PARTIVThe Foes of the KingdomPARTIVThe Foes of the KingdomWithchapterxiianother section of the Apocalypse begins. Two great truths relating to the kingdom of Christ have been discussed—the fundamental principle of mediatorial sovereignty upon which it is based, and the instruments, providence and the written word, by which it is advanced. It follows very naturally and logically that the antagonists by whom the kingdom is opposed should also be disclosed to us. Out of his abundant grace and in tender compassion for human ignorance, God has made known to us, through this marvelous book, the adversaries with whom we must contend before the kingdom can attain its consummation in our hearts or in the world at large.While no part of the Revelation is easy of interpretation, or can be made intelligible without very careful study both of itself and of the whole Bible, there has been added to this part of it the embarrassment of theodium theologicum. Bitter controversial strifes have raged around the interpretationof it and have raised a cloud of prejudices, through which the truth has been sometimes dimly seen. From all such prejudices we must free ourselves. We are approaching holy ground, and it behooves us to put off our shoes, that nothing of human invention may intervene between our naked feet and the sacred floor of God’s temple.We need this caution the more because from the nature of the case the interpretation of this part carries us more or less into the field of history. The foes of the kingdom of Christ are visible foes, as well as invisible. The contest is not only for the individual man, but for the race. The commission given to the Church is, “Go, preach my Gospel to every creature;” and the keynote of the song of triumph with which the last part closed was, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.”There is, therefore, a tendency to confine the interpretation to the field of history, to direct the attention to large and collective bodies of men, either world powers or religious societies, or to those historical events and cycles of events which have apparentlychanged the currents of the ages, and to insist that in these the fulfillment of the prophecy lies.But history itself is only the record of individuals. We delude ourselves when we fancy that by association anything is created. That mystical something which is imagined to be in collective bodies more than in the individuals that compose them is a mere figment of the brain, and to discuss it is simply to revive the barren conceits of the schoolmen. A Church is only “a congregation of believing men;” a State is a coöperative association of individuals, not a corporation; and neither one has any powers or forces other than those which exist in the individual members. Man is both the microcosm and the macrocosm.The chief value of the inspired book which we are now studying lies in the fact that it discloses to us those forces, spiritual and otherwise, the conflict between which makes up the life history of each individual of mankind. It is a chart meant for every navigator of this boundless ocean of human existence. Its truths will be as precious and important to the last man on this globe as they are to us. The reefs andbreakers it describes are not perils past which any age can sail and then look back upon as things done with, but dangers which beset every voyager. It is true that in the history of large bodies of men, whether secular or religious in their character—in the temptations, declension, growth, and triumph of nations and Churches—illustrations of its truths and fulfillments of its predictions will be found. But these, we must insist, are merely illustrations. Long as the world shall last the♦Apocalypse will prove itself to be a part of God’s boon of revelation, in that each follower of Christ shall find it of inestimable value for his own private guidance, inspiration, and study.♦“Apocalyse” replaced with “Apocalypse”Looking by the light of God’s lamp through the ages to come, John was allowed to foresee the successful completion of the life work and plans of Jesus the Saviour. He who began both his gospel and his great epistle with “the beginning” also follows the course of the drama of redemption to its final “amen.” The saint who, leaning on the bosom of Jesus, looked up to him as the Author of his faith was also permitted to fall at his majestic feet and worship him as its Finisher. And, from personal communionwith and contemplation of him as the Son of man, he rose to the grander conception of him as the Christ, the Word of God, King of kings, and Lord of lords. He was taught, also, that the progress through which his own conceptions of the Son of God had passed was but a type and example of that which shall take place in time on the field of the world and in the hearts of mankind. The cross upon which Jesus of Nazareth suffered was, indeed, a throne from which he ascended to the crown of the universe. But John, too, saw that ere that final consummation can be reached there are foes to be encountered, hindrances to be removed, antagonists to be overthrown. A great and effectual door is opened unto us, but there are many adversaries. To the consideration of these he therefore now calls our attention:1.The Dragon, or Satan.—The first of the adversaries with whom the kingdom of Christ has to dispute supremacy is the devil, the archfiend and enemy of God and man.That Satan, the evil one, is referred to in the description of the great red dragon having seven heads, ten horns, and seven diadems seems an interpretation so natural thatit is hardly worth while to seek for far-fetched meanings when so plausible an explanation lies near at hand. The ten horns (Zechariah saw but four—Zechariahi, 18) are the instruments with which he seeks to scatter and destroy the sheep of God. The seven heads with diadems represent the pride and haughtiness of spirit in which he boasts that the power and glory of all kingdoms have been delivered to him and that he gives them to whom he will. It is a struggle for life and death between him and the Christ. If Paul, the man of affairs, with his practical conception of things in their concrete relations, says, “Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Revised Version), much more strongly does John, with his intuition of abstract principles, recognize and emphasize the power and working of the dark spirit whose names are Satan and “destroyer.” No writer of the New Testament speaks oftener or more clearly of the evil spirit than does John. In vivid imagery and with graphic condensation he sums upthe history of the kingdom of darkness, the long record of Satan’s undying antagonism to the kingdom of Christ.The woman arrayed “with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” (see Genesisxxxvii, 9), represents the Church collectively and in its most general expression; primarily, the Jewish Church, inasmuch as Christianity had just begun its mission; but not confined thereto. Against the Church, against every individual of it, this murderer and liar from the beginning wages relentless warfare. His is the power behind all other antagonisms. To devour the child of the woman in the hour of its birth, to destroy humanity itself if he can, seems to be the aim of his being. Not a soul is now born into the kingdom of Christ by regenerating grace but Satan is there to crush the newly-given life, if possible, in its inception.When the first gospel of salvation and victory was given to Eve, “Thy seed shall bruise the serpent’s head,” Satan began his machinations to defeat the prophecy, even though he knew that he could do no more than bruise the heel of the promised seed.When the promise given to Abraham of a posterity countless as the stars of heaven was about to receive its fulfillment in the extraordinary fertility of the sons of Jacob in Egypt, it was Satan who inspired Pharaoh to issue the cruel edict commanding the death of every Hebrew male child.When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea it was the same dragon that urged Herod to his mad purpose of slaying every young child throughout its coasts. “This is the heir; let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.”And it is against this wily foe, “the prince of the power of the air,” “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” that we all have continually to struggle.For protection against such an adversary there is certainly need of divine aid. And that help has never been withheld. “There were given to the woman the two wings of a great eagle.” Is not this an echo of Exodusxix, 4, “I bare you on eagles’ wings,” and also of Psalmxci, 4, “And under his wings shalt thou trust”? And in addition to this we are told that God prepared “a place” in the wilderness where the woman might fly and be nourished. Does not this refer toPalestine, that quiet, secluded land, nigh the great highways of the world and yet aloof from them, where in comparative isolation Israel might develop her own resources and grow in strength until she should be ready for her broader mission? If the purpose of the divine Being fell short of full realization the fault was not his, but hers, through her lust to be like the surrounding nations.The numbers, too, representing the period of this seclusion, “twelve hundred and sixty days,” and “a time, times, and half a time,” are forms of three and a half, which, as has been said in the Introduction, symbolizes Judaism, or any cycle with a definite purpose which is, however, only a half period.And further confirmation of the reference to the Church of Israel is found in the allusion to the archangel Michael, who is always represented in the Scriptures as sustaining some special relation to Israel (Danielx, 21;xii, 1).Yet, mighty as Satan is and venomous as is his hostility, the believer is endowed with weapons of offense and defense still more potent. “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony”(or “witness” with reference, doubtless, to the testimony of the two witnesses of the preceding chapter). In other words, the cross of Christ and the word of God are the conquering weapons with which believers win the victory over Satan. The Lord Jesus had most plainly foretold the secret of victory in the hearing of John when he had said, “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” And, doubtless, these words came with fullness and force to the memory of the apostle when he heard the “loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down.”Not yet, however, is Satan ready to cease his efforts to destroy. He changes the field of conflict, but does not relinquish the malice of his assault. If he cannot in heaven, that is, the Church, countervail the kingdom of Christ, he will attempt it in the earth, on the field of secular life. “The serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood, after the woman: that he mightcause her to be carried away of the flood.” There is, perhaps, a reference here to Isaiahlix, 19: “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.” Looking back at that chapter, we shall find that the flood spoken of means an unusual increase of social disorders and crimes. That is most probably the meaning here. Satan is the foe alike of God and man. His enmity is directed as much against all order and morality as against goodness and righteousness. He is that “lawless one” of whom Paul speaks in 2 Thessaloniansii, 3 (Revised Version). If he were allowed to carry out his will he would subvert all government, spiritual or secular. But, says the apostle and seer, “The earth helped the woman.” For its own protection and existence the State must execute laws, must preserve order, and must secure itself against anarchy and unbridled libertinism; and, in so far as it guards social morality, it fosters spiritual prosperity. In restraining crime and violence it must needs allow the kingdom of Christ opportunity to grow.Foiled thus again, Satan does not abandon the conflict, but resorts to other and morewily means to make war with the “remnant” of the woman’s seed “which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ;” and the history of these efforts must next engage our attention.2.The First Wild Beast, or the Spirit of Worldliness.—In the chapter of the Revelation which precedes the appearance of the beasts (Revelationxii, 12) the warning had been given, “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath.” We are now to witness the fulfillment of this warning. The apostle saw two wild beasts rise, one from the sea, the other from the land, both of them formidable foes and intense in their hostility to the kingdom of Christ. There can hardly be a question but that these are intended to represent the means by which Satan, thwarted in his direct assaults, endeavors to carry on his warfare. And just as Christ, in carrying forward his mediatorial kingdom, makes use of the two instrumentalities, providence and the written word, so also, in imitation of him, his fierce antagonist has his two emissaries and agents. We shall find as we study thispart of the Revelation that one of the most deceptive and dangerous arts which Satan employs is his manner of counterfeiting the form and aping the methods of Christ, in hope that he may thereby delude the unsuspecting or heedless. We ought, therefore, very carefully to note every feature, that we may be able to detect these dangerous incarnations of the spirit of evil, and thus escape his snares.The first wild beast of John’s vision rose from the sea—an expression which, when used symbolically, designates the secular or temporal world, in antithesis to the Church. His distinctive characteristics are intense pride, the possession of vast power, strong vitality enabling him to recover speedily from severe injuries, insatiable craving after homage and ability to secure it, outrageous blasphemy, and undisguised as well as unceasing hostility to Christ and his saints. It is a mooted question whether by this beast John meant to describe and foretell the coming of some individual person or some organization of men, secular or religious, State or Church; or whether the characteristics he portrays are intended to represent some principle of evil, always at work,mightier and more enduring than any organization of men, which manifests itself in various forms and at all times, but transcends all its manifestations, and against which, because it is one of Satan’s most successful means of antagonism, every Christian must keep perpetual watch.The latter of these hypotheses seems to be more in keeping with the cast of John’s strongly idealistic and abstract mind, and also with the purpose of the Apocalypse as intended for the edifying of believers. And furthermore, as the kingdom of God is not something that cometh “with observation,” so that men can say of it, “Lo here! or, lo there!” but is something “within” us, so its opponent is not to be sought in any particular organization or special event or single individual, but rather in some abstract principle, all the more dangerous because it exists separate and distinct from these.In his description of this wild beast John draws his data from the prophecy of Daniel; and a study of that book will aid in the elucidation of this. It is, indeed, true that in the mind of Daniel the antagonists and allies of God alike assumed the form of kingdoms,or world powers. But this resulted from the fact that his cast of mind was essentially concrete, and also because as a statesman and man of affairs, charged with the administration of finances and politics, accustomed to the handling of men in collective bodies and to deal with matters affecting their external relations, his conceptions of religion regarded rather its outward manifestations than its inward power. We are not, however, compelled to believe that John, while using the prophecies of Daniel as his basis, was limited to the conceptions of the older prophet. He had a better key to the hieroglyphics of the kingdom and could read their meaning more clearly. Behind the forces which play their part upon the world’s stage he could recognize the spiritual principles of which they were incarnations.The world power which loomed largest to the mind of Daniel, and whose hostility to the kingdom of Christ was most dreaded by him, was one that sprang up after the death and among the successors of Alexander the Great. That extraordinary captain and gifted statesman, the first ruler who grasped the conception of the essential unity of mankindand who strove to realize it by the fusion of races into one nation, left no one at his death capable of comprehending or executing his plans; and the empire that was formed by his ten generals was a heterogeneous one, possessing elements both of weakness and strength that were incapable of being welded into unity. Among the descendants and successors of these generals was Antiochus Epiphanes, whose hatred of Judaism amounted to real monomania, and whose insane purpose to exterminate utterly the customs, usages, religion, and even the existence of Judaism carried him to such extremes as to arouse a spirit of revolt which, under the guidance of the Maccabees, defeated his intent. In him the prophet Daniel foresaw the incarnation of all that is hostile to Christ and his kingdom.In the days of John the political sovereignty of the world was wielded by a still more formidable power, one that combined in itself the strength of all the four kingdoms of Daniel, uniting the lion, the bear, and the leopard with the added and imparted authority and power of the dragon. That power was the Roman Empire, between which and Christianity had already begunthe antagonism which was to leave its decisive and disastrous effects upon both.The policy of Rome toward conquered peoples and religions had not been one, customarily, of harsh severity; indeed, it had been marked in general by unusual liberality. Having so many gods in her own Pantheon, it has been said, the addition or subtraction of a few more or less was hardly worth consideration. But upon one thing Rome invariably and absolutely insisted—the preservation of public order. Her administration was one of strict, even stern, paternalism. The individual existed for the State, and had no rights but such as the State allowed. The central power did all the thinking; the subject had only to submit, whatever his personal wishes. Upon the emperor, as the embodiment of the State, devolved the onerous responsibility of securing and, if need were, of enforcing peaceful and lawful relations between men and men. Whenever therefore, the profession of any religion or the organization of any guild or association interfered with the prosperity of any branch of trade or commerce or manufacture, the emperor felt called upon to interpose, in order to redress the injurycaused or wrong suffered thereby. The more conscientious and upright the emperor, the more he felt the responsibility of administering the laws; and thus just and righteous rulers, like Trajan and Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, were more likely to enforce these rules of order, even to the point of persecution, than such men as Nero and Caligula and Domitian, upon whom moral considerations sat loosely.The early persecutions of Christians sprang out of this fact. There were things Christian men would not do. They would not eat meat sacrificed to idols; they would not attend the spectacles of the theater; they would not worship or own images; and, as the trades and professions that lived by these things suffered with the increase of Christians, complaint was made to the emperor, and the power of the State invoked in behalf of public order. The riot at Ephesus (Actsxix, 23–41) is a case in illustration.Very soon, however, the Roman authorities came to see that there was something back of Christian worship that differentiated it from other cults. There was a principle of individual liberty, a conviction of personalfreedom, an appreciation of unseen and divine realities which, if unchecked, threatened the paternalism and the emperor—the worship of the Cæsars and the continuance of the empire; and so Christians began to be persecuted simply because they were Christians. Thus began the antagonism that did not cease until the empire became nominally Christian, and the Church, striving after the universality of the empire, became worldly and paternal in its turn. This antagonism John clearly discerned, and reveals it in the Apocalypse.But we shall be astray if we conceive that the beast which the apostle saw symbolized only the Roman or any other empire. There is an evil principle which was in existence long before that empire was established, and has continued with unabating energy since its dissolution; of whose power earthly and worldly kingdoms are but manifestations; which Satan has employed in all ages as one of his most successful weapons; and whose deadly hostility to the Christian and the Church is implacable. It is the principle of worldliness, that spirit of the world against which the Bible so frequently and faithfully warns us.It is not easy to define worldliness. If it could be described exactly, and its bounds accurately meted, its danger would be greatly diminished. If we could point to the doing or abstaining from doing of specified things, or the using or refraining from using of any particular faculties, and say, “This is worldliness and this only,” how much easier it would be to avoid it! Worldliness is a principle, a spirit and temper of the soul. It can find a field for its exercise anywhere and everywhere, in things essentially good as well as in the essentially evil. Its intrinsic spirit lies in this—that it disengages men and things from their normal relation of dependence upon and subjection to God, and sets them up as rivals to him. It assumes to displace the Creator from his rightful sovereignty over thoughts and desires and affections and activities, and transfers allegiance to some created thing. It substitutes something temporal and earthly for God and gives to it the worship that belongs undividedly to him. It manifests itself, John tells us, in “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life.” This is the spirit of which the Bible speaks so plainly and forcibly in passageslike these: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you;” “The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be;” “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God;” “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” And every characteristic of the wild beast which John saw exhibits this spirit of worldliness. It, and it alone, exhausts the fullness of the description.Of this beast which John saw, one of the heads was, as it were, “wounded [or slain] to death”—the very words which were used in the description of the Lamb (Revelationv, 6), as if there were in this an attempted, although feeble, imitation of Christ. Worldliness, too, has its Calvaries and Gethsemanes; but they fall far short in measure and in purpose of the great sacrifice of the cross. They are compulsory, not self-chosen sacrifices; they are not redemptive and substitutional in their design, but retributive inflictions of divine justice; they involve but a part of the being, and are not, as wasChrist’s offering, the surrender of the whole self.Many such wounds has worldliness received. The serpent’s head has been bruised again and again by the seed of the woman. In the judgments which have come upon the world throughout the course of its history—in the deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the exodus from Egypt, the overthrow of Nineveh and Babylon, the fall of Jerusalem—its spirit has been rebuked, condemned, punished. Indeed, in all the dissolutions and decay of nature—in the fading of the grass, in the falling of the flower and of the leaf—the warning is being constantly given, “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” Most of all, in the cross of Christ has the world received its deadliest wound. But how soon is the wound healed, how quickly are the lessons of providence forgotten! and the tide of worldliness, stayed for a moment, resumes its volume and rapidity and carries its victims to their destruction.It is this power of recuperation which contributes to the might of worldliness and makes it the more dangerous. Success adds to its fascinations and multiplies its votaries.“All the world wondered after the beast” whose deadly wound was healed. In comparison with its triumphs the cross of Christ becomes a stumbling-block to some and foolishness to others, because of the paucity of its victories. And in worshiping the beast its followers are scarcely aware, or are oblivious to the fact, that they are worshiping the dragon himself; for Paul says, “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God.”Another striking and conspicuous characteristic of the first beast was his virulent blasphemy. Upon his heads were “the names of blasphemy.” The voices of his mouth were blasphemy. His fierce, ambitious purpose to displace God and usurp his throne—and this is what the Bible defines blasphemy to be—moved him to demand such homage as can be given rightly to God alone, and to set up his own tabernacle and name as competitors with God’s. Is not this descriptive of the spirit of worldliness? How exacting it is of the worship of its devotees! In place of the Creator, who is blessed for ever, it substitutes the creature. It enthrones nature in some one or other of its phases as the rival of the divineBeing. It will not admit the visible universe, with its laws, to be merely the vehicle through which God reveals himself and his thoughts, but demands for it equality of homage with its Maker. It does not claim for itself power to work miracles, and will not believe that any are possible. It does not base its authority upon any supernatural revelation, and denies that any is needful. Like Absalom, in the gates it whispers in every man’s ears, “O that I were made judge in the land!” and thus draws unwary souls into treason against their King. It arrogates to itself the right to the whole of man’s being—to all beauty and life, to all literature and art, to all recreation and enjoyment, to the exclusive and undivided use and administration of all earthly powers and faculties.And how ruthless and cruel this spirit of worldliness can be! Does any human soul, driven by dissatisfaction and heartache, seek to lift the veil and penetrate to the secret shrine of the universe, or to pierce the “rose mesh” of mystery that surrounds us and ascend to the divine Spirit above and beyond it, how quickly is the fascinating smile of the world turned to bitter scorn, and itssmooth flattery to remorseless persecution! With what haughtiness and assumption does it contend that, in everything relating to music and poetry, to the æsthetic arts, to finance and politics and social matters, the question of morals has no place and God and religion have no right to enter!To this beast, we are further informed, power, or authority, was given “to continue forty and two months.” This number, it has been previously said, is the symbol of an epoch which is limited and fractional, but which has a definite purpose pervading it.Throughout the whole period of Judaism this beast raged with all his ferocity against the Church of the Old Testament. And, although the wild beast next to be delineated was a more formidable adversary to religion than even he, yet the temptation to fall into the ways, and follow the practices, and to drop down to the religious level of the ungodly world of heathenism around constituted a peril to the Hebrew faith against which the prophets had need frequently to lift their voices. And how constant even now is the peril to the Christian Church and the Christian believer of fallinginto the worship of the same beast of worldliness, is so patent a truth that every man’s observation and experience are sufficient to prove it. The victims of worldliness are, indeed, many, and to resist sorely tries “the patience and the faith of the saints.” But its doom is sure and irretrievable, whether that doom shall come by the sword of God or by captivity. Its own methods of hostility shall be turned against itself.3.The Second Wild Beast, or the Spirit of False Prophetism.—In attempting to solve the mystery of the second wild beast which John saw we are confronted with a task much more serious than has as yet been presented to us. Not only is this antagonist of Christ a more formidable one than any hitherto encountered, but there seems an almost purposed obscurity and indistinctness about the description, as if to the seer himself the beast appeared in so vague and nebulous a form, or else was of such composite and heterogeneous character, as to be incapable of more exact delineation. The only way to reach the truth is to seek out such features of the description as may be regarded plain, and from them to advance to the more perplexing ones.It will be noticed, then, that the second beast rises not as the preceding from the sea, but from the earth; that is, from the Church, not in its ideal state, but in its actual condition, as the field of human activity and influence.Again, it is noticeable that, while in the description of the first beast the expression “it was given him” occurs again and again (much more conspicuously in the original than in the translation), in the case of the second one this expression is, in the main, although not in every instance, superseded by words suggesting active agency—“he doeth,” “he maketh,” “he causeth”—these being all various renderings of the same Greek word. This would seem to imply that, while the first beast is merely an emissary or instrument executing the will of another, the second differs from him in that he has, or assumes to have, some power of originating action, some causative agency, and that he regards himself as having independent authority. While, therefore, the results effected by both are the same (“He had power to give breath to the image of the beast”), those results are brought about in different ways.Another very important feature of the description is that, while the distinguishing characteristic of the first beast is blasphemy—an open and undisguised assumption of the prerogatives of God, with intense and avowed hostility to him—the properties of the second are duplicity, deception, and self-deceit—perversion of the truth rather than antagonism to it; and hypocrisy, if more insidious, is far deadlier than open opposition. He has the appearance of a lamb, while speaking as a dragon. He is said to work miracles, or at least is said to profess so to do, which the first beast did not. And he counterfeits the work of God, in that by a peculiar mark he stamps upon his followers his claim to them, as the divine Being affixes to his a seal in attestation of his ownership.One further remark may be made. Three times in the subsequent part of the Revelation (Revelationxvi, 13;xix, 20;xx, 10) these two adversaries of Christ are brought into juxtaposition, and in these instances it is the first beast alone who is designated by that name. The second beast has the synonym of “the false prophet.” The term seems to mark his superior power or craft;to the malice of a beast is added the higher intelligence of a man. The combination attests the formidable character of this wily antagonist.In this last-named feature lies a suggestion which may serve as a clew to the interpretation of the symbol and unveil its mystery. A false prophet can stand only in contrast with a true one. It will be needful, therefore, to discuss, somewhat in detail, the characteristic functions of the prophetical office as set forth in the Scriptures.“The usage of the word [prophet],” says Cremer,¹“is clear. It signifies one to whom and through whom God speaks. What really constitutes the prophet is immediate intercourse with God, a divine communication of what the prophet must declare. Two things, therefore, go to make the prophet—an insight granted by God into the divine secrets or mysteries, and a communication to others of those secrets. New Testament prophets were for the Christian Church what Old Testament prophets were for Israel, inasmuch as they maintained intact the immediate connection between theChurch and, not the Holy Spirit in her, but the God of her salvation above her. The prophets, both in the old and the new dispensations, were messengers or media of communication between the upper and the lower world.”¹Lexicon of New Testament Greek, third English edition,pp.568, 569.“The primary idea of a prophet,” says Ewald,¹“is of one who has seen or heard something which does not concern himself, or not himself alone, which will not let him rest. It wholly absorbs him, ... so that he no longer hears or is conscious of himself, but of the loud and clear voice of another who is higher than himself. He acts and speaks, not of his own accord; a higher one impels him, to resist whom is sin. It is his God, who is also the God of those to whom he must speak.”¹Prophets of the Old Testament,vol. i,p.7. London, Williams and Norgate.“That which,” says Oehler,¹“made the prophet a prophet was not his natural gifts nor his own intention; and that which he proclaimed as the prophetic word was not the mere result of instruction received nor the product of his own reflection. Theprophet, as such, knows himself to be the organ of divine revelation, in virtue both of a divine vocation capable of being known by him as such, ... and also of his endowment with the enlightening, sanctifying, and strengthening Spirit of God.”¹Theology of the Old Testament, §§ 205, 206. New York, Funk and Wagnalls.With these statements the concurrent testimony of the New Testament is in harmony: “God ... at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets” (Hebrewsi, 1); “The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peteri, 21).It was, therefore, essential to the credibility and authority of the prophet that he should have received some direct revelation from God. The message intrusted to him to deliver must be from a source above and outside himself. It was not sufficient that God spake in him; he must be able to say that God spake to him. When to the student prepared by the guidance of a teacher to receive them nature reveals its facts and laws, these come to him as something external to him. They are not suggestions or inspirations of his own mind, but owetheir origin to a source exterior to it. So likewise with the prophet. How the revelation came to him, and how his hearers became convinced that God had spoken to him, are questions that do not touch the truth of his message. The important thing is that the prophet was the agent and representative of God in delivering a message which had previously been committed to him. Herein lay the distinction between the priesthood and the prophetical office. A priest was a man on whom was laid the responsibility of appearing before God on behalf of men; a prophet was one who stood in the presence of men on behalf of God. A priest represented man in the court of God; a prophet represented God in the court of human life. A priest was man’s advocate; a prophet was God’s advocate. The function of the priest was to intercede for his fellows; identity of condition and tender sympathy with them were therefore prime requisites. The function of a prophet was to deliver God’s word to man; strict fidelity to his message and to the truth were his essential qualifications. As the priesthood, then, was a type of Christ, finding its perfect realization in him who laid downhis life a ransom for us, the prophetical office was a type of the Holy Ghost, whose work it is to convey to man the message of God, whether it be of conviction, of justification, of sanctification, of inspiration, or of assurance.If, therefore, by a “false Christ” is meant one who usurps the place of Christ and substitutes himself for him, demanding from men the allegiance due only to the Son of God, then by a “false prophet” must be meant one who unconsciously or purposely substitutes himself for the Holy Spirit, setting forth his own conceptions or visions as the voice of God.“The characteristic,” says Oehler,¹“of the false prophets is declared to be that they speak that which they themselves have devised. These latter are designated (Ezekielxiii, 2) as prophets ‘out of their own hearts,’ who ‘follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing;’ ‘they speak,’ according to Jeremiahxxiii, 16, ‘a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord.’”¹Theology of the Old Testament,p.464.No stage of history has been free from such presumptuous prophets. Their existenceand the disastrous work they wrought are set forth again and again in the Old Testament Scriptures. But that their appearance in larger numbers and under more formidable guises may be expected in the New Testament dispensation follows from a consideration of the influence of Christianity upon human nature.Unquestionably, one marked result of that copious effusion of the Holy Spirit, which beginning at Pentecost has continued until now, was a quickening of the human soul to a realization of its individuality. Fifteen centuries of sad experience and a convulsion which disrupted Western Christendom were needed to bring any large portion of the Church to an appreciation of the privileges which inhere in this individualism. Since the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, men have come by freer study of the Bible to discern more clearly the possibilities which it teaches of personal consciousness of sonship, and of the individual possession by the Holy Spirit of every soul availing itself of the privilege; although there have never been wanting those who have discerned the possibility of individual communion with the spiritual world.In individualism lurks a danger against which no revelation can absolutely secure us. I may transgress its prescribed limitations and become excessive. It may strive after independence from its Creator and put forth its hands to forbidden fruit. It may assume prerogatives which the divine Being reserves to himself. It may substitute its own imaginings and volitions for voices of God, and displace that real spirituality which only the Holy Ghost can create with an auto-spiritualism which is deceptive, illusory, and specious, the precursor of spiritual and intellectual anarchy.Our Lord gave warning of this peril when, predicting the trials which should come, he said, “There shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Paul foresaw it, saying to the Ephesian elders, “Of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to drawaway disciples after them.” It was this which led John to write, “Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”The writer of the Revelation had no need to go beyond his own memory to find symptoms of this spirit. Already it had begun to manifest itself in the apostolic Church. Simon Magus was a conspicuous but not solitary example. In the epistles to the seven churches there are cautions against “the Nicolaitans” and “the woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess,” very distinct from those which denounce the pleasures or the persecutions of the world. In the ante-Nicene age gnosticism, with its pretensions to a theosophy more profound, a knowledge more extensive and exact, a code of ethics more consistent, and a self-denial more rigid than those of the faithful, was a more dangerous adversary than the Roman empire; and we who appreciate the skillfulness of its specious arguments realize that nothing but the providence of God carried the artless and unsuspicious Church safely through the peril.¹And throughout the ages since there has been a continuous reappearance of this spirit, sometimes within, sometimesoutside the Church; not always avowedly antagonistic to Christianity, but assuming to be a more perfect form of it; not impugning the authority of the Scriptures, but claiming to possess deeper views of their esoteric meaning; not openly subverting the foundations of morals, but superseding them by a show of a more austere and uncompromising sanctimoniousness. It so puts on the appearance of a lamb that its dragon nature is hard to detect. It has cropped out in Manichæism, in Paulicianism, in Albigensianism, among hermits and pillar saints, among pietists, mystics, occultists, and other professors of a strained and exalted perfection and illumination to which only the elect initiate can aspire, and from which the common masses of believers are excluded.¹Bigg,Christian Platonists of Alexandria, Bampton Lectures, 1886, lecturei,p.35; Harnack,History of Dogma, booki, chapteriv.It is hard to describe this spirit by a single name. It wears so many forms that no one word can comprehend all of them. Even the apostolic pen failed to depict this adversary clearly or sketch its outline with distinctness. Deceit seems to be the pervading and controlling element of its being, and to affect both substance and form. But it has as its usual accompaniment one markwhich it stamps upon its devotees—a scrupulous and rigid asceticism which deludes itself with the hope of emancipation from the necessary conditions of earthly life, which denounces as sinful things proper in themselves, simply because they are natural or secular, and which aims at the profitless and impracticable task of anticipating in this life the celestial state of disembodied spirits. No creature can ever with impunity contravene the laws imposed upon his nature. The abnormal and excessive development of one side of man’s constitution is sure to involve a corresponding atrophy of some other side, and thus the sins excluded by one system of defenses find entrance through some other avenue left unguarded. And the constant result of asceticism has been in the end to revive with new power the worldliness it aimed to destroy; so that in this sense the second beast gives “life” and breath “unto the image” of the first. For the termination of all hyperspiritualism has been either in an arrogant self-exaltation, the very opposite of Christian humility and love, or in an antinomianism which, under the affectation of liberty, gives loose rein to sensualism.To the question, which thus becomes of vital importance, How shall we “try the spirits” to know “whether they are of God”? John has elsewhere furnished a sufficient answer: “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world” (1 Johniv, 2, 3).The central principle of all asceticism, in whatever form, and whether perceived and acknowledged or not, is that matter is essentially evil and spirit essentially good. It is in the contact of soul with body and of spirit with matter that sin lies. Holiness, therefore, means only the diminution or destruction of this contact. All bodily desires, activities, and enjoyments, if they cannot be annihilated, must be reduced to the minimum, that thereby the ascendency of the spirit may be gained and maintained. Thus human nature is mutilated to half its capacities. Religion becomes only a “concision,” not a process of transformation. The problem of redemption is no longer themoral one of the salvation of the soul from the guilt and pollution of sin, but the metaphysical one of the liberation of the spirit from matter.¹By such as hold this view of things the assumption by the Son of God of the likeness of sinful flesh, his birth, his fellowship with earthly conditions and experiences, can never be fully accepted; his crucifixion is attenuated into a figure of speech or becomes a mere parable, and cannot be the necessary means of our salvation.¹Möller,History of the Christian Church,vol. i,pp.152, 153. New York, Swan Sonnenschein &Co., 1892.Against such a theory the Revelation is one long protest. Its keynote is salvation through “the Lamb that was slain.” Nor does anything prove so conclusively that John was the author of the Apocalypse as the fact that in it, in the fourth gospel, and in the epistles which bear his name, the central and fundamental truth was the same: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us;” and, “This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.”The acquisition of knowledge depends as much upon a right method as upon an earnest purpose. Alphabets must be mastered before sentences can be read. No one can understand the higher mathematics who has not been grounded in the fundamental axioms. And one of the axioms of the spiritual life is that the Holy Spirit cannot be given until Jesus is glorified (Johnvii, 39). Whoever does not accept, with all implied therein, the exemplary earthly life and the atoning and sacrificial death of the Son of God may well pause to reflect whether the spirit which leads and moves him is indeed the Spirit of God, or whether it is not the spirit of evil and untruth. We may not set limits to the spiritual flights of which the soul is capable, but it must have a solid basis from which to start; otherwise it wastes its strength in aimless wanderings amid mazy fogs and vagaries.The path of truth lies between extremes, and from either side of the ridge along which it winds steep declines lead to dangerous abysses. If a man, on the one hand, accepts to the full the reality of the incarnation of the Son of God, and then does not advance to that other revealed truth, that theHoly Ghost is of equal power and divinity and that his mission is as wide in its range and as complete in its effects, religion will be to him a thing of externals, of outward and mechanical forms and rites. On the other hand, the ascetic who would aspire to the full heights of the revelation of the Holy Spirit without accepting what must precede success—the real humanity of our Lord, his cross, his grave, his resurrection—will surely miss the path and be lost in abstractions, fanaticisms, delusion, and deceit.One last feature descriptive of the second beast remains to be considered—the number of his name. “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.” If John meant to cover a mystery he has certainly succeeded, for no explanation has as yet been offered convincing enough to command the acceptance of the Church. Unquestionably this is the most difficult to solve of all the problems of the book, and the apostle is thought to intimate this in saying, “Here is wisdom;” although possibly his meaning is that the special need for wisdom lies in defense against the wiles ofthis adversary, rather than in solving the mystery of his name.The interpretation which has met with the largest assent is based on the usage of employing the letters of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets as numerals. Men have attempted to discover some name the letters of which when added will give the numerical value six hundred and sixty-six. The name which has secured the largest number of advocates is Lateinos (Latin), which, written in Greek characters and numbered, gives six hundred and sixty-six. By Roman Catholic interpreters who accept this solution the empire of Rome is supposed to be meant; by Protestants, the Church of Rome.Dr.Adam Clarke thought this solution to “amount nearly to demonstration.”In recent times many German and other scholars, mainly for reasons based on a special theory of the date of the Revelation, prefer the words Nero Cæsar, which, written in Hebrew letters, number six hundred and sixty-six. Irenæus (died about 202), who attempted the problem, out of many names preferred Teitan, possibly to suggest an analogy between the attempts ofRoman emperors to crush the Church and the unsuccessful war of the Titans against the gods, without venturing to put forth his opinions in more definite form. Very many other names of men, ancient and modern, have been proposed, with greater or less plausibility; for curiosity to decipher numerical symbols, when it possesses a man, holds him with almost the fascination of gambling. But it is apparent that the combination of names possible with only a few letters is so much beyond computation that almost apostolical inspiration is requisite to decide upon the right one.To the word “Lateinos,” strong as are its claims, the objection lies that the Roman or Latin empire can scarcely be meant, since the beast John describes is evidently a spiritual power, not a secular one. Nor can the Roman Church be meant, for it was not known as Latin in the days of the apostle, nor for centuries afterward; and, as one design of the Apocalypse was to comfort and instruct the generation in which John lived, it would have been inconsistent with that design to select a name which could have no meaning intelligible to it or to many generations succeeding. There is wisdom inthe words of Bleek:¹“The discovery that a definite name contains this number as the value of its letters in Greek would not warrant us to assume the correctness of the interpretation if other hints in the book respecting the beast did not agree.”¹Lectures on the Apocalypse,p.87. London, Williams & Norgate, 1875.Another explanation offered is that the number six hundred and sixty-six is but a threefold repetition of the number six, John thus intending to mark in the most emphatic manner that, however mighty the power or long the duration of the beast shall be, it will inevitably fall short of the completeness and permanence of Christ’s kingdom, as six is less than seven.Still another explanation proposed is that the number was originally written with the Greek lettersχξϛ;χbeing equal to six hundred,ξto sixty, andϛto six. Asχ(ch) is the initial letter of Christ,ξis supposed to be an emblem of Satan, being afterward so used by the Gnostics, andϛis the initial ofσταυρός,cross. The symbol, it is said, refers to some Satanic power intervening between Christ and the cross, some system which honors him as teacher but denieshim as Saviour, which accepts Jesus, but not “him crucified.” The description accords well enough with that of the second beast; but whether it can be extracted from the number six hundred and sixty-six is another question. The monogram, while harmonizing with the symbolism of the Apocalypse, and also delineating the nature of the beast, does not explain the emphasis which seems to be laid upon his “name.”There is, however, one detail in this part of the description of the beast often overlooked, but which may carry us far on our way to decipher the secret of the number. The number of the name is not monopolized by the beast; it does not exhaust itself in any single individual. We are told that “no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” The beast has followers who imbibe his spirit and partake of his characteristics, and to whom his name and number are equally appropriate. It is more in keeping with this statement, as well as with other details, to interpret the beast as a principle rather than a person, as being some spirit of evil which, assumingprominence in some man or organization, is yet shared by many men and organizations. The ascetic, false prophetism which fulfills the other details of the description coincides also with this.If, following out the rule of interpretation which has guided us hitherto, and assuming that John drew his prediction of the future from facts and tendencies existing in his day, we read the epistles contained in chaptersiiandiii, we shall find that among the perils which threatened the apostolic Church none was more imminent than that which is called “the doctrine of the Nicolaitans,” which was but a reproduction of the heresy of Balaam, the gifted and formidable rival and antagonist of Moses; the name Nicolaus, indeed, meaning in Greek the same that Balaam does in Hebrew. So deep a mark did Balaam make that throughout the Old Testament, as well as the New, he stands as the representative, as he was the first example, of that spirit of false prophetism which, beginning as ascetism, degenerates into antinomianism and prostitutes genius to the service of the flesh. Now, it is certainly true, as Züllig shows,¹that the words “Balaam, the son of Beor, soothsayer,” if written in Hebrew letters do make up the sum six hundred and sixty-six. It seems, therefore, probable that some embodiment of his insidious spirit, some reproduction of his deadly doctrine, with its resultant lawless practices, is the solution of this mysterious symbol, the second beast, against which John earnestly warns the Church in all ages to guard itself as the most dangerous foe to the kingdom of Christ. And possibly the archæological researches which are now bringing to light much of the hidden history of earlier ages may yet discover to us the sect which served as the basis of his warning.¹Bleek, Lectures on the Apocalypse,p.285.The interpretation which has here been put upon the symbols of the two wild beasts—namely, that they represent, the one the spirit of worldliness, the other that autospiritualism or self-centered piety which, for lack of a more comprehensive phrase, may be designated as false prophetism or false asceticism—derives some confirmation from the fact that their resulting effects have been such as the author of the Revelation predicted. Worldliness seems the baser of the two, but its dominion isbriefer and less stable. As the mind can never be content with agnosticism, but must by necessity search for some explanation of the mystery of being until satisfaction is gained, so the heart can never fully rest in hopes and themes and joys which are only earthly. The religious instincts inherent in and inalienable from our nature will assert themselves and cry for God. On the other hand, asceticism, while it seems to present a loftier ideal and holds men thereby with a more permanent grasp, is all the more baleful by reason of its deceptiveness. It veils pride, ambition, malice, selfishness, under the guise of superior sanctity, which, while imposing on others by its well-masked duplicity, lulls its victims into almost hopeless slumber by its hypocrisy. Those whom it allures by its professions of superior piety it mocks with disappointing dreams. It is the dark shadow that always waits on holiness and liberty; it is the special temptation that besets souls seeking after purity and knowledge; while worldliness is that to which those are most prone who mingle much with the world and deal with earthly realities. If, on the one hand, it is easy for men to fall into the danger ofusing their heaven-given faculties for the ignoble purpose of gratifying their lower desires or of turning stones to bread simply that they may live, it is equally easy, on the other, to wander into the opposite error of presuming rashly upon God’s providence and mercy, although humility has degenerated into boasting and love has been perverted to censoriousness. From neither tendency can the regeneration of the world come; both are alike enemies of God and of man.4.Anticipations of Victory.—It is one of the characteristic peculiarities ofSt.John’s literary style to introduce a subject which for the moment he merely suggests to our notice, returning to it subsequently in order that he may amplify and complete it. He goes over his work again and again, each time adding some new touch, with the purpose of bringing out in greater prominence some detail of his subject. While each section, therefore, contains in measure an epitome of the whole, in each one some single point is more specifically and elaborately discussed. There is, it is true, advance of thought; but the eagle of the apostolic band moves in circles, bringing into notice of his keen eye every part of the field overwhich he soars, while each swoop of his wing carries him a little beyond his former orbit, so that his progress is in spirals. The principle which controlled him seems to have been that of presenting to us in sharp and striking antithesis the contrasts between conflicting ideas, while he holds them under our observation.It is also characteristic of a disposition likeSt.John’s, and of a life so contemplative and secluded as his was, to view things in the light of their essential principles; not as they become, modified by contact and in relation with each other, but as they radically and germinally are. By consequence such minds, instead of being occupied with the intermediate changes, pass at once to ultimate results and see the end in the beginning.An instance of this appears in the fourteenth chapter, which is really but an epilogue to the preceding chapters. In the twelfth and thirteenth chapters we have had presented to our vision the formidable enemies with which the Christian believer must struggle. They have been described most graphically and with a fullness of detail not subsequently exceeded.Thedramatis personæare all put upon the stage, and no new actors in the tragedy of existence need be expected. But these enemies are sufficiently numerous and terrible to excite apprehension and awaken earnest inquiries as to our means of resistance and possibilities of success. The seer, therefore, pauses for a moment to review the resources put within our reach and to assure us of their adequacy. “Greater is he that is in you,” he says, “than he that is in the world.” And he fully indorses the emphatic declaration of Paul, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”In prophesying victory over the dragon and the beasts to the saints of Christ, John separates them into two classes, as he had done in chaptervii. This is not in any spirit of Jewish narrowness or exclusiveness. He had long gotten beyond that and learned to call no man common whom God had cleansed. Even Paul, the apostle of the uncircumcision, recognized a distinction between the Jew, who was first, and the Gentile; so there can be alleged against John no bigotry in recognizing the distinction,inasmuch as he foreshadows equal victory to both classes. There can hardly be a question that by the “hundred forty and four thousand” John meant Israelites after the flesh; for they “stood on the mount Sion;” they sang a song which none others but themselves could learn, namely, the song of Moses and of the Lamb (xv, 3); they were “the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb” (xiv, 4); they were without “guile,” with reference no doubt to Johni, 47. They were “virgins,” having the true asceticism—freedom from ungodliness and worldly lusts. There was reason for rejoicing to a Jew like John in the fact that, in spite of the opposition of the rulers and Herods among the chosen people to whom had been committed the oracles of God, and on the very spots of the crucifixion and resurrection, so many of his former co-religionists had become disciples of Christ and followed the Lamb whithersoever he led them.But the word of God is not bound, nor is it the exclusive property of any race; and the seer immediately adds the vision of the multitudes of “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” to whom “theeverlasting Gospel” was preached and among whom it found adherents. The fullness of the times had come, and Gentiles might “fear God, and give glory to him,” the one Creator of “heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”One new feature is now introduced. Babylon, which occupies so much of the subsequent part of the Apocalypse, is here for the first time mentioned. Babylon, it will be attempted to show, is not another adversary, but an apostate Church which has succumbed to adversaries and thereby become a counterfeit and rival to Christianity. It is here brought upon the stage by anticipation, and its doom foretold, to give completer assurance of the coming victory over all forms and results of sin and evil.The age in which John lived was an age of martyrdom. How severely this fact tried “the patience” and faith of the early Christians we know from hints in other apostolical writings. Paul found it necessary to show to his brethren in Rome that if they suffered with Christ it was that they might be also glorified together with him. Peter, too, comforts those whose faith was being so sorely tried with the assurancethat the trial of their faith was “more precious than of gold that perisheth,” and would be “found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” And so John gives to the Church of his day the glad tidings that, although God buries his workmen, he carries on his work; that they, if they died “in the Lord,” should “rest from their labors;” and that “their works” should survive and go on winning victories after their departure.If it should be asked how or with what weapons they were to overcome, John gives the answer which is found so often in the Book of Revelation that it is one of the keys to unlock its mysteries—they overcome “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Revelationxii, 11); by which latter expression is meant, doubtless, the Scriptures, as explained in the chapter upon the two witnesses. That the two visions which now follow, the harvest of the world and the vintage scene, refer to these two weapons of success furnishes an explanation of them so simple and easy that it is strange they should have occasioned so much difficulty to commentators.The prophet Joel, from whose writingsthese visions are drawn (Joeliii, 13), probably among the earliest and certainly among the greatest of the Hebrew seers, appears to have been gifted with a foresight of the future remarkable even for one of that extraordinary body of men. The final and complete triumph of God’s cause over all opposing foes in and through Zion, and the deliverance of the Church from all bondage, oppression, and danger, preceded by a plentiful outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all classes, ages, and conditions, stood out before him as a certain and assured fact. The details of the methods by which this result was to be achieved were not revealed to him, nor is it surprising that, being thus left to himself, he could conceive of no other instrumentalities than those which in his experience of human affairs had passed under his own observation. This is not the only instance in which the apostles of the New Testament, while confirming the prophets of the Old as to results, have discerned more clearly the power of spiritual forces, and for swords and carnal weapons and rods of iron have substituted the more peaceful instrumentalities of the sword of the Spirit, the breathof the Messiah’s lips, and the staff of the Good Shepherd.The writer of the Revelation, expanding and evangelizing the vision of Joel, saw “a white cloud,” and One “like unto the Son of man” sitting thereon, “having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.” “Out of the temple” an angel came and cried to him, “Thrust in thy sickle, ... for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” Whereupon he cast his sickle upon the earth, and “the earth was reaped.”In these words surely a reference is to be seen to the words of our Lord himself uttered in the hearing of John and recorded in Matthewxxiv, 14, 30, 31: “And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.... And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”This metaphor of the harvest as the result of the sowing of God’s word is one of the most common to be found in the Scriptures.“The sower soweth the word” (Markiv, 14), or “the word of the kingdom” (Matthewxiii, 19), or “the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you” (1 Peteri, 25). “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself [that is, automatically and spontaneously].... But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come” (Markiv, 26–29).That “the word of God is quick and powerful” (Hebrewsiv, 12); that it has God’s life in it (Johnvi, 63); that it is the great weapon of warfare, defensive and offensive, to the Church and the believer; that it is the incorruptible seed by which men are born into the kingdom (1 Peteri, 23); that it is the instrument whereby we are sanctified (Johnxvii, 17), is the concurrent declaration of the Scriptures themselves. That it is to be preached by apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers is the commission binding on all: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Markxvi, 15).This Bible is sufficient of itself, all other things are only ancillary; “in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatiansvi, 9). All literature and art and culture and science are but as “the grass” that “withereth,” or “the flower” that “fadeth;” “but the word of our God shall stand forever.” And the martyrs of the apostolical age had the inspired assurance of John to console them, that if they faithfully bore witness to the word they might fall, but “their works” would follow on after them. And in so saying he is only reëchoing the words which he himself had heard from the Master, “One soweth, and another reapeth” (Johniv, 37). And John shows how completely he had gotten away from Jewish narrowness and absorbed the Master’s spirit, in his recognition of the fact that the Bible is for every nation and kindred and people.The other instrumentality of victory put within the reach of the Church, namely, the all-sufficient “blood of the Lamb,” is beautifully illustrated in the vintage vision, which has most needlessly perplexed commentators.An angel—not now the Son of man—is seen coming “out of the temple which is inheaven” with a sharp sickle. Another angel came out from the altar, who is described as having “power over fire” (the same combination as is found in Isaiahvi, 6), and at his cry the sickle was thrust into the earth, and the clusters of fully ripe grapes gathered and cast “into the great wine press of the wrath of God.”It is hardly possible to read these words without seeing in them a reference to Isaiahlxiii, 1–6. By the great mass of believers the words are interpreted as an allusion to and a prophecy of the atoning work of Christ. It certainly seems that the writer of the Revelation so understood them, not only from the connection of this vintage scene with the blood of the Lamb, but also from Revelationxix, 11–16, where the same connection of the two themes, the “sharp sword” issuing from the mouth of Christ, that is, the word of God, and the “vesture dipped in blood,” with the treading of the wine press, is found.Our belief in the plenary inspiration of the writers of the Scriptures does not compel us to the conviction that they always comprehended the full import of their message, or that all the particulars embracedtherein stood out clearly and plainly in their minds. This is one of the instances in which prophets and wise men desired to see the things which we in the kingdom of Christ see, but did not see them. Every man in painting mental pictures must of necessity use colors with which his own mind is acquainted, and which he has acquired by experience and observation. And Isaiah and the other prophets, in the age and with the surroundings in the midst of which they lived, had no other means of conveying to the minds of men the true revelations which were given to them of the suffering and victorious Messiah than terms such as they saw exemplified in the world of history and in the men about them. Any other terms would have been incomprehensible, and so have failed of their purpose to help and inspirit. And the divinity of the Bible is seen conspicuously in this—that the framework in which its glorious pictures were set is capable of expansion to the times in which we live and the larger views we have, without fracture or distortion. The signs and symbols which by divine illumination were presented to them have come down to us; but we, with the clearer lightof the Sun of righteousness, can read intelligently what were hieroglyphics to them, and, looking with unveiled face, can behold therein the glory of God. That John, in thus quoting from Isaiah, has Calvary and Gethsemane in his thoughts is shown by his specifying particularly that “the wine press was trodden without the city,” bringing out the truth, of which Hebrewsxiii, 12, is the witness, that “Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.”It is true that in the prophecy of Isaiah there appears an element of vengeance and wrath that does not comport with our ideas of salvation and redemption, and even repels. The element is still there; but the New Testament teaches us that all that was lonely, painful, agonizing in human redemption was borne by the Christ for us. We are “bought with a price,” but he paid it. He was “made a curse for us.” He “bare our sins in his own body on the tree,” and by his “stripes” we are “healed.” However feeble may be the traces of vicariousness in nature, human life is full of it, is built about it. All love is manifested in vicarious suffering. Scarce any rise butthat some fall; scarce any become rich but that others become poor; there is hardly a smile or a laugh of joy for which some pain is not felt or some tear not shed somewhere. And, if God manifests his love by sending “his Son to be the propitiation for our sins,” this is but an illustration of the truth, as apparent in the spiritual world as in that of nature, of the transmutation of forces; the sum not being increased or diminished, but the places and modes of manifestation changing.The remainder of the vintage scene may be easily explained, difficult as it has seemed to most interpreters, by applying the key which is put into our hands, if we accept the solution offered above.We must now for almost the first time take up the prophecy of Ezekiel, which from this place onward almost singly rules the Apocalypse, and the careful study of which will throw light upon what seems most obscure.We are told that “blood came out of the wine press, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”Turning to Ezekiel, we find that the lastchapters of that great prophecy are taken up with a beautiful description, ideal and figurative, doubtless, of the restored temple, holy city, and land of the new Israel of God. In the forty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel the dimensions of this ideal land are very carefully stated. The boundary line of it was, on the north side, Hamath, in latitude thirty-four degrees twenty minutes, and, on the south, a line drawn from Tamar, at the southern border of the Dead Sea, to Kadesh, a brook emptying into the Mediterranean. If, now, we measure on a map the distance between these lines, we shall find it to be two hundred miles, or sixteen hundred furlongs.This whole space, comprehending all of the Holy Land, was thus entirely covered with the blood which flowed from the wine press trodden by the Son of God. Could there be a more complete statement of the all-sufficiency of that atoning blood? It is the same truth presented to us here which John has elsewhere in plainer prose revealed to our faith: “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”And as if still further to verify the statement he tells us that the blood reached to“the horse bridles.” There is an allusion in this to Zechariahxiv, 20, where we are told that in “the day of the Lord” there shall be “upon the bells [or, as the margin has it, ‘upon the bridles’] of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord.” The ideal land is not only covered in its whole extent with the atoning blood, but so deep is the stream that it buries all beneath it, except where upon the surface is displayed the significant inscription, “Holiness unto the Lord.” Surely there is no lack in the provisions of salvation. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.”Thus, then, in these beautiful visions is it shown that the believer and the Church are sufficiently armed for the encounter with any antagonist, however furious or formidable. We are supplied with “the sword of the Spirit” and “the blood of the Lamb.” Whatever the tasks may be that lie before us, having these, we have all necessary equipment. Nothing shall be able to harm us so long as we continue to be followers of God.If the harvest scene illustrates the extent of divine grace, and is an emblem of the living seed which, small in its beginnings, grows into a great and widespreading tree under whose branches all the nations of earth may find shelter and rest, the vintage scene illustrates the depth to which salvation penetrates. The whole extent of human need is reached. Neither is there a want anywhere which may not be satisfied. And through the use of the divinely appointed means the kingdom of Christ may be brought to its ideal of perfection, in us and in the whole Church, until God shall, indeed, be all and in all.
PARTIV
The Foes of the Kingdom
Withchapterxiianother section of the Apocalypse begins. Two great truths relating to the kingdom of Christ have been discussed—the fundamental principle of mediatorial sovereignty upon which it is based, and the instruments, providence and the written word, by which it is advanced. It follows very naturally and logically that the antagonists by whom the kingdom is opposed should also be disclosed to us. Out of his abundant grace and in tender compassion for human ignorance, God has made known to us, through this marvelous book, the adversaries with whom we must contend before the kingdom can attain its consummation in our hearts or in the world at large.
While no part of the Revelation is easy of interpretation, or can be made intelligible without very careful study both of itself and of the whole Bible, there has been added to this part of it the embarrassment of theodium theologicum. Bitter controversial strifes have raged around the interpretationof it and have raised a cloud of prejudices, through which the truth has been sometimes dimly seen. From all such prejudices we must free ourselves. We are approaching holy ground, and it behooves us to put off our shoes, that nothing of human invention may intervene between our naked feet and the sacred floor of God’s temple.
We need this caution the more because from the nature of the case the interpretation of this part carries us more or less into the field of history. The foes of the kingdom of Christ are visible foes, as well as invisible. The contest is not only for the individual man, but for the race. The commission given to the Church is, “Go, preach my Gospel to every creature;” and the keynote of the song of triumph with which the last part closed was, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.”
There is, therefore, a tendency to confine the interpretation to the field of history, to direct the attention to large and collective bodies of men, either world powers or religious societies, or to those historical events and cycles of events which have apparentlychanged the currents of the ages, and to insist that in these the fulfillment of the prophecy lies.
But history itself is only the record of individuals. We delude ourselves when we fancy that by association anything is created. That mystical something which is imagined to be in collective bodies more than in the individuals that compose them is a mere figment of the brain, and to discuss it is simply to revive the barren conceits of the schoolmen. A Church is only “a congregation of believing men;” a State is a coöperative association of individuals, not a corporation; and neither one has any powers or forces other than those which exist in the individual members. Man is both the microcosm and the macrocosm.
The chief value of the inspired book which we are now studying lies in the fact that it discloses to us those forces, spiritual and otherwise, the conflict between which makes up the life history of each individual of mankind. It is a chart meant for every navigator of this boundless ocean of human existence. Its truths will be as precious and important to the last man on this globe as they are to us. The reefs andbreakers it describes are not perils past which any age can sail and then look back upon as things done with, but dangers which beset every voyager. It is true that in the history of large bodies of men, whether secular or religious in their character—in the temptations, declension, growth, and triumph of nations and Churches—illustrations of its truths and fulfillments of its predictions will be found. But these, we must insist, are merely illustrations. Long as the world shall last the♦Apocalypse will prove itself to be a part of God’s boon of revelation, in that each follower of Christ shall find it of inestimable value for his own private guidance, inspiration, and study.
♦“Apocalyse” replaced with “Apocalypse”
♦“Apocalyse” replaced with “Apocalypse”
♦“Apocalyse” replaced with “Apocalypse”
Looking by the light of God’s lamp through the ages to come, John was allowed to foresee the successful completion of the life work and plans of Jesus the Saviour. He who began both his gospel and his great epistle with “the beginning” also follows the course of the drama of redemption to its final “amen.” The saint who, leaning on the bosom of Jesus, looked up to him as the Author of his faith was also permitted to fall at his majestic feet and worship him as its Finisher. And, from personal communionwith and contemplation of him as the Son of man, he rose to the grander conception of him as the Christ, the Word of God, King of kings, and Lord of lords. He was taught, also, that the progress through which his own conceptions of the Son of God had passed was but a type and example of that which shall take place in time on the field of the world and in the hearts of mankind. The cross upon which Jesus of Nazareth suffered was, indeed, a throne from which he ascended to the crown of the universe. But John, too, saw that ere that final consummation can be reached there are foes to be encountered, hindrances to be removed, antagonists to be overthrown. A great and effectual door is opened unto us, but there are many adversaries. To the consideration of these he therefore now calls our attention:
1.The Dragon, or Satan.—The first of the adversaries with whom the kingdom of Christ has to dispute supremacy is the devil, the archfiend and enemy of God and man.
That Satan, the evil one, is referred to in the description of the great red dragon having seven heads, ten horns, and seven diadems seems an interpretation so natural thatit is hardly worth while to seek for far-fetched meanings when so plausible an explanation lies near at hand. The ten horns (Zechariah saw but four—Zechariahi, 18) are the instruments with which he seeks to scatter and destroy the sheep of God. The seven heads with diadems represent the pride and haughtiness of spirit in which he boasts that the power and glory of all kingdoms have been delivered to him and that he gives them to whom he will. It is a struggle for life and death between him and the Christ. If Paul, the man of affairs, with his practical conception of things in their concrete relations, says, “Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Revised Version), much more strongly does John, with his intuition of abstract principles, recognize and emphasize the power and working of the dark spirit whose names are Satan and “destroyer.” No writer of the New Testament speaks oftener or more clearly of the evil spirit than does John. In vivid imagery and with graphic condensation he sums upthe history of the kingdom of darkness, the long record of Satan’s undying antagonism to the kingdom of Christ.
The woman arrayed “with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” (see Genesisxxxvii, 9), represents the Church collectively and in its most general expression; primarily, the Jewish Church, inasmuch as Christianity had just begun its mission; but not confined thereto. Against the Church, against every individual of it, this murderer and liar from the beginning wages relentless warfare. His is the power behind all other antagonisms. To devour the child of the woman in the hour of its birth, to destroy humanity itself if he can, seems to be the aim of his being. Not a soul is now born into the kingdom of Christ by regenerating grace but Satan is there to crush the newly-given life, if possible, in its inception.
When the first gospel of salvation and victory was given to Eve, “Thy seed shall bruise the serpent’s head,” Satan began his machinations to defeat the prophecy, even though he knew that he could do no more than bruise the heel of the promised seed.
When the promise given to Abraham of a posterity countless as the stars of heaven was about to receive its fulfillment in the extraordinary fertility of the sons of Jacob in Egypt, it was Satan who inspired Pharaoh to issue the cruel edict commanding the death of every Hebrew male child.
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea it was the same dragon that urged Herod to his mad purpose of slaying every young child throughout its coasts. “This is the heir; let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.”
And it is against this wily foe, “the prince of the power of the air,” “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” that we all have continually to struggle.
For protection against such an adversary there is certainly need of divine aid. And that help has never been withheld. “There were given to the woman the two wings of a great eagle.” Is not this an echo of Exodusxix, 4, “I bare you on eagles’ wings,” and also of Psalmxci, 4, “And under his wings shalt thou trust”? And in addition to this we are told that God prepared “a place” in the wilderness where the woman might fly and be nourished. Does not this refer toPalestine, that quiet, secluded land, nigh the great highways of the world and yet aloof from them, where in comparative isolation Israel might develop her own resources and grow in strength until she should be ready for her broader mission? If the purpose of the divine Being fell short of full realization the fault was not his, but hers, through her lust to be like the surrounding nations.
The numbers, too, representing the period of this seclusion, “twelve hundred and sixty days,” and “a time, times, and half a time,” are forms of three and a half, which, as has been said in the Introduction, symbolizes Judaism, or any cycle with a definite purpose which is, however, only a half period.
And further confirmation of the reference to the Church of Israel is found in the allusion to the archangel Michael, who is always represented in the Scriptures as sustaining some special relation to Israel (Danielx, 21;xii, 1).
Yet, mighty as Satan is and venomous as is his hostility, the believer is endowed with weapons of offense and defense still more potent. “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony”(or “witness” with reference, doubtless, to the testimony of the two witnesses of the preceding chapter). In other words, the cross of Christ and the word of God are the conquering weapons with which believers win the victory over Satan. The Lord Jesus had most plainly foretold the secret of victory in the hearing of John when he had said, “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” And, doubtless, these words came with fullness and force to the memory of the apostle when he heard the “loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down.”
Not yet, however, is Satan ready to cease his efforts to destroy. He changes the field of conflict, but does not relinquish the malice of his assault. If he cannot in heaven, that is, the Church, countervail the kingdom of Christ, he will attempt it in the earth, on the field of secular life. “The serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood, after the woman: that he mightcause her to be carried away of the flood.” There is, perhaps, a reference here to Isaiahlix, 19: “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.” Looking back at that chapter, we shall find that the flood spoken of means an unusual increase of social disorders and crimes. That is most probably the meaning here. Satan is the foe alike of God and man. His enmity is directed as much against all order and morality as against goodness and righteousness. He is that “lawless one” of whom Paul speaks in 2 Thessaloniansii, 3 (Revised Version). If he were allowed to carry out his will he would subvert all government, spiritual or secular. But, says the apostle and seer, “The earth helped the woman.” For its own protection and existence the State must execute laws, must preserve order, and must secure itself against anarchy and unbridled libertinism; and, in so far as it guards social morality, it fosters spiritual prosperity. In restraining crime and violence it must needs allow the kingdom of Christ opportunity to grow.
Foiled thus again, Satan does not abandon the conflict, but resorts to other and morewily means to make war with the “remnant” of the woman’s seed “which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ;” and the history of these efforts must next engage our attention.
2.The First Wild Beast, or the Spirit of Worldliness.—In the chapter of the Revelation which precedes the appearance of the beasts (Revelationxii, 12) the warning had been given, “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath.” We are now to witness the fulfillment of this warning. The apostle saw two wild beasts rise, one from the sea, the other from the land, both of them formidable foes and intense in their hostility to the kingdom of Christ. There can hardly be a question but that these are intended to represent the means by which Satan, thwarted in his direct assaults, endeavors to carry on his warfare. And just as Christ, in carrying forward his mediatorial kingdom, makes use of the two instrumentalities, providence and the written word, so also, in imitation of him, his fierce antagonist has his two emissaries and agents. We shall find as we study thispart of the Revelation that one of the most deceptive and dangerous arts which Satan employs is his manner of counterfeiting the form and aping the methods of Christ, in hope that he may thereby delude the unsuspecting or heedless. We ought, therefore, very carefully to note every feature, that we may be able to detect these dangerous incarnations of the spirit of evil, and thus escape his snares.
The first wild beast of John’s vision rose from the sea—an expression which, when used symbolically, designates the secular or temporal world, in antithesis to the Church. His distinctive characteristics are intense pride, the possession of vast power, strong vitality enabling him to recover speedily from severe injuries, insatiable craving after homage and ability to secure it, outrageous blasphemy, and undisguised as well as unceasing hostility to Christ and his saints. It is a mooted question whether by this beast John meant to describe and foretell the coming of some individual person or some organization of men, secular or religious, State or Church; or whether the characteristics he portrays are intended to represent some principle of evil, always at work,mightier and more enduring than any organization of men, which manifests itself in various forms and at all times, but transcends all its manifestations, and against which, because it is one of Satan’s most successful means of antagonism, every Christian must keep perpetual watch.
The latter of these hypotheses seems to be more in keeping with the cast of John’s strongly idealistic and abstract mind, and also with the purpose of the Apocalypse as intended for the edifying of believers. And furthermore, as the kingdom of God is not something that cometh “with observation,” so that men can say of it, “Lo here! or, lo there!” but is something “within” us, so its opponent is not to be sought in any particular organization or special event or single individual, but rather in some abstract principle, all the more dangerous because it exists separate and distinct from these.
In his description of this wild beast John draws his data from the prophecy of Daniel; and a study of that book will aid in the elucidation of this. It is, indeed, true that in the mind of Daniel the antagonists and allies of God alike assumed the form of kingdoms,or world powers. But this resulted from the fact that his cast of mind was essentially concrete, and also because as a statesman and man of affairs, charged with the administration of finances and politics, accustomed to the handling of men in collective bodies and to deal with matters affecting their external relations, his conceptions of religion regarded rather its outward manifestations than its inward power. We are not, however, compelled to believe that John, while using the prophecies of Daniel as his basis, was limited to the conceptions of the older prophet. He had a better key to the hieroglyphics of the kingdom and could read their meaning more clearly. Behind the forces which play their part upon the world’s stage he could recognize the spiritual principles of which they were incarnations.
The world power which loomed largest to the mind of Daniel, and whose hostility to the kingdom of Christ was most dreaded by him, was one that sprang up after the death and among the successors of Alexander the Great. That extraordinary captain and gifted statesman, the first ruler who grasped the conception of the essential unity of mankindand who strove to realize it by the fusion of races into one nation, left no one at his death capable of comprehending or executing his plans; and the empire that was formed by his ten generals was a heterogeneous one, possessing elements both of weakness and strength that were incapable of being welded into unity. Among the descendants and successors of these generals was Antiochus Epiphanes, whose hatred of Judaism amounted to real monomania, and whose insane purpose to exterminate utterly the customs, usages, religion, and even the existence of Judaism carried him to such extremes as to arouse a spirit of revolt which, under the guidance of the Maccabees, defeated his intent. In him the prophet Daniel foresaw the incarnation of all that is hostile to Christ and his kingdom.
In the days of John the political sovereignty of the world was wielded by a still more formidable power, one that combined in itself the strength of all the four kingdoms of Daniel, uniting the lion, the bear, and the leopard with the added and imparted authority and power of the dragon. That power was the Roman Empire, between which and Christianity had already begunthe antagonism which was to leave its decisive and disastrous effects upon both.
The policy of Rome toward conquered peoples and religions had not been one, customarily, of harsh severity; indeed, it had been marked in general by unusual liberality. Having so many gods in her own Pantheon, it has been said, the addition or subtraction of a few more or less was hardly worth consideration. But upon one thing Rome invariably and absolutely insisted—the preservation of public order. Her administration was one of strict, even stern, paternalism. The individual existed for the State, and had no rights but such as the State allowed. The central power did all the thinking; the subject had only to submit, whatever his personal wishes. Upon the emperor, as the embodiment of the State, devolved the onerous responsibility of securing and, if need were, of enforcing peaceful and lawful relations between men and men. Whenever therefore, the profession of any religion or the organization of any guild or association interfered with the prosperity of any branch of trade or commerce or manufacture, the emperor felt called upon to interpose, in order to redress the injurycaused or wrong suffered thereby. The more conscientious and upright the emperor, the more he felt the responsibility of administering the laws; and thus just and righteous rulers, like Trajan and Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, were more likely to enforce these rules of order, even to the point of persecution, than such men as Nero and Caligula and Domitian, upon whom moral considerations sat loosely.
The early persecutions of Christians sprang out of this fact. There were things Christian men would not do. They would not eat meat sacrificed to idols; they would not attend the spectacles of the theater; they would not worship or own images; and, as the trades and professions that lived by these things suffered with the increase of Christians, complaint was made to the emperor, and the power of the State invoked in behalf of public order. The riot at Ephesus (Actsxix, 23–41) is a case in illustration.
Very soon, however, the Roman authorities came to see that there was something back of Christian worship that differentiated it from other cults. There was a principle of individual liberty, a conviction of personalfreedom, an appreciation of unseen and divine realities which, if unchecked, threatened the paternalism and the emperor—the worship of the Cæsars and the continuance of the empire; and so Christians began to be persecuted simply because they were Christians. Thus began the antagonism that did not cease until the empire became nominally Christian, and the Church, striving after the universality of the empire, became worldly and paternal in its turn. This antagonism John clearly discerned, and reveals it in the Apocalypse.
But we shall be astray if we conceive that the beast which the apostle saw symbolized only the Roman or any other empire. There is an evil principle which was in existence long before that empire was established, and has continued with unabating energy since its dissolution; of whose power earthly and worldly kingdoms are but manifestations; which Satan has employed in all ages as one of his most successful weapons; and whose deadly hostility to the Christian and the Church is implacable. It is the principle of worldliness, that spirit of the world against which the Bible so frequently and faithfully warns us.
It is not easy to define worldliness. If it could be described exactly, and its bounds accurately meted, its danger would be greatly diminished. If we could point to the doing or abstaining from doing of specified things, or the using or refraining from using of any particular faculties, and say, “This is worldliness and this only,” how much easier it would be to avoid it! Worldliness is a principle, a spirit and temper of the soul. It can find a field for its exercise anywhere and everywhere, in things essentially good as well as in the essentially evil. Its intrinsic spirit lies in this—that it disengages men and things from their normal relation of dependence upon and subjection to God, and sets them up as rivals to him. It assumes to displace the Creator from his rightful sovereignty over thoughts and desires and affections and activities, and transfers allegiance to some created thing. It substitutes something temporal and earthly for God and gives to it the worship that belongs undividedly to him. It manifests itself, John tells us, in “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life.” This is the spirit of which the Bible speaks so plainly and forcibly in passageslike these: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you;” “The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be;” “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God;” “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” And every characteristic of the wild beast which John saw exhibits this spirit of worldliness. It, and it alone, exhausts the fullness of the description.
Of this beast which John saw, one of the heads was, as it were, “wounded [or slain] to death”—the very words which were used in the description of the Lamb (Revelationv, 6), as if there were in this an attempted, although feeble, imitation of Christ. Worldliness, too, has its Calvaries and Gethsemanes; but they fall far short in measure and in purpose of the great sacrifice of the cross. They are compulsory, not self-chosen sacrifices; they are not redemptive and substitutional in their design, but retributive inflictions of divine justice; they involve but a part of the being, and are not, as wasChrist’s offering, the surrender of the whole self.
Many such wounds has worldliness received. The serpent’s head has been bruised again and again by the seed of the woman. In the judgments which have come upon the world throughout the course of its history—in the deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the exodus from Egypt, the overthrow of Nineveh and Babylon, the fall of Jerusalem—its spirit has been rebuked, condemned, punished. Indeed, in all the dissolutions and decay of nature—in the fading of the grass, in the falling of the flower and of the leaf—the warning is being constantly given, “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” Most of all, in the cross of Christ has the world received its deadliest wound. But how soon is the wound healed, how quickly are the lessons of providence forgotten! and the tide of worldliness, stayed for a moment, resumes its volume and rapidity and carries its victims to their destruction.
It is this power of recuperation which contributes to the might of worldliness and makes it the more dangerous. Success adds to its fascinations and multiplies its votaries.“All the world wondered after the beast” whose deadly wound was healed. In comparison with its triumphs the cross of Christ becomes a stumbling-block to some and foolishness to others, because of the paucity of its victories. And in worshiping the beast its followers are scarcely aware, or are oblivious to the fact, that they are worshiping the dragon himself; for Paul says, “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God.”
Another striking and conspicuous characteristic of the first beast was his virulent blasphemy. Upon his heads were “the names of blasphemy.” The voices of his mouth were blasphemy. His fierce, ambitious purpose to displace God and usurp his throne—and this is what the Bible defines blasphemy to be—moved him to demand such homage as can be given rightly to God alone, and to set up his own tabernacle and name as competitors with God’s. Is not this descriptive of the spirit of worldliness? How exacting it is of the worship of its devotees! In place of the Creator, who is blessed for ever, it substitutes the creature. It enthrones nature in some one or other of its phases as the rival of the divineBeing. It will not admit the visible universe, with its laws, to be merely the vehicle through which God reveals himself and his thoughts, but demands for it equality of homage with its Maker. It does not claim for itself power to work miracles, and will not believe that any are possible. It does not base its authority upon any supernatural revelation, and denies that any is needful. Like Absalom, in the gates it whispers in every man’s ears, “O that I were made judge in the land!” and thus draws unwary souls into treason against their King. It arrogates to itself the right to the whole of man’s being—to all beauty and life, to all literature and art, to all recreation and enjoyment, to the exclusive and undivided use and administration of all earthly powers and faculties.
And how ruthless and cruel this spirit of worldliness can be! Does any human soul, driven by dissatisfaction and heartache, seek to lift the veil and penetrate to the secret shrine of the universe, or to pierce the “rose mesh” of mystery that surrounds us and ascend to the divine Spirit above and beyond it, how quickly is the fascinating smile of the world turned to bitter scorn, and itssmooth flattery to remorseless persecution! With what haughtiness and assumption does it contend that, in everything relating to music and poetry, to the æsthetic arts, to finance and politics and social matters, the question of morals has no place and God and religion have no right to enter!
To this beast, we are further informed, power, or authority, was given “to continue forty and two months.” This number, it has been previously said, is the symbol of an epoch which is limited and fractional, but which has a definite purpose pervading it.
Throughout the whole period of Judaism this beast raged with all his ferocity against the Church of the Old Testament. And, although the wild beast next to be delineated was a more formidable adversary to religion than even he, yet the temptation to fall into the ways, and follow the practices, and to drop down to the religious level of the ungodly world of heathenism around constituted a peril to the Hebrew faith against which the prophets had need frequently to lift their voices. And how constant even now is the peril to the Christian Church and the Christian believer of fallinginto the worship of the same beast of worldliness, is so patent a truth that every man’s observation and experience are sufficient to prove it. The victims of worldliness are, indeed, many, and to resist sorely tries “the patience and the faith of the saints.” But its doom is sure and irretrievable, whether that doom shall come by the sword of God or by captivity. Its own methods of hostility shall be turned against itself.
3.The Second Wild Beast, or the Spirit of False Prophetism.—In attempting to solve the mystery of the second wild beast which John saw we are confronted with a task much more serious than has as yet been presented to us. Not only is this antagonist of Christ a more formidable one than any hitherto encountered, but there seems an almost purposed obscurity and indistinctness about the description, as if to the seer himself the beast appeared in so vague and nebulous a form, or else was of such composite and heterogeneous character, as to be incapable of more exact delineation. The only way to reach the truth is to seek out such features of the description as may be regarded plain, and from them to advance to the more perplexing ones.
It will be noticed, then, that the second beast rises not as the preceding from the sea, but from the earth; that is, from the Church, not in its ideal state, but in its actual condition, as the field of human activity and influence.
Again, it is noticeable that, while in the description of the first beast the expression “it was given him” occurs again and again (much more conspicuously in the original than in the translation), in the case of the second one this expression is, in the main, although not in every instance, superseded by words suggesting active agency—“he doeth,” “he maketh,” “he causeth”—these being all various renderings of the same Greek word. This would seem to imply that, while the first beast is merely an emissary or instrument executing the will of another, the second differs from him in that he has, or assumes to have, some power of originating action, some causative agency, and that he regards himself as having independent authority. While, therefore, the results effected by both are the same (“He had power to give breath to the image of the beast”), those results are brought about in different ways.
Another very important feature of the description is that, while the distinguishing characteristic of the first beast is blasphemy—an open and undisguised assumption of the prerogatives of God, with intense and avowed hostility to him—the properties of the second are duplicity, deception, and self-deceit—perversion of the truth rather than antagonism to it; and hypocrisy, if more insidious, is far deadlier than open opposition. He has the appearance of a lamb, while speaking as a dragon. He is said to work miracles, or at least is said to profess so to do, which the first beast did not. And he counterfeits the work of God, in that by a peculiar mark he stamps upon his followers his claim to them, as the divine Being affixes to his a seal in attestation of his ownership.
One further remark may be made. Three times in the subsequent part of the Revelation (Revelationxvi, 13;xix, 20;xx, 10) these two adversaries of Christ are brought into juxtaposition, and in these instances it is the first beast alone who is designated by that name. The second beast has the synonym of “the false prophet.” The term seems to mark his superior power or craft;to the malice of a beast is added the higher intelligence of a man. The combination attests the formidable character of this wily antagonist.
In this last-named feature lies a suggestion which may serve as a clew to the interpretation of the symbol and unveil its mystery. A false prophet can stand only in contrast with a true one. It will be needful, therefore, to discuss, somewhat in detail, the characteristic functions of the prophetical office as set forth in the Scriptures.
“The usage of the word [prophet],” says Cremer,¹“is clear. It signifies one to whom and through whom God speaks. What really constitutes the prophet is immediate intercourse with God, a divine communication of what the prophet must declare. Two things, therefore, go to make the prophet—an insight granted by God into the divine secrets or mysteries, and a communication to others of those secrets. New Testament prophets were for the Christian Church what Old Testament prophets were for Israel, inasmuch as they maintained intact the immediate connection between theChurch and, not the Holy Spirit in her, but the God of her salvation above her. The prophets, both in the old and the new dispensations, were messengers or media of communication between the upper and the lower world.”
¹Lexicon of New Testament Greek, third English edition,pp.568, 569.
¹Lexicon of New Testament Greek, third English edition,pp.568, 569.
¹Lexicon of New Testament Greek, third English edition,pp.568, 569.
“The primary idea of a prophet,” says Ewald,¹“is of one who has seen or heard something which does not concern himself, or not himself alone, which will not let him rest. It wholly absorbs him, ... so that he no longer hears or is conscious of himself, but of the loud and clear voice of another who is higher than himself. He acts and speaks, not of his own accord; a higher one impels him, to resist whom is sin. It is his God, who is also the God of those to whom he must speak.”
¹Prophets of the Old Testament,vol. i,p.7. London, Williams and Norgate.
¹Prophets of the Old Testament,vol. i,p.7. London, Williams and Norgate.
¹Prophets of the Old Testament,vol. i,p.7. London, Williams and Norgate.
“That which,” says Oehler,¹“made the prophet a prophet was not his natural gifts nor his own intention; and that which he proclaimed as the prophetic word was not the mere result of instruction received nor the product of his own reflection. Theprophet, as such, knows himself to be the organ of divine revelation, in virtue both of a divine vocation capable of being known by him as such, ... and also of his endowment with the enlightening, sanctifying, and strengthening Spirit of God.”
¹Theology of the Old Testament, §§ 205, 206. New York, Funk and Wagnalls.
¹Theology of the Old Testament, §§ 205, 206. New York, Funk and Wagnalls.
¹Theology of the Old Testament, §§ 205, 206. New York, Funk and Wagnalls.
With these statements the concurrent testimony of the New Testament is in harmony: “God ... at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets” (Hebrewsi, 1); “The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peteri, 21).
It was, therefore, essential to the credibility and authority of the prophet that he should have received some direct revelation from God. The message intrusted to him to deliver must be from a source above and outside himself. It was not sufficient that God spake in him; he must be able to say that God spake to him. When to the student prepared by the guidance of a teacher to receive them nature reveals its facts and laws, these come to him as something external to him. They are not suggestions or inspirations of his own mind, but owetheir origin to a source exterior to it. So likewise with the prophet. How the revelation came to him, and how his hearers became convinced that God had spoken to him, are questions that do not touch the truth of his message. The important thing is that the prophet was the agent and representative of God in delivering a message which had previously been committed to him. Herein lay the distinction between the priesthood and the prophetical office. A priest was a man on whom was laid the responsibility of appearing before God on behalf of men; a prophet was one who stood in the presence of men on behalf of God. A priest represented man in the court of God; a prophet represented God in the court of human life. A priest was man’s advocate; a prophet was God’s advocate. The function of the priest was to intercede for his fellows; identity of condition and tender sympathy with them were therefore prime requisites. The function of a prophet was to deliver God’s word to man; strict fidelity to his message and to the truth were his essential qualifications. As the priesthood, then, was a type of Christ, finding its perfect realization in him who laid downhis life a ransom for us, the prophetical office was a type of the Holy Ghost, whose work it is to convey to man the message of God, whether it be of conviction, of justification, of sanctification, of inspiration, or of assurance.
If, therefore, by a “false Christ” is meant one who usurps the place of Christ and substitutes himself for him, demanding from men the allegiance due only to the Son of God, then by a “false prophet” must be meant one who unconsciously or purposely substitutes himself for the Holy Spirit, setting forth his own conceptions or visions as the voice of God.
“The characteristic,” says Oehler,¹“of the false prophets is declared to be that they speak that which they themselves have devised. These latter are designated (Ezekielxiii, 2) as prophets ‘out of their own hearts,’ who ‘follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing;’ ‘they speak,’ according to Jeremiahxxiii, 16, ‘a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord.’”
¹Theology of the Old Testament,p.464.
¹Theology of the Old Testament,p.464.
¹Theology of the Old Testament,p.464.
No stage of history has been free from such presumptuous prophets. Their existenceand the disastrous work they wrought are set forth again and again in the Old Testament Scriptures. But that their appearance in larger numbers and under more formidable guises may be expected in the New Testament dispensation follows from a consideration of the influence of Christianity upon human nature.
Unquestionably, one marked result of that copious effusion of the Holy Spirit, which beginning at Pentecost has continued until now, was a quickening of the human soul to a realization of its individuality. Fifteen centuries of sad experience and a convulsion which disrupted Western Christendom were needed to bring any large portion of the Church to an appreciation of the privileges which inhere in this individualism. Since the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, men have come by freer study of the Bible to discern more clearly the possibilities which it teaches of personal consciousness of sonship, and of the individual possession by the Holy Spirit of every soul availing itself of the privilege; although there have never been wanting those who have discerned the possibility of individual communion with the spiritual world.
In individualism lurks a danger against which no revelation can absolutely secure us. I may transgress its prescribed limitations and become excessive. It may strive after independence from its Creator and put forth its hands to forbidden fruit. It may assume prerogatives which the divine Being reserves to himself. It may substitute its own imaginings and volitions for voices of God, and displace that real spirituality which only the Holy Ghost can create with an auto-spiritualism which is deceptive, illusory, and specious, the precursor of spiritual and intellectual anarchy.
Our Lord gave warning of this peril when, predicting the trials which should come, he said, “There shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Paul foresaw it, saying to the Ephesian elders, “Of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to drawaway disciples after them.” It was this which led John to write, “Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”
The writer of the Revelation had no need to go beyond his own memory to find symptoms of this spirit. Already it had begun to manifest itself in the apostolic Church. Simon Magus was a conspicuous but not solitary example. In the epistles to the seven churches there are cautions against “the Nicolaitans” and “the woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess,” very distinct from those which denounce the pleasures or the persecutions of the world. In the ante-Nicene age gnosticism, with its pretensions to a theosophy more profound, a knowledge more extensive and exact, a code of ethics more consistent, and a self-denial more rigid than those of the faithful, was a more dangerous adversary than the Roman empire; and we who appreciate the skillfulness of its specious arguments realize that nothing but the providence of God carried the artless and unsuspicious Church safely through the peril.¹And throughout the ages since there has been a continuous reappearance of this spirit, sometimes within, sometimesoutside the Church; not always avowedly antagonistic to Christianity, but assuming to be a more perfect form of it; not impugning the authority of the Scriptures, but claiming to possess deeper views of their esoteric meaning; not openly subverting the foundations of morals, but superseding them by a show of a more austere and uncompromising sanctimoniousness. It so puts on the appearance of a lamb that its dragon nature is hard to detect. It has cropped out in Manichæism, in Paulicianism, in Albigensianism, among hermits and pillar saints, among pietists, mystics, occultists, and other professors of a strained and exalted perfection and illumination to which only the elect initiate can aspire, and from which the common masses of believers are excluded.
¹Bigg,Christian Platonists of Alexandria, Bampton Lectures, 1886, lecturei,p.35; Harnack,History of Dogma, booki, chapteriv.
¹Bigg,Christian Platonists of Alexandria, Bampton Lectures, 1886, lecturei,p.35; Harnack,History of Dogma, booki, chapteriv.
¹Bigg,Christian Platonists of Alexandria, Bampton Lectures, 1886, lecturei,p.35; Harnack,History of Dogma, booki, chapteriv.
It is hard to describe this spirit by a single name. It wears so many forms that no one word can comprehend all of them. Even the apostolic pen failed to depict this adversary clearly or sketch its outline with distinctness. Deceit seems to be the pervading and controlling element of its being, and to affect both substance and form. But it has as its usual accompaniment one markwhich it stamps upon its devotees—a scrupulous and rigid asceticism which deludes itself with the hope of emancipation from the necessary conditions of earthly life, which denounces as sinful things proper in themselves, simply because they are natural or secular, and which aims at the profitless and impracticable task of anticipating in this life the celestial state of disembodied spirits. No creature can ever with impunity contravene the laws imposed upon his nature. The abnormal and excessive development of one side of man’s constitution is sure to involve a corresponding atrophy of some other side, and thus the sins excluded by one system of defenses find entrance through some other avenue left unguarded. And the constant result of asceticism has been in the end to revive with new power the worldliness it aimed to destroy; so that in this sense the second beast gives “life” and breath “unto the image” of the first. For the termination of all hyperspiritualism has been either in an arrogant self-exaltation, the very opposite of Christian humility and love, or in an antinomianism which, under the affectation of liberty, gives loose rein to sensualism.
To the question, which thus becomes of vital importance, How shall we “try the spirits” to know “whether they are of God”? John has elsewhere furnished a sufficient answer: “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world” (1 Johniv, 2, 3).
The central principle of all asceticism, in whatever form, and whether perceived and acknowledged or not, is that matter is essentially evil and spirit essentially good. It is in the contact of soul with body and of spirit with matter that sin lies. Holiness, therefore, means only the diminution or destruction of this contact. All bodily desires, activities, and enjoyments, if they cannot be annihilated, must be reduced to the minimum, that thereby the ascendency of the spirit may be gained and maintained. Thus human nature is mutilated to half its capacities. Religion becomes only a “concision,” not a process of transformation. The problem of redemption is no longer themoral one of the salvation of the soul from the guilt and pollution of sin, but the metaphysical one of the liberation of the spirit from matter.¹By such as hold this view of things the assumption by the Son of God of the likeness of sinful flesh, his birth, his fellowship with earthly conditions and experiences, can never be fully accepted; his crucifixion is attenuated into a figure of speech or becomes a mere parable, and cannot be the necessary means of our salvation.
¹Möller,History of the Christian Church,vol. i,pp.152, 153. New York, Swan Sonnenschein &Co., 1892.
¹Möller,History of the Christian Church,vol. i,pp.152, 153. New York, Swan Sonnenschein &Co., 1892.
¹Möller,History of the Christian Church,vol. i,pp.152, 153. New York, Swan Sonnenschein &Co., 1892.
Against such a theory the Revelation is one long protest. Its keynote is salvation through “the Lamb that was slain.” Nor does anything prove so conclusively that John was the author of the Apocalypse as the fact that in it, in the fourth gospel, and in the epistles which bear his name, the central and fundamental truth was the same: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us;” and, “This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.”
The acquisition of knowledge depends as much upon a right method as upon an earnest purpose. Alphabets must be mastered before sentences can be read. No one can understand the higher mathematics who has not been grounded in the fundamental axioms. And one of the axioms of the spiritual life is that the Holy Spirit cannot be given until Jesus is glorified (Johnvii, 39). Whoever does not accept, with all implied therein, the exemplary earthly life and the atoning and sacrificial death of the Son of God may well pause to reflect whether the spirit which leads and moves him is indeed the Spirit of God, or whether it is not the spirit of evil and untruth. We may not set limits to the spiritual flights of which the soul is capable, but it must have a solid basis from which to start; otherwise it wastes its strength in aimless wanderings amid mazy fogs and vagaries.
The path of truth lies between extremes, and from either side of the ridge along which it winds steep declines lead to dangerous abysses. If a man, on the one hand, accepts to the full the reality of the incarnation of the Son of God, and then does not advance to that other revealed truth, that theHoly Ghost is of equal power and divinity and that his mission is as wide in its range and as complete in its effects, religion will be to him a thing of externals, of outward and mechanical forms and rites. On the other hand, the ascetic who would aspire to the full heights of the revelation of the Holy Spirit without accepting what must precede success—the real humanity of our Lord, his cross, his grave, his resurrection—will surely miss the path and be lost in abstractions, fanaticisms, delusion, and deceit.
One last feature descriptive of the second beast remains to be considered—the number of his name. “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.” If John meant to cover a mystery he has certainly succeeded, for no explanation has as yet been offered convincing enough to command the acceptance of the Church. Unquestionably this is the most difficult to solve of all the problems of the book, and the apostle is thought to intimate this in saying, “Here is wisdom;” although possibly his meaning is that the special need for wisdom lies in defense against the wiles ofthis adversary, rather than in solving the mystery of his name.
The interpretation which has met with the largest assent is based on the usage of employing the letters of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets as numerals. Men have attempted to discover some name the letters of which when added will give the numerical value six hundred and sixty-six. The name which has secured the largest number of advocates is Lateinos (Latin), which, written in Greek characters and numbered, gives six hundred and sixty-six. By Roman Catholic interpreters who accept this solution the empire of Rome is supposed to be meant; by Protestants, the Church of Rome.Dr.Adam Clarke thought this solution to “amount nearly to demonstration.”
In recent times many German and other scholars, mainly for reasons based on a special theory of the date of the Revelation, prefer the words Nero Cæsar, which, written in Hebrew letters, number six hundred and sixty-six. Irenæus (died about 202), who attempted the problem, out of many names preferred Teitan, possibly to suggest an analogy between the attempts ofRoman emperors to crush the Church and the unsuccessful war of the Titans against the gods, without venturing to put forth his opinions in more definite form. Very many other names of men, ancient and modern, have been proposed, with greater or less plausibility; for curiosity to decipher numerical symbols, when it possesses a man, holds him with almost the fascination of gambling. But it is apparent that the combination of names possible with only a few letters is so much beyond computation that almost apostolical inspiration is requisite to decide upon the right one.
To the word “Lateinos,” strong as are its claims, the objection lies that the Roman or Latin empire can scarcely be meant, since the beast John describes is evidently a spiritual power, not a secular one. Nor can the Roman Church be meant, for it was not known as Latin in the days of the apostle, nor for centuries afterward; and, as one design of the Apocalypse was to comfort and instruct the generation in which John lived, it would have been inconsistent with that design to select a name which could have no meaning intelligible to it or to many generations succeeding. There is wisdom inthe words of Bleek:¹“The discovery that a definite name contains this number as the value of its letters in Greek would not warrant us to assume the correctness of the interpretation if other hints in the book respecting the beast did not agree.”
¹Lectures on the Apocalypse,p.87. London, Williams & Norgate, 1875.
¹Lectures on the Apocalypse,p.87. London, Williams & Norgate, 1875.
¹Lectures on the Apocalypse,p.87. London, Williams & Norgate, 1875.
Another explanation offered is that the number six hundred and sixty-six is but a threefold repetition of the number six, John thus intending to mark in the most emphatic manner that, however mighty the power or long the duration of the beast shall be, it will inevitably fall short of the completeness and permanence of Christ’s kingdom, as six is less than seven.
Still another explanation proposed is that the number was originally written with the Greek lettersχξϛ;χbeing equal to six hundred,ξto sixty, andϛto six. Asχ(ch) is the initial letter of Christ,ξis supposed to be an emblem of Satan, being afterward so used by the Gnostics, andϛis the initial ofσταυρός,cross. The symbol, it is said, refers to some Satanic power intervening between Christ and the cross, some system which honors him as teacher but denieshim as Saviour, which accepts Jesus, but not “him crucified.” The description accords well enough with that of the second beast; but whether it can be extracted from the number six hundred and sixty-six is another question. The monogram, while harmonizing with the symbolism of the Apocalypse, and also delineating the nature of the beast, does not explain the emphasis which seems to be laid upon his “name.”
There is, however, one detail in this part of the description of the beast often overlooked, but which may carry us far on our way to decipher the secret of the number. The number of the name is not monopolized by the beast; it does not exhaust itself in any single individual. We are told that “no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” The beast has followers who imbibe his spirit and partake of his characteristics, and to whom his name and number are equally appropriate. It is more in keeping with this statement, as well as with other details, to interpret the beast as a principle rather than a person, as being some spirit of evil which, assumingprominence in some man or organization, is yet shared by many men and organizations. The ascetic, false prophetism which fulfills the other details of the description coincides also with this.
If, following out the rule of interpretation which has guided us hitherto, and assuming that John drew his prediction of the future from facts and tendencies existing in his day, we read the epistles contained in chaptersiiandiii, we shall find that among the perils which threatened the apostolic Church none was more imminent than that which is called “the doctrine of the Nicolaitans,” which was but a reproduction of the heresy of Balaam, the gifted and formidable rival and antagonist of Moses; the name Nicolaus, indeed, meaning in Greek the same that Balaam does in Hebrew. So deep a mark did Balaam make that throughout the Old Testament, as well as the New, he stands as the representative, as he was the first example, of that spirit of false prophetism which, beginning as ascetism, degenerates into antinomianism and prostitutes genius to the service of the flesh. Now, it is certainly true, as Züllig shows,¹that the words “Balaam, the son of Beor, soothsayer,” if written in Hebrew letters do make up the sum six hundred and sixty-six. It seems, therefore, probable that some embodiment of his insidious spirit, some reproduction of his deadly doctrine, with its resultant lawless practices, is the solution of this mysterious symbol, the second beast, against which John earnestly warns the Church in all ages to guard itself as the most dangerous foe to the kingdom of Christ. And possibly the archæological researches which are now bringing to light much of the hidden history of earlier ages may yet discover to us the sect which served as the basis of his warning.
¹Bleek, Lectures on the Apocalypse,p.285.
¹Bleek, Lectures on the Apocalypse,p.285.
¹Bleek, Lectures on the Apocalypse,p.285.
The interpretation which has here been put upon the symbols of the two wild beasts—namely, that they represent, the one the spirit of worldliness, the other that autospiritualism or self-centered piety which, for lack of a more comprehensive phrase, may be designated as false prophetism or false asceticism—derives some confirmation from the fact that their resulting effects have been such as the author of the Revelation predicted. Worldliness seems the baser of the two, but its dominion isbriefer and less stable. As the mind can never be content with agnosticism, but must by necessity search for some explanation of the mystery of being until satisfaction is gained, so the heart can never fully rest in hopes and themes and joys which are only earthly. The religious instincts inherent in and inalienable from our nature will assert themselves and cry for God. On the other hand, asceticism, while it seems to present a loftier ideal and holds men thereby with a more permanent grasp, is all the more baleful by reason of its deceptiveness. It veils pride, ambition, malice, selfishness, under the guise of superior sanctity, which, while imposing on others by its well-masked duplicity, lulls its victims into almost hopeless slumber by its hypocrisy. Those whom it allures by its professions of superior piety it mocks with disappointing dreams. It is the dark shadow that always waits on holiness and liberty; it is the special temptation that besets souls seeking after purity and knowledge; while worldliness is that to which those are most prone who mingle much with the world and deal with earthly realities. If, on the one hand, it is easy for men to fall into the danger ofusing their heaven-given faculties for the ignoble purpose of gratifying their lower desires or of turning stones to bread simply that they may live, it is equally easy, on the other, to wander into the opposite error of presuming rashly upon God’s providence and mercy, although humility has degenerated into boasting and love has been perverted to censoriousness. From neither tendency can the regeneration of the world come; both are alike enemies of God and of man.
4.Anticipations of Victory.—It is one of the characteristic peculiarities ofSt.John’s literary style to introduce a subject which for the moment he merely suggests to our notice, returning to it subsequently in order that he may amplify and complete it. He goes over his work again and again, each time adding some new touch, with the purpose of bringing out in greater prominence some detail of his subject. While each section, therefore, contains in measure an epitome of the whole, in each one some single point is more specifically and elaborately discussed. There is, it is true, advance of thought; but the eagle of the apostolic band moves in circles, bringing into notice of his keen eye every part of the field overwhich he soars, while each swoop of his wing carries him a little beyond his former orbit, so that his progress is in spirals. The principle which controlled him seems to have been that of presenting to us in sharp and striking antithesis the contrasts between conflicting ideas, while he holds them under our observation.
It is also characteristic of a disposition likeSt.John’s, and of a life so contemplative and secluded as his was, to view things in the light of their essential principles; not as they become, modified by contact and in relation with each other, but as they radically and germinally are. By consequence such minds, instead of being occupied with the intermediate changes, pass at once to ultimate results and see the end in the beginning.
An instance of this appears in the fourteenth chapter, which is really but an epilogue to the preceding chapters. In the twelfth and thirteenth chapters we have had presented to our vision the formidable enemies with which the Christian believer must struggle. They have been described most graphically and with a fullness of detail not subsequently exceeded.Thedramatis personæare all put upon the stage, and no new actors in the tragedy of existence need be expected. But these enemies are sufficiently numerous and terrible to excite apprehension and awaken earnest inquiries as to our means of resistance and possibilities of success. The seer, therefore, pauses for a moment to review the resources put within our reach and to assure us of their adequacy. “Greater is he that is in you,” he says, “than he that is in the world.” And he fully indorses the emphatic declaration of Paul, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”
In prophesying victory over the dragon and the beasts to the saints of Christ, John separates them into two classes, as he had done in chaptervii. This is not in any spirit of Jewish narrowness or exclusiveness. He had long gotten beyond that and learned to call no man common whom God had cleansed. Even Paul, the apostle of the uncircumcision, recognized a distinction between the Jew, who was first, and the Gentile; so there can be alleged against John no bigotry in recognizing the distinction,inasmuch as he foreshadows equal victory to both classes. There can hardly be a question that by the “hundred forty and four thousand” John meant Israelites after the flesh; for they “stood on the mount Sion;” they sang a song which none others but themselves could learn, namely, the song of Moses and of the Lamb (xv, 3); they were “the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb” (xiv, 4); they were without “guile,” with reference no doubt to Johni, 47. They were “virgins,” having the true asceticism—freedom from ungodliness and worldly lusts. There was reason for rejoicing to a Jew like John in the fact that, in spite of the opposition of the rulers and Herods among the chosen people to whom had been committed the oracles of God, and on the very spots of the crucifixion and resurrection, so many of his former co-religionists had become disciples of Christ and followed the Lamb whithersoever he led them.
But the word of God is not bound, nor is it the exclusive property of any race; and the seer immediately adds the vision of the multitudes of “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” to whom “theeverlasting Gospel” was preached and among whom it found adherents. The fullness of the times had come, and Gentiles might “fear God, and give glory to him,” the one Creator of “heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”
One new feature is now introduced. Babylon, which occupies so much of the subsequent part of the Apocalypse, is here for the first time mentioned. Babylon, it will be attempted to show, is not another adversary, but an apostate Church which has succumbed to adversaries and thereby become a counterfeit and rival to Christianity. It is here brought upon the stage by anticipation, and its doom foretold, to give completer assurance of the coming victory over all forms and results of sin and evil.
The age in which John lived was an age of martyrdom. How severely this fact tried “the patience” and faith of the early Christians we know from hints in other apostolical writings. Paul found it necessary to show to his brethren in Rome that if they suffered with Christ it was that they might be also glorified together with him. Peter, too, comforts those whose faith was being so sorely tried with the assurancethat the trial of their faith was “more precious than of gold that perisheth,” and would be “found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” And so John gives to the Church of his day the glad tidings that, although God buries his workmen, he carries on his work; that they, if they died “in the Lord,” should “rest from their labors;” and that “their works” should survive and go on winning victories after their departure.
If it should be asked how or with what weapons they were to overcome, John gives the answer which is found so often in the Book of Revelation that it is one of the keys to unlock its mysteries—they overcome “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Revelationxii, 11); by which latter expression is meant, doubtless, the Scriptures, as explained in the chapter upon the two witnesses. That the two visions which now follow, the harvest of the world and the vintage scene, refer to these two weapons of success furnishes an explanation of them so simple and easy that it is strange they should have occasioned so much difficulty to commentators.
The prophet Joel, from whose writingsthese visions are drawn (Joeliii, 13), probably among the earliest and certainly among the greatest of the Hebrew seers, appears to have been gifted with a foresight of the future remarkable even for one of that extraordinary body of men. The final and complete triumph of God’s cause over all opposing foes in and through Zion, and the deliverance of the Church from all bondage, oppression, and danger, preceded by a plentiful outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all classes, ages, and conditions, stood out before him as a certain and assured fact. The details of the methods by which this result was to be achieved were not revealed to him, nor is it surprising that, being thus left to himself, he could conceive of no other instrumentalities than those which in his experience of human affairs had passed under his own observation. This is not the only instance in which the apostles of the New Testament, while confirming the prophets of the Old as to results, have discerned more clearly the power of spiritual forces, and for swords and carnal weapons and rods of iron have substituted the more peaceful instrumentalities of the sword of the Spirit, the breathof the Messiah’s lips, and the staff of the Good Shepherd.
The writer of the Revelation, expanding and evangelizing the vision of Joel, saw “a white cloud,” and One “like unto the Son of man” sitting thereon, “having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.” “Out of the temple” an angel came and cried to him, “Thrust in thy sickle, ... for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” Whereupon he cast his sickle upon the earth, and “the earth was reaped.”
In these words surely a reference is to be seen to the words of our Lord himself uttered in the hearing of John and recorded in Matthewxxiv, 14, 30, 31: “And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.... And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
This metaphor of the harvest as the result of the sowing of God’s word is one of the most common to be found in the Scriptures.“The sower soweth the word” (Markiv, 14), or “the word of the kingdom” (Matthewxiii, 19), or “the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you” (1 Peteri, 25). “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself [that is, automatically and spontaneously].... But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come” (Markiv, 26–29).
That “the word of God is quick and powerful” (Hebrewsiv, 12); that it has God’s life in it (Johnvi, 63); that it is the great weapon of warfare, defensive and offensive, to the Church and the believer; that it is the incorruptible seed by which men are born into the kingdom (1 Peteri, 23); that it is the instrument whereby we are sanctified (Johnxvii, 17), is the concurrent declaration of the Scriptures themselves. That it is to be preached by apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers is the commission binding on all: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Markxvi, 15).This Bible is sufficient of itself, all other things are only ancillary; “in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatiansvi, 9). All literature and art and culture and science are but as “the grass” that “withereth,” or “the flower” that “fadeth;” “but the word of our God shall stand forever.” And the martyrs of the apostolical age had the inspired assurance of John to console them, that if they faithfully bore witness to the word they might fall, but “their works” would follow on after them. And in so saying he is only reëchoing the words which he himself had heard from the Master, “One soweth, and another reapeth” (Johniv, 37). And John shows how completely he had gotten away from Jewish narrowness and absorbed the Master’s spirit, in his recognition of the fact that the Bible is for every nation and kindred and people.
The other instrumentality of victory put within the reach of the Church, namely, the all-sufficient “blood of the Lamb,” is beautifully illustrated in the vintage vision, which has most needlessly perplexed commentators.
An angel—not now the Son of man—is seen coming “out of the temple which is inheaven” with a sharp sickle. Another angel came out from the altar, who is described as having “power over fire” (the same combination as is found in Isaiahvi, 6), and at his cry the sickle was thrust into the earth, and the clusters of fully ripe grapes gathered and cast “into the great wine press of the wrath of God.”
It is hardly possible to read these words without seeing in them a reference to Isaiahlxiii, 1–6. By the great mass of believers the words are interpreted as an allusion to and a prophecy of the atoning work of Christ. It certainly seems that the writer of the Revelation so understood them, not only from the connection of this vintage scene with the blood of the Lamb, but also from Revelationxix, 11–16, where the same connection of the two themes, the “sharp sword” issuing from the mouth of Christ, that is, the word of God, and the “vesture dipped in blood,” with the treading of the wine press, is found.
Our belief in the plenary inspiration of the writers of the Scriptures does not compel us to the conviction that they always comprehended the full import of their message, or that all the particulars embracedtherein stood out clearly and plainly in their minds. This is one of the instances in which prophets and wise men desired to see the things which we in the kingdom of Christ see, but did not see them. Every man in painting mental pictures must of necessity use colors with which his own mind is acquainted, and which he has acquired by experience and observation. And Isaiah and the other prophets, in the age and with the surroundings in the midst of which they lived, had no other means of conveying to the minds of men the true revelations which were given to them of the suffering and victorious Messiah than terms such as they saw exemplified in the world of history and in the men about them. Any other terms would have been incomprehensible, and so have failed of their purpose to help and inspirit. And the divinity of the Bible is seen conspicuously in this—that the framework in which its glorious pictures were set is capable of expansion to the times in which we live and the larger views we have, without fracture or distortion. The signs and symbols which by divine illumination were presented to them have come down to us; but we, with the clearer lightof the Sun of righteousness, can read intelligently what were hieroglyphics to them, and, looking with unveiled face, can behold therein the glory of God. That John, in thus quoting from Isaiah, has Calvary and Gethsemane in his thoughts is shown by his specifying particularly that “the wine press was trodden without the city,” bringing out the truth, of which Hebrewsxiii, 12, is the witness, that “Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.”
It is true that in the prophecy of Isaiah there appears an element of vengeance and wrath that does not comport with our ideas of salvation and redemption, and even repels. The element is still there; but the New Testament teaches us that all that was lonely, painful, agonizing in human redemption was borne by the Christ for us. We are “bought with a price,” but he paid it. He was “made a curse for us.” He “bare our sins in his own body on the tree,” and by his “stripes” we are “healed.” However feeble may be the traces of vicariousness in nature, human life is full of it, is built about it. All love is manifested in vicarious suffering. Scarce any rise butthat some fall; scarce any become rich but that others become poor; there is hardly a smile or a laugh of joy for which some pain is not felt or some tear not shed somewhere. And, if God manifests his love by sending “his Son to be the propitiation for our sins,” this is but an illustration of the truth, as apparent in the spiritual world as in that of nature, of the transmutation of forces; the sum not being increased or diminished, but the places and modes of manifestation changing.
The remainder of the vintage scene may be easily explained, difficult as it has seemed to most interpreters, by applying the key which is put into our hands, if we accept the solution offered above.
We must now for almost the first time take up the prophecy of Ezekiel, which from this place onward almost singly rules the Apocalypse, and the careful study of which will throw light upon what seems most obscure.
We are told that “blood came out of the wine press, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”
Turning to Ezekiel, we find that the lastchapters of that great prophecy are taken up with a beautiful description, ideal and figurative, doubtless, of the restored temple, holy city, and land of the new Israel of God. In the forty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel the dimensions of this ideal land are very carefully stated. The boundary line of it was, on the north side, Hamath, in latitude thirty-four degrees twenty minutes, and, on the south, a line drawn from Tamar, at the southern border of the Dead Sea, to Kadesh, a brook emptying into the Mediterranean. If, now, we measure on a map the distance between these lines, we shall find it to be two hundred miles, or sixteen hundred furlongs.
This whole space, comprehending all of the Holy Land, was thus entirely covered with the blood which flowed from the wine press trodden by the Son of God. Could there be a more complete statement of the all-sufficiency of that atoning blood? It is the same truth presented to us here which John has elsewhere in plainer prose revealed to our faith: “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
And as if still further to verify the statement he tells us that the blood reached to“the horse bridles.” There is an allusion in this to Zechariahxiv, 20, where we are told that in “the day of the Lord” there shall be “upon the bells [or, as the margin has it, ‘upon the bridles’] of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord.” The ideal land is not only covered in its whole extent with the atoning blood, but so deep is the stream that it buries all beneath it, except where upon the surface is displayed the significant inscription, “Holiness unto the Lord.” Surely there is no lack in the provisions of salvation. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Thus, then, in these beautiful visions is it shown that the believer and the Church are sufficiently armed for the encounter with any antagonist, however furious or formidable. We are supplied with “the sword of the Spirit” and “the blood of the Lamb.” Whatever the tasks may be that lie before us, having these, we have all necessary equipment. Nothing shall be able to harm us so long as we continue to be followers of God.
If the harvest scene illustrates the extent of divine grace, and is an emblem of the living seed which, small in its beginnings, grows into a great and widespreading tree under whose branches all the nations of earth may find shelter and rest, the vintage scene illustrates the depth to which salvation penetrates. The whole extent of human need is reached. Neither is there a want anywhere which may not be satisfied. And through the use of the divinely appointed means the kingdom of Christ may be brought to its ideal of perfection, in us and in the whole Church, until God shall, indeed, be all and in all.