeveloped future, we entertain not the remotest doubt, and regard as utterly futile all the attempts that have been made to accommodate the terms of the description to any period of the past.
I. The doctrine of the Lord’s coming is common to both Testaments, as the desire and expectation of it belongs to the people of God under both dispensations. It could scarcely fail, therefore, that the mode of representation employed respecting it in New Testament Scripture should bear a close resemblance to that which had been in use under the Old, and should even be in great measure coincident with it. The proper starting-point for all the representations is the entrance of sin, which brought as its necessary result the withdrawal of God’s manifested presence, and laid a restraint upon His intercourse with men. Prior to that fatal period, He did not need to come, as from a distance, to do anything for man; He did it as being already and habitually at hand. Even after the transgression the fallen pair are represented, not as seeing the Lord come for the occasion, but as hearing His voice walking in the garden in the cool of the day; they knew the familiar sound of their heavenly Father’s footsteps. But they were to know it thus no more. The Paradise, where God could so familiarly dwell with man, had now become to them a forfeited region; and not till the evil which then entered should have run its course, not till the works of sin should be destroyed, and the warfare with its abettors brought to a perpetual end, could the original state of things in regard to men’s relation to God be again restored. Then, however—that is, when the new and better Paradise is brought in—the tabernacle of God shall be once more with men, and He shall dwell with them, in an everlasting fellowship of love. But till that blessed consummation, there can only be occasional manifestations—comings of such a nature and in such succession as may be needed to maintain the divine interest in the world, to provide the requisite means of grace and comfort to the Lord’s people, and administer seasonable rebukes to His adversaries.
Now, in Old Testament Scripture there appears a perpetual struggle against this untoward state of things. Faith is ever striving to bring God out of the distance to which He has retired, and present Him in immediate connection with the deeper experiences of the soul, and the more important movements of the world’s history. The Book of Psalms may be regarded as a continued exemplification of this. How often, in perusing it, do we feel as if we even heard the voice of God, and saw His shape! The soul, animated by a lively spirit of faith, and thereby raised to the higher moods of spiritual thought and feeling, moves among the things of God as among sensible realities; is tremblingly alive to whatever marks His presence or His absence; is alternately cheered by the light of His countenance, and troubled by the hidings of His face; and is conscious of all the indications of a sustained or interrupted fellowship. “Lord, by thy favour thou didst make my mountain to stand strong; thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled.” “Arise, O Lord, in thine anger; lift up thyself because of the rage of mine enemies; and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded.” “In my distress, I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry came before Him, into His ears. He bowed the heavens also, and came down.” “O God, how long shall the adversary reproach? Shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever? Why withdrawest thou thy hand, even thy right hand? Pluck it out of thy bosom?” “Arise; why sleepest thou, O Lord? Cast us not off for ever,” etc.
Such a mode of contemplating and addressing God pervading a book which is the production of so many hands, and in its several parts is connected with so many diversities of time and place, could not, it is clear, belong to a few isolated individuals, or be transient in its exercise. It must have been the natural tendency and expression of that spirit which grew out of the religion of the Old Covenant, and which it was the design as well of its symbolical institutions, as of its express promises, to strengthen and foster. Hence, also, it enters deeply into the language of prophecy. Everything of moment in the dispensations of God, is there connected with His presence and working. So, for example, in the earliest prophecy after the transactions connected with the fall, the prediction of Enoch, which is preserved in Jude, though not recorded in the original history: “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all; and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” The prophecy, as appears from the application made of it by St Jude, had an extensive reach, and might be understood even of the final manifestation of the Lord to execute judgment. But, from the time and circumstances in which it was spoken, there can be no doubt that it pointed more immediately to the clouds of wrath which were already gathering around antediluvian sinners, and that when these burst in the deluge there was the first realization of the Lord’s threatened coming to judgment. In like manner, the next recorded manifestations of righteousness of an unusual kind—those connected with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—the punishment of Egypt and the rescue of Israel—are in Scripture associated with the Lord’s immediate presence and agency. He is represented as “coming down to see and hear” how matters stood; and when He saw, smiting, on the one hand, with pestilence and destruction, on the other, stretching forth His hand to protect and succour. What a vivid representation is given in the song of Moses of the Lord’s appearance and working, in connection with the events of the Red Sea! It seems as if it spake of what the eye had seen and the ear had heard: “The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is His name. Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters. Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them.”
It is not otherwise in prophecy generally. The descriptions vary in respect to imagery and vividness of colouring; but they are alike in connecting the Lord’s personal presence with events, whether of mercy or of judgment, which bore materially on the well-being of His people, or on the power and policy of their enemies. If signal judgment was to be executed upon the worldly kingdoms which sought to oppress or extinguish the covenant people, proclamation was made of the Lord’s coming to inflict it (Isaiah 13:1-22, Isaiah 19:1-25, Isaiah 30:27, etc.) When sin prevailed among the covenant-people themselves, the Lord speaks of His soul departing from them, or of going far off from His sanctuary (Jeremiah 6:8; Ezekiel 8:6), as He actually did when He gave them up to the will of their enemies, and laid their land desolate for a season. On the other hand, when the prospect of better times was announced, it came in the form of an assurance that the Lord would appear with salvation, would Himself even go before as a leader, or, as a protector, bring up their reward (Hosea 6:1-3; Isaiah 40:1-31, Isaiah 52:12). And when the remnant from Babylon again settled at Jerusalem, they were met with the prophetic testimony that He also had returned to Jerusalem with mercies (Zechariah 1:16). But were the people not taught to expect another, and, in the stricter sense, personal coming of the Lord from heaven? Undoubtedly they were—not, however, by the simple announcement of such a coming, but by the conditions and circumstances associated with it, which were such as to require for their fulfilment a personal appearance of Godhead in the flesh. Predictions like those in Malachi, in which it was intimated that the Lord should come suddenly to His temple, that the day of His coming should be terrible, and should burn as an oven, might be paralleled by many others which had their accomplishment in events long prior to the incarnation, and were accompanied by no external displays of the Divine personality. But then in other prophecies there were particular adjuncts connected with the coming. It was to take place amid conditions of flesh and blood, of time and circumstance. There was to be a preparation of the way by a messenger going before, a birth in a definite line and at a specific place, a life and death alike marked by the most singular characteristics—all not only affording ground for expecting, but even containing terms that indispensably required, a coming of the most distinct and palpable description. It was not, therefore, so properly the coming considered by itself as the declared manner and objects of the coming, which rendered that of Messiah’s predicted appearance in the flesh different from all other announcements of the Lord’s coming. And if, on that account, the epithet real is applied to the one, and figurative to the other, or, if the one is designated a personal coming, and the others only virtual or spiritual, such modes of distinction, it must be remembered, are not derived from Scripture, nor are they strictly accordant with the truth of things. The Lord was as really present at the destruction of Sodom, at the deliverance of Israel from the host of Pharaoh, and at the restoration of the captives from Babylon, as in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. There was a proper coming, and an actual presence, in the earlier as well as the later events referred to; only in the former withdrawn from human sight, and forming no part of the visible realities which made up the historical transactions of the time. It was there, however, as a living force, and the invisibility attaching to it was the result merely of a defect in the perceptive part of our natures, which (if He had pleased) might have been supplied by some higher intuition, or even by an intensifying of the power of spiritual apprehension. It was from no want of reality in the appearances, which betokened, on a certain occasion, the presence of the Lord and of His ministering host, but for want of the necessary discernment, that the servant of Elisha was unconscious of their existence; and when the prophet prayed that the servant’s eyes might be opened, presently, we are told, he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha (2 Kings 6:17). In like manner, the peculiar elevation of soul which was given to Stephen on the eve of his martyrdom, enabled him to see what had otherwise remained hid,—the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. Jesus himself is reported to have heard with perfect distinctness a word addressed to Him by the Father, which, in the duller ears of those about Him, sounded only as a confused murmur (John 12:28-29); and, subsequently, in His own manifestation to Saul on the way to Damascus, Saul both saw and heard in the clearest manner what seems to have made but a faint impression upon the senses of others (Acts 9:7). How, indeed, in the case of One who is everywhere present, without whom not even a sparrow falls to the ground, nor a single event, from the least to the greatest in any region of the universe, is accomplished—how but by a special adaptation of Himself to the existing faculties of His creatures, or by an elevation of these faculties to a nearer conformity to His own spiritual nature, can they perceive Him where He is, or descry the signs of His approach? The Son of Man speaks of Himself as being in heaven at the very time He was living upon the earth (John 3:13), as from His essential divinity He must have been, and must also have appeared to be to the higher beings who could penetrate the region of His glory. So that, as regards the Lord’s presence and coming, the real and the visible are by no means to be regarded as interchangeable; and it is only from the accompanying circumstances and conditions that we can determine, in regard to any predicted manifestation of Himself, whether it is to be patent to the senses of men, or concealed from their view.
Such are the conclusions we arrive at on the subject of the Lord’s coming, from a consideration of what is written of it in Old Testament Scripture; and the presumption is, as we have already indicated, that it may not be materially different, when we pass from the Old to the New. Here it is the Messiah in His distinctly defined personality as the God-man, and in His character as the glorified Redeemer, whose coming in glory is announced as the great hope of the church. When on earth He was known as “He that should come” (
Such we find to be actually the case. There is a coming spoken of in New Testament Scripture which may be designated in the proper sense terminal, and therefore also visible; so that every eye shall see it, and every heart be filled either with joy or dismay on account of it. And there are comings of a provisional kind, which all point toward the ultimate manifestation, and differ from it only in being less palpable in their nature, and less complete and lasting in their results. The reference to both modes of coming is found in our Lord’s own discourses upon the subject. In some of the parables it is presented under the aspect of a single and conclusive event; as in the parables of the talents and the pounds, where He appears as one going to a far country for a time, and leaving his servants to their several spheres of privilege and duty, with the prospect of a personal reckoning on his return; in the parable also of the wise and foolish virgins, which presents the church in its false, as well as its true portions, under the aspect of a bridal company waiting for the arrival of the proper spouse to the celebration of his marriage solemnity; and in the delineation, substantially also a parabolical one, of the appearance of the Son of Man on the throne of judgment, when He shall have come finally to separate between the goats and the sheep, and to give to every one as his works may have been. In all these representations the coming of the Lord has the aspect of a grand and culminating event, which winds up the affairs of time and ushers in the destinies of eternity. But if we turn to the parable of the wicked husbandmen (Matthew 21:33-43), we find a coming spoken of, which is plainly interpreted by our Lord to have had its accomplishment in an earlier and merely provisional event. There the husbandmen are represented as consummating a long-continued course of wickedness by proceeding to kill him who had come to them in the character of son and heir. And the question is then asked, “When the Lord of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?” The persons present instinctively supplied the answer by saying, that he would miserably destroy those wicked men, and let out his vineyard to others, that would render him the fruits in their seasons. On receiving this answer, and making special application of the truth it embodied, the Lord forthwith uttered the memorable words, “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” So that the divine procedure, which had the effect of transferring the kingdom from Jewish to Gentile soil, must correspond to the coming of the Lord of the vineyard in the parable, for the purpose of dispossessing one class of husbandmen, and installing another. But how was that transference effected? Simply by the setting up of the gospel dispensation by means of the word preached, and the Spirit bestowed among the Gentiles, along with the overthrow of Jerusalem and the dissolution of the old economy. The Lord then came and let out the vineyard to others. Nor is this the only place in our Lord’s discourses, where the same use and application is made of the expression. In the tenth chapter of St Matthew’s gospel we have a full report of the address delivered by our Lord on the occasion of His sending out His apostles on a missionary tour—the first of its kind. Precisely because it was the first—the moment when the
There are not wanting other passages of a similar kind in our Lord’s discourses; for example, Matthew 16:28, “Verily I say unto you.There be some standing here who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom”—which, by no fair and natural exposition can be referred primarily to events and times altogether subsequent to the apostolic age; it must indicate what some of those then present lived to witness, viz., to the manifestation of Christ’s divine power after His ascension, when introducing the new dispensation, and formally removing the old. This is the only thing that can be regarded as properly falling within the terms of the description; and what, in, effect, was it but the first movements of the stone in Daniel’s vision, proceeding to displace the things opposed to it, and to take possession of the field? “The day of the Son of Man,” in Luke 17:24, must also be viewed as having its primary reference to the same period—since if referred to the final advent, the practical exhortations connected with it would not be applicable. And in Matthew 24:1-51, it is impossible altogether to separate between the immediate and the final coming. To a certain extent, the two are intermingled together, and the one is contemplated as the type and presage of the other. At the same time there can be no doubt, that the final return of the Saviour is often held forth in New Testament Scripture as the great object of hope and expectation to the church. It meets us at the very commencement of the Apostolic history, in the words addressed by the angels to those who witnessed the ascension: “This same Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner, as ye have seen Him go into heaven”—which manifestly gives promise of a return equally visible and glorious as the departure which had just taken place It is again, shortly afterwards, and in the most pointed manner, referred to by the apostle Peter in his second address to the people of Jerusalem, when representing it as necessary that the heavens should receive Christ only till the times of the restitution of all things. The same apostle in his second epistle describes believers not only as holding fast the promise of Christ’s coming, but even as called to hasten the day of its fulfilment; and St Paul characterises the followers of Jesus as those “who love his appearing.” It is needless to multiply examples. But such passages alternate with others, in which a coming is spoken of, which is neither terminal nor marked by any outward personal display. The history detailed in the book of Acts, though formally that of the apostles, appears more as the continuation of Christ’s personal agency, carried on through the instrumentality of the immediate actors, than of their own proper working. The wonders of Pentecost were exhibited as the evidence of Christ’s exaltation, and the fruit of His power. The miraculous healing of the poor cripple at the temple-gate, and the no less miraculous judgment on Ananias and Sapphira in the church, were alike viewed as the results of Christ’s outstretched hand; they happened because He (the Holy One whom the Father had anointed, Acts 4:27-30) was present with the power of His Spirit to do signs and wonders. When the apostles bore to other lands the gospel of salvation, and planted Christian churches, Christ Himself was declared to have come and preached peace by them (Ephesians 2:17). On Him as a present living Saviour, they laid the foundation of a living church (1 Corinthians 3:10-11). In the Book of Revelation, more especially, where the final coming is most conspicuously displayed, provisional and invisible comings are also most distinctly noticed. “Remember from whence thou art fallen,” is the charge to the church of Ephesus, “and repent and do the first works or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove the candlestick out of its place.” So also to others, “Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly;” “If thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.” Nay, he even speaks of himself to the church of Laodicea as standing at the door and knocking. In the subsequent parts of the Book, it is he who, as a “mighty angel,” is represented (Revelation 10:1-11) as coming down from heaven, and setting his feet upon the sea and dry land, as going presently to take permanent possession of both; and who again during the currency of the sixth vial, and in respect to the things then in progress, proclaims, “Behold I come as a thief; blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame” (Revelation 16:15).
II. It is only in the Book of Revelation that we have any formal or explicit account of what is known as the millennium, or the thousand years’ reign of Christ and His saints. The Old Testament prophets contain many delineations which point towards it, and which shall only then reach their proper accomplishment; but they are, for the most part, of a general description, and are couched under the veil of Old Testament relations. They speak, for example, of a time to come, when the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14); when the Lord shall be king over all the earth, and His name one (Zechariah 14:9); when men shall be blessed in Him, and all nations shall call Him blessed (Psalms 72:17); when the earth, having been smitten with the rod of His mouth, and the wicked slain with the breath of His lips, righteousness and peace shall universally prevail, and there shall be nothing to hurt or destroy in all God’s holy mountain (Isaiah 11:1-9). There are many such descriptions sufficient to show that the Old Testament prophets were enabled to descry, even from their comparatively distant watch-tower, the sure and final overthrow of every form of evil in the world, to be followed by a long and happy reign, during which the truth of God should be everywhere triumphant, and the blessings of salvation shed abroad. But beyond this, nothing can with certainty be anticipated from such descriptions. Those of Daniel, however, are somewhat more specific. In the first of them the kingdom, represented by the stone cut out without hands, the kingdom that was to be set up by the God of heaven, is described as “breaking in pieces and consuming all those kingdoms, and itself standing for ever”—apparently implying, not only the ultimate success and permanent establishment of the Divine kingdom, but along with this, and as somehow necessary to it, the formal abolition and disappearance of the kingdoms, which were contrary to its spirit, and had opposed its progress. So also in the other vision, that of Daniel 7:1-28, the prophet says he “beheld till the beast (the embodied representation of all the worldly kingdoms in their hostility to the kingdom of Messiah) was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame”—as if not merely the spirit that had animated it, but the very form and shape it had assumed, was to come to an end. And again, to the like effect in the explanation, “The judgment shall sit, and they (viz., the saints, the only party of an opposite kind mentioned in the preceding verse—they, therefore, having now received power and authority to judge) shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it to the end. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness (or power) of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.” If this language does not certainly betoken, it yet seems naturally to imply something more than the infusion of a better spirit into the kingdoms of the world; to indicate an actual remodelling of the state of things among men, and a fresh organization of the social fabric, such as would formally commit the administration of affairs into the hands of the Lord’s people, by making personal piety and worth the essential qualification for civil rule. The indications to this effect in Daniel are confirmed, and still more distinctly exhibited in the Apocalypse, which contains by much the most explicit revelation upon the subject. It is not simply, however, the account given of the thousand years’ reign (Revelation 20:1-6), that here calls for consideration; but the manner, also, in which this is introduced, and the antecedent condition of things, out of which it is represented as emerging. Prior to this millennial reign, and preparatory to it, the worldly power in all its successive phases and forms of working, is seen to have gone down. It had passed through every conceivable species of combination and culture, from the time of the old heathen monarchies, down to the subdivided, and at last professedly Christian kingdoms of more recent times. In the course of the changes it underwent, and as the result of the contact into which it came with Christianity, it had appeared for a season to die; the stroke as of a mortal wound seemed to have befallen it; but the former vigour again returned to it, and even more than the former danger to the cause and kingdom of Christ became connected with its operations. Instead of carrying into full and proper effect the spirit of the gospel, it had only imbibed as much of the Christian element as served to render its ministrations to the flesh more perilous for those who knew not the power of godliness; on which account its Christianity had proved but a mother of abominations, and its prophecy a spirit of carnal pride, and lying divination. All, therefore, had been judged and cast out; first, the whore, or the corrupt and faithless church, which even the worldly power came at length to repudiate; and then this power itself—the beast—with his ally, the false prophet, both had been adjudged to the lake of fire, or finally put down as irreconcilably opposed to the spirit and interests of the divine kingdom. The last trial had been given to the world in what might be called its native and self-contrived organizations, to see if its authorities would submit themselves aright to the truth of the gospel, and have their administration directed in accordance with the mind of Christ. But without the desired effect. The old enmity still lurked; the opposition to God and holiness only assumed new and more aggravated forms; and the kingdoms themselves, as well as the beast that represented their ungodliness, and the false prophet that, as it were, inspirited and justified the evil, were swept away into the blackness of darkness for ever.
It seems scarcely possible to understand all this of a simple diffusion of gospel light, and a general ascendency of the Christian element, under forms of social life and conditions of working, such as the world has hitherto exhibited. We might have conceived it would be so, if merely a corrupt and apostate Christianity, and a science and learning opposed to the gospel, were all that had been represented as going into perdition. But it is otherwise, when the beast also, and the kingdoms of the world are spoken of as sharing the same fate; for this seems to import, that the worldly powers, or forms of earthly government now and hitherto subsisting in the world, should pass away, as in their very nature incompatible with that higher state of things which is in prospect. They cannot, it would appear, be so divested of the bestial properties inherent in them, as to be capable of assuming the aspect of that kingdom, which had its proper representation in one possessing the likeness of a son of man. The transition from one to the other involves a shaking of earthly things to their foundations, that other things, which cannot be shaken—the things which are of God—may remain. And, indeed, let any one reflect on the invariable tendency of worldly power and dominion—how constantly it takes the direction of fleshly indulgence and selfish aggrandisement, becomes partial or exclusive in its operations, makes undue account of the adventitious and the temporal, while it leaves comparatively unheeded what is of primary and enduring moment; and this, not as in one age merely, or in some particular phases of political and social life, but in all: let any one reflect carefully on this, and say, whether worldly kingdoms, as such, can be conceived to perpetuate their formal existence, on the supposition of everything coming to bear the image of a living Christianity. It is one thing to overthrow evil in its more prevailing forms, but another thing to bring in and establish on a secure and permanent footing the contrary good. The progress of enlightenment, and the growing diffusion of divine truth, may of themselves expose the corruptions of a false religion, and render manifest the insufficiency or ungodliness of a mere earthly wisdom. But they may still prove wholly inadequate to the higher end of making righteousness everywhere and continuously triumphant; nay, must do so, unless the entire framework of society shall be cast anew, so as to lay open all the avenues of life for the good, and close them against the evil. Yet nothing less than this is the extent to which the change predicted shall reach. It is that the saints, not merely shall become more numerous and powerful than hitherto, but shall formally possess the kingdom under the whole heaven, and exercise its dominion. It is, that the god of this world shall be bound in his proper home, that men may not be deceived, and turned aside from the right by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. It is, therefore, that the spiritual shall carry it over the natural in the ordinary affairs of the world—that the grace and energy of holy principle, not hereditary place, or the adventitious distinctions of rank and fortune, shall come to bear general sway among men. And how this can be done without many organic changes being wrought in the social and political sphere, it is impossible to conceive. The more closely the account of the millennial reign is examined, the more does it confirm us in these impressions. Thus, while we read still of the nations of the earth (Revelation 20:3, Revelation 20:8), we hear no more of the old worldly kingdoms, nor of the beast and the false prophet. The existing and historical forms of the world’s power, and wisdom, and glory, have all disappeared. Then, the thrones which were set for judgment, and which unquestionably represented not only the actual, but also the ostensible, forces that are destined to regulate the affairs of that better age, are said to be for those who had suffered for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus—a description which, however understood in respect to the particular occupants, and of which we shall speak presently, undoubtedly denotes such as are distinguished for the most faithful and uncompromising adherence to the principles of the gospel. These it is who are then to appear before the world as its guides and rulers; by them somehow, and by them in the recognised character of the Lord’s people, the world is to be presided over and governed. Of them, as emphatically “blessed and holy,” it is written, that they are the “priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” Being, like Christ Himself, priests upon thrones, their kingly power and influence shall be based on ascertained holiness of character; all authority shall be held directly of God, and such things only shall be allowed to proceed as carry with them the divine sanction, and are fitted to promote the interests of righteousness. Happy period, truly, that shall witness the commencement of such an administration! But what a remodelling shall it not need to bring along with it of the political and social fabric! In the same direction, also, points the notice that is given of the prime agent and patron of evil. Satan, we are told, shall be bound during the thousand years’ reign in the bottomless pit, so that he shall be able to deceive the nations no more. Here, again, there is a mighty gulph to be bridged over for the world, and even for the church. Outside the professing church, the field is, in a manner, all his own; he is the spirit that works in the children of disobedience, and carries them captive at his will. But even within the church his temptations are plied with unwearied diligence, and lamentable success. Under the very eye of the apostles, and in spite both of their supernatural gifts, and their unceasing watchfulness, he found it possible to deceive many; and by dint of his subtle agency, not only has there been reared a huge system of antichristian idolatry, but in the case of myriads living amid the clearest light, a worthless profession is ever being substituted for the life and power of godliness. When that agency, therefore, with its fruits, shall have been abolished, there will inevitably be a revolution, previously unheard of, in the general order and constitution of things. Governments as they now exist, the policy and business of the world as at present conducted, even the management and direction of the church, which shall then have ceased to be distinct from the world, shall be antiquated; in many respects they shall have to take another aim, and work in another manner, than they have hitherto done; because they shall have to be adapted to a state of things in which no longer ignorance, delusion, and falsehood predominate, but the knowledge and love of the truth.
Such, then, being the view of the millennial state presented to us in the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse, taken in its plain and broad import, the question naturally arises, How is it to be brought about and maintained? What is indicated as to the means and agencies by which such extraordinary results are to be accomplished? To say nothing of the operations going before, and preparing the way for the introduction of this state—which have been discussed in a previous chapter—there are two leading features in the millennial vision itself, the two circumstances last noticed, which must be regarded as of the nature of means or agencies, and must be understood, if not themselves to possess, at least to involve in the way of inseparable accompaniment, whatever of vital influence or efficient working may be necessary.
(1.) The first instrumentality referred to is the binding of Satan: “And I saw an angel,” St John writes, “come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years; and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled; and after that he must be loosed a little season.” That this description is, in respect to the form, figurative, can admit of no doubt; for the actual performance of such material operations as those here connected with the key, the chain, and the seal, are obviously incompatible with the nature of the being to whom they relate. A spirit without bodily parts cannot possibly be the subject of such gross and mechanical treatment. But as a finite being, subject to the conditions of space and time, he may, doubtless, be confined within a definite region—confined as strictly as if he were actually chained in a prison-house, with the door sealed by the hand of Omnipotence to prevent the possibility of egress. And such may be the meaning here. The binding of Satan may denote a local and personal incarceration of the prince of darkness within the region designated by the bottomless pit; or it may indicate, that in respect to his cause and operations in the world, it shall be as if by forcible arrestment and location in such a region he were prevented from taking part in them. Which of these two senses should be preferred will depend upon the question, Whether the representations given us of Satan in this book, and in Scripture generally, are mainly of a personal or of a relative description? Whether they refer to Satan as an individual, or to the relation in which he stands through his workings to the church and the world? Now that it is the latter, and not the former, may be rendered evident by a few plain considerations.
It is in perfect accordance with the economy practised by Scripture in its supernatural communications, and the strictly moral design with which it makes them, that it should be very sparing in its intimations respecting the personal history of Satan, and should give prominence only to what concerns his power and interest among men. There is, therefore, an antecedent presumption that the knowledge imparted will be chiefly, if not exclusively, of a relative description. And when we look to the communications actually made, we soon perceive that unless they are contemplated in this light they stand in irreconcilable opposition to each other. Thus, at a certain period of our Lord’s ministry, He declared that He saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven; at another and later period, He speaks of Satan being judged and cast out (viz., from the world); while in the second chapter of the Apocalypse he is represented as having his seat at Smyrna, then, in chapter twelfth, as being, in consequence of our Lord’s perfect obedience unto death and ascension up on high, cast out of heaven, and brought down to the earth; yet again, in this twentieth chapter, as shut up in the bottomless pit; while in 2 Peter 2:4, the whole company of fallen angels, inclusive doubtless of their chieftain, are declared to have been, from the very period of their fall, thrust down to hell, and under chains of darkness reserved unto judgment. It is impossible, excepting on the most arbitrary and forced suppositions, to bring such statements into harmony, if they are understood absolutely, and applied simply to the personelle of Satan. But viewed as symbolical representations of his position and influence in relation to mankind, the whole becomes perfectly intelligible; and the several changes of position indicated in respect to height and depth, heaven and earth, confinement and release, only mark the different stages of the power he exercises, and the cause he maintains in the world.
Such, on a still farther account, must be the view we adopt of the description given of Satan in the vision before us. In it, as in the descriptions generally of this book, a symbolical element predominates. The characters delineated in them all are representative, rather than individual and personal; and Satan is no more to be considered apart from the legions of darkness, and the instruments of evil generally, than the beast from its different embodiments in the worldly kingdoms, or the woman and the whore from the parties they respectively symbolized. Satan, therefore, comes into view here simply as the representative of the devilish power and agencies in the world; and the disposition often shown by writers on the Apocalypse, to consider the binding of Satan in a strictly personal light, is but another example of the intermingling of the literal with the symbolical, which has so greatly retarded the proper understanding of the prophetical Scriptures.
Taking, then, the description of Satan’s being bound with chains, and shut into the bottomless pit, in a relative sense, we have in it a symbolical representation of the utterly prostrate condition to which at and during the millennium his interest in the world shall be reduced. It goes down, as it were, to the lowest hell. At first the adversary had appeared altogether in the ascendant; his dwelling seemed to be in heavenly places—such commanding sway had he obtained over the minds of men and the affairs of time. He is compelled to stoop, however, from his lofty elevation by the accomplishment of our redemption, and the ascension of the Son of Man to the right hand of the Father. But though thenceforth crippled in his power, and reduced to a lower sphere, he still wields a mighty influence, and sustains a vast dominion in the world. He does so partly by giving a new and more Christian-like form to the beastly power of the world, and partly by the corruption of the church through the formation of the great apostacy. Here again, however, he is destined to another downfal. The building he has laboured with such power and dexterity to raise, at length gives way under the advancement of truth and righteousness. The judgment of heaven alights on its different parts—Babylon, or the corrupt church, first going into perdition, then in close succession the beast and the false prophet. One abyss receives them all; and with their descent thither, the adversary has his dominion overthrown also upon the earth, and is consigned as to a miserable and inactive bondage in the nether world. In each stage of the downward history all is at once symbolical and relative, and is consequently framed according to the appearances of things. At every step in the process we must explain, it was as if Satan were in such a position, as if now he were occupying such a sphere. And hence in what respects the last stage, his place during the thousand years’ reign, it is the comparative, rather than the absolute annihilation, of his power and influence that must be understood. His cause on the earth shall be gone. He shall no longer have a distinct party to represent him, or a fitting agency to ply his devices and prosecute his designs. It will be as if he had altogether lost his influence among the generations of mankind, though, since men shall still be in the flesh, and death shall still work, and a liability shall still exist to deception and apostacy, his connection with the world cannot be wholly destroyed. It will survive, but only—as the cause of God in the past times of the world’s corruption—in a mystery. From what has been said of the nature of the representation before us, it follows that the binding of Satan, when viewed in respect to millennial means and agencies, is much more of a negative than of a positive nature. It will appear in the withdrawal of manifold temptations to evil, and the cessation of plans and operations, which had for their object the encouragement of ungodliness and crime. But that very cessation and withdrawal must itself be a result. It will be the supplanting of falsehood by the prevalence of truth; the abolition of darkness by the diffusion of light; the removal of what is in itself evil, or tends to evil, by the love and practice of what is pure and lovely, and of good report. The kingdom of Satan, it must be remembered, belongs not to the physical but to the moral sphere. The foundation on which it rests is sin; and wherever the occasions and inducements to sin are resisted, there also the devil is worsted—he plies in vain his machinations, his weapons of war have perished. But to render such a resistance general in the world, there will necessarily be required a direct and powerful agency of good. There must be influences from above, and, through these, states of mind, social habits, and arrangements, brought into play, which shall on every hand counterwork the wiles of Satan, and give effect to the pure and beneficent spirit of the gospel of Christ.
(2.) It is in the other feature of the description that we are to look for these more direct and positive agencies, by which the comparative perfection of the millennial state is to be secured. This, though in itself one, has a double representation in the vision. In the first instance it is described as a judging and reigning with Christ; while afterwards it is designated the first resurrection; the one aspect, however, being involved in the other, and only rendering more prominent what had been previously implied. “And I saw thrones,” so the description runs in regard to the first aspect, “and they sat upon them; and [I saw] the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness (testimony) of Jesus, and for the word of God; and such as had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” Now, that they are said to have lived and reigned, is obviously as much as that they lived again in order to reign. It implies their previous death, and their death from circumstances the very opposite of those now associated with their state—because they had not power to reign, nor even to preserve themselves in life. The description, therefore, is plainly that of a martyr-company. It is so throughout, in the latter part as well as the first; for the whole of the parties mentioned are represented as now living and reigning, in contrast to a previous time, when they had found it impracticable alike to live and to reign. But it becomes conclusively certain, and, indeed, must cease with all fair and sober interpreters to be a disputable point, when the description here is taken in connection with earlier passages, which it merely resumes, in order to shew the reverse of the picture that had been previously exhibited. The first of those passages is Revelation 6:9-11, where it is said, at the opening of the fifth seal, that there appeared “under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and the testimony which they held,”—manifestly the first company indicated in this millennial vision, who are said to have been beheaded, or slain, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. And in answer to the cry for judgment raised by those slain witnesses, it was intimated, that “they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed, as they were, should be fulfilled.” This is not less plainly the other company, who were to suffer in the later stages of the beastly power’s opposition to the cause of God, and whose case is more fully represented in subsequent portions of the Book. We find it in Revelation 13:15, where it is written of those who would not receive the mark of the beast, nor worship his image, that power was given to the second beast to kill them; and again in Revelation 17:6, where Babylon, the antichristian power of later times, more peculiarly embodied in the papacy, is described as being even drunk with the blood of the saints, and of the martyrs of Jesus. Referring now to these previous delineations, and embracing the whole line of confessors and martyrs, the vision given to the Apocalyptist of the occupants of the millennial thrones includes such as had not worshipped the beast, nor had received his mark, together with those who, at an earlier period, had been beheaded for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus. So that the description tells simply of the confessors and martyrs living anew, and, instead of dying as formerly for the cause of Christ, reigning with Him over a world at last brought into subjection to the truth of God.
There is another point, however, in this view of the description, which is still more decisive against it; namely, its contrariety to the general style of the representations of this Book, and in particular to that of the earlier portions referred to in the very terms of the description. In unison with the ecstatic condition of the prophet, and the mode of revelation, which was by vision, the scenes are throughout ideal as to the form they assume; and the characters that appear in them are in consequence described symbolically and representatively, not individually and personally. Thus the royal and conquering hero in the first seal is not the personal Saviour, but the cause and people that have Him for their living head; it is personified Christianity in all its compass and completeness. In like manner, the woman in the twelfth chapter is not properly or directly the Virgin Mary, as is plain from the woman’s seed being used as a comprehensive term for the whole of the elect church; it is this church itself which can only at most be regarded as having for the moment found a concentrated representation in the mother of Jesus. That the same holds of the vision in the fifth seal respecting the souls under the altar seems so manifest, that it is difficult to understand how it should ever have been contemplated otherwise. Their position alone as seen under the altar is conclusive of the sense in which it is to be taken; it shews the description to be that entirely of an ideal scene, in which the animal souls (corresponding to the life-blood of the ancient victims) of the martyred witnesses appeared in the place of sacrifice, their righteous blood that had been poured out there crying to heaven for vengeance. It is quite frivolous, therefore, to insist upon the term souls being often used to denote persons; no one doubts that it is; but the question is, can it be so taken here? In the midst of a scenic and symbolic representation, in which certainly it is not a literal altar, nor a literal cry for judgment, nor literal robes of glory that are spoken of, are the souls, that form the centre of the whole, to be understood in the literal and personal sense? They manifestly cannot be so understood without arbitrarily interchanging the literal with the symbolical, and destroying all certainty of interpretation. The souls seen in the ideal region under the altar simply represent those, who during the struggling and depressed period of Christ’s kingdom had to bear reproach and suffering unto death on account of it. And so, again, here, the souls once sacrificed and slain, but now living and enthroned represent the party that had been persecuted unto blood, risen at length to the dominion, not only possessed of fresh life, but invested with kingly power and authority. Should it be asked, whether the party so represented must not, however, be viewed as composed of the same individuals? We reply, that the question here is not properly of individuals, but of a collective body, and of a continuous history. It might as well be asked, whether the witnesses in Revelation 11:1-19, who represent the church during the whole period of her earnest contending for the truth of the gospel, were the same at the close as at the beginning? Or, whether the beast was the same in the later forms and manifestations of the worldly power as in the earlier? Or, whether the whore was the same, when she received her doom, as when she entered on her career of backsliding and apostacy? In all cases of this description there is, and must be, a continuity in the imagery employed; the future as to its essential elements must be identified with the past, in order to show that it is the same cause which is proceeding, the same interests that are involved. And precisely as here the once beheaded souls are seen rising to life and reigning, so in earlier and closely related visions the two witnesses appear as first slain, then coming to life again and ascending to heaven, and the holy apostles and prophets are called to rejoice over Babylon, as being avenged in her destruction (Revelation 18:20), although they lived before the apostacy represented by Babylon had even assumed a formal existence in the world.
We are compelled, therefore, by a regard to the scenic and symbolic character of the representations in the Apocalypse, and by the necessity of avoiding what would otherwise war with the great principles of the Gospel, to take the souls here described as passing from the death of martyrdom to the possession of thrones, not in an individual, but in an ideal and representative sense. In their position and aspect, as formerly seen by the apostle, they formed a fitting and impressive image of the church and cause of Christ, when struggling for existence and striving unto blood for the testimony they held; now, they not less fitly image the same church and cause everywhere triumphant, appearing, as they do, not under the rod of oppression, but upon thrones of judgment, not as sheep for the slaughter, but holding at command the sovereignty and dominion of the world. It is simply to mark the contrast in its full extent, that the description in the Apocalypse takes the form of the martyred host rising to life and glory. In Daniel, on the other hand, where the same representation in substance is given, but where it assumes a more general and outward form—the form of a contest for dominion between the kingdoms of earth and the kingdom of heaven, the issue of the contest naturally presents itself under the image of the judged becoming the judges, or of the saints possessing the kingdom, and exercising the dominion under the whole heaven. These saints in Daniel are no other than the martyrs in the Apocalypse; and it is only from the demands of the symbolical representations in the two places respectively, that a diversity in the form to that limited extent prevails. But if such be the true interpretation of this part of the vision, why, it may still be asked, should such emphasis be laid on the scene described as a resurrection? “They lived and reigned with Christ,” it is said of the souls, “a thousand years; but the rest of the dead lived not again, until the thousand years were finished. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ; and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” Why designate the event referred to so explicitly and repeatedly as not only a resurrection, but the first resurrection, and distinguish between the dead then raised and the rest of the dead, who are not to be raised till the close of the millennial era, if the description is not to be understood of definite individuals, but symbolically of the representatives of Christ’s cause and kingdom among men? Simply, we answer, to mark the greatness of the moral resuscitation that is to take place, the mighty and permanent impression it is to make upon the world, and the near approach that is to be effected by it toward the final issues of the kingdom. In these respects it will be immeasurably superior to everything that has been known or experienced within the sphere of the earthly life. In describing it the prophet must borrow his imagery from the higher life to come: it is the first resurrection, because it seemed to his illuminated eye to partake more of the immortal vigour and bloom of the resurrection-state, than of the sickliness and languor which have hitherto characterized the church on earth. Such glowing delineations of the nearer future, by the characteristics of the higher and more remote, are not unknown in prophecy. The prophet Ezekiel, when foretelling what relatively occupies the same place in his predictions with the scene before us, finds nothing suitable but the coming resurrection; it is under this image, wrought out after his peculiar fashion into manifold details, that he pourtrays the resuscitation that was to come upon his peeled and scattered countrymen.
Viewed thus, the language of the vision has its perfect justification, both in the nature of the things described and in the usage of prophecy. And were it not for the mistaken realism, which is ever forcing itself in upon even the better class of interpreters, and disturbing the harmony of the Divine symbolism, no material difficulty would be found in what remains of the description. Let it be only kept steadily in view, that in the apostle’s account of what he saw and heard in the visions of God, we have an ideal delineation of the great and heart-stirring reality just described—such a delineation as might convey to the church beforehand, the most correct and vivid notion of its character; and it will readily be perceived, why he should pronounce those peculiarly blessed and holy, who should have part in the first resurrection, and should also represent the rest of the dead as not living till the thousand years were finished. The change is to be so great and deep—there is to be such an inwardness and strength in the spiritual life of the millennial era, that not only a resurrection, but a resurrection of the most faithful and devoted of Christ’s followers seemed necessary to characterise the event. It should be as if the flower alone of the church, her noblest exemplifications of holy zeal and self-sacrificing love had come to life again, and entered on their immortal career. Nothing any longer should appear of the lukewarm, who had hung midway between flesh and spirit, Christ and the world, and in times of temptation had ever been ready to fall away; far less of those who had openly espoused the cause of ungodliness, and soiled their garments in the pollutions of the world. At the millennial era there shall be no resurrection of such mongrel characters—none, at least, till the period commenced by that era shall be drawing to its close. Then the other dead shall have their representation also; and the diversities that have appeared in the past shall be found embodied anew in the lives and actions of professing Christians. Not so, however, during the millennium itself. Then there shall be only life in its fullest vigour and efflorescence; and the church shall present the aspect of a body fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners. Hence the eulogium, “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power:” that is, they shall be all visibly of the right stamp—not like men standing on slippery places, and leaving it doubtful, whether heaven or hell might at length come to be their portion; no, but men so sincere in heart, so consistent in behaviour, so clearly and transparently Christian, that no room shall be left for doubt in regard either to their blessed condition, or their glorious destiny.
III. Having now considered what is written of the thousand years’ reign, we return to the question, in what relation does it stand to the coming of the Lord? Of much that has been advanced upon this question, it is not our intention to take any notice; being persuaded that a multitude of things have been pressed into the field from a misapprehension of the proper nature and province of prophecy, and from a desire to extract from it an amount of light respecting the precise form and lineaments of the future, which it was never intended to give. If in the first part of our inquiry we have not succeeded in showing the impropriety of such a treatment of prophecy; and if the proofs which have subsequently been exhibited of the erroneous and contradictory results, to which it inevitably leads, have failed to produce conviction, nothing that could be said now on this particular phase of the prophetic future could be of any avail. But from what has been already stated respecting the millennium itself, as well as from the kind of providences which must be necessary to bring it into accomplishment, there can be no doubt that it must be in a very special manner connected with the power and presence of the Lord. The apostles spake of Him as coming and being present, when the gospel through their instrumentality and the working of God’s providence took effect in particular places, and when the kingdom of God was transferred from Jewish to Gentile soil. But the operations by which such things were accomplished, could not have afforded nearly such marked indications of His presence, or such proofs of His controlling agency and power, as must appear in the world-wide movements and changes of which we have been treating. The subversion of antichristian falsehood and domination, the bringing to nought of the world’s power and wisdom, the abolition of all that in the social and political condition of things is opposed to truth and justice, and, along with these, the formal elevation of the pious and God-fearing portion of mankind to the place of influence and authority, and the establishment through all lands of the pure and benign principles of the Gospel:—such things, when they take place, cannot but betoken a manifestation of the presence and coming of the Lord, far surpassing what has yet appeared in the past—if we except the period of His actual sojourn among men. Besides, when we take into account what human nature now is, and how much its instinctive cleaving to the dust, together with the veil that hides from its view the realities of a higher sphere, operates as a hindrance to the work of grace among men, and to the practical ascendency of the truth of God in the world, it cannot appear wonderful if there should be some nearer connection established in the millennial period between the two regions of the divine kingdom. Without speculating much concerning the possibilities of things, we can conceive a mode of administration not impracticable, which should bring into fuller realization than hitherto the word of our, Lord to Nathanael, “Hereafter ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man”—something whereby faith might become more like a living sense than it has ever been in any number of individuals, or for any length of time in the same individuals, during the past stages of the world’s history. This, we say, might not seem impracticable, and might even appear needful, when we think of the difficulties to be vanquished, and the resistance to be overcome, compared with the gigantic and blessed results, that for so long a period are to be in progress. Indeed, we can scarcely understand how such results can be effected, unless supports of some sort are furnished to faith, and an insight is given into the spiritual and divine beyond what has been the common privilege of believers since the present dispensation began. But whatever may be justly anticipated in this direction, it ought to be looked for, not so much, perhaps not at all, in connection with any objective or visible manifestation on the Lord’s part, but from subjective elevation on theirs. In so far as given, it will be the property of faith, not of sight, and will come as the effect of a more copious outpouring of the Spirit—a bestowal of grace so plentiful as to make gifts that have hitherto been rare comparatively common, and shall raise the recipients of them to such an elevation of soul, and such nearness of communion with heaven, that all who see them shall feel as if they saw the face of an angel. There is nothing in the constitution of the church of Christ, or in the prophetic word, to render such an enlargement of present grace and privilege improbable; much, indeed, to warrant and encourage the expectation of it. The more so, as it is plain that, entirely apart from the removal of external hindrances, or the supply of adventitious helps, there must be an operation of the Spirit of grace, of the most efficacious and persuasive kind, in order even to reconcile the world to the rule of the saints, or to give it practical effect. If there shall be power to make the people generally willing to obey, how much more of power—power to reach to the greater things of God—will be required for those who in such a time will be called to rule in the affairs of men, and ride on the high places of the earth! And if it shall be the grand reaping-time for the world in the Spirit’s work, of which till then the first-fruits only shall have been gathered, what must form the essential condition of its accomplishment so much as the nobler endowments of the Spirit, and His richer communications to the souls of men! But that the glorified Redeemer should openly manifest Himself to the world, and in the splendour of Divine Majesty should take visible possession of the throne—that what is known as distinctively the advent of the Son of Man in glory, for the purpose of winding up the affairs, and bringing in the final results of His dispensation—that this is to precede the commencement of the millennial reign, and constitute its more important and distinguishing feature, we can by no means admit; for it seems to us, in many respects, at variance with the clearest revelations given on the subject, and incompatible with the constitution and order of things that shall then be brought into existence. We shall only glance at some of the more leading points.
(1.) First of all, in the passage which beyond doubt contains the most explicit and detailed account of the millennium, this personal manifestation, and local residence of Christ on earth, is not mentioned. If it really were to have a place in the state of things then to exist, that place must unquestionably be a pre-eminent one; it should, one would imagine, have formed the prominent feature in the description. But it is not once distinctly named. The reign of Christ is implied, merely, as forming the substratum and background of that which His people are to exercise. But it is the reign of this people themselves—the thrones set for them to occupy—the royal priesthood they are to discharge—the high, blessed, and honourable condition they are to hold—these alone are the points which are prominently exhibited in the delineation. When the people of Christ are thus represented as possessing the kingdom, it must be because they are ostensibly to bear sway upon the earth; the reins of government are to be in their hands. Then, no doubt, as well as now, the position they occupy shall have its root in their connection with Christ; their rule, therefore, shall not be of an independent nature, but, as it is here described, a reigning with Christ, precisely as in their present state they live with Christ, and (spiritually) sit with Him in heavenly places. As regards outward appearance, however, it is they who in the millennium are to constitute the dominant parties, while in an after-stage, the really culminating period of the world’s history, when Christ is to appear, and shine forth in His glory, they fall comparatively into the back-ground, and it is He who takes the prominent place. Then by the excessive lustre of His throne, every other throne disappears; all power and authority, life and blessing, centre in Him, and diffuse their influence on every side (Revelation 20:11, Revelation 21:5, etc.)
(2.) A second argument against the visible manifestation and personal appearance of Christ at the millennium is derived from the account given in the Apocalypse of what is to precede and usher in the era. Its more immediate precursors are to be the execution of the doom of antichrist, the destruction of the beast and the false prophet, or the overthrow generally of the world’s organized power and wisdom. The final conquest of the kingdoms that formed the earthly forces and adherents of those hostile parties had been represented in Revelation 19:1-21 under the image of a royal rider on a white horse, going forth with his armies to bring the people under him. Such a rider cannot fail to suggest the thought of Christ; yet the representation is properly an ideal one, and exhibits the spirit rather than the exact form of the coming transactions. This is evident alone from the accompaniments of the chief personage—his white horse and splendid accoutrements—his band of faithful and devoted attendants—and, above all, the grand weapon employed in the conflict, the sharp sword going out of his mouth. This, we can have no doubt, is the word of truth, considered as a word of conviction and rebuke, wielded, however, as it ever is now, not by Christ directly and personally, but through the instrumentality of His faithful and devoted servants. Through them, therefore, as the immediate actors in the conflict, the victory is to be won. And so again in the overthrow of Babylon, or the destruction of the antichristian apostacy, so far from any visible and overpowering display of Christ’s divine glory being required to accomplish it, the kingdoms of the world themselves are represented as having a chief hand in the business, turning, as it is said, to hate the whore and to destroy her (Revelation 17:16). Their taking this part will by no means dissociate the event from Christ’s personal agency; it will still be His doing, and so, in 2 Thessalonians 2:8, it is expressly ascribed to the breath of His mouth and the brightness of His coming. But since even worldly kingdoms are to be actively employed in effecting it, the coming spoken of cannot be that of the final advent or any external manifestation of Christ’s power and glory. It must be such a coming as took place in Pentecostal times, and the overturning that followed, through heathenish intervention, of apostate Judaism; so that whether we look to the immediate precursors of the millennium, or to the distinctive features of the millennium itself, there seems nothing in the description that requires or properly admits of the manifested appearance and external glory of Christ.
(3.) Thirdly, The hypothesis of the final advent before the millennium assumes an incongruous mixture of the two states of humiliation and glory, such a mixture as seems incompatible with the great principles of the divine administration. Looking either to these principles themselves, or to the exemplification that has been given of them in the past, there seems to be a gulph fixed between the two conditions. The things belonging to a state of humiliation cannot, excepting in momentary periods and partial cases, intermingle with those belonging to the state of glory. The outward frame and constitution of the world is adapted to the present condition of its inhabitants; and if the one becomes essentially changed, the other must undergo a corresponding alteration. When Jesus entered on His state of glory, He could no longer dwell on earth and make Himself visible to men. Before this can fitly take place, the corruptible must have put on incorruption, the carnal be changed into the spiritual. Only when He comes to make all things new, and stamps them with the perfection of His divine work, will the world be prepared as the house of the glory of His kingdom.
(4.) Again, the special acts more immediately associated in Scripture with the period of the second advent belong to the age subsequent to the millennium. Among the acts referred to must be placed, in the first instance, those of the general resurrection and the final judgment,—both of which are here placed after the millennium, and described in the latter part of Revelation 20:1-15. It is as clear as language can make it, that by St John’s account these events are both posterior to the millennial age, and also peculiarly connected with the Lord’s manifested presence and glory; and all opinions which attempt to get rid of these conclusions must be assigned to the region of speculation, not to that of fair and unbiassed interpretation. The same order also is observed in the representations elsewhere found in Scripture. Another act of the same class is the solemnization of the bride’s marriage with the Lamb. This, in the Apocalypse, is placed subsequent to the millennium, subsequent even to the general judgment. It is only after the period of conflict is entirely closed, and the final awards have been dispensed, that the holy city (as the church is now called) appears descending out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband (Revelation 21:2). At an earlier stage, indeed, she is spoken of as having made herself ready, and the time for her marriage is even said to have come (Revelation 19:7). But the actual and formal realization of the espousals is only introduced afterwards, and the previous notice of preparation and readiness must be understood simply of the great relative advance made toward the consummation. So marked was this at the period referred to, that farther delay, in regard to the final issue, seemed needless; the union, so far as the existing church was concerned, might be consummated at once. Hence, when we look to the representations given of it in Scripture, we find the union spoken of as one that admits of a series of matrimonial solemnities. Even the first union of believers to Christ has sometimes the aspect of a marriage given to it (Romans 7:4; Ephesians 5:32; Isaiah 54:5). More commonly, however, the present relationship of the church to Christ is described as that of a bride to the bridegroom, contemplating the marriage-union as an event yet in prospect. But at the glorious epoch of the millennium the things that concern her seemed to take such a mighty rise—the number, the holiness, the power and influence of her members, appeared to mount so far above their former level, that the happy time for a consummation might already be said to have arrived. Yet, if the church should then seem ready, other things would not be so. The theatre of bliss would be by no means adequately prepared for the full manifestation of the sons of God, and their joint participation with Christ in the highest honours of the kingdom. For this there is required not only a church all glorious within, but a corresponding glory also without—a new heavens and a new earth. Sin, in every form, must be put down; the powers of evil must be driven from every department of nature and every sphere of life; the whole region of terrestrial things must again become very good; and then at length will the Lord dwell with men as at first, there being nothing any more to offend the eye of His holiness, or to draw forth the visitations of His displeasure. Then will He find it possible to treat His redeemed as His proper spouse, and maintain with them a free and blessed intercourse of love. But if so only then, a pre-millennial manifestation in glory, followed by His abiding and visible presence, cannot be justly looked for. On all these grounds the conclusion forces itself upon us, that whatever of spiritual elevation may be given to the Lord’s people during the millennium, and whatever indications may be afforded them of His own peculiar nearness and presiding agency, as still the restitution of all things shall not then have fully come, so it will not be the time for the unveiled manifestation of His presence, and His face-to-face communications with men on earth. This belongs to the period of final deliverance from evil, when every thing in the natural and the spiritual world shall be stamped with the glory of the new creation. And between the millennium and this ultimate period of blessing and glory, there lie, according to the representations of the Apocalypse, two great acts—the one forming the last phase of wickedness on the part of man, and the other the last phase of retributive justice, which shall be emphatically the judgment, on the part of God.
IV. The earlier of these great acts is presented in so abrupt and abbreviated a form, as necessarily to suggest a reference to some preceding revelation. “When the thousand years are expired,” it is said, “Satan shall be loosed out of his prison; and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters (literally, corners) of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city; and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” Were there not an earlier revelation, which this merely resumes and applies to post-millennial times, it would be inexplicable, that the extraordinary names of Gog and Magog should have been thus suddenly introduced upon the scene, without any thing to indicate why such names should have been chosen to designate the heads of so vast a confederacy, or what should have moved either them to undertake, or others to concur in it. It is singular, also, that in the description of their hostile movement, while they are said to come up over the breadth of the earth, and to compass the camp of the saints and the beloved city, no mention had previously been made of the saints having pitched that camp, or of their possessing such a city. These obvious blanks in the vision before us can only be accounted for by an implied reference to a fundamental passage, in which materials should be found to supply what is here defective, and which rendered more explicit statements unnecessary. That passage, we can have no doubt, is the prophecy contained in Ezekiel 38:1-23 and Ezekiel 39:1-29, which forms one of the most characteristic portions of Ezekiel’s writings. Having endeavoured to unfold its meaning in detail elsewhere,
They had been so long and so completely freed from these, that it had seemed needless to make any formal provision against their recurrence; and so, defenceless in regard to outward weapons of assault, and strong only in resources of spiritual life and blessing, it seemed to the enemies, who had been eyeing them with jealousy, and mustering their forces for an attack, as if they should fall an easy prey into their hands. 3. Then, thirdly, in respect to the enemies themselves, who thus thought and reasoned, they were, as might be inferred from what has now been said, hostile powers from the distance; powers that had hitherto lain, as it were, out of sight, and now for the first time were gathered from the most remote regions, and brought up in battle array by a powerful and enterprising leader. This leader is described under the ideal name of Gog, of the land of Magog, prince of Rosh, Mesech, and Tubal; and as having in his train, beside the people more immediately belonging to his own northern latitudes, the far-off Ethiopians and Libyans, on one side; and on the other, the Armenians, the Persians, and the Cimmerians of Crim Tartary. Even the nearest of these tribes was at a considerable distance from the land of lsrael, and some of them were in the very corners of the earth, alike remote from each other, and from the people of God. They were, therefore, the fit representatives of a hostile movement to be made from quarters morally at the greatest distance from the kingdom of God, and thence disposed to imagine, that by mere dint of carnal weapons and numerical force, they might carry it as by storm over the children of righteousness and peace. 4. Finally, the result proves them to be entirely wrong in their calculations; for as the assault was not provoked by any defection on the part of the Lord’s people, so they have Him for a shield of safety; with fire from heaven He consumes the adversaries, and causes it to be known, that now the right must prevail, that the meek and pure, not the violent and rapacious, must possess the earth, and dwell in it for ever.
Such are the main features of the prophecy, which, with certain characteristic differences, the divine Seer of the Apocalypse resumes and applies to the period immediately subsequent to the millennium. The differences are not such as materially to affect the nature of the vision, or the relative place and bearing of the things disclosed in it. In accordance with his more advanced position, and the deeper insight possessed by him into the spiritual world, the later prophet supplies at the outset a link that is omitted by the earlier—he connects all with the powerful agency of the prince of darkness. Satan at the commencement of the new period is loosed from his prison, and goes out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth; that is, fresh opportunity and a larger scope is, by some turn in the affairs of Providence, to be given him for plying his temptations and influencing the minds of unregenerate men. And though the parties whom his wiles succeed in stirring into rebellion are not here connected, as in Ezekiel, with any definite localities, and are represented, not as mustered and led by Gog, the prince of Magog, but as themselves collectively Gog and Magog (for the purpose, no doubt, of showing more clearly, that such names are to be understood in an ideal manner), yet the substance of the revelation entirely corresponds with that of Ezekiel. First, the time assigned for the fearful conflict is the remoter future—the closing stages of the present dispensation, after which nothing remains for the church but the final recompenses of blessing and glory. The mighty revival and spread of living godliness destined to characterize the latter days represented by the resurrection of the martyrs, and their thousand years’ reign among men, corresponding to the resurrection-scene in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 37:1-28), with the long period of holy peace and prosperity that was to follow; this has already, in the prospective outline of St John, come and fulfilled its course: and before the final extirpation of evil, room is afforded for but one more, and, as it were, a spasmodic effort of the adversary to regain his lost ascendency. The general condition, in like manner, of the cause and people of God, in the period preceding the hostile assault was evidently one of secure and tranquil enjoyment. So complete had been the ascendency of good, and so long the flow of outward peace and prosperity, that no thought of evil was likely to have entered the bosoms of men, or any outward munitions of defence and safety to have been provided against its possible occurrence. The followers of the Lamb have reigned for ages in their character as saints; by the moral weight of holy principle and works of righteousness, they have borne sway in the affairs of men; and, realising on this account their connection with the omnipotent grace, and sure guardianship of Heaven, they could scarcely fail to discard from their minds all care for other means of protection. But carnal minds, if any such still existed, must be expected to judge otherwise; to their view the spiritual rule of saints, simply because trusting so much to divine supports, and intent mainly on the employment of moral agencies, could not but appear to be deficient in solid strength; and this, coupled with the joyous security, and benignant satisfaction everywhere diffused, might well be conceived enough to prompt the idea of a gigantic effort to overturn the dynasty of righteousness. The more naturally might such a project come to be entertained, if it should happen, that in process of time the power of godliness to some extent should fall into decay, and the love of many wax cold. But this is precisely what we have already seen to be indicated in Revelation 20:5, by “the rest of the dead living not again till the thousand years were finished.
V. In the midst of this general rout and confusion of the adversary and his host, or immediately subsequent to it, there comes the end of all things, as regards the present frame and constitution of the world, and the fixing of the final destinies of all who have had part in its eventful history. This is introduced in the visions of the apostolic seer, by the appearance of a great white throne (emblem of the pure and glorious majesty of the divine Judge), and one sitting on it who is identified with God (Revelation 20:11-12). Before the face of this Eternal King, earth and heaven (the old frame and constitution of things) were seen to flee away, and the dead, small and great, stood before God to be judged by their deeds. The process of judgment is described by the books being opened, those, namely, which were viewed as containing the record of all they had done and said during their lives on earth, and along with these memorials of good and evil in the past, the book of life, wherein are recorded the names of the elect from the foundation of the world. Of the latter class, none can be allowed to perish with the wicked; they shall all have their portion in the New Jerusalem, however diversified may be their respective lots there; since these must be determined by the other things concerning them that may be found written in the books. It is impossible to understand all this of any thing short of an absolute universality: the language of symbols can have no definite meaning, if such descriptions are not to be understood as comprising the entire race of humanity in the whole of its two grand divisions of the saved and the lost. And the more so, as (in Revelation 20:13) every region and receptacle of the dead are said to be ransacked for the purpose of having the assize complete: not the earth merely, or the world in its more conspicuous and settled parts which did not need to be particularly named, but the sea also which is identified with whatever is deep, mysterious, turbulent, and death and hades themselves—the ideal lords and possessors of the departed—wherever their realms might extend—all now are compelled to resign their charge, that the judgment of God may proceed to the completion of its work. And when these ideal powers, death and hades, as well as those whose names were not found written in the book of life, are represented as being cast into the lake of fire, it is but a symbolical way of exhibiting the awful truth, that all the forces and abettors, the agents, and the results of sin shall be doomed to remediless destruction. The accursed thing with all belonging to it, the forms it has assumed, and the instruments it has wielded, shall go into the perdition, which, from the first, it was destined to inherit.
VI. The old framework of nature, with the noxious powers and elements which had so long held possession of it, being thus brought to an end, the closing scene of the book unfolds to us the new and better constitution which is to take its place. The description can only be regarded as presenting an imperfect image, derived, like all the preceding delineations in the book, from such things in the past or present, as seemed best fitted to shadow forth the coming reality. If we should seek to ascertain from it the precise form and lineaments of the church’s final condition and destiny, we shall turn it to a purpose it was palpably not intended to serve. It tells only—and relating, as it does, to things which immeasurably surpass all that eye has yet seen, or ear heard, it could tell only—of the relative nature and properties of what is to be hereafter. By a manifold variety of allusion and figure it exhibits this to our view as both negatively and positively perfect, alike freed from all evil, and possessed of whatever is desirable, glorious, and good. The sea, which has so often served as an image of the world’s restless turmoil and disorder, is no longer seen; nor the temple, which by its own peculiar sanctity witnessed to the general pollution of the world around; night also disappears (emblem of the world’s guilt and shame), and with it every thing that works abomination and causes defilement: and as the natural result of this stainless purity, there are found no tears, no sorrow, no pain, no death, for, in such respects, “the former things have passed away.” Then, with this removal of all the forms and occasions of evil, there is not less prominently marked, under signs and emblems of an opposite description, the appearance of whatever might be needed to constitute a state of consummate happiness and glory. There is the radiance of a perennial lustre, the very light and glory of God, investing the whole region of the church’s existence. Then the church herself, seen descending from heaven in loveliest form and most comely attire, as a bride prepared for her marriage-union with the Lamb; or-again, appearing as a city, perfect in its proportions and structure, paved with gold, built and garnished with the most precious gems—a city watered with the river of life, issuing clear as crystal from the throne of God, and bearing on its banks the tree of life, the blessed medicine of immortality; and, to crown all, the living God, as now thoroughly reconciled to the work of His hands, and beholding in all around the reflection of His own perfect nature, having His tabernacle with men, and discovering everywhere the signs of His gracious presence and working.
What more is needed to complete the picture, and heighten the ideal of the coming good? It is still, indeed, but an ideal, framed out of such materials in the past and present as imagination has here at its command. It necessarily leaves undefined the exact shape and features of the glorious future. In that respect we must still say, “We know not what we shall be;” but we know at the same time, we cannot doubt, from what is here written, that all shall be very good, and that as God is the end as well as the beginning of all, so the end shall be not only like the beginning, perfect in its kind, but in that kind unspeakably higher and better—not nature rectified merely, but nature refined and glorified.