"I give theft Books.
\ for the founding of a College in iHr Colony"

• ILIII3I82&]Ky •

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

The Devotional
and Practical
Commentary Edited by
W. Robertson Nicoll
M.A., LL.D.

THE
DEVOTIONAL AND PRACTICAL
COMMENTARY
Crown Svo, Cloth, <,s. each.
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.
By JOSEPH PARKER, D.D.
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES TO THE COLOS
SIANS AND THESSALONIANS. By the
Same Author.
THE EPISTLES OF ST. PETER. By J. H.
Jowett, M.A.
THE BOOK OF REVELATION. By C.
Anderson Scott, M.A.
London: HODDER AND STOUGHTON

THE
BOOK OF THE REVELATION

\,*> .,V° BY THE REV.
Cf ANDERSON SCOTT, M.A.
AUTHOR of
"EVANGELICAL DOCTRINE— BIBLE TROTH," ETC

LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27 PATERNOSTER ROW
i9°5

TO THE
EEVEEED MEMORY
OF
THOMAS ANDEESON
MY FIEST TEACHER.

PREFACE
The Book of Eevelation is not one the whole
meaning of which lies upon the surface. It
differs from the other books of the New Testa
ment in this, that the ideas it contains are ex
pressed not only in words, but in words and
symbols. . The meaning of the symbols must
have been clear to the first readers, but is
no longer obvious to us. It can only be ascer
tained when patient investigation in many fields
has reconstructed the political, social, and
religious environment of the Christian com
munities in "Asia" at the end of the first
century. That reconstruction is not yet com
plete, but the remarkable progress of recent
years makes it already possible to interpret with
considerable certainty nearly all the symbols
which are used, and thus to read the book
approximately as it was read by those to whom
it was first addressed.
The purpose of the following chapters is first
to explain the book as a whole in the new
light which is shed upon it by recent historical
and literary research, and then to indicate lines

viii PEEFACE
of practical application for those principles of
Divine government which it so impressively
illustrates. The volume is thus intended to be
complementary to the commentary in the Cen
tury Bible, to which reference should be made
on questions of verbal interpretation as well as
all matters concerning authorship, date, and
construction. The commentary of Bousset is still the best
and most illuminating, but much helpful sug
gestion will also be found in the recent works
of Bernhard Weiss and of Johannes Weiss. In
English the intelligent study of the Eevelation
has been immensely furthered by the publication
of Professor Eamsay's Letters to the Seven
Churches, of whose authoritative statements
I have availed myself freely in the relative
chapters. The English edition of the Greek
text which will be on the plane of modern
scholarship is still to come ; but it may be
looked for with confidence among those which
are announced by Dr. Swete, by Dr. Moffatt in
the Expositor's Greek Testament, and by Dr.
Charles in the International Critical Commen
tary. In the meantime I hope that the follow
ing chapters may do something to remove the
veil which has lain so long upon the face of
the reader of the Eevelation. C. A. S.

CONTENTS

CHAP. THESE
I. 1-3. What is an Apocalypse?

I. 4-6. Where the Church of the First
Century put Christ, and Why 20

I. 9-20. The Vision of the Son of Man . 34

II. 1-7. The Letter to the Church at
Ephesus .49

II. 8-11. The Letter to the Church at
Smyrna  66

II. 12-17. The Letter to the Church at
Pergamum . . . . 81

: CONTENTS
CHAP. VEESE PAGE
II. 18-29. The Letter to the Church at
Thyatira . . .97

III. 1-6. The Letter to the Church at
Sardis . ... 113

III. 7-13 The Letter to the Church at
Philadelphia .... 126

III. 14-22. The Letter to the Church at
Laodicea  141

IV., V. The Vision of the Things that
Are . . . 155

VI.-XVI. The Seals, the Trumpets, and
the Bowls . 169

VII. The First Parenthesis : the
Vision of the Eedeemed in
Heaven . . . 190

X.-XI. 13. The Second Parenthesis . . 203

CONTENTS xi
CHAP. TERSE PAGE
XII. The Third Parenthesis :
the Vision of the Woman,
the Man-Child, and the
Dragon . . 218

XIII The Monstrous Power of
Evil . . 231

XIV. Anticipatory Visions of
the Judgment . . 252

XVII.-XIX. 10. The Fall of Babylon —
eome . 266

XIX. 11-XXI. 1. Seven Visions concerning
the End . . 287

XXI.-XXII. 5. Jerusalem from Above . 303

XXII. 8-21. The Epilogue .322

WHAT IS AN APOCALYPSE?
Rev. i. 1-3
The Eevelation oj Jesus Christ, which God gave him to
show unto Ms servants, even the things which must shortly
come to pass : and he sent and signified it by Ms angel unto
Ms servant John; who bare witness of the word of God,
and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, even of all things that
he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the
words of the prophecy, and keep the things wMch are
written therein; for the time is at hand (B.V.).
The name by which this book would be known
to its earliest readers among the Christians of
Asia Minor would be " the Apocalypse," or " the
Apocalypse of John." This is the name which
it bears in the original Greek, not only in the"
" title," which is later than the book, but in the
opening words, "The Eevelation of Jesus Christ,"
where " Eevelation " is the rendering of the word
"Apocalypse." Now, those among its fir'st
readers who had been Jews ere they became
Christians would be quite familiar with a title
such as this ; it would not be the first book
bearing this name with which they were ac-
2 1

2 THE BOOK OE EEVELATION
quainted, and they would be prepared for the
character of its contents and the peculiar forms
which they take. By the word itself, which
exactly corresponds in its etymology to our word
"Eevelation," they would understand the remov
ing of a veil, the veil which hides the future from
the eyes of men. And the period between the
close of the Old Testament Canon and the end
of the first century after Christ had seen the
production of many books which had this
purpose and bore this name. The earliest speci
men of an Apocalypse — the one which is indeed
the prototype of them all — is found within the
Old Testament itself in the Book of Daniel ; but
this had been followed by many others, the
names of which are less familiar to us than
they were to the Jews. There is, for example,
the Book of Enoch, of Jewish authorship, and
composed at different periods in the second and
first centuries before Christ. It was for long
regarded by both Jews and Christians as inspired.
It is quoted by name in the Epistle of Jude, and
probably referred to in the opening chapter of
the first Epistle of Peter. It consists largely
of visions which purport to have been seen by
Enoch, " the seventh from Adam," and is written
in the first person as though by Enoch himself.
There is no doubt, however, that it is the
production of a much later age. Then there is

CHAPTEE I. 1-3 3
the Assumption of Moses, from which, in all
probability, St. Jude derived his allusion to
" Michael the archangel contending for the body
of Moses." Another book of this class which
had wide circulation and great influence in both
Jewish and Christian circles is the Fourth Book
of Esdras, or Esra, which is more familiar than
the others, because it is found in the Apocrypha.
Like Enoch, it is quoted by many of the early
fathers as a work of genuine inspiration, and
it is of special interest to us because it is
practically contemporary with the Apocalypse
of St. John. It also is a record of many visions,
and makes even more abundant use of the
symbolism of beasts with many heads and
eagles with many wings.
There are still several other Jewish works of
this class which might be enumerated ; but it is
not neceBsary to do so here, nor yet to describe
further the contents of this Apocalyptic literature.
Our main purpose is to call attention to its exist
ence, and to the great interest taken in it by
many Jews of the first century, and now to
indicate briefly the general character of these
books in order that we may have an idea of what
our Book of Eevelation means by calling itself an
Apocalypse. The first thing to observe is the kind of atmo
sphere, political and religious, in which they

4 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
flourish. An Apocalypse is the product of " bad
times" — bad times for the Church, the people, and
the Kingdom of God. The cause of this con
dition of affairs is seen to be a double one,
external and internal. The external cause is the
oppression of the enemy, the fact that, for a time
at least, the foes of righteousness have got the
upper hand, the people of God are suffering
persecution, the present is dark, and the imme
diate future darker still. Hope, at least for this
world, is, humanly speaking, almost at an end.
Nothing short of " a new heaven and a new
earth " can bring redress and security. And the
internal cause is the absence of any " open vision."
Apocalyptic is the successor of prophecy : it comes
into vogue when, and because, prophecy has
ceased. The period following on the close of the
Old Testament is full of evidence that men were
sadly conscious that it was so with them. There
was no longer any one by whom it could be said,
" The word of the Lord came to me." And men
who desired to find a message of mingled warning
and encouragement for their contemporaries,
turned to the prophets for their inspiration, and
tried to read the future in the light of the
principles they laid down. The prophet had
been first and foremost an orator, a speaker-
forth of the mind of God to men. The
Apocalyptist is a writer: he writes in solitude

CHAPTEE I. 1-3 5
what another may read in public. He is a seer.
He sees the future as it needs must shape itself in
accordance with the principles of Divine govern
ment, and the attributes of the Divine Being,
which have been revealed through the prophets.
He is not conscious of personal inspiration such
as would enable him to reveal new truth, but
acts rather as the interpreter of earlier revelation,
showing how it may be applied to his own present
or to the immediate future.
This twofold characteristic of the situation out
of which the Apocalypses spring, the oppression
of God's people and the absence of direct in
spiration, leads to the second and most striking
feature of -all these books, namely, that they
transfer the scene of God's manifested glory from
the world that now is to a world which is to
come, or (giving a slightly different rendering to
the word represented by " world ") from the
present "age " to a future one. In other words,
they interpose between their own time and the
fulfilment of God's promises a crisis and catas
trophe so great that it may be identified with the
last judgment, overturning so completely the
present constitution of the world, that what
follows it is " a new heaven and a new earth."
In this we see the greatest distinction between
them and the prophets of Israel, who had foretold
the fulfilment of God's promises under the con-

6 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
ditions of the life that now is. They predicted a
golden age for Israel, marked by the restoration
of Jerusalem, the return of the captives, and the
establishment of an ideal kingdom upon earth in
the rule of the Messiah. The glories of this
Messianic age were to be largely of a material and
earthly kind : they are expressed in terms of earthly
prosperity. When the horizon of the life that
now is remained so bright, it is little wonder
that the Jews before the Exile betray but little
interest in the life that is to come. The hope
of immortality w'as at best but dim, partly at
least because the need for it was but lightly
felt. The Apocalypses, beginning with Daniel, show
a change of profound significance. The keynote
of their conception is found in the saying which
becomes current after the Exile : " God has made
not one world but two, not one age but two ages."
That is to say, this world, this age, this dispen
sation, is to be followed by another, the outward
conditions of wliich will be very different, and
the transition from the one to the other is the
crisis of judgment. Isaiah looks forward to the
establishment of a Messianic kingdom upon earth,
where " the cow and the bear shall feed, the lion
shall eat straw like the ox, and none shall hurt or
destroy in all my holy mountain." The trans
formation is a moral and spiritual one rather than

CHAPTEE I. 1-3 7
a physical; and even the "new heavens and the
new earth" of this propbet's prediction leaves
room for the " sinner of an hundred years old."
The Apocalypses, on the other hand, look through
and beyond any such tentative' realisation of the
Messiah's kingdom to an entire reconstitution of
the conditions of life. In their " new heaven
and new earth " there is "no curse any more,"
neither any place for the "fearful and the
unbelieving." The centre of the prophets' hope
is a restored and glorified Sion upon earth : the
Apocalyptists interpret these prbphecies in what
we should call a spiritual sense, and all their gaze
is fixed upon the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of
the living God " coming down from heaven."
Thus, in passing from prophecy to Apocalypse,
we pass from the expectation that God's right
eousness and glory will be completely vindi
cated on earth to the expectation that they
will be vindicated finally and completely only
in heaven.
It would be hard to overestimate the change
in human thought and outlook which is here
involved ; and yet there is a point of view from
which these two convictions, apparently so con
tradictory, are seen to lie side by side, in perfect
harmony, and that is the point of view of Jesus.
When He declared, " the kingdom of heaven is
within you," He revealed a higher truth in

8 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
which both the earlier ones find their harmony.
He declared in effect that the Kingdom of God is
not conditioned either by space or time, that it
does not follow the life that now is, as the
Apocalyptists thought, but penetrates and per
meates it ; and on the other hand that it is not
exhausted in any earthly manifestation, as the
prophets thought it might be, but finds its con
summation in the world to come, the life beyond
the grave.
A third characteristic which all these Jewish
Apocalypses have in common is to our minds a
startling, and even a perplexing one. It need
not disturb the study of our Apocalypse, which in
this matter differs from all the others; but the
fact is nevertheless important, that they are all
" pseudonymous." That is to say, they bear the
name, and are written in the name, of some one
who was not their author. The names they bear,
such as Enoch, Moses, Isaiah, Baruch, Esra, and
so forth, are names of men who were dead and
gone many centuries before these works were
written. And yet there is no room for any
suggestion of fraud or deception practised on
the contemporaries of the actual writers. In all
probability, it was a well-understood device,
adopted for reasons that were equally well under
stood, reasons partly political and partly religious.
To appreciate the point of view from which this

CHAPTEE I. 1-3 9
was possible, we require to divest our minds of
our modern ideas of literary property. In Hebrew
literature there is no trace of any writer regarding
his work as in any sense his property or of any
benefit accruing to him from its production ; nor
is there any trace of one writer recognising the
writings of another as his property. Men wrote
then for altogether different motives from those
which have prevailed especially since the inven
tion of printing. They wrote neither for fame
nor for profit, but simply to help other men by
recording the thoughts which God had given
either to themselves or to others. Those who.
wrote under a strong sense of being commissioned
by God to address men, did nothing, indeed, to
conceal their own personality. In their case
the personality added weight to the message.
Others, again, writing without that sense, wrote
anonymously, as in the cases of Lamentations,
parts of Proverbs, or Jonah. The third class,
who belonged to a time when it was a matter of
common consciousness that there was no longer
any open vision, frankly attached their work to
the name of one long ago departed, on the ground
that they felt their spirit or their message in
harmony with his. So far from being either
anomalous or fraudulent in its purpose, this
pseudonymous writing was one of the recog
nised literary methous of the time, and one

10 THE BOOK OF REVELATION
which was followed with an entire absence of
any intention to deceive.
We mark this common characteristic of the
Jewish Apocalypses, however, rather as a point
of contrast with the Apocalypse of John, which
is neither anonymous nor pseudonymous, but
stamped at more places than one with the name
of its author, and that the name of a living
man personally known to many of his first
readers. ' A fourth characteristic of these books is to be
noted and carefully borne in mind, and that is
the use made by a writer of an Apocalypse of the
material provided by his predecessors. This is at
once abundant and free. Not only does he quote,
and that without indicating where he quotes from,
but his method consists largely in quoting with
such alterations and modifications as may makfe
the old material serve the needs of a new time.
It follows that in many instances the writer's
distinctive contribution is to be found rather in
the modification which he introduces than in the
material which he actually makes use of. The
most considerable source from which these later
writers draw is undoubtedly the Book of Daniel.
In this we meet for the first time many of the
symbolic figures and actions which became, as it
were, apocalyptic conventions, part of the frame
work or setting in which, from thenceforth,

CHAPTEE I. 1-3 11
Apocalyptic ideas were commonly expressed.
Thus, the method of representing the great
world-powers under the forms of various living
creatures, and their kings as "heads" of a
"beast," the introduction of Antichrist or the
" abomination of desolation " as part of the
" world-process " of the future, and the computa
tion of the duration of his reign by means of
cryptic numbers, these are only some of the
features which make their earliest appearance in
Daniel, to form afterwards part of the material
with which the Apocalyptists work.
These, then, are the most important features
which mark the Apocalypses as a form of litera
ture. They are also marked by a common pur
pose. An Apocalypse is a " Tract for Bad Times,"
intended to encourage God's people suffering
under the strain of oppression and persecution.
The writer's object is to steel them to patience
and endurance unto the end by the presentation
in the most vivid form of the fact which overrides
all others, " the Lord reigneth," and will surely
come with a recompense. The assurance is con
veyed by means of a series of pictures of the
future, or visions of the real but unseen present.
The personality and inspiration of the writer dis
play themselves not in the material which he may
have derived from earlier sources, but in the selec
tion he makes, in the adaptation he puts upon it,

12 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the interpretation of the world's history which
clothes itself in these forms.
On two points, however, our Apocalypse, the
Book of Eevelation, differs from the others with
which we are acquainted. First, as we have
already observed, it is not pseudonymous. It
does not claim to have been written by a great
prophet or religious leader of the past, but claims
to come from the pen of a contemporary of those
to whom it first came. It claims, further, to be
written by one John, a disciple of Christ, and a
person of acknowledged authority and influence
in the Churches of the Eoman province of Asia.
Very early tradition asserts that this John was
no other than John the son of Zebedee, one of
the Twelve, the one whom Jesus loved, to whom
the Church ascribes also the authorship of the
Fourth Gospel. And while no doubt lias been
ever raised as to the justice of the claim to be
written by a contemporary, and by one whose
name was John, the tradition that this was
John the Apostle has also met with general
acceptance ; although there are those who would
recognise in the author another John, who is dis
tinguished from the Apostle as the "Presbyter"
or Elder.* But inasmuch as he also was one of
the circle of our Lord's personal disciples, as-
* See further on this and other matters above mentioned
in the Century Bible, Revelation, pp. 13-45.

CHAPTEE I. 1-3 13
sociated with Him during His earthly ministry,
it does not greatly matter for our present purpose
which of the two is to be regarded as the author.
In either case he was a Jew, one who had known
Jesus according to the flesh, and had companied
with Him as He walked and taught among men.
The second point of difference is that this book
is written by one who is conscious of Taeing a
prophet. He followed the Apocalyptic method
in making use of earlier material, but he was
not as the other Apocalyptists referred to above,
a mere adapter and interpreter of earlier Apoca
lyptic visions. He was one of the new order of
prophets — Christian prophets — who made their
appearance after Pentecost, and played a great
part in the Church of the first century. He
spake, being moved by the Spirit of Christ.
But the form into which he threw his utterance
was that of an Apocalypse, and we may be pre
pared to find his work marked by some of the
characteristics common to the class.
John records in this book the vision or visions
he had seen in Patmos, but he does more. The
visions set his prophetic activity in motion. It
was probably after he had left the isle of his
banishment that he committed to writing what
had been given him to see. And as he weaves
together his record of that, he weaves in other
things the fruit of meditation on his strange

14 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
experience, fragments and echoes of Old Testa
ment prophecy and Apocalypse, and, it may be,
fragments of other Apocalypses which were
precious in his sight. It is impossible, and it
is not necessary, to distinguish what he had
actually seen from the thoughts and memories
and predictions which he thus wrought into the
record of his visions. He had seen a picture
or pictures of infinite wonder ; he had heard the
voice of Christ commanding him to write not
only "the things which thou hast seen," but
also the things which are and the things which
shall be hereafter. He was at once the describer
of his vision and its interpreter, delineator of the
world as seen by the eye of God, and prophet
of the things that must shortly come to pass.
Under the form of an Apocalypse he spoke as a
prophet. The time seems to have come when we are
called upon to give new heed to his message, and
to employ the new material which has been
accumulating for its just interpretation. For
some time past the Apocalypse and the circle of
ideas which it represents have suffered from com
parative neglect. This is in part due to the
uncertainty of its interpretation and the vagaries
of its interpreters. In part it is due to our pre
occupation with the opposite pole of Christian
hope and consciousness, that wbich may be

CHAPTEE I. 1-3 15
called the ethical. The world that now is, and
the world that is to be, these are the two foci
of an ellipse of great orbit, round which the mind
of Christendom has travelled several times, held
in its place by its relation to both these foci, but
nearer how to one and -now to the other. The
mind of the Church has been at one time more
clearly conscious of her redemptive mission to
society, at another of her native opposition to the
world as now constituted. Her attitude over
against that world has been now one of hope
that the Kingdom of God might, come to be
realised under present conditions, now one of
despair as looking for that realisation only under
the conditions of a new heaven and a new earth.
There has also been a tendency in those who
stood at one point of view, to criticise those who
occupied the other, not having reached the higher
point where both are seen as one. For it is
undeniable that both points of view find recogni
tion in our Scriptures, and may indeed be found
in the teaching of our Lord. The one serious
mistake we have to learn to avoid is that we
should insist on making either of these foci the
centre round which our life and thought are to
turn ; and the one secret of harmonious thinking
in justice to all we know of God is to recognise
that in Christ Jesus the two coincide, that for us
in Him they are continuously approximating, and

16 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
so the thought and life which revolve round both
these points in equal balance tend to move in
a perfect circle. The ethical and the Apocalyptic
elements both have their place in the Christian
system ; both are necessary factors in redemption.
No wise man will presume to dogmatise on the
historical movement in the midst of which he
stands; but unless the signs of the times are
very deceptive, we are at or near a point where the
emphasis which has for fifty years been laid upon
the realisation of the kingdom upon earth will
make way for a new emphasis to be laid on the
transcendental Kingdom of Heaven. We have
most of us lived through an era of enthusiasm
for social amelioration as the tangible working
out of God's will for men. Stimulated by the
preaching of F. D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley,
by the preaching and social work of Thomas
Chalmers, roused by the pungent satire and
inspired by the ideas of Thomas Carlyle, stung
by the polished criticism of Matthew Arnold,
and less reasonably so by the sneers levelled
by George Eliot at other-worldliness, English
Christianity during this period came to be pene
trated as never before with the conception of the
service of man as a duty to God. Attention was
concentrated upon the life that now is, on the
ethical side of religion, the Sermon on the Mount,
and the amelioration of the conditions of existence

CHAPTEE I. 1-3 17
for the poor and suffering. The poet of the period
was Tennyson with " Locksley Hall," " Maud,"
and "The Princess"; its statesmen, Bright and
Cobden, passionate for the rights of the people
and the welfare of the masses ; its martyr, Arnold
Toynbee, burning himself out in the effort to
instil into the rich their obligation to the poor.
The governing idea less or more consciously
present to the minds of these men was the
Kingdom of God to be established upon earth, for
whose realisation men were called upon to strive
and pray and suffer. Their attitude to God might
be expressed in the words of the disciples on the
way to Emmaus : " Wilt thou not at this time
restore the kingdom ,to Israel? " Wilt Thou not
here and now and under the conditions of this
present life 4 establish the rule of justice, mercy,
and peace ? And there was an under-running
current of suggestion that if God would not, or
did not, manifest His power in this way, if the
Church could not on this plane vindicate her
claim to be the agent of the Divine redemption,
it hardly mattered what God might do or not do
under other conditions and in another world.
Now the situation is changed : for good or for
evil we find ourselves living in a different moral
atmosphere. The mere rehearsal of these mid-
Victorian names carries with it the impression
that whoever may be the men that influence^ojis-
3

18 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
generation and express its attitude to life, it is
not these. Many of the principles which they
held to be axiomatic, or demonstrated through
their effort, are now dismissed or ignored. Many
of the ideals which they assumed as desirable or
desired by all are now questioned or scouted.
The principles are not the less true; the ideals
are not the less noble and ennobling ; but those
who assert them are not the voices which are
heard; what was once a commonplace of public
life may now sound as a lonely echo from the
desert. Like every partial failure Of human
aspiration, this change has been due in large
measure to one-sidedness, to concentration on
one half of tfye complete ideal, in this case con
centration on the Kingdom of God as coming by
process only, and under the conditions of the life
that now is, and to the ignoring of the other half
of truth, the conception of the Kingdom as not of
this world, as finding its consummation under con
ditions of spiritual existence,, and after a crisis,
a catastrophe, which for the individual is repre
sented by death, and for humanity by the crash
of judgment. In other words, through their
enthusiasm for the teaching of the Sermon on
the Mount men were led to overlook the teaching
of Matthew xxiv. ; in their devotion to the
ethical and practical they forgot the mystical and
transcendental elements in the system of Jesus ;

CHAPTEE I. 1-3 19
they sat at the feet of the prophets, but the
Apocalypse was a book of unimportant mysteries.
It is, therefore, by no means accidental or
without significance that in the last ten or twenty
years there has been a marked revival of interest
in the whole subject and literature of Apocalypse.
Both the Christian and the Jewish conceptions of
the world to come, of judgment, of the reign of
God in a new heaven and a new earth, have been
investigated with a thoroughness which sheds a
new light on this whole area of thought. The
pendulum has swung so far in the new direction
that at least one competent scholar of the New
Testament has advanced the opinion that the real
emphasis of our Lord's teaching is to be found
less in the ethical standards therein set up for the
present than in the Apocalyptic revelation of the
future. The time^seems to have come, therefore,
for making the attempt to expound, with the aid
of the new material, the meaning and value of
the one Apocalypse contained in our New Testa
ment, in the hope of restoring it, if possible, to its
proper place in our private as well as our public
Canon of Scripture.

WHEEE THE CHUECH OF THE FIEST
CENTUEY PUT CHEIST, AND WHY
Rev. i. 4-6
John to the seven churches which are in Asia : Grace to
you and peace, from Mm which is and which was and which
is to come ; and from the seven Spirits which are before
Ms throne ; and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful
witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the
kings of the earth. Unto him that loveth us, and loosed
us from our sins by Ms blood; and he made us to be a
kingdom, to be priests unto Ms God and Father; to him
be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen
(B.V.).We have learnt in the previous chapter what it
means that in the Book of Eevelation we have
" words of prophecy" in the form of an Apoca
lypse. The writer is one of the new order of
Christian prophets, corresponding to those of the
Old Testament, but proclaiming the mind and
will of God in the name, and in the spirit, of
Jesus. To him has been given while " in the isle
that is called Patmos " a mighty vision of things
to come ; and he obeys the injunction to write
20

CHAPTEE I. 4-6 21
down "the things which he has seen," along
with " the things which are." In doing so he
weaves into his description much that is the fruit
of meditation on what he has seen, much that
was lying in his memory, handed down from the
prophecies of the Old Testament, and possibly
some things contained in later Jewish literature
with which he must have been familiar from his
early days. These things provided to a consider
able extent the forms into which he threw the
description of what he had seen, the colours with
which he worked in building up his picture ; and
the whole took shape as an Apocalypse, one of a
well-known and well-defined class of. literature,
with rules and methods of its own. Just as St.
Luke, writing the Acts of the Apostles, wrote
history, and St. Paul, writing to Timothy, wrote
an Epistle, so St. John wrote an Apocalypse.
Before, however, he comes to the actual vision,
the description of the things which he has seen,
and the prediction of the things which are to
come, he sets before his readers, in vers. 4-6, a
wonderful description of the things which are.
" John to the seven churches that are in Asia :
Grace to you and peace from him who is, and
who was, and who is to come : and from the seven
Spirits that are before his throne : and from Jesus
Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of
the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our

22 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
Verses sins by his blood : and he made us to be a
4-6. kingdom, to be priests unto his God and Father:
to him be the glory and the dominion for ever and

The form into which this rich and compre
hensive statement is thrown is that of an
address or salutation to the Churches in Asia
Minor with which the Apostle was personally
acquainted. To them, in the first place, his
message was to be directed, but through them,
as a representative group, to the Church as a
whole. It is a salutation, passing into a bene
diction, and that into a doxology.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the interest
of this passage in the history of religion. We
seem to see here Christian theology in the
making. We touch it, and are enabled to
observe it, at the point of transition between
living experience and formulated doctrine, be
tween the individual and diversified experience
of men in contact with Jesus and the collected
and connected formulae of a creed. The Christian
faith, when it came to be finally defined, pro
claimed a triune God — Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit — and Christian thinkers exhausted the
resources of thought and language in the attempt
to define their mutual relation. In this passage,
though we are far from having reached that stage,
it is easy to see that the Apostle traces the grace

CHAPTEE I. 4-6 23
and peace which he invokes to a threefold source,
and so describes that source as to suggest rather
than to define the Father, the Spirit, and the
Son. The order in which these are arranged is,
of course, remarkable, and probably unique ; and
even more remarkable is the way in which the
Spirit is referred to. In both these points we see
tokens of Christian thought at its earliest stage.
But what is most important is to observe that
we have before us not formulated dogma, but
elementary reflection on experience. John and
his fellow-believers knew that grace and peace
had come to them from God; that grace and
peace had come to them through the ministry
of the Spirit, and also that grace and peace had
come to them by Jesus Christ ; and in the prayer
that the same benediction may be continued and
extended the Apostle appeals to the same three
fold source from which he had known it to reach
himself. We have, then, as the first element in
the apostolic consciousness, experience — expe
rience of "grace and truth coming through
Jesus Christ." This gives him his material.
But we see also what it is that gives him the
form in which his experience is described. And
in this passage, as largely throughout £he book,
it is the language and the symbolism of the Old
Testament. In the striking phrase, " Him which
is and which was and which is to come " (still

24 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
more striking in the original than it can be made
in a translation), there is a direct allusion to the
great passage in Exodus where Jehovah reveals
himself to Moses as the " I am," the self-existent
and eternal one. In the description of the " seven
spirits before the throne " the Apostle is drawing
on the language of later Judaism, according to
which the chiefs of the angelic bands of spirits
were seven in number. And when he describes
Jesus as " the faithful witness, the firstborn of
the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the
earth," he is paraphrasing the language of the
Psalms so as to make it express what had
come under his own observation. But it is
Jesus whom he sets there, alongside of God,
as part of the threefold source of grace and
peace. This fact deserves our close attention, both in
its extraordinary character and in the explana
tion which it suggests. It is, indeed, very
extraordinary that we should find Jesus set
where He is set here; and the marvel has only
become the greater as through investigation and
criticism the situation has been made more clear.
To our fathers it seemed only natural that those
who had hailed in Jesus the long-expected Mes
siah should forthwith invest Him with Divine
rank and honour. To them the ancient pro
phecies and hopes concerning the Messiah seemed

CHAPTEE I. 4-6 25
to involve nothing less. Had He not, for example,
been described by Isaiah as " the Mighty God the
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace " ? Had
not His suffering and subsequent exaltation been
foretold with singular minuteness in the famous
fifty-third chapter of the same book? Looking
back on these things in the light shed on them
by the actual manifestation and history of Jesus,
they do seem to us to anticipate with strange
accuracy both the experience through wbich He
passed and the glory He has received, so that it is
difficult to realise that the Jews were not pre
pared to hail Him as God in man, if they were
able to recognise Him at all. And yet it must
be remembered that Jesus in His historical
manifestation was both less and more than
the Messiah looked for by His contemporaries.
According to Jewish understanding of these pro
phecies, even of the greatest of them, they could
be, and were to be, fulfilled in the person of a
human sovereign, an ideal king over an Israel
restored to independence and to power. And in
the generations following the close of prophecy
this hope waned and revived only to wane again,
so that there were periods in Jewish history
before Christ when the religious hope of the
future hardly included the figure of Messiah at
all. And as to His coming to glory through
suffering, that prophecy had been so little under-

26 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
stood, or had made so little impression, that when
Jesus spoke of the Cross that awaited Him, one
of the disciples who knew him best " took Him
and began to rebuke Him." Whatever it was
that led the Church of the first century to set
Christ where it did, in the glory of the Father, it
was not merely the fact that they believed Him
to be the Messiah. It is indeed a great miracle
with which we are confronted. Just as Jesus
transformed the Cross, which was religiously as
well as politically a symbol of shame, into a
throne of glory, so He transfigured the idea of
the Messiah from that of an earthly deliverer
and potentate into that of God in man. And
the less predisposition there was in the minds
of His contemporaries to such a transfigura
tion the greater was the marvel wbich He
wrought. Neither shall we see it in its true light unless
we bear in mind another fact which made the
transfiguration of the Messianic idea all the
more difficult to effect, namely, that these
Jews were before all else in their religion
monotheists. The thing from which they shrank
with deepest horror was offering to any one
but Jehovah the honour which was due to
Him alone. It was the lesson which had been
burnt into their consciousness by the fires of
suffering, and annealed by the chill of exile, one

CHAPTEE I. 4-6 27
which they never afterwards forgot and never
questioned. From the time of the return from
Babylon they were rigid , monotheists, both in
theory and in practice ; and yet those who believed
in Jesus set Him where they did. The fact is
nowhere more conspicuous than in the Book of
Eevelation. Although the writer is plainly a
Jew of Jews, his mind saturated with Hebrew
literature and Hebrew modes of thought, a true
son of the race with which monotheism had
become a passion, and the ascription of Divine
honour to any other than the supreme God a
horror and a blasphemy, he nevertheless sets
Jesus, the man whom he had known in the flesh,
side by side with God. Indications are not
wanting of the writer's familiarity with the
historical Jesus. He frequently makes use of the
name which specially marks His human nature ;
he refers to His death at Jerusalem, to His resur
rection, and to His exaltation to the Father's
throne. He alludes to the twelve Apostles, and
echoes more than one of the recorded sayings of
Jesus. But for him the Jesus whom he had known
in the flesh is lost in the glory of the exalted Lord.
He is "the Lord of lords and King of kings."
His existence reaches back before the beginning
of things created. Himself the principle from
which all creation issues, He is the absolutely
Living One, by whom it can be said, as God alone

28 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
can say, " I am the first and the last." To Him,
therefore, is committed the unfolding of the book
of human destiny, the waging of the final conflict
with evil, the holding of the Divine assize. All
these functions which men had been taught to
recognise as absolute prerogatives of the Divine,
John lays without explanation upon Christ. And
not these only which belong to the future, but
also those attributes which had been displayed in
earlier revelation as the peculiar property of the
Most High are similarly assigned to Jesus Christ.
In the vision of the Son of Man which imme-^
diately follows this passage, the Apostle takes one
after another of those phrases which had been
consecrated from old times to the description of
the Most High God, those attributes in which by
prophet and psalmist He had been apparelled,
and applies them to Christ as though they were
recognised to be His by right. The description of
the " Ancient of Days " in Daniel is transferred to
Him. He holds the keys of Hades and of Death.
He searches the hearts of men. He shares in the
Divine honour paid to God : even angels join in
worshipping " God and the Lamb." *
We cannot but inquire with wonder to what
cause or causes this central phenomenon of the
Christian consciousness is to be traced. Other
causes, and among them prophecy in particular,
* See Century Bible, Introduction, p. 72.

CHAPTEE I. 4-6 29
may have contributed ; but the cause which was
both primary and efficient was the personality of
Jesus, the total impression which He made on
those who knew Him best, and their conviction
that He had loosed them from their sins and
made them kings and priests to God.
On the one hand there was the total impression
made by Jesus, His personality and His history.
The Apostle, in the description which he here
gives, at least suggests the elements which went
to make up that impression. In the phrase
"faithful witness " there is an echo of His words
recorded in the Gospel : " I bear witness to the
truth," an allusion to the impression Jesus had
made as a teacher, to the self-luminous revelation
of which He was the bearer to the world. "First
born from the dead" testifies to the central fact/
of the disciples' knowledge concerning Him, that
though He had been dead, yet He was living, and
so to the revolution in their thinking which had
been wrought by His resurrection. " Prince of
the kings of the earth," a phrase moulded on the
Messianic language of the eighty-ninth Psalm,
attests the impression Jesus had made of universal
dignity and authority, the conviction He had
wrought in the minds of His disciples as to the
supremacy of that spiritual kingdom of which He
was King. These are the elements in His per
sonality and His history here indicated by John

30 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
which combined to produce such an impression
that the men who believed in Him could do
nothing else than equate Him with God.
But there was another line along which they
were led to the same conclusion, and that was
their experience of what Jesus could do, and had
done, for and in those who believed. And as the
thought of this rises in the Apostle's mind he
passes over from benediction invoked upon his
readers to doxology addressed to Christ. Here is
what Christ had done for him and for all his
brethren : " To him that loveth us, and loosed us
from our sins by his blood." So the true text
reads. Some copyist, who was thinking more of
grammar than of Christian experience, thought it
must be a mistake, and altered it to " loved." Or
perhaps John himself first wrote "loved" and
then bethought him : " Why should I say ' loved '
when He loves us still? " At any rate, there is
conviction of the early Church : the Jesus whom
they had known not only loved them while He
was their companion on the earth, but loves them
still, shares therefore in that further quality of the
Godhead of which John writes elsewhere : " God
is Love," and gives to that quality just what each
man requires to find in it, personal direction
towards himself. Thus Jesus is the link between
the universal God and the individual soul. What
without Him would be incredible, not only be-

CHAPTEE I. 4-6 31
comes credible but is actually realised through
Him. God loves me: I know it by referring
myself to the historical Jesus : and when that is
so, He has for me the value of God.
But the experience mediated by Jesus does not
stop here. He " hath loosed us from our sins,"
says John. Or, it may have been "washed us
from our sins " that he wrote. In either case
think what it means that John and those in
whose name he wrote had found this to be so,
that a guilty past was no longer a barrier
between them and God, that they could stand
conscience-clear in the presence of the All-Holy
One, that they were no longer the slaves of sin
and sinful habit, but men of moral stamina, able ,
to resist and overcome temptation. And this
they traced to Jesus, not to any ritual they had
performed, not to any sacrifice they had offered,
not to any moral revolution engineered by them
selves, but to what He had done for them in
dying, and in them as living again. Along with
this their indubitable experience of forgiveness
of, and deliverance from, sin, we must take the
universal conviction of their time, expressed by
certain of the Pharisees in our Lord's lifetime :
" Who can forgive sins save God only ? " in order
to see the full bearing of the fact that these
Christians of the first generation knew, felt, and
declared that it was through Jesus that this had

82 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
happened to them, that they had been loosed
from their sins.
But there is still a further point in their
experience which goes to explain why they put
Jesus where they did. They found themselves
in a new relation to the world, and to one
another as well as to God. They felt that they
were collectively a kingdom, a society distinct
from the surrounding world, exalted above it,
exercising royal powers over life. They were
conscious of living on a higher plane, in another
mode of existence penetrated by the powers of
the world to come. And they formed also a
priesthood. Formerly they had looked up to
other men as the appointed and necessary
mediators of God's mercy and God's truth. Now
they needed such no longer. They had stepped
up into their place, conscious of having for them
selves immediate access to God, and of offering
unto Him a continuous " spiritual service," the
daily sacrifice of heart and mind and body, which
made any other sacrifice as unnecessary as any
other priesthood. And this glorious privilege,
this deliverance from the yoke of human priest
hood and priestcraft, this royal relation to the
world of sense, they traced to Jesus. It was He
that had made them " a kingdom and priests to
God." It was this complex and yet harmonious im-

CHAPTEE I. 4-6 33
pression which Jesus had made upon His
disciples which explains as nothing else can
their frank and simple recognition of Him as
Divine. He had " made all things new " — them
selves, their relation to the world, their relation
to God. Alike in its measure and in its character
the work which He had wrought in them and for
them was the work of God. To Him, therefore,
" be glory and dominion for ever and ever."
Tbese are the eternal realities in the presence
and consciousness of which St. John proceeds to
write his Apocalypse ; and they are the same
spiritual realities in the presence of which we
are to study it, and also to live our lives and
write our own histories. First, God: God as
Universal Being, the Absolute and All-mighty ;
God as Universal Energy, and specially energy
towards righteousness ; but also God in history,
God in Christ moving in the affairs of men,
making Himself known as Love; and then,
human experience of God as mediated through
Christ — experience of His mercy, His forgiveness,
and His redemption. And as the conviction of
these things came to these early Christians, so it
comes to us, through Jesus, the faithful witness,
the firstborn from the dead.

THE VISION OF THE SON OF MAN
Rev. i. 9-20
I John, your brother and partaker with you in tlie
tribulation and kingdom and patience which are in Jesus,
was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God
and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the
Lord's day, and I heard behind me a great voice, as of a
trumpet saying, What thou seest, write in a book, and send
it to the seven churches ; unto Ephesus, and v/nto Smyrna,
and unto Pergamum, and wnto Thyatira, and unto Sardis,
and umto PhiladelpMa, and unto Laodicea. And I turned
to see the voice which spake with me. And having turned
I saw seven golden candlesticks ; and in the midst of the
candlesticks one like unto a son of man, clothed with a
garment down to the foot, and girt about at the breasts
with a golden girdle. And his head and Ms hair were
wMte as white wool, white as snow ; and Ms eyes were as a
flame of fire ; and Ms feet Uke unto burnished brass, as if
it had been refined in a furnace ; and his voice as the voice
of many waters. And he had in Ms right hand seven stars :
and out of Ms mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword :
and Ms countenance was as the sun shimeth in his strength.
And when I saw Mm, I fell at Ms feet as one dead. And
he laid his right hand upon me, saying, Fear not ; I am
the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead,
and behold, I am alive' for evermore, and I have the keys
of death and of Hades. Write therefore the things which
thou sawest, and the tMngs which are, and the tMngs
3i

CHAPTEE I. 9-20 35
which shall come to pass hereafter; the mystery of the
seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the
seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of
the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks are seven
churches (B.V.).

There are few portions of- the earth's surface
more rich in historical and religious interest than
that which St. John refers to by the name of
" Asia." By that he means, of course, not the
great continent to which we have extended the
name, nor yet what is to-day known as Asia
Minor, but the western end of that great peninsula,
where the central plateau slopes and breaks down
to the Mediterranean Sea. It was to this that
the Eomans gave the name of " Asia " when they
made it one of ih6 provinces of their Empire, a
name which has gradually extended until now it
covers the whole continent to the far east of
Siberia. For many centuries, down to the
occupation of the country by the Turks, which is
as the pouring of the sands of the desert on a
fertile land, this Asia had fulfilled the destiny
marked out for her by Nature as the most con
venient bridge between East and West. Trade
rolled down its valleys in an opulent stream, to
find the shipping of Greece and Eome awaiting
it in the safe harbours of Smyrna and Ephesus ;
the" valued products of two continents found their
place of meeting and exchange along its coasts,

36 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
and, as wealth has never grown so fast as through
the handling of this kind of traffic, Asia was for
long one of the richest portions of the ancient
world, studded with large and prosperous cities,
the homes of luxury and comfort. It is not with
out reason that to i^iis day Croesus, one of its
kings, and Pactolus, one of its rivers, are pro
verbial for boundless wealth and prosperity.
In this outwardly favoured land the seed of the
Gospel had been early sown, had taken root, and
sprung up in Christian communities which were
found in most of the great cities, in Smyrna, Ephe-
sus,Pergamum, andTroas.inLaodicea, Hierapolis,
Thyatira, and Sardis, in Philadelphia and Colossae.
And among the men to whom these communities
of believers in Christ looked up with reverence as
having seen, heard, and known the Master in the
days of His flesh, was this John, whether he were
John the Elder, or, as remains more probable, John
the Apostle, the son of Zebedee. Persecution
had broken out against these Christians — perse
cution the cause and character of which we shall
have opportunity to examine later. They had
suffered even unto blood, and many who had
escaped the sword were banished, at least for a
time, among them this John. Banishment, and
especially to the mines, was a favourite measure
with tyrannical governors of the period. Tacitus
writing of this period says : " The sea was thickly

CHAPTEE I. 9-20 37
strewn with exiles, the crags were stained with
the blood of victims." The scene of John's
banishment was Patmos, an island some thirty
miles round, which lies off the coast about fifteen
miles from Ephesus. Thither the exiles were
sent to work in the mines or marble quarries.
And there John had his vision of the Son of
Man. There is something peculiarly touching in the
manner in which he introduces the account of
what he had seen. Even this great privilege had
not altered the tender and brotherly relation, in
which he stood to those whom he addressed : "I
John, who also am your brother," not as lording
it over God's heritage, though he had seen Christ,
and received authority from Him to speak. He
claims no superiority of age or privilege — " your
brother, and fellow-partaker," in what? In
tribulation? Yes, and more: in the tribulation
and the kingdom — that is, in the twofold and in
divisible experience of the tribulation which
Christ said they should have "in the world,"
and the "kingdom" which He also said His
Father would give unto them, the kingdom which
was not of this world. " In the tribulation and
kingdom" they were fellow-partakers, because
they were partakers also in the patience by which
Christ had said that they would win their souls.
And all three, the tribulation and the kingdom

38 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
and the patience, were held together in one
harmonious whole " in Jesus." Christ was the
sphere in which they lived and moved and had
their being. Tribulation did not undermine their
patience ; the kingdom did not make it un
necessary. This was life, and it was a life of
brotherhood, of inner peace and of assured
triumph for the end. This was the temper and
this the experience of the man who saw the
Vision. He had left Patmos ere he wrote this account
of it ; at least, that is the more probable explana
tion of his 'words; But the whole thing is still
vivid to his memory. It was the Lord's day,
honoured in the hearts of those who knew the
Lord, the first day of the week, which those
Christians who had seen Jesus, treated with
equal respect, and hailed with even greater
gladness than the seventh day, the Sabbath of
their fathers. It was not likely to be a holiday
in the mines. ' The Eomans had small respect for
such superstitions. But it was a holy day in the
Apostle's heart. Was it not the Lord's day, the
day of the week when he had run with Peter to
the tomb where they had seen their Master laid,
to find it open and empty ? — the day when He had
made Himself known to them as alive from the
dead ? — their Eedeemer that dieth no more, and at
once all their shattered hopes were revived and

CHAPTEE I. 9-20 39
restored, for they beheld in Him a Prince and
a Saviour, one who had indeed loosed them from
their sins and made them as kings and priests
unto God. All these experiences had swept back
through John's memory as he rose that Lord's day,
and flooded all his soul with a sense of peace and
the presence of God. In rapt and joyous contem
plation of all that the day recalled, he passed into
a trance of ecstatic adoration. He was " in the
Spirit," the life of sense suspended, heaven open
before the eye of faith. Like St. Paul, he might
have said : " Whether in the body or out of the
body I cannot tell ; God knoweth ; " but this he
knew, that he saw and heard the Lord, the living
and exalted Christ. That is the central and un
impeachable fact of John's experience.
In the description of his vision which follows
it is interesting and not unimportant to observe
what features are absolutely new, and what had
already found place in inspired descriptions of the
vision of God or of the expected Messiah, and so
might be already in John's mind. For as a man's
waking thoughts do often provide part at least
of the detail and colouring of his dreams, so it
may have been with this vision. John's waking
thoughts of Christ may thus have contributed
features either to what he saw or to the subse
quent description of the vision. And if we only'
take a good reference Bible, and turn up the

40 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
passages referred to in the margin here, it is quickly
evident how many and how close are the parallels
with the language of the Old Testament. When
John " heard behind him a great voice as of a
trumpet," it was as when Ezekiel says: "Then
the Spirit took me up, and I heard behind me a
voice of a great rushing." When he saw One
whose "head and his hair were white as white
wool, white as snow," he saw a figure identical
in appearance with that which had been seen by
Daniel, when "the Ancient of Days did sit,
whose raiment was white as snow, and the
hairs of his head like pure wool." The eyes
"as a flame of fire," the feet "like burnished
brass," the voice " like the voice of many waters,"
all find their parallels in the visions of Messiah
recorded by older prophets. And even the two-
edged sword proceeding out of the mouth is but a
symbolic picture of the Word of God, "sharper
than any two-edged sword," with which according
to Jewish expectation the Messiah was to destroy
the heathen. These and other phrases in the
description, in which we seem to hear echoes of
Old Testament prophecies regarding the Christ,
only serve when recognised to throw into higher
relief the points in which the vision stands in
startling contrast with all that had been thought
or seen before. And these are two. First, the
seven candlesticks in the midst of which the

CHAPTEE I. 9-20 41
Lord is seen, and second, the words in which He
describes Himself.
As to the second of these features, the language
in which the Lord describes Himself : " Fear
not " — the words which He had used on more
than one well-remembered occasion in His
earthly life — are followed by others which no
mere man could use: "I am the first and the
last and the living one" — applying to Himself
the very phrase which in the eighth verse comes
from the lips of God : " I am the Alpha and the
Omega, saith the Lord, the Almighty." And in
order that there may be no mistake as to the
claim here made by the risen Christ, He goes on
to say : " I have the keys of death and of Hades."
The full significance of these last words is only
realised if we recall the fact that it was part of
the well-known teaching of the Jewish doctors,
that " the keys of four things are in the hands of
God alone," and these things were Life and the
Grave, Food and Eain. When John heard Jesus
saying: " I have the keys of death and Hades,"
he heard Him using words which, according to all
his early training and thinking, were proper to
God alone. We have here, therefore, another
and a striking illustration of the fact that in spite
of all his inbred monotheism, in defiance of all
his traditional theology, John and those for
whom he speaks and writes had given to the

42 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
Jesus of history a place not second even to that
of God. So great, so overwhelming was the
impression He had made on them by His
personality in life, and by His victory over
death. But the central thing in the vision is this
figure of the Son of Man, such as John had seen
Him once upon the Mount of Transfiguration
when " His face did shine as the sun," like to
Jesus of Nazareth, and yet with a Divine unlike-
ness. " He is seen arrayed not, as in the days of
His ministry, in the short seamless tunic and the
flowing cloak wliich formed the common dress of
His time, but in the long robe reaching to the
feet, that had been the special garment of the
High Priest." He wears the visible emblem of
His atoning office for mankind. And He is
girded with a golden girdle, " not as of one who
toils and runs, fastened round the waist, but
around the heart as of one who has entered into
the repose of sovereignty." He wears the visible
emblem of His royal rule over men. He stands
there as Priest and King, and in His hand He
holds the seven stars, while round about Him are
set the seven golden lamp-stands or candlesticks.
Here we meet a feature in the vision to which
no parallel can be found. The earlier literature,
both of the prophets and the extra-canonical
books, has been searched in vain for anything

CHAPTEE I. 9-20 43
that would throw light on these symbols. They
belong wholly to this vision. And the explana
tion of them is that given in the twentieth verse :
"The seven stars are the angels of the seven
churches: and the seven candlesticks are seven
churches." This of course raises the question,
What are we to understand by " the angels of the
churches " ? and that is by no means easy to
answer. On the one hand, it has been thought
by many that " angel" is the name for a repre
sentative man, or body of men, the rulers, elders,
or bishop of each particular congregation. Against
this have to be set the facts that the word " angel "
is never used in the New Testament of a human
being, except in two cases, where it means simply
"messenger " : that it is not certain that at the
time when these letters were written the develop
ment of Church government in Asia Minor had
reached the point where one individual stood out
at the head of the community as its representative
and ruler ; and that when we come to consider
the letters themselves we shall find that the
"angel" to whom each letter is addressed is
identified with his Church as partaker of its
character and also of its destiny to a degree which
could not be predicated of any human representa
tive. In fact, so far as the contents of the letters
are concerned, each one of them might as well be
directed to the particular Church itself as to " the

44 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
angel" of the Church. The meaning of the
address seems rather to be found in connection
with the idea of " guardian angels," of angels as
representatives in heaven of individuals and com
munities on earth. There is authority for the
idea in our Lord's words regarding the children ;
that " their angels do behold the face of my
Father." On this suggestion the angel of each
Church would be its heavenly counterpart and
representative, the composite personality of the
Church as seen by God. In the vision each of
these angels is symbolised by a star. These stars,
the heavenly symbols of the Churches, are held in
the hand of the risen Lord, and He moves among
the candlesticks which represent the Churches
themselves. That was what John saw in Patmos on the
Lord's day. Its significance becomes clear as
soon as the purpose for which it was vouchsafed
is understood. These Christian communities,
which for some reason not discoverable by us
were selected out from the Churches of Asia,
were, like their neighbours, in most imminent
danger. And the danger was of more kinds
than one. They were threatened from without
with a renewal of the persecution they had
already undergone, but renewal in a fiercer and
more organised form. As we shall see later,
the State was no longer merely the agent giving

CHAPTEE I. 9-20 45
effect to the hostility of the Jews or heathen to
whose religious prejudices the presence of the
Christians was offensive. The Eoman State had
itself set up a religion which was utterly abhorrent
to all Christian sentiment and belief. The
deification of the reigning Emperor, mad as it
seems to us, had become part of the Provincial
administration, and especially in the Province
of Asia the worship of the Eoman Emperor as
God had been taken up by the populace with
enthusiasm, and was being enforced by the
Government as the duty of every loyal subject.
Times of cruel searching and sifting were evidently
at hand, when the genuineness of every Christian's
loyalty to the one and only God would be tested
as by fire. And the Churches were but ill pre
pared for such a test. For there was danger to
their vitality from within. They had been
invaded in various degrees by laxity and coldness,
by false doctrine and the example of base sur
render to heathen standards, by divisions and
party spirit; arid every true disciple of Jesus
must have been looking forward to the future
with foreboding, if not with dismay. To John,
whose relations with these Churches gave him
both influence and responsibility, there came by
means of this vision the command to write
what should brace the faith and steel the courage
of these communities to face the coming trial,

46 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
and the vision itself was intended and calculated
in the first place to brace his own faith and steel
his own courage. It was a vision of the things
that are, the unseen things which really count in
the history of men, calculated to counteract for
ever afterwards the impression of things as they
seem. What seemed to be the case was that
each of these Christian communities was lost as
a drop in the surrounding ocean of worldliness
and hostility to God, isolated from its neighbours
many miles away across the hills, far from help
and at the mercy of men. What was really true,
as revealed to the Apostle in his vision, was that
each of these Churches formed part of a perfect
whole represented by the mystic number seven,
that all of them were held together by the unseen
presence in their midst of the risen Son of Man,
that each of these Churches as it was seen by
God was held in the hand of Him who is mighty
to save, who holds the keys of death and of
Hades. And John sets the record of his vision here in
the forefront of his book, partly because it gives
the explanation of his call to write, and partly
because this is characteristic of his method, and
indeed the great service he has rendered to the
Church. The key to time is eternity. Human
life transacts itself, as it were, upon a stage, and
only finds its true meaning and value when seen

CHAPTEE I. 9-20 47
against the true background, the background of
things that are. To the ordinary observer, unin-
structed by the Spirit in the mind of God, it may
seem as though there iWere nothing but a flat
curtain just behind the figures on the stage, and
for him both men and their actions and their
^sufferings lose their true proportions. But John,
the inspired man, sees through the veil, sees the
illimitable distance beyond, the whole, of which
each man's brief part upon the stage is but a
fraction, the eternal which gives its true value
to what is in time. And, further, he sees the
figure of Christ central and dominating, already
the interpretation of much in the experience of
His people, but also Author of that deathless
hope in the power of which they might face
the rest without interpretation. We shall have
taken a great step towards the understanding of
this book if we realise that through all its
details it is this single and commanding im
pression which John has received through the
vision of the Son of Man, Christ living, supreme,
aware, and caring for His Churches, holding
them, in fact, in His hand. What he saw as
a whole, the here and the beyond, the temporal
and the eternal, he has necessarily to describe
in succession, first the one and then the other ;
but always with the conviction that what
governs, interprets, and even justifies, the

48 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
present is the eternal. No threats can dismay,
no danger can cow, no temptation can over
master those who have seen with him the Son
of Man ever moving through the circle of com
munities which form His Church — nay, holding
them as a circlet of brilliants in His hand.
Nought can make them afraid ; for they endure
as seeing the invisible.

THE LETTEE TO THE CHUECH
AT EPHESUS
Rev. ii. 1-7
These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in Ms
right hand, he that walketh in the midst of the seven golden
candlesticks : I know thy works, and thy toil and patience,
and that thou canst not bear evil men, and didst try them
wMch call themselves apostles, and they are not, and didst
find them false; and thou hast patience and didst bear
for my name's sake, and hast not grown weary. But
I have tMs against thee, that thou didst leave thy first
love. Bemember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and
repent, and do the first works ; or else I come to thee, and
will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou
repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the works of
the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. Ble that hath an ear,
let Mm hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To Mm
that overcometh, will I give to eat of the tree of life, which
is in the Paradise of God (B.V.).
The letters to the Seven Churches form a distinct
and well-marked section of this book, and have
often been studied separately. And yet they are
closely connected with what has gone before and
with much that follows. Each one of them is
5 «

50 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
written at the express command of the Son of
Man whom the Apostle saw in his vision, and is,
in fact, written in His name. And it is to all of
these same Churches that John has been instructed
to send "a book " containing an account of what
he has seen : this instruction he carries out in the
chapters' which follow the letters. The principles
which they illustrate are woven into the texture
of the whole work, and much of their symbolism
has a common source with that which appears
later. But even taken by themselves the letters
offer a fascinating subject of study, and afford
some of the most interesting glimpses that we
get into Christian life towards the end of the
first century, and not a few most valuable sug
gestions for Christian life in the beginning of the
twentieth. It is at once apparent that all the seven letters
are constructed on a common plan. Each one of
them opens with the same command to write " to
the angel of the Church " : followed by the intro
ductory words, "These things saith." Each
letter then proceeds to describe the Speaker
under one aspect of His power, one which is
quoted from the description of the Figure seen
in the vision of the first chapter. Each Church
addressed is then characterised in a sentence or
two beginning, " I know," and there follows an
exhortation fitted to the circumstances and

CHAPTEE II. 1-7 51
character of the Church ; and each letter culmi
nates in a promise "to him that overcometh."
In the first three cases this precedes, in the last
four it follows, a solemn appeal for attention:
" He that hath an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit saith to the churches." Within a frame
work so carefully constructed and so precisely
followed, the variable elements in each letter are
so exquisitely adjusted to the history, circum
stances, and character of each several Church that
we seem to get "its very form and pressure"
reproduced on a perfectly plastic surface. Brief
as the letters are, each one of them presents as
in a clear-cut cameo the portrait of the Church
addressed. And every trait which is added from
without to our knowledge of the history, topo
graphy, or idiosyncrasy of the particular Church,
only confirms the wonderful accuracy of the
portrait. The delineation of these features as
they have been preserved in the landscape, the
annals and the archaeological remains of the
several localities, has recently been achieved with
unequalled fulness and accuracy by Professor
W- M. Eamsay, to whose book, The Letters to
. the Seven Churches, every student of the subject
should refer.
We should, however, do less than justice to
the value of these letters if we allowed our
selves to overlook the second aspect in which

52 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
they are as remarkable as in the first.
Each of the Churches is individualised in [the
most effective way; but each of them is also
addressed in a representative capacity, and all
together stand for the whole Church, reflecting
the strength and weakness, the victories and
shortcomings which characterise the Church of
Christ wherever it may be found. It is possible
that, as Mr. Eamsay thinks, each Church to
which a letter is sent is to be looked on as the
head and centre of a group of local Churches :
and yet the writer " does not think of the Smyrna
group when he addresses Smyrna, nor is he think
ing of the Universal Church : he addresses Smyrna
alone : he has it clear before his mind, with all
its special qualities and individualities. Yet the
group which had its centre in Smyrna and the
whole Universal Church alike found that the
letter which was written for Smyrna applied
equally to them, for it was a statement of eternal
truths and universal principles." " The idea that
the individual Church is part of the Universal
Church, that it stands for it after the usual
symbolic fashion of the Apocalypse, is never far
from the writer's mind ; and he passes rapidly
between the two points of view, the direct
address to the local Church as an individual
body with special needs of its own, and the
general application and apostrophe to the entire

CHAPTEE II. 1-7 53
Church as symbolised by the particular local
Church." *
Ephesus, to the Church in which city the first
of these letters is sent, stood foremost among the
seven in rank, in historical importance, and in
wealth. But in no one of these features on
which she prided herself was her superiority
unchallenged. Planted at the sea-end of one of
the great -trade-routes from the East, and owing
everything to this favourable position, she had
watched for centuries the slow silting up of the
harbour on which her trade depended, and the
growth of a younger rival in Smyrna, some fifty
miles to the north. But Ephesus was not entirely
dependent upon her trade and commercial supre
macy ; she was the political capital of the Eoman
Province, and even more distinguished in the
eyes of her inhabitants and neighbours by having
within her walls the famous Temple of Artemis,
" Diana of the Ephesians," of whom we hear so
much in the Acts of the Apostles. This venerated
shrine attracted year by year many thousands of
pilgrims, and therefore no little wealth, to the
city. The strategic importance of such a centre
for the missionary work of the Church had been
promptly recognised by St. Paul, who laboured
longer at Ephesus than at any other town in
Asia Minor. And the result was that he left
* See Ramsay, loc. cit., pp. 200, 206.

54 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
behind him a Church the fame of which in
Christendom matched the fame of the city in the
political world.*
"To the angel of the church at Ephesus" —
that is, to its heavenly counterpart and respon
sible representative. In modern language the
angel of the Church is in each case that Church's
better self — that self which is stimulated to con
sciousness whenever God's voice is truly heard by
it.' Just as "the entrance of his word" giveth
light to our own better selves, so Christ by this
address seeks to waken the Church's better self
to activity and effectiveness. And what He says
falls into three parts — Eec6gnition, Warning, and
Promise. First comes the Eecognition: "I know thy
works." The same words are used to five out
of the seven Churches. As another New Testa
ment writer puts it, " God is not unrighteous to
forget your work and the love which ye showed
towards his name." The "works" in this case
are further defined as "thy toil and patience,"
and the meaning of the whole is well illustrated
in the expanded phrase used by St. Paul in
writing to the Thessalonians — "remembering
your work of faith and labour of love and patience
of hope." Their "toil" is active and laborious
* Ignatius speaks of the Church at Ephesus as " renowned
to all ages."

CHAPTEE II. 1-7 55
effort to resist and overcome evil; their "patience"
the steadfast endurance of pressure and persecu
tion in the cause of Christ. Poor little Church
of some few hundreds gathered out of the many
thousands in the great city, passing cautiously
through the streets to their place of meeting,
prepared to meet persecution yet not courting it ;
labouring with zeal and faith to make known to
others the good news which they had received,
that "God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto himself " ; putting up with the disabilities
of their new relation to the world, its contempt,
its dislike, its hostility, its possible cruelty;
bearing all this with patient endurance " as
seeing him who is invisible," and yet wondering
sometimes what is to be the end of it, what is
the good of it how. For Ephesus goes on pretty
much as before, with its frivolity and revelries,
its immoralities and indifference. The Temple of
Artemis is thronged as ever ; the processions of its
votaries sweep through the streets. The frequent
salutation from Christian lips, " Maranatha "
(" the Lord cometh "), sometimes rings hollow
with the consciousness of hope too long deferred.
"As things have been they remain." Who is,
after all, the better for their toil and patience ?
Who cares, in Ephesus ? To such thoughts the
answer comes, "I know thy works." Every act
of faith, every ministry of self-denial, every

56 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
humble acceptance of the Cross for the Master's
sake, finds its recognition from the Master's eye,
has its record in heaven.
And these Christians at Ephesus had one
quality which called for special acknowledgment —
that which St. Paul refers to as the power to
discern spirits, to distinguish between what was
false and true in that which claimed to come
from God. This gift was one for which there
was special need at a time when many were
taking it upon themselves to instruct Christ's
flock, while as yet there was no established
standard of Christian faith and practice. The
number of men was by this time very consider
able, who exercised a Christian ministry, apostolic
or prophetic, on the ground that they had received
the gifts of the Spirit for the purpose. Many,
doubtless, had received a call from God similar to
that which had led to the ordination of Paul and
Barnabas. But there were others who had no
such authority for their ministry, who had been
moved by personal motives of varying degrees of
unworthiness to exercise the ministry without
having received a true call. The young Churches
were continually being visited by strangers who
professed to be Apostles or Prophets of Christ,
and they needed to be always on their guard
against the intrusion of false teachers and false
doctrine. In his general Epistle St. John makes

CHAPTEE II. 1-7 57
both the situation and the warning clear: "Be
lieve not every spirit, but try'the spirits, whether
they are of God ; because many false prophets are
gone out into the world." In these circumstances
a Christian Church could hardly have higher
testimony borne to it than this : " Thou didst
try them which call themselves apostles, and
they are not, and thou didst find them false."
The Church of Ephesus knew the real messengers
of Christ when it heard them: the others it
recognised in their true character, and would
have nothing to do with them.
The whole situation is brought out very clearly,
and the favourable judgment here passed on
Ephesus is strikingly confirmed, in another letter
written to the same Church twenty or thirty
years later, by Ignatius, bishop and martyr. A
few quotations from this letter will speak for
themselves : " Some are wont of malicious guile
to hawk about the Name." " I have learned that
certain persons passed through you from yonder,
bringing evil doctrine : whom ye suffered not to
sow seed in you, for ye stopped your ears, so that
ye might not receive the seed sown by them."
" Now Onesimus of his own accord highly
praiseth your orderly conduct in God, for that
ye all live according to truth, and that no heresy
hath a home among you: nay, you do not so
much as listen to any one, if he speak of aught

58 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
else save concerning Jesus Christ in truth."
There we have both the presence of the false
teachers and the firm way in which they were
ignored by the Ephesian Christians. And from
the same pen we have testimony to those other
qualities in the Church which are touched upon
in this letter. Ignatius, on his way to martyr
dom, writes: "I ought to be trained by you
for the contest, in faith, in admonition, in
endurance, in long-suffering."
It would be very interesting if we could know
with certainty who these false teachers were, and
what was the nature of their teaching. What is
most probable is, that they were men of the same
school as those who dogged the footsteps of St.
Paul, professing to be apostles of Christ, but
in reality emissaries of the Judaising party at
Jerusalem. If so, the burden of their teaching
would be that men must needs become Jews in
becoming disciples of Christ, and so were bound
to " keep the whole law." They wouldtbe repre
sentatives of the party with whom the Apostle of
the Gentiles deals so trenchantly in his Epistle to
the Galatians, desiring to bring Christ's people
once more into bondage under ordinances, and
impugning the liberty wherewith Christ had made
them free. And when the Church at Ephesus
would have none of such teachers, they showed
that they had within themselves the Spirit of

CHAPTEE II. 1-7 59
Christ, a sure touchstone of the truth of the
Gospel. But even a Church which invites such recogni
tion of its works and its faithfulness does not
escape criticism, and incurs serious warning. " I
have this against thee, that thou hast left thy
first love." These people were still doing the
works, but the inner fire had burnt low, and
the works themselves, even though outwardly
the same, were not now " the first works " in the
eye of God. The external evidence of their faith
was like the pointer on a self-registering thermo
meter: it marked the highest level which their
spiritual temperature had reached; but where
was the mercury now? We may take it that
there never was a community of Christians, of
some years' standing, perhaps there never was an
individual Christian, to whom at some time or
other the Spirit of Christ had not this re
monstrance to address : " Thou hast left thy first
love." It may be that many at least of the works
which were prompted by that first love are still
being done ; and yet God hath this against us :
we have this against ourselves. We say, Where
is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the
Lord? How, then, does the Spirit deal with this con
dition ? As revealed in this letter, in two ways :
partly by the utterance of a ^olemn threat, and

60 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
partly by loving counsel. The threat is that the
Lord will remove the Church " out of its place,"
a threat not of destruction, as some have thought,
but of material and grievous change. The con
dition of this Church is not like that of Laodicea,
for example: it is not one which calls for even
the threat of extinction ; Ephesus had true love
and genuine loyalty, and the threat of Divine
discipline would meet the case.
There is an interesting and, in many ways,
an attractive explanation which has been put
forward by Professor Eamsay, based upon a close
study of the topography and history of Ephesus.
He points out that one characteristic which
belongs to Ephesus and distinguishes its history
from that of all the other cities, is change. "In
most ancient sites one is struck by the immuta
bility of Nature and the mutability of all human
additions to Nature. In Ephesus it is the shifting
character of the natural conditions on which the
city depends for prosperity that strikes every
careful observer, every student either of history
or of Nature. This scenery and this site have
varied from century to century. Where there
was water, there is now land ; what was a
populated city in one period, ceased to be so in
another, and has again become the centre of life
for the valley ; where at one time there was only
bare hillside or the gardens of a city some miles

CHAPTEE II. 1-7 61
distant, at another time there was a city crowded
with inhabitants, and this has again relapsed into
its earlier condition : the harbour in which St.
John and St. Paul landed has become a mere
marsh, and the theatre where the excited crowd
met and shouted to Diana, desolate and ruinous
as it is, has been more permanent than the
harbour. . . . The city followed the sea, and
changed from place to place to maintain its im
portance as the only harbour of the valley." *
Accordingly, Mr. Eamsay concludes : " A threat
of removing the Church from its place would
be inevitably understood by the Ephesians as a
denunciation of another change in the site of
the city, and must have been so intended by the
writer." Should a threat of this character seem hardly
grave enough for what is here predicted, then we
must fall back on the explanation of persecution
and the consequent scattering of the Church,
which was indeed its fate. The main point is
to observe that it is the candlestick, the earthly
form of the Church, which is to be moved out of
its place; the star remains in the hand of the
Eedeemer. For there is at Ephesus, as in nearly
every community which names itself by the name
of Christ (the case of Laodicea a possible excep
tion), an invisible Church, a proportion great or
* See Ramsay, loc. cit., p. 245.

62 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
small of those whose names are written in
heaven, whose relation to their Saviour cannot
be affected even by the scattering of the visible
Church. And it is they who will lay both the
threat and the counsel to heart. The counsel is
to "remember" and "repent." Eemember the
early time, " the love of thine espousals." He is
the same : He changeth not. His love is great
and strong as ever. And thy need of it is as
great as ever: nay, it is greater. For the only
thing that causes thee to shrink from remem
bering is shame — shame that the cares and
pleasures of this life have been allowed to choke
the good seed, shame that thy love has been
unequal to His, less constant, less pure, less
strong. And for that shame He and He alone
has the remedy. It was concerning an Israel
that had sinned her mercies that the Lord pro
claimed through Hosea: "I will betroth thee
unto me for ever ; yea, I will betroth thee unto
me in righteousness and justice, in leal love and
tender mercies." Eemember the high privilege
from which thou art fallen ; remember it not as
lost but as offered to thee by the same pierced
hand by which it was at the first bestowed:
remember and repent, and do the first works in
the enthusiasm of the first love.
There remains the promise: and that is con
nected in this case with another point which has

CHAPTEE II. 1-7 63
been recorded to the credit of the Church at
Ephesus, "But this thou hast, that thou hatest
the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate."
About these Nicolaitans we know practically
nothing beyond what can be gathered from allu
sions in these letters. In the Century Bible the
present writer, following many good authorities,
was inclined to regard them as identical with the
false teachers previously referred to in this letter,
those " which call themselves apostles, and they
are not." But on further consideration, it seems
more in accordance with all the available evidence
to see in the false apostles and the Nicolaitans
two distinct and, indeed, antithetical forces
which endangered the purity of the Church from
opposite sides. "Ye must keep the whole law
of Moses," said the intruders from the side of
Judaism. " Nay," said the Christians of Ephesus,
who had drunk in Paul's teaching, "not so, for
Christ hath made us free from the law." "If
that be so," said another party, the Nicolaitans,
"then let us use our freedom, let us show that we
are above the law, by living as we please." And
so they threatened to turn the liberty of the
Gospel into an excuse for all manner of libertinism
and immorality. These two tendencies were the
Scylla and Charybdis between which the Church
of the first century had to find the middle path
of safety. And the true Christian standard which

64 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
prevailed at Ephesus enabled the Church there to
perceive the falsehood of this extreme also : as
they rejected the teaching of the false teachers,
so they hated the works of the Nicolaitans. Not
that they were not tempted, some of them by the
lust of the flesh, tempted to think that these
Nicolaitans were right, and that a Christian
might do with impunity what for another man
was sin. But they had "an unction from the
Holy One," and they knew that this was not the
mind of Christ.
The form which this temptation took gives its
form to the promise with which the letter closes.
Were they tempted by this diabolical attempt to
legitimise the worst of human passions, tempted
by the desire to gratify carnal appetites regard
less of the moral law, let them continue to resist,
understanding that he that doeth evil is evil,
whatever he may believe. Let them continue
to fight manfully in this conflict, and " to him
that overcometh" shall be given "to eat of the
tree of life," of fruit which is not as the fruit of
Sodom, but prepared by God for the true and
perfect satisfaction of human nature's needs.
The Nicolaitans are not extinct. • Our modern
cities are as hospitable to them as Ephesus or
any of the cities of the Eoman Empire. They
have many avenues of insidious approach for
their nauseous doctrines. For the young,

CHAPTEE II. 1-7 65
especially, they lie in wait, urging that self-
indulgence in natural appetite cannot be wrong,
daring even to charge upon God the evil results
of such self-indulgence. They spread snares of
every kind for the unwary and the unwarned,
even inventing ways to rouse "the beast in
man." The only safeguard is to hate all such
instigations to evil, to hate as Christ hates them ;
and then to claim from Him the fulfilment of
this great promise, to him that overcometh. " I
will give him to eat of the tree of life," of the
tree whose fruit does satisfy, of the tree whose
satisfaction endures : all else turns to ashes : this
fulfilment of desire which comes from the hand
of God is both perfect and eternal.

THE LETTEE TO THE CHUECH
AT SMYRNA
Rev. ii. 8-11
These things saith the first and the last, which was dead,
and lived again : I know thy tribulation and thy poverty
(but thou art rich), and the blasphemy of them which say
they are Jews, and they are not, but are a synagogue of
Satan. Fear not the things wMch thou art about to suffer :
behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison,
that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten
days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee
tlie crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what
the Spirit saith to the churches. He that overcometh shall
not be hurt of the second death (B.V.).
Smyrna is the only one of the seven cities to
which these letters are addressed which remains
to this day a place of importance. The sites on
which the others stood are now either vacant
or occupied only by a few mud-houses in the
midst of ancient ruins. But the traveller to
Smyrna finds a large and flourishing town, with
a population of a quarter of a million or more,
and the centre of a wide-reaching and productive
66

CHAPTEE II. 8-11 67
commerce. It is said, indeed, to be the most
solidly prosperous city within the Turkish Empire,
and the reason of its prosperity is at least partially
disclosed in the fact that by the Turks it is called
" Ismid Giaour," Smyrna the heathen : in other
words, its population is largely composed of those
who profess Christianity and are at least pene
trated with Christian ideas. There is, however,
a natural cause besides for this prosperity, which
has lasted now for more than two thousand years,
and that is the situation of the city at the top of
a great land-locked bay or gulf, in which great
fleets could lie in safety, and also at the lower
end of one of the great river-valleys which strike
up from the coast into the heart of Asia Minor.
Thus, Smyrna was hardly second to Ephesus
as an emporium of trade, and indeed vaunted
itself so highly that it carried on a long struggle
both with Ephesus on the south and with Per-
gamum on the north for the coveted title of "First
City in Asia."
Of its early religious history we know very
little beyond the fact that as Ephesus was famous
for its devotion to Artemis and for the splendour
of her temple there, so Smyrna was the special
home of the cult of Dionysus, the god of vintage
and of revelry. But there is in the Eoman
historian Tacitus a passage which throws an
interesting light on the religious as well as the

68 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
political situation in Smyrna in the first century.
The relation of the Province of Asia to Eome
was roughly that of India to Grea* Britain : and
then, as now, the dependency not infrequently
sought to show its loyalty and to secure the
Imperial favour by the erection of monuments
or public buildings. In the year 23 a.d. the cities
of Asia had obtained leave to erect in one of
them a temple in honour of Tiberius, and three
years later they all sent commissioners to Eome
to plead their respective claims to furnish the
site. " The Emperor," says Tacitus, " in order
to turn away public attention from a scandal,"
frequently attended the Senate, and on several
days listened to the ambassadors from Asia argu
ing as to which city should be the one where the
temple was to be erected. Eleven cities were en
gaged in the contest, equally ambitious, but not
equally important. Situated not far apart from
one another they laid stress on their antiquity and
their loyalty to Eome. But Laodicea, Tralles,
Troas, and some others were passed over at once,
as not sufficiently important. There was more
hesitation about Halicarnassus, which for twelve
hundred years had been undisturbed by any earth
quake: Pergamum was rejected on the very
ground put forward as a ground of claim — that
it had already a temple of Augustus. Ephesus
and Miletus were already too closely associated

CHAPTEE II. 8-11 69
with the ritual and worship of Diana and
Apollo. Only Sardis and Smyrna remained. The
Sardian advocates strove hard, pointing to the
history of their town, its- early treaty with Eome,
the fertilising power of its streams, the wealth
of the neighbourhood, and the excellence of the
climate. The envoys from Smyrna, however,
claimed a yet greater antiquity, a loyalty to Eome
which stretched yet further back, and special
services rendered to a Eoman army in great
straits, when the citizens of Smyrna had stripped
themselves of their clothing to cover the shivering
Eoman troops. So when the vote of the Senate
was taken, Smyrna carried the day.
Some sixty years had elapsed since that scene
in Eome, when John wrote this letter to the
Christians in Smyrna ; but the city had not
declined either in wealth or in devotion to Eome.
And neither its wealth nor the direction of its
enthusiasm was favourable to the Christian cause
and the Christian people in the city. Poverty
and tribulation were the outward marks of the
Church there, but its inward marks were stead
fastness and the favour of God.
It has been already pointed out that the more
thoroughly we comprehend the history, the local
circumstances, and the social surroundings of
each of these Churches, the more are we in a
position to appreciate the accuracy of these

70 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
letters, and the exquisite adaptation of every
phrase in them, to each special case. Of this a
good illustration is found here. Like all the rest,
this letter begins with a description of Christ, the
Speaker, in a phrase which is taken from the full
description of the Son of Man as John had seen
Him. And as there is in some of the cases
an unmistakable appropriateness in the phrase
selected to the circumstances of the Church
which is addressed, so it is natural to assume
an appropriateness even in those cases where
the application is less immediately obvious. To
Smyrna Christ speaks as " the first and the last,
who was dead, and yet liveth." What could be
more appropriate in addressing " an age-long city
half as old as time " ? A city where the popula
tion prided itself on this very antiquity, and
traced its foundation back to the gods them
selves. A city where, as the beginning seemed
to be lost in the dim past, so the end seemed a
thing unthinkable. And yet the Christians in
this city set against all this material splendour
and this vast duration the conviction that there
were higher things, things more precious and
more lasting. How difficult it was for them to
keep alive this conviction in the face of what men
called facts ! "I," with whom you have to do,
"I am the first and the last": even before
Smyrna was, I am : and when Smyrna is for-

CHAPTEE II. 8-11 71
1
gotten, I shall be, the same yesterday, to-day,
and for ever. And even the death which must
surely overtake each one of you, the martyr's
death which awaits some of you, makes no
difference. I was dead, and yet live. Neither
time and the things of time, nor death and the
agonies of death, do alter life for those who
have heard My voice, and know Me as their
Saviour. Coming to the body of this letter, we find three
things made prominent — the outward condition of
the Church, its poverty, the inward spirit or temper
of the Church, its loyalty, and the final reward of
loyalty shown through poverty and tribulation,
namely, life. " I know thy tribulation and thy
poverty." The tribulation arose partly from the
pressure of the world, the constant friction of
antagonistic ideas and diverse aims in life, such
as was and is inevitable when a Christian com
munity is planted in the midst of a heathen
population. From organised persecution Smyrna
had up to this time been free, but none the less
there would be for every true disciple of Jesus a
very real bearing of the Cross, a daily call for
patience and self-sacrifice, " for the testimony of
Jesus." But the tribulation was also due in part
to the presence, in large numbers, of Jews who
had only a nominal claim to belong to God's
Israel, and proved their own righteousness rather

72 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
by attacking the believers in a crucified Messiah
than by walking in the law of Moses. It does
not appear that these were Jewish Christians,
such as troubled the Church at Ephesus : they
were Jews by birth and by profession, who had
departed so far from the standards of their
religion that they no longer deserved the name,
while from the standpoint of fierce orthodoxy
they reviled the Christians. Such Jews were
found by this time in all the chief cities of the
empire, a powerful body, and unscrupulous in
their hostility to the followers of Christ. But
they would appear to have been unusually strong
and unusually bitter at Smyrna. For when some
fifty years later many Christians perished in the
persecution, and amongst them the saintly Poly-
carp, it is recorded that the Jews were eager in
bringing faggots to the theatre for the burning
of the Christians, " sabbath day though it was."
Here there was cause enough for " tribulation,"
and it had to be borne with the added dis
advantages of poverty.
It is very significant that the Church which,
if it does not receive the same positive praise as
that of Philadelphia, is at any rate distinct from
all the other Churches in receiving no reproach
at all, should be also the one marked out from
the rest by its poverty. It was a living illustra
tion of the beatitude pronounced by Jesus,

CHAPTEE II. 8-11 73
" Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom
of heaven." For our Lord does so absolutely
reverse the common judgment of the world, that
He holds them blessed who are poor in this
world's goods. Not that there is any virtue in
being poor, or specially attaching to those who
are poor, but because as a matter of experience
riches, wealth, social security are so great a
danger to the higher life of man, because the
moral demand made upon a rich man ere he
can qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven is so
much more severe than that which is felt by the
pbor. Many a poor man cries out in the midst
of his poverty: "How hard it is to trust God!"
and yet he trusts Him. But for the rich man
it is not only hard. Christ thought it almost
impossible ; because he requires not only to have
faith in the unseen, but to have want of faith
in the seen, want of faith in that riches the
evidence of which is before him every hour, want
of faith in his power, although every one round
him bows down to it, want of faith in himself,
although to human eyes he appears to be the
master of his circumstances. If only men could
open their hearts to the conviction that Christ
was right in this matter, those who are rich in
any form of possession would look on their riches
with trembling, and those who are poor would
find in the daily looking to the hand of God a

74 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
daily discovery that this is true : " God hath
chosen them that are poor as to the world to be
rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he
promised to them that love him."
This was the experience of Smyrna. The out
ward poverty of the Christians there was accom
panied by an inward loyalty to God, so deep and
strong that it outweighed their poverty, and
overcame their tribulation — nay, might be trusted
to overcome the further tribulation which was
looming in the near future. For their Lord
would not conceal from them that more and
greater trouble was to come. In their case
tribulation had wrought patience, and patience
had brought about a condition of testedness, in
which they could bear with equanimity even the
announcement of new trials. They were their
Lord's friends, and He would not conceal from
them what was in His mind : "Ye shall have
tribulation ten days."
Why " ten days " ? Much thought and in
genuity had been spent in the attempt to dis
cover the meaning of this and the many other
periods of time which are indicated in this book.
And as this is the first occasion when such a
number is met with, it may be well to consider
the general question of the place of numbers in
the symbolism of the Apocalypse. It may be
said at once that so far as they refer to extension

CHAPTEE II. 8-11 75
in time or space, no one of these numbers is to
be understood literally. When they refer to
objects, the candlesticks, the Churches, the heads
and horns of the Monster, the " living creatures,"
and the like, they are to be taken literally in a
sense. That is to say, the Apostle had before
his mind in these cases a definite number of
objects corresponding to the figure which he
gives. In regard to space and time he uses
numbers to express rather their character and
quality than their extent or duration. One set
of numbers* notably three, seven, ten, and
twelve, with their multiples, convey the ideas
of completeness and satisfaction, and so are
associated with the merciful dispensations of
God; another set, notably three and a half in
various forms and multiples (forty and two
months, a thousand two hundred and three
score days, a time times and half a time) convey
the ideas of broken continuity, imperfection and
confusion, and so are associated with the domina
tion of wickedness or the punitive dispensations
of God. Such numbers in all the Apocalyptic
literature have a purely conventional value. A
"thousand years" stands for a rounded and
complete period of long but unknown duration.
" Three and a half years " derives its sinister
meaning in part from its being a broken seven,
in part from its having been the duration of the

76 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
reign of Antiochus, when "the abomination of
desolation " first made its appearance in Jewish
experience. It follows that in the ordinary sense of the
word there is no chronology to be sought or to be
found in this book. " The Seer does not look for
ward to age succeeding age or century century.
To him the whole period between the first and
the second coming of Christ is but ' a little time,'
and whatever is to happen in it ' must shortly
come to pass.' In truth be can hardly be said to
deal with the lapse of time at all. He deals with
the essential characteristics of the Divine govern
ment in time, whether it be long or short. Shall
the revolving years be in our sense short, these
characteristics will nevertheless come forth with a
clearness which shall leave man without excuse.
Shall they be in our sense long, the unfolding of
God's eternal plan will be only again and again
made manifest."*
But it is not only vain to seek to construct a
chronology of the future out of the periods men
tioned in this book, and thus to establish "the time
of the end." It seems perilously like presumption
in view of our Lord's specific declaration : "Ye
know not the day nor the hour." The time of the
end is a secret reserved in the mind of the Most
High alone : " Of that day and hour knoweth no
* Milligan, Expositor's Bible, p. 112.

CHAPTEE II. 8-11 77
man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father
only." And this was clearly recognised by the
Church of the first century, in whose understand
ing it was firmly fixed that the day of the Lord
would come " as a thief in the night." The per
petually recurring admonition to watchfulness
would have had no meaning, had it been possible
to extort from Scripture the secret of the date
when the end would come. Even if we had the
material, which we have not, it would not become
us to pry into what has been declared to be God's
secret : the true attitude of the Christian is that of
waiting and watching for his Lord's coming, and
that is the attitude which the whole of this book
serves to inculcate.
The " ten days " of tribulation, then, to which
Smyrna is to be exposed are not to be interpreted
as describing its precise duration ; the phrase
simply announces a period of persecution which is
to be brief and definite. The Church at Smyrna
could be trusted to receive such an announcement
without questioning and without dismay. Her
members were sound at heart. They had not
made compromise either with false teaching or
with libertinism. And the history of the Church
within the next half-century showed both the
fulfilment of this prediction, and how fully the
Lord's confidence in His people was justified.
The evidence of this is found in that most

78 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
interesting letter which was sent by the Church at
Smyrna to another Church in which an account is
given of a fierce persecution which haM broken
out, and of the martyrdom of Polycarp, which
brought it to a close. " The church of God
which sojourneth at Smyrna to the church of God
which sojourneth at Philomelium, and to all the
holy brotherhoods of the holy and universal
church sojourning in every place." "We write
unto you, brethren, an account of what befel
those that suffered martyrdom and especially the
blessed Polycarp, who stayed the persecution;
having as it were set his seal upon it by his
martyrdom." Then we hear about the steadfast
ness of other witnesses to Christ. "The right
noble Germanicus encouraged their timorousness
through the constancy that was in him ; and he
fought with the wild beasts in a signal way. For
when the pro-consul wished to prevail upon him,
and bade him have pity on his youth, he used
violence and dragged the wild beast towards him,
desiring the more speedily to obtain a release from
their unrighteous and lawless life. So after this
all the multitude, marvelling at the bravery of
the God-beloved and God-fearing people of the
Christians, raised a cry, ' Away with the Atheist :
let search be made for Polycarp.' " Then we read
how the friends of the aged bishop strove to per
suade him, saying : " Why, what harm is there in

CHAPTEE II. 8-11 79
saying, Caesar is Lord, and offering incense to his
statue, and so saving thyself? " But at first he
gave them no answer ; when, however, they per
sisted, he said, " I am not going to do what you
counsel me"; and when he was brought into the
theatre, the magistrate pressed him again, and
said : " Swear the oath, and I will release thee :
revile the Christ." And Polycarp's reply was :
" Fourscore and six years have I been His servant,
and He hath done me no wrong: how can I
blaspheme my King who saved me?" So he gave
his body to be burned, and as his flock put it :
" Having by his endurance overcome the un
righteous ruler in the conflict, and so received the
crown of immortality, he rejoiceth in company
with the apostles and all righteous men, and
blesseth our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of our
bodies and helmsman of our souls, and shepherd
of the universal Church." *
"Having received the crown of immortality."
The Church at Smyrna must have laid to heart
the promise with which the letter in the Eevela
tion closes. They were used to seeing the victors
in the games crowned with the wreath, which
was made of perishable leaves ; but for them
selves they had learned to look beyond their
daily conflict with evil, through the fire and
smoke of martyrdom, to a crown of imperishable
* See The Martyrdom of Polycarp, Lightfoot's translation.

80 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
glory — a crown which consisted in life for ever
more. For them death had no terrors. It had
lost that which alone gave it its sting ; for Christ
had " loosed them from their sins." The " second
death " which the Jews around them thought of
as the portion of the wicked after the resurrec
tion had no terrors either. The Christ for whom
they lived, was the Christ in whom they lived ;
and He was alive for evermore. To be absent
from the body, therefore, was only to be more
really present with the Lord.

THE LETTEE TO THE CHUECH AT
PEEGAMUM
Rev. ii. 12-17
And to the angel of the church at Pergamum write;
These things, saith he, that hath the sharp two-edged
sword: I know where thou dwellest, even where Satan's
throne is; and thou holdest fast my name, and didst not
deny my faith, even in the days of Antipas, my witness, my
faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan
dwelleth. But I have a few things against thee, because
thou hast there some that hold the teaching of Balaam,
who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the
cMldren of Israel, to eat tMngs sacrificed to idols, and to
commit fornication. So hast thou also some that hold the
teaching of the Nicolaitans in like manner. Bepent, there
fore ; or else I come to thee quickly, and I will make war
against them with the sword of my mouth. He that hath
an ear, let Mm hear what the Spirit saith to tlie churches.
To Mm that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the
hidden wanna, and I will give him a white stone, and upon
the stone a new name written which no one knoweth but
he that receiveth it (B.V.). i
The passage from the Annals of Tacitus, which
was quoted in the last chapter, illustrates not
only the relative claims of the seven cities to
recognition by the Eoman State, but also the
-f 81

82 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
social and civil significance which the worship
of the Emperor bad attained in the first third of
the first century. The competition among the
Asian cities was for the honour of providing the
site for a new temple of the reigning Emperor ;
and as this subtle and diabolical amalgam of
patriotism, politics, and religion is the subject of
repeated allusion in the Apocalypse, its origin
and its meaning require to be noted. It began -
in a natural and, granted the polytheism on
which it rested, a comparatively harmless way.
The population of Western Asia Minor had
always been notorious for its superstitious cha
racter, the avidity with which it welcomed new
deities and new forms of worship, and for the
fanatical enthusiasm with which it abandoned
itself to religious excitement. Eome, as a political
power, stood to these people very much as
Britain stands to many parts of India ; and just
as in India we find some of the native peoples
doing a kind of homage to what they call the
British Raj, just as some of them have even gone
the length of paying Divine honours to the name
of one at least of our great administrators (John
Nicholson), so the natives of "Asia" looked
with something more than reverence on the
great civilising power of the West, and were
ready enough to conceive of the ruling sovereign
in distant Eome as something more than man.

CHAPTEE II. 12-17 83
The initiative, however, came from the side of the
Eoman rulers themselves. The claim had been
advanced by, or for, Julius Caesar that he was
descended from the goddess Venus Genitrix ;
and an obsequious assembly at Ephesus had
pronounced him to be " god made manifest, the
son of Ares and Aphrodite." His successor,
Augustus, was the object of yet more intense
devotion as the Saviour of the civilised world,
and a kind of incarnation of the genius of Eome.
" In the condition of human thoughts and
religious conceptions that then prevailed, such
an intense feeling must take a religious form.
Whatever deeply affected the minds of a body
of men, few or many, inevitably assumed a
religious character. No union or association of
any kind was then possible except in a common
religion, whose ritual expressed the common
feelings and purpose. Thus the growth of an
Asian Provincial religion of Eome and the Em
peror was natural." *
The material forms which this Emperor- worship
took included the erection of temples and the es
tablishment of priestly guilds for their service.
The first of these temples to be erected in Asia
was fixed at Pergamum, and had been increasing
in importance and prestige for over a hundred
years when this letter was written. Pergamum
* See Ramsay, loc. cit., p. 118.

84 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
had been selected as the site for this temple
because it was historically and officially the
capital of the province. During the first Christian
century it was being slowly ousted from its
primacy through the growing importance vof
Ephesus and Smyrna, both of which were
geographically better situated for the purposes
of commerce. But Pergamum had been the
royal city of ancient native kings, and situated
as it was on a magnificent hill "standing out
boldly in the level plain, and dominating the
valley and mountain on the south," it was
also a " royal city " to behold ; and it remained
at least till the end of this century the seat of
Eoman government, and the residence of the
Pro-consul of Asia/
These two features, Pergamum, the seat of
the Provincial government, and Pergamum, the
site of the oldest and most famous temple of
Emperor-worship, provide at once the key to
the situation of the Church in that city, and the
clue to several phrases in this letter.
"Thus saith he that hath the sharp two-
edged sword." Again we have in the phrase
here chosen to describe the author of the letter,
one selected from the description of the Son
of Man in the first chapter, and the appropriate
ness of the choice is obvious. At Pergamum dwelt
the Eoman Governor, the one man in Asia who

CHAPTEE II. 12-17 85
had what the Eomans called the jus gladii, the
power of the sword, the power of life and death.
It was to Pergamum, therefore, that prisoners
were taken, including such as were accused of
being Christians, in order that they might
undergo the sentence and suffering of death.
The message to Pergamum comes, therefore,
from the one, "who hath the sharp two-edged
sword," to indicate the fact that behind the
Eoman Governor and above him, is One whose
authority is mightier still, by whose will princes
do govern, and to whom even the tyrants of
the earth are responsible. By this phrase the
trembling Church of Pergamum is bidden to
look past the threatening world-power, and to
fix its gaze on the King of kings, who is " mighty
to save."
In like manner the description of the Church
as dwelling " where Satan's throne is " conveys
an allusion to the prevailing cult of the Emperor.
This had reached its climax in the reign of
Domitian, within which these letters were prob
ably written. It was Domitian who insisted on
being addressed by his subjects as " our Lord and
God," and at the same time the Provincial
government had discovered the value for its
own purposes of fostering and extending this
monstrous worship of a man. By its means
they obtained a new and very effective instru-

86 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
ment for controlling their subject races. They
skilfully identified submission to the civil power
with religion, and made conformity to the ritual
a test of loyalty to the State. The heathen
subjects of Eome found no difficulty in enlarging
their Pantheon to include another god, in paying
their dues in the temple of the Emperor as well
as in those of Diana or .<Esculapius. Some Jews
also appear to have conformed or compromised
in this matter; at any rate there is no record
of their suffering persecution because they refused
the worship of the Emperor. And here is at
least a possible explanation of the contemptuous
indignation of the Apostle against " those who
say they are Jews and are not." It would be
as open a denial of their faith in Jehovah for
them to offer incense in these temples as it was
for the Christians a denial of their faith in God,
the,, Father of their Lord Jesus Christ. But for
the Christians the stereotyping of this Emperor-
worship into an instrument of government, and
a test of loyalty, created at once a situation of the
keenest trial. They who were probably the most
law-abiding of all the subjects of Eome, found
themselves liable to be branded as traitors and
enemies of the State, if they were not prepared
to make public denial of their Lord. How much
comfort there was, therefore, in the opening words
of this salutation, " I know where thou dwellest."

CHAPTEE II. 12-17 87
Nothing in their circumstances or situation was
hidden from their Lord, nothing of the daily
bitterness of life, nothing of the daily struggle to
remain loyal to Him.
It is still the fortune of many of Christ's people
to dwell where Satan is enthroned. It may be in
the midst of the great city, where large sections
of the population are more or less openly the
servants of sin, more or less openly defiant of
God. Or it may be within a narrower circle
that men dwell, among fellow-workers, or in a
society, or even in a family, where God is for
gotten, and the world is worshipped, where
loyalty to Christ is interpreted as disloyalty to
the conventions of men, or the unwritten code
of social intercourse. To His faithful servants
in such circumstances the same voice comes
from the same Saviour: "I know where thou
dwellest, that thou holdest fast my name."
But, even as we hearken to catch these words
of comfort, and assurance that we are not alone
or forgotten in the midst of the conflict, that
greater is He that is for us than they that are
against us, we must be prepared to hear the
same voice challenging our want of single-
minded loyalty to the Lord's ideal, " I have a
few things against thee." The shortcomings of
the Church at Pergamum were connected with
the presence within the community of certain

88 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
false teachers whose teaching is again referred
to and more fully described in the letter to
Thyatira. Eeserving, therefore, a closer exami
nation of its character, let it suffice to observe
now that this teaching was evidently of the
nature of an attack upon the obligation of
morality, an encouragement to men to use the
liberty wherewith Christ had made them free as
an occasion for licence and lust ; and further,
that while at Ephesus this teaching was firmly
repudiated, and in the Church at Smyrna, poor
in this world's goods but rich in faith, there
seems to have been no trace of it, in Pergamum
this teaching had received at least some hospi
tality, while in Thyatira it had spread to a
dangerous extent.
But whether the lapse is small or great,
whether the things which Christ has against
us are few or many, the summons of His Spirit
is ever the same, "Eepent." Change your mind
about the thing which has drawn you from His
side. You were enticed by it because it had a
specious attractiveness. See it now as it is, in all
its triviality, contemptible, mean, or disgraceful,
imperilling your higher life. See it as it is, the
thing you have loved and lusted after ; and hate
it, with something like Christ's hatred of evil.
That is what it is to repent, arid that is the
beginning of final victory.

CHAPTEE II. 12-17 89
"To him that overcometh" our Lord in this
letter promises that He will give "the hidden
manna and a white stone, and upon the stone
a new name written." In trying to discover the
meaning of this double promise there is one
thing to be chiefly borne in mind, namely, that
the meaning of the symbolism must have been
perfectly plain to those for whom this letter was
prepared. It is in the circle of their ideas and
not of ours that we are to find the clue. And
each part of the twofold promise appears to have
had a different section of the Church in view.
Some of the Christians at Pergamum had been
Jews, and the clue to the meaning of the " hidden
manna " is found in the circle of ideas charac
teristic of later Judaism. It had been recorded
in the book of Exodus that Aaron received a
coinmand to take of the manna before it ceased
to fall, and " lay it up " in a pot or basket " before
the Lord " by placing it before " the Testimony."
In after-times this was understood to mean with
in the Ark of the Testimony. And one of the
favourite legends of post-exilic Judaism was to
the effect that before the destruction of Jeru
salem the prophet Jeremiah had been instructed
to remove the Ark, with its contents, to a place
of safety, and that he had carried it off and con
cealed it iii a cave of Mount Sinai. Bound this
hidden Ark, and the manna hidden with it, the

90 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
fancy of the Eabbis played exuberantly; and,
amongst other things, they averred that when
the long-expected Messiah came the Ark and
its contents would be discovered and restored to
the holy city, or, otherwise, that manna, which
by this time they had come to think of as hidden
in heaven, would descend again from above. It was
to be one of the glorious privileges of Messiah's
reign that His people would be fed on manna.
A pious Jew, therefore, who had been nurtured
not only on the Old Testament, but also on. these
later fantasies, would naturally include this among
his anticipations of that golden age, that he and
his fellow-Jews would partake of the manna
which bad so long been hidden. It is for such
that this part of the promise is specially adapted.
Christ always speaks to men in the language that
they understand ; and here He adopts the form of
Jewish anticipation into which He has taught
them to put higher and truer contents.
In order that men of other ages and other
modes of thought may understand it too, He has
given us a key and the power.to use it. The key
is in St. John's Gospel : " Your fathers did eat
the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
This is the bread which cometh down out of
heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
I am the living bread, which came down out of
heaven." Applying this key, we recognise that

CHAPTEE II. 12-17 91
what our Lord promises to give "to him that
overcometh" is Himself, and in Himself the
God-sent satisfaction of the human heart in all
its cravings for light and love. He is the hidden
manna. And were any one to ask, Why, then, did
He not say so plainly? be misses the exquisite
tenderness of self-adaptation which is shown in
the very form of the promise, adaptation even to
the crude and blundering notions of the common
folk, who had been Jews but now were Christians.
Christ is seen once more clothing Himself in
human form, this time in the form of human
thought, for the same purpose as at the beginning,
that He might give Himself to men.
If, as seems most probable, this is the true
explanation of the first half of the promise, we
shall not find it difficult to see in the second half
an extension of the same principle. Here our
Lord condescends to a yet lower circle of ideas,
attaches His thought to the common speech of
men who had been not Jews but Gentile
" heathen " ere they became Christians, and by
its means speaks home to their hearts thoughts
of eternal truth.
The white stone with a new name has provided
a great problem for all the commentators, and
the explanations which have been advanced are
very numerous. The origin of the symbol has
been sought in many directions, in the Urim and

92 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
Thummim of the Jewish High Priest, on the
stones of which names were - inscribed, in the
white pebbles with which the- Greek jurors gave
a vote for acquittal, in the tablet or plaque
inscribed with a password which gave admittance
to an assembly or banquet. But none of these
gives a satisfactory explanation of the name.
Once more we must look for light in the circle of
popular religious ideas, but in this case, not in
Judaism, but in the region where Judaism and
Paganism mingled. There we find first of all the
habit of attaching mystical and even magical
significance to secret names. The knowledge and
use of these conferred, according to a widespread
superstition, tremendous power over Nature or
unseen spirits. And we find, moreover, in the
same quarter a particular application of such
secret names. They were regarded as passwords,
the utterance of which would secure the admission
of the soul into one after another of the succes
sive heavens through which it was to ascend to
perfect bliss.
There was already in vogue at the end of the
first century a system of thought which took the
place of religion, produced by a commingling of
Judaic and Hellenic ideas, in which this super
stition connected with names of power played a
great part. This ' Gnosticism," as it is called,
is of great importance in relation to the early

CHAPTEE II. 12-17 93
Church. And Gnosticism from the practical point
of view was just a securely patented method of
obtaining salvation by learning the various pass
words or names of power by means of which the
ascending spirit could make sure of entrance into
one heaven after another. There can be no doubt
that ideas such as these had formed part of the
religious furnishing of many minds in Pergamum,
some of whom had found a simpler and a surer
salvation in Christ. Another line of explanation
is suggested by the inscriptions quite recently
discovered in Asia Minor by Professor Eamsay.
They throw light upon the subject of " Tekmoreian
guest-friends," a guild or society the existence of
which had been revealed by earlier inscriptions.
The " Tekmor " proves to have been not, as was
formerly supposed, a name derived from a locality,
but a secret password, or sign of membership,
which secured entrance to the banquets of the
guild. Professor Eamsay is inclined to see in
this something which throws new light upon " the
mark of the beast," and its use in " exclusive
trading." But it is also possible that a reference
to the same password or sign underlies the
promise here. Whether the name were a name
of power to be applied to religious purposes, or a
password admitting to social privileges, it would
be quite natural that the word should be inscribed
upon a stone or plaque. In either case the

94 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
possession of the name would be understood to
confer great privileges upon the man who received
it. In connecting His promise with one or other
of these popular ideas our Lord once more clothes
His own great gift in forms understanded of the
people, and thereby contrasts the false with the
true. Did others offer to teach mystic signs
securing access to social privileges, He would
give to His true followers access to the marriage-
supper of the Lamb. Did others speak of pass
words giving a right to enter heaven, He would
give to him that overcometh a surer password
for entrance to a truer heaven. Did others
promise to communicate the mighty names which
caused closed portals to fly back, He would
put in His faithful servant's heart the name that
is above every name, the name at which every
knee must bow, of things in heaven and things
on earth and things under the earth. Was the
availing name, which once they had longed to
find, a name which each man should have for
himself, then Christ would give to him a " new
name " in the deep sense of the Bible, a new
nature, the real key to the real heaven.
Such appear to be the clues to the true mean
ing of this promise, and such a foreshadowing at
least of its interpretation. If this be so, we have
a striking illustration of God's method of dealing
with the human mind. He does not stand over

CHAPTEE II. 12-17 95
against His children with a complete system of
pure truth, which they must rise to, or otherwise
accept, before they can enter into fellowship with
Him. He incarnates Himself in human thought,
as He was once incarnate in human flesh, and
for the same purpose, that He may purify it,
sanctify it, lead it on to truer truth. As He took
certain institutions, such as sacrifice, marriage,
the Sabbath, and brought them under the sanc
tion of His command, purified them, made them
witnesses and interpreters of higher things; as
He took ideas that belonged originally to what
we call natural religion, such as Divine Father
hood, immortality, retribution, and by the power
of His Spirit working in men elevated them into
intense spiritual convictions, speaking all the
time to men in language they could understand,
so He spoke to the Church at Pergamum in terms
of religious ideas which were already transcended ;
and so He speaks to us, " having many things to
say, which we cannot yet bear," in the language
of to-day's needs, of to-day's philosophy, of to
day's religion, but ever summons us to press
through these veils in order to find the one un
changing Christ, that when we have finally
pressed through the last veil, the flesh, we may
find, and find for ever, the unchanging God.
This great promise waits till then for its final
fulfilment; but it is made, like all the corre-

96 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
sponding promises in these letters, not merely to
him that has finally overcome, but " to him that
overcometh." For Christ's faithful servant there
are many preliminary victories, and to each of
them is attached its meed of reward— reward in
this sort, sustenance and progress and power.
As to Christ Himself, when in the wilderness He
had overcome, so to His followers faithful though
forespent come after their struggles the Ministers
of His Grace, to bestow the hidden manna, Christ
the Food and Medicine of the soul, and the
restored courage of a new name — the name in
which He causeth us to triumph. To him that
overcometh, as he overcomes, to-day, to-morrow,
and all the days is this promise made good.

THE LETTEE TO THE CHUECH AT
THYATIEA
Rev. ii. 18-29
These tMngs saith the Son of God, who hath Ms eyes like
aflame of fire, and Ks feet are like unto burnished brass :
I know thy works, and thy love and faith and ministry and
patience, and that thy last works are more than the first.
But I have this against thee, that thou sufferest the woman
Jezebel, wMch calleth herself a prophetess; and she teacheth
and seduceth my servants to commit fornication, and to eat
tilings sacrificed to idols. And I gave her time that she
should repent ; and she will not repent of her fornication.
Behold, I do cast her into a bed, and them that commit
adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent
of her works. And I will kill her cMldren with death;
and all the churches shall know that I am he which
searcheth the reins and hearts : and I will give unto each
one of you according to your works. But to you I say, to
the rest that are in Thyatira, as many as have not tMs
teaching, wMch know not the deep things of Satan, as they
say ; I cast upon you none other burden. Howbeit, that
wMch ye have, hold fast till I come. And he that over
cometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to Mm
will I give authority over the nations : and he shall rule
them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are
broken to shivers ; as I also have received of my Father :
and I will give him the morning star. He that hath an
ear, let Mm hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches
(B.V.). 8 97

98 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
The letters to the Churches up to this point
have revealed a condition of affairs which is, on
the whole, satisfactory. Ephesus has cooled
somewhat from her first enthusiasm, but cannot
tolerate "the works of the Nicolaitans." Smyrna
is protected by her poverty from many of the
temptations which beset her neighbours. Per
gamum has tolerated the presence of some " that
hold the teaching of Balaam," and also of some
" that hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans," but
still holds fast the Name, and does not deny the
faith. At Thyatira we find a Church which along
with much faithfulness and energy of service is
more seriously infected with false teaching — a
Church in which one of the actual teachers of
falsehood occupies an acknowledged and honoured
position. It is in harmony with this situation
that the tone of this letter is distinctly different
from that of the others, more vigorous and
authoritative, more threatening in reference to
the unrepentant, more eloquent in regard to the
victorious. The town of Thyatira itself was one of little
importance in comparison with those which have
gone before. It would, indeed, have little or no
place in history were it not for the fact that this
letter was addressed to the Christian Church
there. It was situated about a day's journey to
the south-east from Pergamum, on the road

CHAPTEE II. 18-29 99
which would naturally be taken by a messenger
passing thence to Sardis. With no great natural
advantages of position, and no famous history in -
the past, it was "probably the smallest and
feeblest, certainly in general estimation the least
distinguished and famous, of all the seven cities."
" The local surroundings of Thyatira accentuate
this comparatively humble character of its
fortunes. It lies in the middle of a long valley
between parallel ridges of hills of no great eleva
tion, which rise with gentle slope from the valley.
Thus there is a most marked contrast between the
situation of Thyatira and the proud and lofty
acropolis of Sardis, or the huge hill of Pergamum,
or the mountain walls of Ephesus, and the castled
hill of Smyrna, each with its harbour, or the long
sloping hillside on which Philadelphia rises high
above its plain, or the plateau of Laodicea." * And
yet so independent is the Divine mind of such
material limitations, that it is to this comparatively
obscure and historically unimportant community
that the risen Lord describes Himself in terms of
the most exalted majesty, and conveys a promise
of the most exalted power : " These things saith
the Son of God, who hath his eyes like a flame
of fire, and his feet are like unto burnished brass."
The two last phrases in the description are taken
from the general portrayal of the Son of Man in
* Ramsay, loc. cit., p. 32.

100 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the first chapter, and are selected doubtless
because it is the eyes searching like a flame which
detect the evil at work in the life of the Church,
and the feet as of a mail-shod warrior, which may
be used to crush obstinate resistance to the truth.
But in the opening phrase this description goes
beyond anything that has yet been enunciated
concerning the Son of Man, and openly declares
that which, though it could not fail to be inferred,
has remained until now a matter of inference.
To this Church the Speaker presents Himself in
all the fulness of His majesty : " Thus saith the
Son of God." Neither does He hesitate to claim
in the body of the letter yet another power which,
according to the evidence of the Old Testament,
was a peculiar attribute of the Almighty : "I am
he which searcheth the reins and hearts." And
this revelation comes through the mind of a man
who had every national and hereditary reason for
doubting and rejecting it. At whatever time in
the first century these letters were written,
whether at the end or soon after the middle, it is
most significant that a monotheistic Jew should
thus raise the Jesus whom he had known to the
plane of God. It is evidence, all the more
remarkable because indirect, of the impression
capable of producing nothing less than a revolu
tion of thought, which was made by Jesus on His
disciples. Such an impression when once admitted

CHAPTEE II. 18-29 101
not only leaves room for, but actually demands,
something corresponding to the words and the
deeds recorded in the Gospels in order to account
for it.
The praise accorded to this Church is once
more hearty and appreciative. It specifies even
more than is acknowledged of good in Ephesus.
There it was the Church's "toil and patience."
Here it is its " love and faith, ministry and
patience." It may be that the " love and faith "
are to be understood as shown toward God, but
more probably it is love on the part of the
Christians toward one another, and good faith,
honour, and mutual loyalty between the members
of the Church. It is a noble record of any con
gregation that God sees these things manifested
in their common life, mutual love and loyalty,
mutual service, and common steadfastness in
bearing the opposition of the world. Where such
fruits are manifested love and faith toward God
cannot be wanting. And Thyatira goes beyond
Ephesus in this also, that there the good work ad
vances. " Thy last works are more than the first."
Wherein, then, does this Church, fruitful as it
is in the works of the Spirit, give cause for
criticism and incur reproach? The criticism is
in this case directed against the tolerated pre
sence, in unusual activity and effectiveness, of
that false teaching which, though not unknown

102 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
in Ephesus and Pergamum, was by them resisted
and rejected. At Thyatira this false teaching
was connected with the influence of a woman, a
prophetess, to whom the symbolical name of
Jezebel is given, to mark the fact that she sought
to lead the Church astray, even as Jezebel, in the
Old Testament, encouraged Ahab in wickedness.
In calling herself a "prophetess," this woman
claimed to belong to a recognised class of
authorities in the primitive Church. The in
fluence of these Christian "prophets" was only
second, if indeed it was second, to that of the
" apostles." Their claim to be heard rested
upon their possession of " the gifts of the Spirit."
There was constant necessity for each congre
gation to "try the Spirits," to exercise their
judgment in detecting false teaching which
might be put forward by such teachers. They
were most prominent in the assemblies for wor
ship at a time when there was> no regularly
constituted local ministry, and so long as their
claim to speak in the "spirit of prophecy" was
admitted, their teaching would be received
without demur. But as of old in Israel the
responsibility of private judgment was thrown
upon the people, and they were summoned to
detect the falsity of a prophet if he sought to lead
them astray from God,* so these Christians were
'¦'¦ See Deut. xiii. 1-3.

CHAPTEE II. 18-29 103
expected to discover the false prophet or pro
phetess, however specious his or her credentials.
The question as to the exact nature of the false
teaching which had thus invaded Thyatira and
other communities is one of great difficulty. In
the letter to Pergamum it is paralleled with " the
doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a
stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to
eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit
fornication." The analogy with the conduct of
Balaam applies historically to the second of these
charges only. The combination of the two
belongs to a much later period, to the contro
versy which was settled by the " Council of
Jerusalem." By the decision of that Council,
of which we have an account in Acts xv., these
two things were absolutely prohibited to all
Christians. And the phrase in verse 25 ("I cast
upon you none other burden ") being apparently
an echo from the finding on that occasion,
there seems to be a direct allusion to this con-
. troversy. The question of "meat offered to idols" was
still causing considerable difficulty when St. Paul
wrote his letter to the Eomans, and had opened
up subsidiary questions which were not covered
by the settlement arrived at by the Council.
They were questions of the most troublesome
kind, because they took concrete form in the

104 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
home life of the Christians and the social life of
every day. There might be no hesitation as to
the duty of a Christian who was aware that the
meat before him had formed part of an idolatrous
sacrifice ; but how far was he bound to ascertain
in every case and in all circumstances whether it
was so? St. Paul met the situation with masterly
common sense: "He that doubteth is condemned."
And were this the only feature by which the false
teaching of "Jezebel " is characterised, it might
be possible to see here the protest of an austerer
spirit against what some might regard as culpable
laxity, while others saw in it only a just assertion
of Christian liberty. The latter might use the
arguments, and appeal to the authority of Paul,
in defence of a line of conduct which the former
might abhor as a weak and cowardly compro
mise. On such a question, did it stand alone,
there might well be two parties, holding with
equal honesty to the letter of the precept, but
following and recommending very divergent
applications of it in practice.
But the reference to "meat offered to idols"
does not stand alone. Whatever may have been
the precise teaching of " Jezebel " and her fol
lowers on this subject, it was conjoined with
serious laxity of opinion and teaching upon a
question regarding which the Church had never
hesitated, on which there could be no debate.

CHAPTEE II. 18-29 105
And the allusion to Balaam and his plan to
seduce the children of Israel, as well as other
language used in the letter, certainly throws
the emphasis on this second charge, the charge
of encouraging or extenuating licentiousness.
Neither is the collocation of the two subjects
without its reason in the practices of corrupt
Paganism. The heathen temples were notoriously
at one and the same time the scene of sacrifice
offered to idols, and the home of authorised
impurity. There may well have been Christian
converts in the Church at Thyatira for whom in
earlier days idolatrous sacrifice and gross immo
rality had been concomitant. They had been
delivered from both these things at one stroke
through faith in Jesus Christ. It was this
inherent relation between idolatry and impurity
which the Church had recognised in placing the
eating of meat sacrificed to idols and fornication
under an equal ban. And the vehemence with
which " Jezebel " and her party are here assailed
requires no further explanation, if we understand
that they were a party who countenanced or
advocated any compromise with heathenism and
the lusts of the flesh in this direction.
Later Writings in the New Testament testify
to the presence of the same false teaching in the
Church, and to the extent of the danger which it
involved. Thus in the Epistle of Jude we read

106 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
how " there are certain men crept in privily, . . .
turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness,
and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus
Christ." The Old Testament parallel on which
Jude enlarges is that of Sodom and Gomorrah,
which "in like manner with these gave them
selves over to fornication " ; but he also has
Balaam in mind : " Woe unto them ! for they . . .
ran riotously in the error of Balaam for hire."
The parallel passage in 2 Peter* is still more
explicit, and even more sweeping in its denuncia
tion of the Antinomian teaching within the
Church. And again this false teaching is con
nected with the example of Balaam. It is plain
that the " destructive heresies " which were
privily brought in were not connected with
dogma so much as with practice ; and their
character as pressing the doctrine of Christian
liberty to the Antinomian extreme of licentious
ness is only too plain. " Forsaking the right way,
they went astray, having followed the way of
Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the hire of
wrong-doing." For they entice "those who are
just escaping from them that live in error ; pro
mising them liberty, while they themselves are
bondservants of corruption." A comparison of
these and other passages shows that those who
were carrying the ideal of Christian life in their
* 2 Peter ii.

CHAPTEE II. 18-29 107
hearts perceived a very real danger lest a consider
able section of the young converts to Christianity
should be seduced by false teaching of this kind
back into " the corruption which is in the world
through lust." And no further explanation is
necessary of the burning indignation with which
these passages are undoubtedly inspired, or of the
gravity with which the beginnings of such teach
ing are regarded in the letters to the Churches.
The possibility that teaching of this kind could be
held and inculcated even by those who were within
the Church and at the outset meant no evil, is
only too abundantly illustrated in the pages of
history. Antinomianism was, and is, a very real
danger, especially in young communities and
among enthusiastic converts. The apostolic
declaration, " He that is born of God cannot
sin," has been too often interpreted to mean,
" Such an one may do what he likes ; it is not
sin." To us, who have been trained for genera
tions in a sense of true morality, such a doctrine
is utterly abhorrent ; and to us lacking, as we too
often are, in the fresh enthusiasm of experienced
redemption, the danger is remote that we should
be snared by it. But the danger was both near
and serious among this excitable people of Asia
Minor, accustomed to go to great extremes in all
religious matters. It was not for nothing that
St. Paul had argued the question, " What then?

108 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?"
The simplest way of accounting for the severity
with which these false teachers, and especially
this prophetess of Thyatira, are denounced, is to
suppose that they actually taught that as justified
by Christ they were free from the obligation of
the moral law.*
At the same time Professor Eamsay is doubt
less right, as he is certainly extremely Interesting,
when he points out that these Churches of the
early time were faced by a number of problems
of conduct in daily life, in which it was extremely
difficult to decide how a Christian should act ; and
that there was probably a party within them
which, without inculcating any such open breach
with morality, favoured a line of compromise
* I find this view of " the false teaching " described as the
doctrine of Balaam confirmed by Johannes Weiss in his
recent valuable study of the Revelation. He is inclined to
accept the reading which makes Jezebel the wife of the
" angel," that is, " the leader of the congregation."
" Whether ' Jezebel ' is the typical or the actual name of
the woman, may remain unsettled. In any case she is a
member of the Christian community, and not a heathen
prophetess operating from without. For the sin, into which
she would seduce the servants of Christ, is not apostasy to
any kind of heathen cultus, but a form of libertinism on a
Christian basis. The watchword of this teaching, that one
must know ' the deep things of Satan,' points to a concep
tion and practice of Gnosis and Freedom, such as Paul had
already required to combat in Corinth, and such as is
attested for Asia Minor by 1 Peter ii. 16." (Die Offenbarung
des Johannes, 1904, p. 52.)

CHAPTEE II. 18-29 109
with the world such as would have been absolutely
fatal to the Church. These also may be included
in the condemnation passed by these letters ; for
they seemed " certain to lead to an acquiescence
in the commonly accepted standard of pagan
society." That such a judgment was right, " no
one can doubt who studies the history of Greek
and Eoman and West Asiatic paganism as a
force in human life. That there were lofty
qualities and some high ideals in those pagan
religions must be frankly recognised. But in
human nature the inevitable tendency of paganism
was towards a low standard of moral life." *
And this is the ultimate and not very distant
end of unbelief in all its forms. Those who tell
us that men can live a moral life without belief in
God, because they themselves do so, are men and
women who are living upon the moral capital
accumulated by generations of believing fore
fathers. Eespect for the great principles of
morality may be ingrained in them by tradition ;
the all-important question is, how far can that
respect be .transmitted without the belief in
God which gave it life and gives it authority?
Alas ! we need only look around to see. Members
of the Christian Church may have their weak
nesses, their sins, occasionally their collapse of all
morality ; but within the pale of faith these
* Ramsay, loc. cit., p. 339.

110 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
things are recognised as such, they are deplored
as such, they may be repented of and recovered
from. But in those sections of society which
have spurned the faith of God, what do we see
but selfishness rampant and unashamed, selfish
ness which has no respect for a neighbour's
welfare, or happiness, or honour, when it stands
in the way of pleasure or of passion. And we
have but to examine our daily newspapers, the
records of police and divorce courts, in order to
see to what depths of immorality and even
bestiality men and women descend, who have
begun by rejecting God.
Over all this, whether at Thyatira in the first
century, or in England in the twentieth, stands
the Son of Man with the eyes of flame and the
feet of power, watching to give to each one
according to his works — to the wicked and un
repentant the bitterness of death, to the steadfast
and self-restrained, grace for grace, and victory
for victory. In the description of the fate
reserved for the prophetess and her associates,
there is probably a grim irony, which would
strike the Thyatiran readers more readily than
ourselves. The time would come, when, in the
very hour of her voluptuous self-indulgence and
defiance of God, she would be struck down. " I
shall set her on a dining-couch, and her vile
associates with her, and they shall have oppor-

CHAPTEE II. 18-29 111
tunity to enjoy great tribulation." She feedeth
upon ashes. Her end is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down
to death. Her steps take hold on hell.
The conflict for the members of the Church
at Thyatira who would be faithful to their Lord,
was the same in character as that which has to
be waged by the members of His Church to-day.
He lays on them no other burden than the obliga
tion to observe the moral law, which is proved by
the experience of mankind to be for the well-,
being of society, as well as for the highest good of
each individual. The truly moral man asks no
other wages but " the wages of going on." Al
though he asks them not, however, God gives
them. As Jesus promised in the parable to the
one who had been faithful in his service, " I will
make thee ruler over ten cities," so here to the
victor in this struggle to keep clear our vision of
what is pure, of what is true, and to cleave to
what we see, with all the energy of our being,
He promises an experience of victory beyond any
thing we can achieve for ourselves. What may
be meant by the gift of "the morning star" is
wholly unknown. It conceals some allusion
which is lost to us. But the rest of the promise
to him " that overcometh " is thrown into a form
derived from the second psalm and there con
nected with the kingdom of the Messiah. It is

112 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
nothing less than a share in His own Messianic
glory which the Saviour promises to him " that
overcometh" and "keepeth my works until the
end." In imagery which is drawn in part from
the Old Testament, in part from Apocalyptic
liter ature, and in part from the teaching recorded
in the fourth Gospel, this great prospect is
described, a time when the final victory of
righteousness and purity and love shall be made
manifest before the eyes of all mankind, when
the fact which now we grasp by faith has become
plain to sight and sense, that the Lord God
Omnipotent reigneth. Then the glory of Him
to whom the victory is due, will be not for Him
self alone, but that other word will be fulfilled,
" the glory which thou gavest me, I have given
them."

THE LETTEE TO THE CHUECH
AT SAEDIS
Rev. iii. 1-6
To the angel of the church in Sardis write : These tilings
saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven
stars : I know thy ivorks, that thou hast a name that thou
livest, and thou art dead. Be thou watchful and stablish
the things that remain, which were ready to die: for I
have found no works of tMne fulfilled before my God.
Bemember therefore how thou hast received and didst hear;
and keep it, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch,
I will come as a tMef, and thou shalt not know what hour
I will come upon thee. But thou hast a few names in
Sardis wMch did not defile their garments : and they shall
walk with me in wiiite; for they are worthy. He that
overcometh shall thus be arrayed in wMte garments ; and
I will in no wise blot Ms name out of the book of life, and
I will confess Ms name before my Father, and before Ms
angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit
saith to the churches (B.V.).
In our study of the earlier letters to the seven
Churches, we have learned to recognise the delicate
adaptation of the phrasing of each letter to the
history, social condition, and the moral atmosphere
of the community to which it is addressed. We
have found reason to think that the scope of the
9 113

114 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
writer's knowledge and interest is not confined to
the community of Christians who have their
home there, a community which was probably
insignificant in number, and of yesterday as to
date. It is hard to resist the evidence, that both
his knowledge and his interest embraced circum
stances in the political history of these cities
which belonged to a distant past, and characteristics
of the population as a whole which imprinted
their mark on the life and on the temptations of
that section to whom Christ's was the name above
every name. In the case of Sardis it appears
probable that this delicate adaptation is to the
tradition, the history, and the topography of the
famous site whereon this Church found itself
established, to features in its history which were
never far from the consciousness of its inhabitants ;
and a brief recapitulation of these will be the
best preparation for appreciating the letter.
The glory of Sardis had sadly waned by the
time when this letter was written ; but it was
not forgotten. There had been a time when it
was the capital of a great kingdom extending
over the whole of Western Asia Minor, the first
great power with which within historic time the
expanding and enterprising peoples of the. Greek
peninsula came into contact and collision.
" Sardis before the middle of the sixth century
B.C. was to the Greek colonists of the iEgean

CHAPTEE III. 1-6 115
coasts the great city of the East ; to them it
represented Asia as distinguished from, and more
or less hostile to, Europe and Greece. That
impression the Asiatic Greeks with their tenacious
historical memory never entirely lost. Sardis
always was to them the capital where Croesus,
richest of kings, had ruled — the city which Solon,
wisest of men, had visited, and where he had
rightly augured ruin, because he had rightly mis
trusted material wealth as necessarily hollow and
treacherous — the fortress of many warlike kings
like Gyges, whose power was so great that legend
credited him with the possession of a ring of
supernatural power." * Its immediate neighbour
hood supplied the Eldorado of Greek fancy, seeing
that the steep bluff on which it stood was washed
on two sides by the waters of the Pactolus, which
were reputed in legend to roll down gold like sand.
The natural position of the city on this high
rocky bluff overlooking the plain of Hermus, and
separated by a considerable depression from the
mountain range behind, was such as to give it the
reputation of being impregnable. On three sides
of the city the cliff was understood to be unscale-
able ; it was only necessary to guard the " cause
way," by which it was connected with other high
ground behind ; and that could be held by a score
of men against thousands. An impregnable city,
* W. M. Ramsay.

116 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
but one which had often been taken — that was
Sardis. The first occasion of its capture was one
which made a profound impression on memory
and on legend.
It was in the sixth century B.C. The army of
Croesus had suffered defeat beyond the Halys, at
the hand of Cyrus, and though the victorious
enemy followed up his advantage with discon
certing rapidity, and appeared before the walls of
Sardis ere a new army could be collected, neither
Croesus nor any of the inhabitants believed there
was any danger of his penetrating their impreg
nable rock-fortress. The only way of approach,
along the connecting isthmus, was strongly
fortified and carefully guarded. The city slept
securely. But accident or treachery revealed to
the invaders the possibility of ascending the rock-
face by some crack or ledge, the existence of which
had been overlooked by the defenders. By this
the soldiers of Cyrus clambered up, and Croesus
awoke to find his capital in the hands of the
Persians. Cyrus had come upon Sardis " like a
thief in the night " ; and long afterwards in
Greece the fate of Croesus and of his city served
to point the moral of overweening self-confidence
and thoughtless security. But even the fact that
it had thus become a proverb for foolish con
fidence did not save Sardis from suffering the
same fate again, when some three centuries later

CHAPTEE III. 1-6 117
it was captured by Antiochus. Sardis was a
city which looked impregnable, but had been
taken. And for some time previous to the date
of this letter it had been slowly sinking in
importance. Out-distanced by its younger rivals,
Ephesus and Smyrna on the sea coast, it became
a melancholy spectacle, a place of third-rate
importance, unable to forget that it had once
been chief. Even as a city, Sardis was pre
tentious and self-satisfied, yet moribund, having
a " name to live " and yet dead.
The social history of Sardis finds a singularly
close reflection in the history of the Church of
Christ within its walls, so that the Apostle
could point the moral of the one by using
language which was suggested by, and suggested,
the other. There is first the superscription of
the letter. It comes from him " that hath the
seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars"; the
letter to Ephesus was from Him that held in His
hand the seven stars, and walked in the midst of
the seven golden candlesticks. What difference
of attitude does the change imply? The " stars "
are the heavenly counterparts of the Churches —
the lamp-stands the earthly symbols of the same.
If for the Church of Sardis the Saviour is no
longer walking among the seven lamp-stands,
it is suggested that her candlestick has been
removed. As a Church she is moribund, a prey

118 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
to death. No good works are to be recognised
as hers. No " tribulation " can be recorded as
having been endured by her with credit, no
struggle with false teaching, no stern resistance
to false practices. The Church there lived " a
ghastly smooth life, dead at heart." Its apparent
life was only in appearance. Nevertheless, its
death was not absolute or final. Its candlestick
may have been removed, but not its star. The
jewel by which it was represented was still in
the hand of Christ. And He who still holds it as
one of the seven stars hath also " the seven
Spirits of God." This phrase comes, not like the
others, from the description of the Son of Man,
but from the Salutation at the opening of the
book. It signifies the possession by the Saviour
of all the plentitude of Divine energy, but inas
much as this energy is spoken of as " the seven
Spirits of God," it is suggested that there is for
each of the seven Churches its own share, its own
portion, of this quickening force. Yes, even for
Sardis. This Church has indeed a name to live,
but it is dead in self-complacency and worldliness.
To such a Church it is easy to see why Christ
presents Himself as holding still the seven stars,
its star not extinguished, but also the Seven
Spirits, and so for its benefit a Spirit which
maketh alive from the dead.
The body of this letter divides itself differently

CHAPTEE III. 1-6 119
from any of the others, the first part being
addressed to, and dealing with, the Church as
a whole. To the Church as a whole a few sharp
sentences suffice to convey a picture of its true
condition, counsel, grave even to severity, and
a warning calculated to startle even its self-
complacency. Its condition was that of death
in life. Tt had all the outward forms of a
Church, its meetings, its worship, its organisa
tion, its beneficence ; but it had no real life. The
symptom which is here singled out as character
ising this condition is what we should call
slackness, ineffectiveness. "I have found no
works of thine fulfilled before my God." Works
were not wanting ; but all alike were branded
with incompleteness, perfunctoriness, unreality.
There was no heart in them, and the Divine
Inspector throws them aside.
The cause of this hollow show of life is sug
gested by the feature by which some individuals
within the Church are marked out as exceptions.
They "had not defiled their garments." Ap
parently the others had; they had not kept
themselves " unspotted from the world." How
far their weak degeneracy had gone, it is impos
sible to say : probably not so far as an actual
return to the vices of Paganism from which they
had been delivered. For in that case the counsel
which is here given would have been inadequate

120 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
to the situation. The whole tone of this part of
the letter seems to point rather to a serious
slackening of moral fibre, to an inclination to slur
over the distinctions between the standard of
Christ and the standard of the world, and to
fling away some of the distinctive practices and
forms of self-denial which were provided as safe
guards of the specifically Christian character.
Sardis had been too much for them; its at
mosphere of self-pleasing, of self-indulgence, had
poisoned the well-springs of their faith, making
it sickly, feeble, and ineffective. Instead of their
overcoming the world, the world had overcome
them. And the result was seen in stains upon
their outward life.
Surely this holding up of the mirror of truth
before the Church which has at least a name
to live, will make it ready to hearken to the
grave counsel which follows. This is an ex
hortation to remember the past, to keep fast
hold on what remains, and to repent, or return
to the early disposition which had marked their
first acceptance of truth. They are to remember
with what eagerness they received the gift of
God, which is " without repentance," with what
joy they heard the Gospel. How often does the
Divine summons to men take this form of a call
to remember; and how often do we find it, as
here, linked with a prediction or promise of the

CHAPTEE III. 1-6 121
future. It is indeed the Divine way of dealing
with one of the subtlest forms of human evasion,
with the disposition to treat life as if it were a
series of disconnected experiences, as though
a man could wipe out the past by forgetting it,
or could destroy the future by ignoring it. Thus
men attempt to escape the sense of responsibility
at the cost of what gives man his true manhood.
For it is the mark of his high position in the scale
of being that he is " a thing of large discourse,
looking before and after." His powers of memory
and of anticipation are among the things which
lift him above the beasts; but it is they which
also bring with them the sense of responsibility.
And for those who are in any sense God's people,
memory and anticipation are among the most
precious means whereby men can face the
present, bear it, control it, make it subservient
to noble ends, by referring themselves to great
facts in the past and great hopes for the future.
"Eemember, therefore," how God came to you,
how God spake to you, how with a mighty band
He delivered you from ignorance, from hopeless
ness, from death ; how by the life, the death, and
the resurrection of His Son, He spoke unto you
a gospel which quickened within you life and
hope and love. Eemember— " Lord, keep our
memory green" — and "establish the things that
remain," the habits of Christian piety and charity,

122 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the practice of assembling yourselves together,
the convictions which even your compromise
with the world have not been able to disturb;
emphasise these to yourselves ; keep fast hold
of what you have, and — repent. That is to say,
recognise that, though at the outset you shaped
your course straight towards heaven and God,
the currents of the world's life have caught and
turned your bark, till now it is drifting, if not
speeding, in the wrong direction. Eepent, face
round, set your course once more towards God.
There is thus a note of wistful urgency even
in this address to a Church like that of Sardis,
and there is also an implicit promise ; for Christ
would never call on men to do either what is
impossible, or what has not a promise attached
to its performance. But it is not on the note of
promise, but on that of warning, that this part
of the letter closes. Evidently the thread of hope
is slender, and the Church of Sardis is warned
that if it does not hearken to this counsel, if it
does not exchange its attitude of listless security
for one of wakeful watchfulness, its fate will be
like that of the city of Sardis. The enemy crept
in upon the careless city "like a thief in the
night," and as a thief in the night will Christ
return against the careless Church, unlooked for,
undesired, not for mercy, but for judgment.
But not all the Christians in Sardis fell under

CHAPTEE III. 1-6 123
the condemnation which struck the Church.
Even there the Lord recognises the presence
of a few who are "among the faithless faithful
found." And with them the second part of the
letter is concerned. There is " a peculiarly kind
and loving tone perceptible in this part of the
letter." These, who have not " defiled their
garments," have kept their purity in circum
stances of special trial ; and their reward is
great, for they shall walk with Christ, be seen
in His company, clad in robes whose whiteness
proclaims their purity and triumph. The promise
to these passes over into a general promise, in
which all are included who, like them, strive, and
strive successfully, to keep themselves unspotted
from the world. It is a promise of life, the same
in substance as that given through the Church at
Smyrna, but here it is thrown into a new form,
that their names shall not be blotted " out of the
book of life." The origin of this symbol may be
found in the roll or register of citizens of Jeru
salem, such as is referred to by Isaiah.* From
this it passes to a roll of the names of God's
people kept by God Himself, such as Moses has
in view in his prayer, " And if not, blot me, I
pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast
written." t Our Lord uses the same figure, ad-
* Isa. iv. 3.
t Exod. xxxii. 32 ; cf. Ps. lxix. 28, and Luke x. 20.

124 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
dressing His disciples, when He bids them
rejoice, "because your names are written in
heaven." The faith of a human heart laying
hold of God's grace does establish a relation
ship which God is slow, very slow, to break
or to allow to be broken. His long-suffering
with the world is great, but with those who
have entered into this relation it is greater far.
It is only by some definite decision on our part,
which amounts to wrenching ourselves away from
God, or by the cumulative effect of prolonged and
increasing carelessness — which amounts to the
same thing — that we incur this doom of having
that name, our name, blotted out, which was
inscribed with so much joy. And the names not
only stand there, as it were, to be referred to in
case of need, but the day approaches when before
men and angels each of these names will be
openly proclaimed. It will be a day of great
surprises, when we discover who among us ^
have been faithful, who have kept their gar
ments from all stain. The wisest judges here
will find how much they have been mistaken.
It should not be difficult to realise the effect
of the reading of this letter in the bearing of
the congregation in Sardis, on some Sunday even
ing in the second half of the first century. It
would strike all as a picture, terrible in its
accuracy, of the condition of that Church as seen

CHAPTEE III. 1-6 125
by God. Surely it would stir the corporate con
science of that Church to a sense of its imminent
danger, due to its want of spiritual life, of true
brotherly love, of devotion to Christ its head.
It would call out in many, if not in all, the
resolve to watch, to watch so as to repel the
insidious approaches and attacks of the worldly
spirit; to be more faithful and more simple in
the discharge of the humblest duties imposed
upon them by their Master's will. To some
it would give a new sense of responsibility, and
even of privilege, involved in the very fact
that the atmosphere around them was cold,
hostile, even dangerous. They would feel up
lifted by the thought that the honour of their
Lord, as well as the safety of their Church, was
specially entrusted to their care. It would send
them for-th into the night, determined to be even
more loyal, more faithful, more set on over
coming the world, because they felt that the eye
of their Master was upon them, that He was not
indifferent to any work they might do, or patience
they might show, and that each day's victory
over the world and self was the pledge of a final
victory, of which only eternity would reveal
the joy.
" He that hath an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit saith to the churches."

THE LETTEE TO THE CHUECH
AT PHILADELPHIA
Rev. iii. 7-13
These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that
hath the key of David, he that openeth, and none shall
shut, and that shutteth, and none openeth : I know thy
works (behold, I have set before thee a door opened, which
none can shut), that thou hast a little power, and didst keep
my word, and didst not deny my name. ' Behold, I give
of the synagogue of Satan, of them wMch say they are
Jews, and they are not, but do lie; behold, I will make
them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that
I have loved thee. Because thou didst keep tlie word of my
patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that
hour wMch is to come upon the whole world, to try them
that dwell upon the earth. I come quickly ; hold fast
that which thou hast, that no one take thy crown. He that
overcometh I will make Mm a pillar in the temple of my
God, and he shall go out thence no more : and I will write
upon Mm the name of my God, and the name of the city of
my God, the new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of
heaven, from my God, and mine own new name. He that
hath an ear, let Mm hear what the Spirit saith to the
churches (B.V.).
When William Penn set out on his great experi
ment of establishing a Christian and democratic
126

CHAPTEE III. 7-13 127
colony in North America, he gave to the place
which was to be its capital the name of Phila
delphia. To this choice he was doubtless led, in
part at least, by the meaning of the name,
"brotherly love"; for that expressed the ideal
which he cherished for bis colony. But Penn
was too good a student of his New Testament
not to know that his ideal had been already
realised, at least to some extent, within the city of
Asia Minor which originally bore the name.
Historically as well as etymologically, it was a
name of good omen, for the Lord of the Church
had caused to be sent to the Christians dwelling
there a letter full of appreciation of their worth
and service, full also of great and gracious pro
mises. The character of this Church is indicated at the
outset by the aspect under which their Lord
presents Himself before its members. "These
things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he
that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and
none shall shut, and that shutteth, and none
openeth." To be holy, is an attribute of the
Most High, to have the key of David an attribute
of the Messiah, to be true, the Truth, one of the
most precious characteristics of Jesus of Nazareth.
There are thus summed together, in this de
scription of the Divine quality, the historical
significance and the personal character of the

128 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
speaker ; and each one of these is regarded and
presented on its gracious side. Neither reproach,
nor warning, nor judgment is called for; and
none of them is suggested by the guise which the
speaker adopts. "In this respect," says Pro
fessor Eamsay, " the letters to Smyrna and
Philadelphia form a class by themselves. These
two Churches are praised with far more cordiality
and less reserve than any of the others. They
have both had to contend with serious difficulties.
The Smyrnaean Church was poor and oppressed ;
the Philadelphian Church had little power.
Before both is held forth a prospect of suffering
and trial; but in both cases a triumphant issue
is anticipated. Life for Smyrna, honour and
dignity for Philadelphia, are promised — not for
a residue among the unfaithful, as at Thyatira
and Sardis, but for the Church in both cities. It
is an interesting coincidence that those are the
two cities which have been the bulwark and the
glory of the Christian power in the country
since it became Mohammedan ; they are the two
places where the Christian flag floated latest over
a free and powerful city, and where even in
slavery the Christians possessed cohesion among
themselves and real influence among the Turkish
conquerors." This salutation, therefore, in which
the Lord of the Church presents Himself in one
gracious aspect after another is in truest harmony

CHAPTEE III. 7-13 129
both with the character and with the future of the
Church in Smyrna.
" I know thy works : behold, I have set before
thee an open door, and no man can shut it : for
thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my
word, and hast not denied my name." The
arrangement of the clauses in the Authorised
Version is still to be preferred to that of the
Eevised. Alone among the seven Churches the
works of the Church in Philadelphia are acknow
ledged but not specified. The love, faith,
ministry, or patience of the people are left to be
assumed. They may be inferred from the special
privilege which is granted to the Church, the
privilege of a great opportunity. "It is true
thou hast but little power, but thou hast kept my
word " — and " to him that hath, shall be given " ;
and so before the Church there stands s an open
door, one which has been opened by the hand
which openeth, " and none can shut." The mean
ing of the picture is not obscure. The "door"
is not in this case that of entrance into eternal
life, nor yet of entrance into God's kingdom upon
earth, but of entrance into a field of successful
missionary activity. St. Paul had already made
frequent use of the metaphor in this sense. He
had told how at Ephesus " a great door and
effectual " was opened to him ; how similarly at
Troas " a door was opened " ; and when he bid
10

130 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the Colossians pray that God may " open unto us
a door for the word, to speak the mystery of
Christ," he makes plain the meaning : the open
door is a free opportunity for propagating the
Gospel, for entering with the good news of
Christ into the regions beyond.
This privilege was in accordance with the
situation occupied by the Church in Philadelphia.
It was marked out to be a missionary Church,
standing, as it did, in one of the gateways to the
central plateau of Asia Minor, through which not
only trade and travellers, but also the message of
the Gospel, could pass to the nations of the
"hinterland"; and to the Christians at Phila
delphia was this grace granted that the way to
missionary activity lay open before them. It was
a reward of their faithfulness in the use of oppor
tunities nearer home ; plainly, it was a reward
which they would appreciate; and it came to
them in a measure which would have been
beyond their own power to compass. Christ's
own hand had set this door open before them.
It was a carrying out of the principle laid down
in the parable : " Because thou hast been' faithful
in a few things, I will make thee ruler over many
things." It is a character of noble Christian quality
which presents itself elusively yet effectively
through the, medium of these sentences— a

CHAPTEE III. 7-13 131
Christian community not richly endowed with
means or members, yet making the most of the
opportunities within its reach, eager to let its
light shine as far as it could in the circumstances,
pained that it could do so little, and having
suddenly opened before it, because its Lord knew
it was worthy, an opportunity of larger^ service.
Some change in outward circumstances, some
alteration in the route of the trade-caravans,
suddenly expanded their sphere of influence. It
was the Lord's doing, and marvellous in their
eyes. Philadelphia is the Church of the one talent,
but of the one talent honestly employed in the
Lord's service. It was not discouraged by the
fact that its strength was small. And its expe
rience supplies the evidence of what is only to be
inferred from the parable, that even the one talent
so employed meets with both recognition and
reward. Indeed, the wording of the letter sug
gests that just because our power is but small,
the Lord has regard unto it, if only we use what
we have, and with His own royal hand throws
open the door of new possibilities. This is Phila
delphia's crown : the one word of exhortation
addressed to her is that she should hold it fast.
The rest of the letter is entirely made up of
great promises, three in number: a promise to
the Church in view of what it was exposed

132 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
to through the hostility of the Jews, another in
view of approaching trial, and a third to "him
that overcometh."
It is one of the ironies of history that
wherever we find the Christian Church during
the first century we find it confronted, scorned,
and even persecuted, by the Jews. The reason for
this was probably political rather than religious in
its character. The strongest element in Judaism
at this period was its nationalism, to which its
monotheism served as a buttress. " The Jews
boasted themselves to be the national and pa
triotic party, the true Jews, the chosen people,
beloved and favoured of God, who were hereafter
to be victors and masters of the world, when the
Messiah should come in His kingdom. They
upbraided and despised the Jewish Christians as
traitors unworthy of the name of Jews, the
enemies of God."* In fact judgment had fallen
upon them, the very judgment which Jesus had
predicted, that while they which were blind should
through Him come to see, they who thought they
saw should become blind. When they turned
away from Him they turned away from the light,
and specially from the revelation of the Divine
Kingdom as a spiritual kingdom, one which tran
scended all national distinctions ; and the religion
which had been their strength changed into a
* See Ramsay, loc. cit., p. 409.

CHAPTEE III. 7-13 133
source of weakness, inasmuch as it ministered to
their pride. Towards the Christians they were at
the best haughty and overbearing, at the worst
vindictive and cruel. But it was not to be so
always — so this promise runs. Already the situa
tion is reversed before God, and the promise
which had been given of old time, that the
Gentiles should come and do homage to Israel,
now becomes an assurance to the Christians,
whether of Jewish or of Gentile origin, that
Jews shall come and worship before their feet;
and the very thing which the Jews denied shall
become too plain to be ignored, namely, that
the Christians were indeed the people of God's
peculiar choice and favour. So completely has
the Christian Chureh taken the place of Sion,
as the Jews have fallen back into the position of
the enemies of God. The promises made in the
Old Testament to Israel after the flesh are trans
ferred to the new Israel according to faith. And
by the same law whereby a door came to be
opened before the Christians in Philadelphia
another door was closed before the Jews :
"From him that hath not shall be taken away
even that which he seemeth to have."
The second of these promises is similarly
founded upon, and formed out of, the facts of the
situation. "Because thou didst keep the word
of my patience, I, on my side, will do the same

134 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
for thee ; I will keep thee safe through the hour
of trial." Even this faithful and so patient
Church may not escape the trial which is to
fall on all around. And, like all trials, this
will be also temptation, an opportunity, nay, an
inducement to "remember the country," the old
life, from which they had come forth, and to
return. This is the second direct allusion in the
book to the approaching sufferings of the Church,
the prophecy of which culminates in the thir
teenth chapter. It would be a time of testing,
of sifting the grain from the chaff. To some it
would be an excuse for falling back into the old
easy ways of heathenism, of forgetting, if not
openly denying, Christ. And even for those who
could not entertain such a suggestion for a
moment there would be strain on their own
faith and patience, and doubt, hesitation, and
pain as to many of their brethren. Half the
anxiety regarding the anticipated persecution
would be gone if men could be sure concerning
one another as well as themselves, that all would
stand firm. And here comes in the reward of
faithfulness in the past, that it is confirmed for
the future. "Thou hast kept my word : I will
keep thee." The reward of keeping is being kept.
For the Church of to-day the hour of trial
does not strike so loudly on the clock of time,
neither is the nature of the trial so clearly

CHAPTEE III. 7-13 135
defined. But it is before us nevertheless ; in a
sense it is upon us. The "world" has learnt
wisdom since the days of Eome, and no longer
persecutes the Christian disciples with sword and
cross ; but he must be strangely insensitive who,
being one of Christ's disciples, does not feel in
the conditions of modern life " a trial " more
subtle, more dangerous,, and, to him who pur
poses to overcome, not less full of pain. What
ever opportunity men bad in the first century of
glorifying their Lord by " keeping the word of
his patience," by enduring and suffering for His
sake, or of testing the truth of His promise, we
have the same. In the accumulated pressure upon
us of the world-spirit, making its arrival by so
many channels, in the scarcely veiled hostility of
the world to all that seems to us most worthy of
devotion, in the attack made on the bases of our
faith often under the sanction of great authority,
we see, the true disciple feels, "the trial which is
come upon the whole world," a trial which is also
a temptation. But to the Churches, as to those
within the Church who keep the word of His
patience, comes this promise, sufficient to quench
all anxiety: he that keepeth, shall be kept — by
the mighty hand of God.
Then comes the closing promise — "to him
that overcometh." The form into which this is
thrown is probably connected with features in the

136 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
history and the social life of Philadelphia. For
one thing, its history as a city was severed into
two parts by the occurrence of an earthquake,
which not only left all its buildings in ruins, but
was followed by a series of earth-tremors so
prolonged that the inhabitants began to doubt
the stability of the ground on which they dwelt.
They lived as a people ready to flee, to quit
their city at a moment's notice. To them, as
citizens, no greater or more welcome promise
could have been given than the assurance that
what they builded should stand firm, and that
never again would they have to quit their homes
for safety. And it is another illustration of the
singular adaptation of the contents of these
letters to the circumstances of the respective
localities, that the Lord's promise to the faithful
ones ^n Philadelphia takes this form of an assur
ance of perfect stability. He Himself will " stab-
lish" and "settle" them, setting each one "as
a pillar " in the house of God, which shall never
be shaken or removed. He is to be a pillar,
something more than one of the stones of which
the walls are composed, an honoured and con
spicuous part of the whole fabric. And his place
therein is permanent. He has " the living will
that shall endure, when all that seems shall
suffer shock." " He that doeth the will of God,
abideth for ever."

CHAPTEE III. 7-13 137
But this position and this permanence are
not due to his own determination only, or to his
own faithfulness ; they are due also to something
in God, something from God which confirms and
ratifies the result of his own victory ; and this is
expressed in the amplification of the promise, " I
will write upon him the name of my God, and
the name of the City of my God, the new Jeru
salem . . . and mine own new name." Profes
sor Eamsay thinks it incorrect to say that
the victor is to receive three names — of God, of
the Church, and of Christ ; and that " the real
meaning is that a name is written on him which
has all three characters, and is at once the name
of God, the name of the Church, and the name of
Christ."* But in the absence of reasons to the
contrary, it still seems best to take the terms of
this promise in what appears to be their simplest
meaning. The idea of one name which should
be at once the name of God, the name of the
Church, and the name of the Eedeemer, is one
difficult to harmonise with the general concep
tion even of an Apocalyptic writer ; and for the
triple name there is an interesting analogy, t
Once more, the form which the promise takes
/
* Ramsay, loc. cit., p. 412.
t See Bousset, Die Offenbarung des Johannes, p. 269
(quoting Hirschfeld). Weiss (Bernard) accepts the three
names without comment.

138 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
may be due to local circumstances. It appears
to have been the custom in those towns where
there was a temple of the Emperor, that the
high priest of that temple, when laying down his
office, had a statue of himself erected within the
temple precincts, on which were inscribed his own
name, his father's name, and the name of his
home, as well as the date of his holding office.
Visitors to such temples would be familiar with
many of such statues by which the memory of
these high officials was held in honour. Again,
Christ promises to His faithful ones better
than the best the world can give. On each of
them He will set these names — the name of God,
for whose pleasure he was created ; the name of
the new society of the redeemed, to which he
eternally belongs ; and the name of Christ, in that
revelation of Himself in glory which is neces-
7 sarily concealed from those who still dwell in
the world. What these names were, or are to
be, does not matter. According to the well-
known significance of the word in the Bible,
they express the character of that to which they
belong, the character which in some measure has
become the possession of those who receive the
name. The promise, therefore, conveys two great
assurances. First, that Christ will place on the
victor an outward sign by which be will be known

CHAPTEE III. 7-13 139
to be God's, not merely because he has given
himself to God, but also because God has chosen
him, accepted him, sealed him to be His own.
This is, indeed, the great discovery which every
man makes whose heart goes out in any degree
towards God, namely, that his own action is only
the middle term between two movements of the
Divine Spirit, the first calling him, the second a
swift response to the human answer, sealing that
act of will. Henceforth it is not on his own faith
or faithfulness that his confidence is based; he
hath "this seal " : " The Lord knoweth them that
are his " ; or, as the Master said to His disciples,
" Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you."
And, secondly, the name itself is a threefold
one, defining him that overcometh in the three -
dominant relations of life, and so holding him in
perfect equipoise of moral being. By the Father's
name he is claimed and protected as the Father's
child. By the name of the city of God he is
admitted and declared member of the Divine
Society of men, fellow-citizen of the Saints, and
partaker of the heavenly inheritance ; and by the
name of the Eedeemer bestowed upon him, he is
enfeoffed in possession of the new character, as
one who is made in the likeness of Christ.
" He that hath ears to bear, let him hear " — his
calling and his sure reward ; his calling to cleave
to what is noblest in life, truest in thought, purest

140 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
in affection, by cleaving to Christ as his Master,
even at the cost of being at issue with the world ;
and his reward, to have these things which he
knows to be best, nay, to be alone worthy of true
manhood, made his for eternity, not alone through
his own effort, but by the sealing and confirming
will of God.

THE LETTEE TO THE CHUECH AT
LAODICEA
Rev. iii. 14-22
These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true
witness, the beginning of the creation of God : I know thy
works, that thou art neither hot nor cold: I would thou
wert hot or cold. So because thou art lukewarm, and
neither hot nor cold. I will spew thee out of my mouth.
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and
have need of nothing ; and knowest not that thou art tlie
wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked :
I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou
mayest become rich; and white garments, that thou mayest
clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy nakedness be not
made manifest; and eyesalve to anoint thine eyes, that thou
mayest see. As many as I love, I reprove and chasten : be
zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door
and knock : if any man hear my voice and open the door, I
will come in to Mm, and will sup with Mm, and he with
me. He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down
with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down
with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let
him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches (B.V.).
This, the last of the letters to the seven
Churches, is the letter to the Church which
failed, and, strangely enough, this Church was
141

142 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
found in a city which had failed as a city to
carry out the function assigned to it. For
Laodicea was one of the many towns which were
planted or founded in a certain place for the
accomplishment of a certain purpose. Like
Philadelphia, it had before it an open door, but,
unlike Philadelphia, it had made little or no use
of its opportunity. The city stood about midway
up the long valley-slope along which the great
route from Ephesus to the East passed up to
reach the central plateau of Asia Minor. It was
one of the outpost-gateways between West and
East. Such a position confers great advantages,
but carries with it also great responsibilities. It
secures a steady stream of travellers, merchandise,
knowledge, wealth, and thereby the almost certain
prosperity of the town which holds it : but man
as well as God expects that such a position should
be used in order to spread knowledge and influ
ence in the regions beyond. Laodicea had been
planted where it was in order to be a missionary
city, that it might transmit to the Phrygian
highlands beyond it some of those stores of
Greek civilisation which flowed into it from
the West. But, for some reason or other which
cannot now be traced, Laodicea had failed to
fulfil its function. In modern parlance, its
imports of such things largely exceeded its
exports. It grew wealthy, luxurious, ineffective,

CHAPTEE III. 14-22 143
and dead. The district beyond it, the country
of Phrygia, remained to the end less influ
enced than any other part of this Hinterland
by the Greek spirit, the Greek language, and the
Greek civilisation. There is thus a curious corre
spondence between the history of the city and the
character of the Church of Christ within it. It
also had failed to fulfil its function. For the
Church also had been planted where it was in
order that it might let its light shine to those who
were in darkness beyond. It had received from
the hand of its Founder all manner of favour
and benefaction, grace and guidance, wisdom and
sanctification. But it failed to pass on the
heavenly gifts to others, and so it failed to profit by
them. And the cause of this failure was want of
enthusiasm, of glad simplicity in the enjoyment
of God's goodness, of full surrender to His will.
The Church of Laodicea was rich, and comfort
able, and well pleased with itself, but sick unto
death with indifference.
To this Church comes this letter full of menace
and reproach. It opens with a threefold descrip
tion of Himself, in which the Divine Speaker
appears in sharp contrast with the Church which
He addresses. It is feeble and vacillating ; He is
the Amen, steadfast and immovable. It is un
certain and ineffective in its action. He is
"faithful and sure." It prides itself on its con-

144 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
nection with things created by man; He is "the
beginning of the creation of God," the incipient
principle or source of all created being. The
aspect in which the Lord of the Church thus
presents Himself prepares us for the tone of the
letter. The contrast which is immediately felt
between His character and that of the community
which represents Him in Laodicea already implies
its condemnation. And the effect of the conse
quent judgment was already apparent ; for con
science itself had lost its authority, and the Church
at Laodicea did not know that it was a miserable
thing, poor, and blind, and naked. In such a case
time could only make more and more manifest the
inward incompetence for life, and, though there is
solemn warning here, there is no suggestion that
the warning will be taken. The condemnation, so
far as the Church is concerned, is absolute.
" I know thy works " ; but there is none worthy
to be recorded. They are all negative, vain, and
worthless in God's sight. There is not even
the patience of Ephesus, or the tribulation and
poverty of Smyrna ; there is no resistance against
false teaching, no love, good faith, or ministry,
nothing which the searching and wistful eye of
the Master can put down to the credit of this
Church. It has taken from God all that it knew
how, and it has kept it all to itself. The con
demnation is therefore unqualified, and it rests

CHAPTEE III. 14-22 145
not upon the absence of the proper works, but
on the temper or character to which that absence
is due. " Thou art neither cold nor hot." The
adjectives, particularly that rendered "hot," are
such as are peculiarly suited to water; and
the figure in the following verse is based upon
the nauseating effect of water which is neither
hot nor cold, but lukewarm. The condition
represented by the word " cold" is the extreme
opposite of the spiritual fervour and zeal signified
by "hot"; it is something more than mere
" spiritual coldness." What we understand by
that was precisely the condition in which the
Laodiceans were found, a condition of luke-
warmness to which entire extreme would have
been preferable. " I would thou wert cold or hot.'
The principle underlying such a statement is
the fact of observation recorded in the Gospel,
" Verily I say unto you (the priests and religious
leaders of the people), that the publicans and the
harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you."
In the religious history of many the dawn seems
to be the enemy of the day. Better than a com
parative warmth, with which a man is apt to
rest content, would be the absolute cold which
would impel him to seek the Sun of Eighteous-
ness. So it was with this Church. The inner
fire was wanting, whereby, the gifts and grace of
God, together with the opportunities of life,
11

146 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
might have been fused and transmuted into
works precious in His sight and beneficent to
all around. The talents entrusted to it lodged
with it useless ; and the reason was that it had
taken the gift of God in a grudging and unthank
ful spirit. It had doubtless all the outward
marks of a Church, the officers, the stated
worship, the prayers, hymns, and preaching of
the word, but —
" Ah ! its heart, its heart jWas stone,
And so it could not thrive."
The truth, which both Churches and the
individuals of which they are composed are
always in danger of forgetting, is that God looks
for love from those whom He has redeemed, and
for those signs by which love naturally expresses
itself. We recall how the Eisen Christ searched
the heart of Peter in order to draw out the ex
pression of that love ; how in earlier days He
had reproached the Pharisee for the absence of
all tokens of sincere affection (" Thou gavest me
no kiss"), and tenderly confirmed the lavishing
of such tokens upon Himself by the hands of the
penitent woman. In these signs and in the love
they signified He saw the proof that her heart was
truly melted before God, that the Divine grace
of forgiveness had reached her. And so, the
expression of dislike and contempt so rare with

CHAPTEE III. 14-22 147
Him, is reserved for those who are " neither cold
nor hot," who are warmed, as it were, by others'
fires, and have no love-fire of their own. That
they are not fervent in their love hinders His joy
and their fruitfulness ; that they are not cold
checks His compassion and their sense of need.
"No heart is pure that is not passionate, no
virtue safe that is not enthusiastic." The Church
at Laodicea fell under the condemnation of those
so bitingly described by Dante : " This miserable
doom they bear, of those wretched souls that
lived without incurring infamy or deserving
praise, mingled with the caitiff crew of angels
who were neither rebels nor loyal towards God,
but stood for themselves alone."
This temper of self-protecting caution, which
will not commit itself wholly even to God, both
springs from, and further ministers to, melancholy
self-deception. Between the soul that is not cast
on God and the true basis of life and well-being
there is still space for the intrusion of other
grounds of confidence. In Laodicea these were
found in the abundance of the things of this
world. The self-satisfaction of the Church there
was due in the end to the fact that it was rich,
could provide itself with all it wanted, and meet
all claims — but the claims of God. For riches
are a snare to a community no less than to an
individual. The Church at Smyrna was poor,

148 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
and poor in the midst of a wealthy city. Its
members may have looked not seldom with
envious eyes upon the easy circumstances of the
sister-Church at Laodicea. But see what a letter
Smyrna received from her Lord, and compare it
with this to Laodicea ! And yet it might have
been otherwise. The grace of God is sufficient
not only for the poor, but also for the rich. Had
Laodicea refused to be misled by her outward
prosperity, had she known her true need, misery,
and nakedness, there was One who had been able
to supply even her need, to heal even her misery.
It would have been a strange prayer, and yet
would it not have been a wise one, " 0 Christ,
have mercy upon us, for we are a wealthy
Church " ?
Whether there was still a chance of such
becoming the prayer of the Church at Laodicea,
we cannot tell. But counsel is given to it as
though there were. And the counsel is blended of
irony and kindness. The irony lies in the allu
sions, obvious enough to the first readers of the
letter, to things for which Laodicea was famous,
the very things on which its inhabitants prided
themselves. In the first place, it was a great
commercial and financial centre, famous for its
banking and exchange. When it was visited
by Cicero in B.C. 51, he carried with him bank
drafts to be cashed there, and its prosperity and

CHAPTEE III. 14-22 149
banking facilities had not diminished in the
interval. Laodicea was renowned also for its
manufacture of fabrics, the materials for which
were supplied by the . glossy black fleece of a
particular breed of sheep, and for outer garments
fashioned of this fabric. To have a cloak from
Laodicea was like being dressed in Eussian furs.
Naked indeed ! There was no one more com
fortably dressed than the people who went to
that church. And there was a third thing for
which the city was famous — its medical school.
Its physicians were disciples of a particular
pharmaceutical principle according to which what
were called compound diseases required to be
treated with compound medicines ; and they
prided themselves on the combinations of drugs
which they had invented. Galen refers to a
special kind of ointment which was originally
prepared only in Laodicea ; and there was also
a medicine for the eyes which is described as
Phrygian, Phrygian stone, or Phrygian powder,
and was exported to all parts of the Greek and
Eoman world. And, strangely enough, these
medicines were commonly made up in the form
of a small cylinder of compressed powder, the
technical name for which was " Kollyrium," the
same word as is used in verse 18 and translated
" eyesalve." We can now perceive both the irony and the

150 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
kindness of the counsel to the Church which
dwelt in this city. These are the things on which
you pride, yourselves, the wealth which is stored
in your banks, the dark glossy garments in which
you are dressed, the world-famous medicines by
which you profess to cure all manner of diseases.
lBut if you knew what is the true riches, true
clothing, true health, you would come to Me,
and seek them from My band. Your banks
and wealthy money-changers can give you only
the gold which perisheth : I give the gold which
is current for eternity. Your richest clothing
leaves you naked and ashamed before God; I
have the garment of righteousness to give, in
which even he that hath been a sinner may
stand before God, and not be ashamed. Your
physicians offer a cure for everything, but there is
a blindness which they cannot cure. It is Mine to
cure that, to remove the blindness that prevents
men from seeing " the King in his beauty, and
the land that is far off." In a word, whatever
the world offers, to make men easy and com
fortable in the life that is now, Christ offers
something that corresponds to it in kind, but is
real, transcendent, and adequate to the needs of
man as a creature of eternity.
Whether the Church at Laodicea was still able
to hear what was said unto it by the Spirit, to
accept and act upon this counsel, we have no

CHAPTEE III. 14-22 151
means of knowing. There is something in the
tone of the letter which disposes us to think not.
It recalls the tone of such sayings as "Ye would
not come unto me, that ye might have life."
And the picture of the Church which it suggests
is one of "ghastly, smooth life, dead at heart," to
which an offer such as this would only too likely
be made in vain.
This is not, however, the whole of the letter,
and what follows furnishes striking and welcome
evidence of the pertinacity of the Divine com
passion. Thwarted and rejected, as it seems to
have been by the Church as a whole, it turns with
exquisite tenderness to the individual member of
that Church, and for him the letter which opens
so sadly closes with a new prospect of hope and
victory. Professor Eamsay regards these last verses
(20-22) as not forming part of the letter to
Laodicea, but rather a general epilogue to the
whole series. By this means he eliminates what
seems to him a difficulty, viz., that " after the
extremely sharp condemnation of Laodicea, it
seems hardly consistent to give it the honour
which is awarded to the true and courageous
Church of Philadelphia alone among the seven,
and to rank it among those whom the Author
loves." But this difficulty is more simply removed
if we recognise that at the beginning of verse 20

152 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the Author turns from the Church to the indi
vidual, in this case anticipating the transition,
which in the other letters is marked by the
promise to him "that overcometh." And to let
the letter to Laodicea break off at verse 19 is to
leave it too obviously a fragment, destroying the
symmetry which is so marked a characteristic of
the whole series by supposing that this letter
alone was sent without any promise to him that
overcometh, and without the closing rubric, " He
that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit
saith to the churches."
"Behold, I stand at the door" of each indi
vidual heart in this Church at Laodicea, "and
knock" there. It is in entire accordance with
the whole tenor of the Gospel that right here,
where the condition of the community is most
sad, the gracious interest of God in the individual
should be most emphatically expressed. The
corporate life has ceased to be the medium of
true Christian experience, the instrument of
fellowship with Christ. But the individual need
not for that reason miss the experience or lose
the fellowship. Eather does he become the object
of the Master's special care ; and to him is offered
a fellowship of a specially personal and intimate
kind. " If any man hear my voice and open the
door, I will come in to him, and will sup with
him, and he with me."

CHAPTEE III. 14-22 153
Thus the most gracious invitation, and also the
most glorious promise, are addressed to those
Christians for whom the conditions of spiritual
life were most difficult. To a humble disciple
of Christ it might be put thus: Supposing you
found yourself forming part of a community to
which such a letter as this could, or ought to be,
addressed ; if there seemed to be neither life nor
love in the professing Christians round you, if
you felt that they must needs fall under the
condemnation of this letter, and you with them,
then with what urgency of Divine tenderness
would this closing message come home to your
heart ! The Church may be " dead," but if there
is one within its doors who can hear the voice, if
there be one who will arise and open, then this
promise is for him. The Christian fellowship
which I seek may be hollow, or cold, or non
existent, but here is One who offers to come in,
even to " the bare lodging of my soul," to be my
Guest and to make me His, to spread before me
all I need for the soul's nourishment and peace
and joy. Those around me may seem to have
given up the struggle. They neither achieve nor
seek victory over self and the world. Am I so
entangled and identified with their failure, their
indifference, that I must needs partake in their
rejection, their condemnation? This promise
says, Nay. We are "members one of another,"

154 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
but we are also in individual touch with God.
I need not, I must not; be dragged down by my
surroundings. My Master calleth me by name,
singles me out with personal recognition, offers
me His personal fellowship. And to him " that
overcometh" in circumstances such as these is
made a further promise of unexampled privilege :
"I will give to him to sit down with me in my
throne." One who has so deeply identified
himself with Christ in the disappointment, the
sorrow, the pain, prepared for Him by such a
Church as that at Laodicea, shall equally be
identified with Him in the glory which He
receives of the Father.

THE VISION OF THE THINGS
THAT AEE
Rev. iv., v.
The kernel of the Book of Eevelation is probably
to be found in the Vision of Judgment which
begins with the opening of the sealed book
in the sixth chapter, and ends with the pouring
of the bowls in the sixteenth. The chapters
which precede this central section are in
tended to prepare for it by preparing the minds
of the readers of the book for these predictions
of judgment ; the chapters which follow contain,
for the most part, the elaboration of one or other
of the elements in the Vision of Judgment.
After the introduction proper, contained in the
first chapter, the letters to the seven Churches
have served to arrest the attention, to quicken
the conscience, and to confirm the steadfastness
of these individual communities of Christ's
people, while at the same time indicating both
the weaknesses and the opportunities of the
Universal Church. Already, the way seems open
155

156 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
for the detailed description of the " tribulation,"
the " hour of trial which is to come upon all
the world," the unfolding of the impending
Judgment. But there remains something still
for the Apostle to do ; and that is to unveil the
heavenly and eternal background, in front of
which these coming events are to be transacted ;
and to this he addresses himself in the fourth and
fifth chapters.
In these wonderful chapters he describes, under
the form of a vision, two different but closely
related scenes in heaven. Each scene is full of
rich and suggestive details ; but these we pass
over lightly in order to show the meaning of these
scenes as separate but related wholes, their rela
tion to the Book of Eevelation as a whole, and
the relation of what they describe to human life
as a whole.
The fourth chapter relates how the Apostle
in a vision saw, as it were, a door opened in the
sky, through which he passed at the summons
of a trumpet-clear voice, bidding him " come up
hither." And, being " in the Spirit," translated
on to the plane of the Eternal, he beholds, at one
glance, a scene corresponding to that which had
been seen and described by the great prophets
of old, by Isaiah and by Ezekiel — the heavenly
court of the King of Kings, in the centre the
Almighty, high and lifted up, throned above

CHAPTEES IV, V. 157
all worlds, veiled in light unapproachable, yet
known, His presence scintillating with the
brilliance of the diamond, glowing like a cor
nelian, with the concentrated redness of a
furnace, and yet overarched with fresh and
living green as of an emerald. Blinding brilliancy,
the glow of a consuming fire, the soft radiance
of rainbow promise, these were the contrasted
elements in the impression made upon the Seer
by the vision of " him who sat upon the throne."
On either side of the throne he saw twelve
other "thrones" coming forward so as partly
to enclose a space in front of it ; and on these
were seated the four-and-twenty " elders," as
they are called. There has, of course, been much
discussion as to what kind of beings we are to
understand by these " elders," or whom they
represent. To see in them the Patriarchs and
Apostles, or the Prophets and the Apostles, is
tempting but not possible. For they are not
beings of earthly, but of heavenly, rank. They
are of the order of angels. From Isaiah (xxiv. 23)
we learn that this name of " elders " was in fact
given to certain angelic beings, who seem to have
been regarded as a kind of Divine consistory
assembled in the presence of God. The idea
reappears in one of the Jewish Apocalypses,
where we read, "They brought before my face
the elders and the rulers of the order of the

158 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
stars " ; and it is probably illustrated by St.
Paul's reference to "thrones and dominions"
among the "things invisible." What the Seer
beholds, therefore, is not the representatives of
any earthly Church or order in the Church, but
a group of angelic beings whose presence in the
heavenly court was part of the ancient Jewish
tradition on the subject.
The case is similar with the four "living
creatures." They correspond with the four
"cherubim" in the vision of Ezekiel. They
are the personification of the forces set in
motion by the will of God, whereby His throne
is supported, His authority maintained. Their
distinguishing characteristic is in their eternal
watchfulness, their sleepless observation of all
that transpires in heaven or on earth. "Full
of eyes before and behind," they observe and
reflect on all sides the Divine majesty of
Creation. Like the foregoing, the rest of the imagery of
this scene is drawn from various passages in the
Old Testament. The "lightnings and voices
and thunder" were heard ih connection with
the great Theophany at Sinai, when the Law
was given to Moses. The "glassy sea as of
crystal " goes back to the account of the Creation
in Genesis, and the " waters above the firma
ment " which separate the created world from

CHAPTEES IV, V. 159
heaven, a conception which was symbolised in
later times by the "molten sea" of the Temple.
It matters not whether all these details actually
impressed themselves on the mind of the Seer as
he beheld the vision, or whether the essential part
of the vision, God in His unapproachable glory
as Creator, came naturally, as he afterwards
described it, to be clothed in forms of thought
and of language which had been hallowed by
the tradition of centuries ; the effect, if not the
purpose, of the details is to enrich the picture, to
intensify the impression of the Divine glory as
John beheld it, and to explain the source of the
great hymn of praise which is the climax both
of the vision and of the chapter.
For the four " living Greatures " rest not day
nor night from the great chant in which, as
representing all His works, they hymn the glory
of Almighty God. And whenever the cadence
of their song reaches its rhythmic change, the
four-and-twenty representatives of the angelic
host repeat their worship, " casting their crowns
before the throne," and add their song: "Worthy
art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the
glory and the honour and the power: for thou
didst create all things, and because of thy will
they were, and were created." This last sentence
at once gives us the burden of their song, and
prepares us to find it supplemented, as it is in the

160 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
following chapter. It is a hymn of praise to the
Creator, offered by creatures or beings wholly of
heavenly origin and unsullied purity. " They
think of Creation and its wonder, of the heavens
which declare God's glory, and the firmament
which shows forth his handiwork; of sun and
moon and stars in their manifold and resplendent
glories ; of the mountains and the valleys ; of the
rivers and the fountains of waters; of the rich
exuberance of life in all its forms from the
tiniest animalcule up to the noblest creature,
man. Their thought penetrates to the almost
infinite abysses of space, and finds there the like
evidence of the power, the wisdom, and the
majesty of God." How often has the impulse to
echo this hymn come to us as we stood beneath
the high- vaulted sky of night, " thick inlaid with
patines^ of bright gold," " when Hesperus with
the host of heaven came."
The powers and privileges of such angelic
beings as we here read about are beyond our
ken; but let us suppose that they include a
knowledge of the wonderful works of God in
all places of His dominion as minute as our
knowledge of this single world, and we shall
not wonder if the spectacle of His creative power
is such as to fill their life with ceaseless praisei
But there is one note in the complete octave
of praise which is not sounded in this chapter,

CHAPTEES IV., V. 161
one instrument which is missing from this
orchestra of praise. The voice of man is not
heard in this song; and with all its richness
and fulness we listen in vain for the note of
love, of joy in the mercy as well as the power
and glory of God. These follow in the fifth
chapter, and that is the reason why they are
rightly studied together ; these two chapters are
not only counterparts the one of the other,
the second is needed to complete the first. To
the description of the eternal adoration of the
Almighty as the Creator is now added a descrip
tion of the adoration of the Lamb as Eedeemer.
But both Creation and Eedemption have a future
as well as a past. He who created all things
"according to his will" is yet to make new
heavens and a new earth. And so He who has
already purchased men to God has still a work1 to
do in the application of redemption , to human
history. The future is under the hand of Him
that once was slain, and the token thereof is that
He alone has the power to open the Book which
contains its secrets.
The scene described in the fifth chapter is once
more described as beheld by the Apostle under
the conditions of a vision. The details are not
such as can be followed or understood under the
conditions of waking life or fitted into one stable
picture. They all combine to convey and in-
12

162 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
tensify one impression, the right and claim of
" the Lamb," and of " the Lamb " alone, to the
control of the future. The Apostle sees lying on
the hand of the Almighty the Book wherein are
written the judgments of God, "the things which
are to be hereafter." On the unsealing of this
Book and the revelation of its contents depends
the possibility of counselling and encouraging in
advance the trembling Churches of Christ; and
the heart of the Seer is heavy as he realises that
even in heaven no one can be found who is
worthy to open the Book. The encouragement
which is thereupon offered to him by one of the
angelic powers is couched in the phraseology of
Jewish expectation of the Messiah : " Behold,
the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Eoot of
David, hath overcome to open the book and
the seven seals thereof." But when the pro
mised figure of the One who is worthy appears
He is seen under the figure of a Lamb, a Lamb
" as though it had been slain," slain in sacrifice,
as the word suggests. The Word and the Lamb :
these represent the aspects of Christ's person and
work which are characteristic of the Fourth
Gospel, and it is important to observe that in
this book, which claims to be by John, and here
alone outside the Fourth Gospel, He appears as
the Lamb and as the Word.
In the action of the scene which follows, we

CHAPTEES IV., V. 163
may perceive how freely the Apostle handles the
figures which form his picture or fill his vision.
The "Lion of the tribe of Judah" is the Messiah;
the "Lamb " is the Eedeemer who once was slain.
The two figures, sharply contrasted as they seem,
coalesce, melt into one another, and all the while
present Him whom they symbolise, Christ Jesus
the Saviour. The forms into which the thought
is poured are all so plastic, so filmy, and symbolic
in their quality that it would be wholly false to
the Apostle's method to force a literal meaning
upon the details. And yet for that very reason
what lies behind and below the forms seems by
contrast only the more solid and substantial
because of their fluidity. We see the like in
Nature, when standing for hours on some Alpine
slope we look across the valley to where some
peak rises fourteen thousand feet into the sky, and
see only hints of its great shape through the
clouds which cling about it, suggesting yet re
fusing to disclose its form. The impression of
that peak's solidity and majesty is only enhanced
by the fleeting, changing garments in which it is
encased whenever a rent in the cloud-covering
reveals the solid fact which gives all the scene
its character. In like manner these elusive,
changeful symbols which are flung over the
central figure of this scene only enhance its
majesty and imposing power, when at the last

164 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
it stands fully revealed in the burst of universal
praise with which the chapter closes.
This is the fact of Eedemption through the
Lamb that was slain. It is this that makes Him
worthy, when none else could be found worthy,
to open the Book ; it is due to this that the future
of God's people is in His hand. " Worthy art
thou, for thou wast slain, and didst purchase
unto God men of every tribe and tongue and
people and nation ; and they reign upon earth."
Even in the midst of the tribulation which
impends they will still be " kings," reigning
royally over life through " him that loved " them.
This song breaks first from the lips of the
heavenly host, from the four living creatures,
and the four-and-twenty "elders"; but it is
caught up by voices which have not been heard
as yet. Created things not only in heaven but
also on earth add their harmonies to swell this
song. For now, through the salvation which has
been wrought by the Lamb, a place has been
made for them along with the unfallen angels, the
beings unstained by sin ; and the theme, of their
rejoicing worship is not the Eedemption only, but
to that they add the Creation too, which in the
preceding chapter had been hymned by the angels
alone. The worship which these had offered "to
him that sitteth upon the throne," and the
worship which is offered by earth and heaven

CHAPTEES IV., V. 165
to the Lamb, now flow together in one stream.
All God's creatures join to sing the double Hymn
of Creation and Eedemption, wherein the glory
of God is complete. " Unto him that sitteth on
the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing,
and the honour, and the glory, and the dominion,
for ever and ever."
It is not difficult to understand how human
language, even the language of an inspired man,
breaks down in the attempt to depict such a
scene as this. And it is not a little significant
that in each of these chapters the situation
becomes clear, the meaning of the vision steals
into our hearts, when we hear the burst of praise.
Is not this the reason why praise forms so impor
tant a part of worship, not only that it is bur due
to God, but that it is the vehicle for expressing,
and so of realising, thought and emotion which
he too deep for words, "fancies which break
through language and escape," high pulsations
of triumphant joy, for which the utmost that
words can do is to lend them wings ?
The glory of God the Creator, " upholding all
things by the word of his power," that is the
fact revealed to John in the first of these visions,
and revealed with blinding splendour. The glory of
Christ the Eedeemer, who has made of His people
" a kingdom and priests upon earth," that is the
fact revealed in the second vision, revealed with

166 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
overwhelming power. Now, what purpose did
these visions serve in the work to which John
was appointed, and why does he record them just
here ? The answer is that these two facts form
the background of all history, and it is in the
presence of these facts that all events on earth
can alone be properly understood. It would be
well, indeed, if we could find a better word than
" background " ; and in using it we must be care
ful to avoid all suggestion that what stands there
is of inferior importance. Eather are these the
unchanging facts, in the presence of which the
changing scenes of human life and history are
set. These are the facts against which all other
facts have to be viewed in order to know their
true meaning and to appraise their just value.
That being so, it is easy to see the importance
of these chapters for St. John's immediate
purpose. He is about to unroll the book of
destiny, to describe its contents, the judgments,
the woes, the chastisements, which are to fall
upon the dwellers on the earth, the trial and
tribulation that await even the Church of Christ.
And before these things are revealed to him, he
is allowed to see, before they are related by him,
he describes — these twin scenes, the things that
are, things which must so profoundly affect men's
judgment on the things that come to pass. It is
as though the Apostle felt that his readers would

CHAPTEES IV., V. 167
be able to look forward without a quiver of dread
to the times of suffering and of sifting which were
at hand, if only they could share with him the
glorious conviction of the things that are, the all-
pervading and all-ruling power of the Almighty,
and the all-embracing, all-uplifting power of the
Eedeeming Lord.
And what was put here to serve a special pur
pose, stands here to meet a general need. The
clouds which hang over human life, half conceal
and half reveal forces which are full of threatening
and of dread. He who tries to peer into the
future of his own life, or of the life of nations or
the world, may see such things as Jphn foresaw —
wave upon wave of trouble, forces of evil raising
themselves to gigantic power, confusion and
distress among the people of God, the possible
falling away of many, a struggle between good
•and evil culminating in a very Armageddon. And
yet he may face it all without trepidation, if only
he has seen the vision of John in Patmos, if he
has been able to join in these great songs of
praise. That great song of Creation, the song which
has never ceased since the first day that " the
morning stars sang together," is one in which we
men are not qualified to take part until we have
learnt to join triumphantly in the song of Eedemp
tion. But when we have beheld in the Lamb of

168 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
God, " slain from the foundation of the world,"
the one through whom God is pleased to reconcile
the world unto Himself, when ourselves partaking
in that reconciliation we are made kings and
priests unto Him, then opening is made even for
us men in that vaster choir, of those who because
they see in all created life the working of one
supreme and holy Will, see human life as it is,
human life with all that threatens it, human life
with all that limits it ; and yet, " rest not day and
night saying, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God
Almighty."

THE SEALS, THE TEUMPETS, AND
THE BOWLS
Rev. vi.-xvi.
The writer's preparation for the ushering in of
1 his vision of Judgment is now complete, and we
come to what was in all probability for himself
and for his first readers the central and most im
portant part of his Apocalypse. His great purpose
is to depict (the impending judgment of God upon
mankind in its certainty, its nearness, and the
stages of its progress ; and so on the one band to
warn the unbelieving and the wicked, and on the
other to encourage God's own people to unabated
patience and confidence under the trial to which
they are to be exposed. The contents of the fore
going chapters, important as they are, and precious
to ourselves, have yet their primary value for the
earliest readers in this, that they set them in a
right position from which to judge what follows,
not only as it stands predicted here, but as it shall
unroll itself in their experience. The first chapter
has set forth the occasion of the prophecy, and the
169

170 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
authoritative source from which it proceeds. The
second and third chapters have served their special
purpose in bringing both comfort and admonition
to the Churches of the Province, comfort in so far
as they know now how precisely their Lord en
visages their situation, how tenderly He is touched
by their distress and trial, how completely His
promises fill every hollow of their need — admoni
tion, in so far as, searched by His word, they have
recognised the various shortcomings in their faith
and practice, the danger, to which both individu
ally and corporately they are exposed, of allowing
the distinction between themselves and the world
to be obliterated, and so of being swept away by
the coming storm of judgment. In chapters four
and five there have been revealed to and through
the Apostle the great facts ,of Creation and Eedemp
tion, which form, as it were, the background
against which the coming events in time are to be
viewed. The spectators have been prepared ; the
all-important background has been set ; and now-
the drama of Judgment begins.
For convenience of examination it may be de
scribed as a drama in three acts — the first a series •
of judgments following on the opening of the
seven seals, the second a series following on the
blowing of the seven trumpets, and the third a
series following on the pouring of the seven bowls.
The description of these successive series is dis-

CHAPTEE VI. 171
tributed over several chapters, beginning with the
sixth and ending with the sixteenth. But within
these chapters there are inserted three passages
which are best understood as "parentheses,"
which break the continuity of the judgment
series. The first of these occupies the seventh
chapter, the second, chapters ten and eleven down
to the thirteenth verse, and the third, chapters
twelve to fifteen. The meaning and purpose of
these parentheses does not concern us just now. It
is sufficient to observe their presence and their
parenthetical character. If the reader passes over
these chapters for the present, he finds that the
drama of Judgment unrolls itself steadily and
continuously before his eyes.
It is the Lamb who opens the seals. The key
of all the future is in the hands of Christ, in that
special aspect of His character and His work
which is represented by the Lamb, His self-
offering to God on behalf of_ men, His wiU to
redeem mankind undeterred by their sin or His
own immeasurable pain. The Father "hath
committed all judgment to the Son," " hath
given him authority to execute judgment " ; but
the hand that opens the seals which mark the
stages of judgment is the hand which was nailed
" for our advantage on the bitter cross." While
men can see the Agent of Judgment under the
form of a Lamb, they still behold the^Saviour in

172 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the Judge ; and till the final judgment has passed
there is room for men to repent, to " see one
instant and be saved."
The Seer beholds in his vision how the opening
of the successive seals is followed by successive
strokes of judgment which fall upon the earth
and its inhabitants. The first four of these
strokes of judgment are symbolised by the ap
pearance of the four horses and their riders.
These are summoned one after the other by one
of the four " living creatures," " saying as with
a voice of thunder, Come." As to the meaning
to be attached to these four riders, there is no
difficulty or question except in regard to the first.
This has been taken by some to represent the
Lord Christ Himself (or some representation of
Him) returning as a victor, " conquering and to
conquer." But it is not here, at the commence
ment of the long series of judgments, that we
can find room for His appearance ; it is not until
the nineteenth chapter is reached, when the
cycles of anticipatory judgments are complete,
that we are to find Him whose " name is called
the Word of God" coming forth to victory
attended by " the armies of heaven," and with
many crowns upon His head. Neither is it com
patible with even the Apocalyptic freedom of
handling images, that Christ should be presented
at one and the same moment as the Lamb who

CHAPTEE VI. 173
opens the seals, and the rider who appears in
consequence of that opening, if not out of the
book itself. In view of these objections it has
been suggested that this first rider represents not
Christ Himself, "but only some symbol of His
victorious power, the embodiment of His advan
cing kingdom as regards that side of its progress
when it breaks down earthly power, and makes
the kingdoms of the world to be the kingdom of
our Lord and His Christ." * But even for a
figure with this meaning there seems to be no
proper place here in advance of, and in closest
connection with, the judgment of destruction
upon wickedness. The clue to the correct ex
planation lies not in the " white horse " and its
supposed connection with the "triumph" of a
Eoman general, which rests upon a mistake, but
in the " bow," which is the most characteristic
feature about this first rider. He represents
Invasion, victorious invasion of the Eoman
Empire, on the part of a particular nation, the
Parthians, who were famous for their skill as
bowmen, and whose growing power on the
Eastern frontier was a just cause of alarm.
" The bowman sitting on a white horse, to whom
a crown was given, is the Parthian King. The
* So Alford, with whom agree Hilgenfeld and Zahn (" A
Presentation of the Victorious Course of the Gospel"), and,
more recently, Bernhard Weiss.

174 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
bow was not a Eoman weapon ; it was not used
in the Eoman armies except by a few auxiliaries
levied among outlying tribes, who carried their
national weapon. The Parthian weapon was the
bow ; the bowmen were all horsemen ; and they
could use the bow as well when they were fleeing
as when they were charging." The colour of the
rider's horse corresponds with this interpretation.
For " white had been the sacred colour among
the old Persians, for whom the Parthians stood
in later times ; and sacred white horses accom
panied every Persian army." *
The first rider, then, represents Invasion, by
this terrible and ruthless people from the East,
putting fire and slaughter through many lands.
The second, mounted on a red horse, is War, the
outbreak of civil conflict within the Empire
itself. The third, who rides a black horse, and
carries scales in his hand, is Famine, dearth so
terrible that the utmost a man can earn by a
whole day's labour is only enough to keep him
self, and leaves nothing for those dependent on
him; dearth of that peculiarly horrible kind which
mocks men by the abundance of what are by
comparison luxuries, while the necessaries of life
are not to be had. There is abundance of oil and
wine ; but bread is a shilling a loaf. The fourth
rider, bestriding a horse of livid grey, is Death,
* Ramsay, loc. cit., p. 58.

CHAPTEE VI. 175
followed by Hades, or the Grave, the black pesti
lence which treads hard on the heels of Famine,
mowing down its helpless victims, and the
insatiable Grave which gathers them into itself.
Thus, the judgments here predicted follow very
closely the course of events indicated by Christ
Himself — " wars and rumours of wars," " famines
and pestilences." But these things are the
" beginnings of travail," the " woes " which
precede "the Lord's return, the birth-pangs out
of which the new creation is to issue.
The opening of the fifth seal ushers in what
appears to be a distinct group of judgments, and
reveals a distinction among those who suffer by
them. We behold the martyrs for the cause of
God awaiting the consummation of their felicity,
represented as impatient for the hour of recom
pense to strike, and bidden to wait yet a season,
until their number be complete. In other words,
among those who are being racked and slain by
Invasion, War, Famine, and Pestilence, and
being swept up by the Grave, there are some,
they may be few, they may be many, whose
names are written in the Lamb's book of life,
whose souls also have to pass into God's keeping ;
and when the tale of these is complete, then the
measure of heavenly felicity will be completed
too. The solidarity of the Church, of the Church
on earth with the Church in heaven, is so real

176 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
that their experience of blessedness lacks some
thing until our warfare also is accomplished.
The sixth seal brings us to the climax; it is
concerned with the things which immediately
precede " the end," or that which has all the
appearance of the end. The events which it
ushers in, the earthquake, the darkening of the
sun, the shaking of the constitution of Nature,
are reproduced almost in the same words from
our Lord's prediction in the ( Gospels : "Imme
diately after the tribulation of those days the
sun shall be- darkened, and the moon shall not
give her light, and the stars shall fall from
heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be
shaken : and then shall appear the sign of the
Son of Man in heaven." These are the things
which immediately precede the end.
But there is a seventh seal; and when that
is opened, there is first of all a silence in heaven.
That the duration of this silence is fixed at "half
an hour" simply means that it lasted for a broken
and indefinite period. It suggests the tremen
dous uncertainty, the strained eagerness with
which the end of the silence is awaited, especially
by the Seer. It is plainly a silence big with fate,
conveying, as nothing else could do, the impres
sion of agonised suspense. The "lightnings and
voices and thunders " cease : even the music and
the praises of heaven seem to cease ; the whole

CHAPTEE VIII. 177
innumerable multitude of heavenly beings are
intent to see what shall come. Will it be indeed
the end ? There is " a stillness so absolute, that
the whole scene seems laid for the sudden signal
which never comes to change and end it."
For when we look for the end to come, behold,
seven angels stand forth, with seven trumpets,
and with the blowing of these trumpets a new
series of judgments begins. We shall have to
consider immediately what is the nature of the
relation between the first and the second series,
and also the third. Meanwhile, we have to
observe the particular judgments which are
heralded by the successive trumpets. A com
parison with the narrative in the Book of
Exodus will show that they correspond very
closely with the successive plagues which fell
upon Egypt and the obstinate Pharaoh. Hail
and fire, water turned into blood, rivers poisoned
so that men die of drinking their waters ; dark
ness through the cutting off of the sun's light —
these judgments correspond in character with the
plagues of Egypt, though they are heightened in
effect by being made universal. Once more, the
fifth and the sixth of the series usher in events
which differ somewhat in character from those
immediately preceding. As the fifth seal opened
a vision of heaven and the souls of the righteous,
so the blowing of the fifth trumpet unstops the
13

178 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
mouth of hell, the shaft which, according to
ancient cosmogony, was supposed to lead down
through the earth into the abyss. Out of this
comes pouring a dense cloud of insect-like
creatures, equipped and prepared for the torment
of men. In the description of this judgment-
stroke we may see a combination of the plague
of flies in Egypt, and the imagery of the famous
passage in Joel, where the army of invading
locusts is described ; * only in the Apocalypse
every feature is heightened by the hellish origin
of the plague.
The sounding of the sixth trumpet is the signal
for something like that which followed the open
ing of the first seal, the letting loose of invading
hordes from the East. In a Jewish Apocalypse
of the same period we find a similar anticipation :
" A voice was heard ; let these four kings be
loosed which are bound beside the river Euphrates,
which shall destroy a third part of mankind.
And they were loosed, and there was a great
commotion." And again in the Book of Enoch
we have : "In those days shall the angels gather
themselves together, and turn eastwards to the
Parthians and the Medes, and stir up their kings
so that a spirit of unrest comes over them, and
chase, them from their thrones, so that like lions
they break forth from their lairs, and like hungry
* Joel. ii. 2-.11

CHAPTEE IX. 179
wolves upon the herds." The basis of this part
of the vision is probably the same anticipation
of invasion of the Empire by the Parthians, the
"terrible riding folk." Men in those days fore
saw a " Yellow Peril " with no less* anxiety than
some do to-day. And more than once in the
history of Europe this has been the form which
God's judgment has taken, as when the Huns, the
Tartars, and the Ottomans were successively let
loose- from their abodes in the East.
The judgment ushered in by the sixth trumpet
is followed, like the sixth seal, by a parenthesis,
but in this case by a much longer one, which
covers chapters ten and eleven down to the
thirteenth verse. Then we read : " The second
Woe is past; behold, the third Woe cometh
quickly." Then the seventh angel sounds, and
his sounding is followed not by silence, like the
seventh seal, but by " great voices in heaven," by
an outburst of praise from the multitude which
no man can number, and a solemn proclamation
1 of the glorious consummation, " The kingdom of
the world is become the kingdom of our Lord
and of his Christ." This is plainly one aspect of
the end ; but the end in all its fulness and finality
is not yet ; for a new scene is set, a new back
ground revealed in heaven, the open temple of
God, and therein the ark of His covenant. The
meaning of this is once more that all which

180 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
follows, the carrying out of judgment in further
detail, takes place in presence of this open
temple, and in presence of this symbol of God's
covenant grace toward men. The symbolism is
taken from the worship of the Old Testament,
and we shall best realise its meaning if we bear
in mind that its New Testament counterpart
is found in the Cross of Christ. From hence
forth all God's judgments take effect in the
foreground of the Cross, which, while it accentu
ates the guilt of the obstinate and unbelieving,
continues to proclaim pardon to those who repent.
Once more we pass over a parenthesis, the
third and longest of all, occupying chaps, xii.,
xiii., and xiv., and come, in xv. 1 and 5, to the
third series of judgments, the bowls. This is
connected with the preceding one by the state
ment in the fifth verse : " I saw, and the temple
of the tabernacle was opened; and there came
out from the temple the seven angels that had
the seven plagues." The pouring of the first
four bowls in succession is followed by judgments
which correspond in character with those heralded
by the first four trumpets, plagues like " the
boil bursting forth with blains," by which the
Egyptians were afflicted, the turning first of
the sea, then of the rivers, into blood, the in
crease of the sun's heat to destroying power
The fifth bowl, like the fifth trumpet, is followed

CHAPTEE XV. 181
by a plague of overwhelming darkness ; and this
calamity specially affects the throne and kingdom
of the Monster Eome and the Empire of which
it is the capital. And the sixth bbwl is again
like the sixth trumpet, in that it opens once more
the way for invasion from the East, through the
drying up of the Euphrates, " that the way
might be made ready for the kings from the sun-
rising." This anticipation is here developed in
fuller detail, inasmuch as* the evil spirits which
inspire the forces of evil, the dragon, the monster,
and the false prophet, go forth to summon these
and all the other kings of the world to the final
conflict. Armageddon, or the "Hill of Megiddo,"
which is specified as the place to which they
are summoned, stands at one end of the great
plain of Esdraelon,* which from the time of
Sisera downwards has been one of the historic
battle-fields of the world. Finally, the pouring
of the seventh bowl is followed, like the seventh
seal and the seventh trumpet, by " lightnings and
voices and thunders," and "a mighty earthquake,"
and by " a great voice out of the temple, saying,
It is done."
This rapid analysis of the contents of the three
fold cycle of judgments connected with the Seals,
the Trumpets and the Bowls, shows how closely
:|: Judg. v. 19 : and cf. G. A. Smith, Historical Geography
of Palestine, pp. 391 ff. *

182 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
they are related, and how important it is to
examine them apart from the parentheses, each
one of which is detachable and in a sense detached
from the context. In such an examination three
points call for special attention : the general
character of the judgment^calamities within each
series, the connection of the series one with
another, and the general purpose and meaning
of this drama of Judgment as a whole.
On the first point, and in reference to the
general character of these judgments, it is to be
noted that they are the same in kind as men had
long been in the habit of recognising as forms
of Divine chastisement. They are for the most
part calamities of a kind which is already familiar
either in history, as the plagues of Egypt, the
bitterness of famine, the devastation of war, or
in earlier predictions, wherein the Old Testament
prophets had foretold calamities which were to
follow on disobedience. The calamities foretold
in the Apocalypse are the same in kind, though
terribly increased in scope and severity. What
is going to happen is the same in kind as men
already know, the same as what has happened.
These natural plagues, disasters, and catastrophes,
as we call them, are " natural " only in the
sense that they affect men through Nature; these
human scourges of tyranny, war, and invasion
are " human " only in the sense that in them man

CHAPTEES VI.-XVI. 183
is the instrument of a higher will. "Natural"
and "human" though these things may- seem,
they are none the less supernatural, in the deeper
sense that they proceed from God, are allowed
and brought about by Him, and work together
for the realisation of His holy purpose. From
this point of view every such event is a " judg
ment," the avenging of some outraged law, the
vindication of some offended principle. And in
order to bring about a judgment which shall be
final for one portion of the world's inhabitants,
for a nation, or ultimately for the whole world
itself, it is not necessary for God to change the
kind of disaster ; He has only to widen its scope,
to extend its duration, to suspend the checks
which have hitherto been put upon its operation,
and that which on the smaller scale we call a
natural catastrophe, or put down to merely human
causes, would be felt by the survivors to be a
judgment of God, would be recognised as corre
sponding to one of the scenes of this great
drama. In other words, the writer of the Apocalypse
takes us, as it were, behind the gre'at web of
Nature and of history, and lets us see the hand
which sets these and all such phenomena in the
fabric of human experience ; and his prediction
of the accumulated repetition of such phenomena
issuing in the destruction of the world "that

184 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
lieth in wickedness" rests upon the fact that
God has pledged Himself to make an end of evil,
to create a new heaven and a new earth "wherein
dwelleth righteousness." Thus what he describes
as the continuous process of the " last judgment"
is for us a continuous process of a present judg
ment. We are in the midst of it, a process of
judgment the end whereof is not yet, but is
nearer than when he wrote.
On the second point, this explanation of the
character of the judgment is confirmed, when we
proceed to consider the relation between these
, several cycles of judgment. A comparison of
these amongst themselves yields a number of per
plexing features. Each one of them, the Seals,
the Trumpets, and the Bowls, is, or seems to be,
complete in itself. Each one seems to bring us to
the very verge of the final end. And yet the second
springs, as it were, with a fresh start from the
end of the first, and the third with a fresh start
from the end of the second. In what way are we
to understand this climax, which proves to be not
the end, but a new beginning ? Some have sought
to trace a progression of predicted events in a
straight line through all the three cycles, as
though they represented three series of events
which are to succeed one another in time, and
lead on by three successive stages to the End of
all things. Others, seeing the difficulty of

CHAPTEES VI.-XVI. 185
relating the series thus to one another when each
one of them so plainly reaches the edge of the
End, have adopted what is called the theory of
Recapitulation. They assume that the three
cycles set forth, in different forms, the same
series of events, that each cycle of prediction is
in effect a repetition of the other two, the object
and result of this repetition being to enforce with
triple energy the certainty and terror of these
judgments. The true explanation probably lies
between these two, and in the recognition of the
fact that the judgments of God move on to their
final issue in a line which is neither straight nor
circular, but spiral. It is like upward progress
round a circular mountain, in which each com
pleted circuit brings the traveller to a point which
corresponds with that from which he started, but
stands above it, nearer the peak, the end. From
any point in each circuit he may behold the same
section of the landscape, or in the case before us,
the same form of impending judgment. From
the same point he sees also the peak ; and with
each completed circuit he finds it nearer, the point
from which he shall see the whole complete.
But the end is not yet, and again he starts upon
another sweep of outlook upon judgments to come,
to arrive again at the point where the end seems
almost at hand.
And such an anticipation of the future is con-

186 THE BOOK OF REVELATION
firmed by human experience. Once and again
since this book was written, have men seemed to
reach a climax in the world's history, a climax of
disaster and oppression and despair, when a cycle
of human wickedness seems to have run its
course, a full harvest of Divine judgment has
been reaped, and men have held their breath in
expectation of a final end. We see such crises in
the Fall of Eome in the fifth century, with its
judgment upon the vices of an effete civilisation ;
in the cataclysm of the Eeformation, with its
judgment on a corrupt Papacy; in the French
Eevolution and the judgment then executed upon
the ancien regime ; and it may well be that we are
spectators of something similar in Eastern Europe.
to-day. In all such crises, men who themselves
are caught in the maelstrom of catastrophe, have
felt that this must be the "last judgment," as
indeed it was for them and for the civilisation of
which they formed a part. But the final end was
not yet. Judgment fell ; one cycle of judgment
had run its course. But another cycle com
menced. The final judgment is still to come ;
but it is nearer.
So interpreted and understood, this drama of
Judgment carries the purpose of its being recorded
and its meaning for to-day very near the surface.
It depicts for us in the most impressive way the
indubitable future — the continuous execution,

CHAPTEES VI.-XVI. 187
through the agency of Nature or of Man, of the
proclaimed will of God, that evil shall be
destroyed. And though in this book the imme
diate application is to the larger world, to nations,
communities, and classes of men, it cannot be
easy to evade the lesson which is written here for
the individual too. We see here in a picture of
the future, as we see on the same large scale in
the history of nations, the pouring of the wrath of
God upon all iniquity and sin. And the same
law, the same judgment is at work on the smaller
scale of individual life and experience ; the same
cycles, stopping short of destruction, and resuming
again with a nearer inevitableness of doom.
The awful reality of this experience has been
caught and described by Eobert Browning, as by
no one else. After drawing a picture of natural
catastrophe, the colours for which are largely
supplied from this passage in the Apocalypse, he
makes the man who beholds it say: —
"I felt begin
The Judgment Day: to retrocede
Was too late now. ' In very deed '
(I uttered to myself), ' that Day 1 '
The intuition burned away
All darkness from my spirit too ;
There stood I, found and fixed, I knew,
Choosing the world." " I heard a voice
Beside me spoke thus : ' Life is done,
Time ends, Eternity's begun,
And thou art judged for evermore.' "

188 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
For him it was so ; and yet it was not yet so for
the world. He missed eveh the false consolation
of being involved in a universal ruin.
"I looked up. All seemed as before,
The common round me, and the sky
Above, stretched drear and emptily.
' A dream — a waking dream at most I
The world gone, yet the world is here?
Are not all things as they appear?
Is Judgment past for me alone ? ' "
He asks, but asks in vain, "Where had place
the great white throne ? The rising of the quick
and dead?" Though these were still in the
future, for him the Judgment was over. It is a
great reality of which this poem records the dis
covery, the possibility, namely, that long ere that
last day come, whether the day when "time
shall be no more," or the day when time shall be
no more for him, a man may incur the judgment
which for him is final. He may do it, by giving
no heed to the warning judgments which he sees
falling upon others, or the earlier judgments
which have fallen upon himself, by going on
still in the wickedness out of which God has done
all He can to shake him, to arouse him by the
witness of word and experience. Or he may
escape it if he sees these things, the 'dealings of
God with men, with nations, with himself, in the

CHAPTEES VI.-XVI. 189
light in which St. John puts them, in the hght
which streams from an open heaven, where God
is, the Creator ; where Christ is, the Eedeemer,
in the light which streams from the Cross, and
irradiates the love of God which prevails over sin,
and the great truth : " He that beheveth on me
hath everlasting life."

THE VISION OF THE EEDEEMED
IN HEAVEN
Rev. vii.
The seventh chapter of the Apocalypse contains
a vision, that of the "multitude which no man
could number," which is among the most
familiar and most highly treasured passages in
the book. The meaning of this vision stands
little in need of explanation ; its value is not to
be enhanced by exposition. It speaks straight to
the heart of every Christian. The picture of the
Church triumphant, drawn " out of every nation,
and of all tribes and peoples and tongues," offer
ing the praise of heaven to God and the Lamb ;
the question, " Who are these ? " and its answer ;
the description of their privileges as the flock
shepherded by the Lamb, the people of God's own
care — these things speak for themselves. But
regarded as a whole and in its relation to the
rest of the book, the chapter presents us with a
problem, and the solution of the problem throws
190

CHAPTEE VII. 191
valuable hght on the larger problem of the book's
construction. We observe in the first place the parenthetic
character of the chapter. Very obviously it breaks
the continuity of the vision of the Seals. The
opening of each seal has been followed by the
consequent judgment, briefly and tersely recorded.
The judgment following on the sixth seal has
been recorded like the rest ; and just when, on
the analogy of the rest -of the vision, we are
looking for the seventh seal, this chapter inter
venes, and the seventh seal is not opened until
the eighth chapter is reached. The character of
the chapter is also strikingly different from that
of the context. The vision in which it is set is
a vision of judgment. With the single exception
of the fifth, the seals have ushered in one form
or other of destructive agency upon earth. Here
we have a vision of Eedemption, of the serenity
and bliss of the redeemed in heaven. When this
chapter is left behind, the unrolling of judgment
proceeds as before through the trumpets and the
bowls. The chapter, then, is a parenthesis, linked
in thought with the scene disclosed by the fifth
seal, and awaking anticipations of future visions
of a similar character, which find their culmina
tion in the vision of the New Jerusalem.
When we come to examine the chapter itself,
we can hardly fail to be conscious of a well-

192 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
marked division between the eighth verse and
the ninth. There is a break, a change, a sudden
expansion of horizon. And this is not due to
any change of subject. The subject is the same
throughout the chapter, the "sealing" of the faith
ful, with a view to their being preserved during,
and to the end of, the impending calamities.
The difference between the two parts of the
chapter, which we cannot help recognising, lies
not in the subject, but in the way it is treated, in
the tone, the atmosphere, of the second as dis
tinguished from the first. And as we dwell upon
the two parts separately, other points of difference
clearly emerge.
In the first half we have the imagery of one
angel holding fast the four winds, and the other
angel ascending from the east ; imagery which is
plainly Apocalyptic in its character ; in the second,
the imagery is almost wholly familiar, being
culled for the most part from Old Testament
prophecy. Further indications are not wanting
that, while the scene of the second half is
evidently laid in heaven, that of the first half
is to be sought on earth. The four winds are
the winds of Nature, and the earth, sea, and trees,
which they are not to injure, belong to the earth ;
in contrast to this, every detail of the second part
is consistent only with the life of heaven. And,
once more, a comparison of the sections reveals a

CHAPTEE VII. 193
marked difference in their respective outlooks on
the future. In the first^ those who are sealed are
a limited, even if it be a symbolic, number. They
all belong to the house of .Israel. And this double
limitation, both of numbers and of race, is further
emphasised in a very striking way by the
rehearsal of the number of the sealed who are
drawn from each individual tribe. Looked at by
itself, and even apart from any comparison with
what follows, it is not difficult to see that this
passage breathes the essential spirit of Judaism,
its particularism, the consciousness of being the
chosen people, the national pride not altogether
free from contempt for the Gentiles, which found
expression in the saying, " Salvation is of the
Jews." The prospect of being preserved through
the approaching tribulation is in these eight
verses confined to the children of Abraham. And
this impression of the Jewish character of this
passage is indefinitely strengthened by the con
trast in this respect which is offered by the second
section of the chapter, where all the emphasis is
laid on the facts that the number of the sealed is
such that " no man can number," and that they
are drawn not from any one race, but " out of all
kindreds and nations."
Before considering this contrast in detail,
however, there is still another point to be
observed in connection with the first half, and
14

194 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
that is the curious omission of one of the twelve
tribes from the list there given. All 'the other
tribes are mentioned, but not the tribe of Dan.
When we inquire what may be the reason for this
strange omission, the most probable explanation is
found in connection with a tradition, which made
its appearance in post-exilic Judaism, to the effect
that as the Messiah was to arise out of the tribe
of Judah, so the anti-Messiah (" Antichrist ")
would spring from the tribe of Dan. So strong
did this opinion become that this tribe was, as we
should say, excommunicated by certain Eabbinic
theologians ; it was denied any share in the
anticipated glories of the future.
Adding this to the points previously noted, the
earthly plane on which the vision moves, and the
spirit of national particularism by which it is
shaped, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that
we have before us a document not of Christian
but of Jewish origin, whose presence is to be
explained by the simple suggestion that the
Apostle quotes this passage from some Jewish
Apocalypse with which he was familiar.
Some such explanation of its origin becomes
almost imperative when we pass on to the
second half of the chapter, and find how
strongly it contrasts at every point with the
first. The contrast appears, if we may not say

CHAPTEE VII. 195
intentional, at least conscious, on the part of
the writer. There, the sealed are reckoned as
a definite number ; their number (and that
means their limitation) is specially insisted on.
Here, the sealed are a vast multitude, whose
special characteristic is that no man can number
them. There they are drawn wholly from one
nation, and specifically from the tribes of which
it was composed. Here it is specially insisted
that they are out of all nations; the Apostle
seems to rejoice in heaping up words to show
that every barrier of race has disappeared. A
still deeper contrast underlies the condition on
the fulfilment of which the blessedness of the
redeemed is declared to rest. In the first half
they who are sealed are men of Israel who are
" servants of God." The condition of salvation
is still that of the old dispensation, viz., that a
man should be of the chosen race, and abide in
loyal union with the people whom God had
chosen to serve Him. Here, in the second
half, that condition is no longer insisted on,
and another has taken its place. They who
serve God day and night in His temple, are
there not because they have belonged to any
human stock or earthly society, but because
" they have washed their robes, and made them
white in the blood of the Lamb."
It would, indeed, be difficult to exaggerate the

196 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
difference between the two parts of the same
chapter. And yet they are not contradictory;
the one is contained in the other as the Old
Testament is contained in the New, and the
whole might be described as a supreme illustra
tion of the difference Christ has made.
For let us try to realise how this chapter came
to be. God, who has in these last times spoken to
us by His Son, had spoken before at sundry times
and in divers manners through His servants the
prophets. John, the writer of the book, takes his
stand with the prophets. He writes in the spirit
of prophecy, though in the form of an Apocalypse.
As a Jew, one of the sons of Zebedee, he would
be brought up in a circle where not only the books
of our Old Testament would be current, but many
other books in which especially the hopes of the
Messianic future were expounded and enforced.
It is at least possible that the first eight verses
of this chapter formed part of one of these books ;
their contents would certainly be part of the
furnishing of John's mind as a pious Jew of
the time of Christ. To him, though now a
disciple of Christ — to him, even writing under
the inspiration of Christ's Spirit — they seemed
important, valuable, it may be essential, to a
complete presentation of the future. So he
incorporates them in his own Apocalypse. But
then. Surely we have here a spectacle of the

CHAPTEE VII. 197
most amazing kind, nothing less than a man
laid hold of before our very eyes by the Spirit
of Christ, and caught up into the seventh heaven
of spiritual reality. As when we ourselves have
climbed to the top of some high mountain, and
stand there conscious only of being lifted far
above the plain, until the dark comes on, and
the eminence on which we stand, with all the
others round about, dwarfs into nothingness in
presence of the ethereal immensities of night;
so John's little bit of Apocalypse, dear and up
lifting as it had been to him, sinks into flatness,
as the heavens open, and he sees God's redeem
ing purpose in all its limitless profundity. His
Jewish expectation of the future becomes merely
a platform from which he is swept off to contem
plate and describe the purpose of God larger than
the Jews had ever known, a purpose that included
all nations and kindreds and tongues.
The details of the vision which follows require,
as we have said, neither explanation nor exposi
tion ; but there is still something to be learnt from
the method of this revelation, and regarding the
central idea round which it turns.
As to the method of Eevelation, we have here
a literary parallel to the flower in the hand of the
poet : — " Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,

198 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand ;
Little flower, if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."
We pluck this flower of Christian thought, and
along with flower and stem there comes away, as
from loose soil, the root also, and the seedlet, out
of which all the beauty and the glory have sprung ;
and if we could understand what it is, "root and
all, and all in all," we should learn something
of God's way of revealing Himself to man. The
two parts of this chapter represent two stages in
the conception of the future given to men by God.
The Apostle has received one "by tradition from
his fathers " ; he passes to the other by inspiration
from God. The Word, in order to become vocal
to men, must take flesh, must enshrine itself in
human form or forms. That js to say, God comes
down to man, takes him as he is, at some particular
stage of moral or spiritual development, to make
him the instrument of His revelation ; plants him
on some thought, some truth, some institution, in
the highest form it has yet attained, and from
that draws him up to a level from which his
previous attainment seems insignificant — and
may even seem false — clarifies the thought,
purifies and consecrates the institution, and so
out of seed and soil, through rain and sunshine,
draws the matchless beauty of perfect truth, and

CHAPTEE VII. 199
the priceless fruit of perfect holiness. If so be
that John's glorious vision bad its root in a
Jewish picture of the future, the growth was
none the less, nay, all the more, of God.
It might be asked, however, how do we know
that it was a growth not only towards beauty,
but also towards truth? The answer is, we
know, because it satisfies the one test of truth
which God has put into our hands ; it is in
harmony with the mind of Christ. The imagery
in which the central idea of the vision is clothed
is largely drawn from the Old Testament ; but the
idea itself, that God's redeeming love is not limited
to race or clime, but " broad as are the heavens
above" — the idea itself is of Christ. He dealt
with man as man, not with man as Jew or
Gentile; the cases which might appear contra
dictory to this were but those in which He paused
to pierce below the surface of racial distinction
to the common qualities of the human heart be
neath. The Gentiles also were His heritage, His
purchase, and His care. " Other sheep I have,
which are not of this fold ; them also must I
bring, and there shall be one flock and one
shepherd." So He charged His followers to go
and make disciples "of aU'nations." And when
one of these declares that " in Christ Jesus there
is . . . neither Jew nor Gentile," and another
of them foresees in the glorious consummation

200 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
of Christ the gathering of a multitude which
no man could number out of all nations upon
earth, no one can deny that these are speaking
in accordance with the mind of Christ. There is
a Spirit of Christ, which leads His humble
disciples into all truth, and "all truth" is an
expansion of the truth as it is in Jesus.
If light is thus thrown on the method by which
the Spirit of Christ expresses Himself through
the mind of a man, attention is also focussed on
the central idea of the vision, which is the unity
of the race before the throne of God, the opening
of God's Kingdom to men of all nations under
heaven, the removal of the most impregnable
barriers which had hitherto divided men. The
Seer sets before us a picture of the future, which
is still so far from being realised, that our faith
flutters towards it, and falls with broken wing.
And yet his picture and prediction had facts for
their background, facts which together form one
of the miracles of history.
Our Lord is said to have done many signs and
wonders ; but of all those which bore on human
life there is none so marvellous as this, that
He did break down the middle wall of partition
between Jew and Gentile. No racial or social
separation we could think of would be less likely
to give way than this. But it did give way, before
the preaching of the Gospel. Both were made one

CHAPTEE VII. 201
by the blood of the Cross. This bringing together
of Jew and Gentile to dwell together as members
of one Church, as it took place all round the
Eastern shores of the Mediterranean in the first
century, was one of those " greater works " which
Christ predicted would be brought about by His
disciples ; and it is a fact of history against
which the waves of criticism hurl themselves in
vain. We, too, have our divisions, domestic and
social ; we have our middle walls of partition,
ecclesiastical and racial. We despair of healing
them ; we hardly hope to see them removed. Is
not this the reason, that we do not bring to bear
the one remedy which has proved effective, the
love of God shed abroad in men's hearts through
Jesus Christ ? We have never thought of it, or
we never thought it practical. It was very
practical indeed in the first century, when its
success proved the historical basis of this vision.
The love of God to all men revealed and mediated
through Jesus Christ was the mighty solvent of
all barriers then, barriers of race, barriers of pride,
barriers of selfishness. Beset and divided as we
are by the like barriers, we stand between the
fact of success then, and this picture of perfected
success for the Divine remedy yonder. We may
be taking our stand like the Apostle on some
traditional conception of our distinctness and

202 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
distinction as a family, as a class, as a Church,
as a nation ; but if vision of heavenly realities
is vouchsafed to us by the Spirit of Christ, we
shall see that the far-off Divine event for which
our life and worship are preparing now, is one
from which all such barriers and distinctions
have disappeared, and that the Divine power
unto salvation, in which we trust, is one
before which even now such barriers may go
down. -

THE SECOND PARENTHESIS
Rev. x.-xi. 13
The closing verses of the ninth chapter record
the blowing of the sixth trumpet, and the events
which follow ; the sounding of the seventh trumpet
is not recorded until we reach the fifteenth verse
of the eleventh chapter : what lies between is
best understood if we regard it as a parenthesis
similar to the one we found in the seventh
chapter between the sixth and seventh seals.
Any one who marks the close connection between
the passage ending with ix. 21 and the passage
beginning with xi. 14 will recognise that there is
a breach at least in the mechanical continuity of
the whole ; and when attention is further directed
to the contents of what -lies between, it discloses
material of a new character, not directly con
nected with the Vision of Judgment. The
record of that vision reads smoothly and continu
ously if this passage be omitted. Only a careful
consideration of the parenthesis will make clear
its relations to what stands before and after.

204 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
Those who have assailed the unity of the
Apocalypse naturally discover in a passage like
this support for their theory that we have in this
book the work of several different authors or
editors, or a Jewish Apocalypse worked up into
a book for Christian edification. But of the
many theories of partition which have been put
forward, no one has succeeded in commending
itself to the general assent of scholars ; and the
tendency among the best critics at the present
time is towards recognising in the Apocalypse a
single original document, the work of one Christian
hand — the undoubted difficulties being met by
the theory that this Christian writer on certain
occasions incorporated in his own work quotations
from earlier literature which may have been
Jewish in its origin. This suggestion need not,
however, arise in connection with the tenth
chapter, the most probable account of which is
that given by Bousset.
" Chapter x. is in fact a transitional chapter
from the band of the Apocalyptist himself, which
is to be regarded not as a subsequent addition,
but as a digression, in which he is at pains to
adjust himself to the future course of his revela
tion, seeing that the fulness of the story threatens
gradually to introduce a certain confusion. It is
not, however, to be regarded as an introduction to
xi. 1-13 alone ; rather does the last verse (" Thou

CHAPTEE X.-XI. 13 205
must prophesy again over many peoples and
nations and tongues and kings ") point far beyond
xi. 13, right up to chapters xvii. and xviii. Thus
does chapter x. stand in the middle of the whole
great composition, and form a powerful clamp, by
means of wbich the component parts are held
together, which otherwise tend to fall asunder.
It looks backwards in the description of the
angel-vision to chapter i., in the mention of the
angel of the seventh trumpet to the six first
trumpets; and it looks forward to the "mystery
of God," which is to unveil itself in chapter xii.,
the revelation, first sweet and then bitter, of the
fall of the dragon from heaven, and his last great
conflict upon earth." *
It is an awe-inspiring figure which the Apostle
sees, "a strong angel," with face like the sun,
and feet like pillars of fire, bestriding both earth
and sea as though he claimed both for spheres
of his authority. The utterance of his voice
unlooses the "seven thunders," by which is
meant apparently another series of judgments
similar to those connected with the seals on the
trumpets. But a voice from heaven forbids the
Seer to write the things which are uttered by the
thunders. The angel then proclaims with solemn
oath that "time shall be no. longer, but in the
days when" the seventh angel is about to sound,
* Bousset, Offenbarung Johannes, p. 370.

206 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the mystery of God will be fulfilled; in other
words, the final end waits only for the sounding
of that trumpet. At the bidding of the same
voice as spoke to him before, the Seer approaches
the angel, and asks that he should give him " the
little book " which is open in his hand. He is
told not only to take it, but to eat it ; "it shall
make thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth it shall
be sweet as honey." This episode is to be care
fully compared with the similar one in the
prophecies of Ezekiel, where the prophet is
prepared for speaking the word of God to the
rebellious house of Israel by being caused to
eat " a roll of a book " : " Son of man, eat
that thou findest ; eat this roll, and go speak
unto the house of Israel." * Ezekiel's roll was
sweet in the mouth, " as honey for sweetness " ;
but there is no reference to its being also bitter,
even though " there was written therein lamenta
tions and mourning and woe." Both the resem
blance and the contrast are instructive. Ezekiel's
experience corresponds with the satisfaction of a
man who is filled with the word of God, what
ever may be the character of the message he has
to deliver. John is impressed rather with the
mingled character of the revelation which is
symbolically conveyed to him in the "little
book." This arises from the fact that these
* Ezek. ii. 8-iii. 3.

CHAPTEE X.-XI. 13 207
prophecies contain at once evil and good, judg
ment and glory, for the wicked and the righteous
respectively; but also it expresses the mingled
readiness and disinclination of every true prophet
to be the mouthpiece of the Divine wrath.
What were the contents of the little book it is
not possible to say, beyond this, that the Apostle
understood it to contain some portion, great or
small, possibly the whole, of the Eevelations
which follow. He is conscious that although
the sounding of the seventh trumpet, which is
immediately to follow, will mark the end of the
process of judgment, there are yet other things
given him both to see and to record, and these
things form the contents of the "little book."
They are found in the last ten chapters, where
the writer's attention is specially occupied with
the Church, its struggle and discipline, its foes
and friends, its victory and peace. These, then,
are the contents of the little book, as the judg
ment-purposes of God toward the whole world
were the contents of the sealed book of chapter v.
This chapter, therefore, is of great importance for
the understanding of the construction of the
Apocalypse. It expresses in symbolic form the
consciousness of the writer that after the close
of the Vision of Judgment his work was not to
come to an end as might have been expected, but
to take, as it were, a new start : " Thou must

208 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
prophesy again." And so it acts as a great
bracket by which the two parts of his book are
held together.
The Measuring op the Temple, and the
Two Witnesses.
Rev. xi. 1-13.
The eleventh chapter, down to the fourteenth
verse, where the Vision of Judgment is resumed,
contains an episode which until quite recently
has caused great perplexity to the commentators,
the prophecy concerning the Two Witnesses,
together with the verses about the measuring
of the temple by which this prophecy is intro
duced. " There was given unto me a reed like
unto a rod : and one said, Eise, and measure the
temple of God, and the altar, and them that
worship therein." In the symbolism of Scrip
ture, this act of measuring may signify one of
three different things. It may be done with
a view to building or rebuilding, or with a view
to destruction, or as a symbol of preservation in
peril or from destruction. The following verse
leaves no doubt that it is the last of these sig
nifications which is here intended. The outer
court of the Temple is not to be measured, and
the reason is that it has " been given to the
nations," and to be trodden under foot with the

CHAPTEE X.-XI. 13 209
rest of the Holy City for forty and two months.
It follows that what is to be measured is marked
out for preservation when all else falls into the
hands of the enemy; the Holy Place with the
altar and them that worship therein are to be
spared. It is a prophecy concerning Jerusalem
that when the Holy City falls into the hands
of the Gentiles, they shall be withheld from
invading the inner court of the Temple or
injuring those that worship there.
Viewing these verses apart from the context
in which they stand, it is not difficult to discern
the circumstances to which the prophecy they
contain would directly apply, or to fix the date
to which they most probably belong. Jerusalem
is still the Holy City, the city with the Temple in
its midst. In other words, the fatal year A.D. 70
has not yet passed over it. It is threatened, it
may be actually besieged, by the " nations " ; that
is to say, the Eoman attack is impending, or
actually in progress,* when this prophecy is
uttered to encourage the faithful inhabitants
with the assurance that, though the greater part
of the city, and even the outer court of the
Temple, must fall into the hands of the enemy,
* Johannes Weiss (die Offerbarung des Johannes, p. 130)
is of opinion that the eleventh chapter can be dated with
exactness, between May and August of the year 70. A
later date is impossible. 15

210 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the inner court and the sanctuary will remain
inviolate. We have before us, in fact, a close
parallel to the prediction of Jesus, " Jerusalem
shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the
times of the Gentiles be fulfilled," coupled with
the assurance that the Holy Place and God's true
worshippers therein shall escape destruction.
These verses stand here as an introduction to
the prophecy touching the two witnesses. It is
not easy to say whether they were found by
John already connected with this ancient pro
phecy, or whether it was he who brought the
two together. If we could trace with any
certainty the spiritual or secondary interpreta
tion, which, being put by him upon these verses,
might have led him to quote them from an
independent source, we should be more ready
to assign the collocation to himself. But there
is no evidence that the Christians of the first
century saw in the Temple at Jerusalem a symbol
of the universal Church, or that they would
understand this prophecy, standing by itself, as
having any bearing on the circumstances of their
own time. It seems more probable, therefore,
that the Apostle found these verses already
forming an introduction to the prophecy of the
two witnesses, and quoted it as a whole.
We say " quoted," for this is one of the
passages in the Eevelation (three in all) in

CHAPTEE X.-XI. 13 211
which, if we are to preserve the unity of
authorship, or indeed to approximate to an
understanding of the Book, we must recognise
that the Apostle is using older material. Here
it is material which has come down to him by
tradition, as elsewhere it is material furnished
by the Old Testament. We are prepared for this,
in the first place, by the fact that the whole
passage is a parenthesis, breaking the continuity
of the Vision of Judgment ; then by the fact that
it introduces an altogether new circle of ideas,
the interest of which centres on the earthly Jeru
salem, its temple, and those that worship therein,
its fate, and the duration of its misery ; and yet
again by the strange abruptness with which the
third verse opens : " And I (God or Christ) will
give unto my two witnesses, and they shall
prophesy." The contents of the passage which
follows to a large extent confirms the suggestion
to which these bbservations give rise. It is full
of ideas and phrases which are at home in Jewish
thought. And in particular the subject of the
two witnesses, with which it is concerned, was
one which played a large part in Jewish anticipa
tion of the future. The anticipation takes its
rise in the prophecy of Malachi (iii. 23, f.), is
the subject of frequent allusion in the Apoca
lyptic literature, and makes its appearance in
several passages of the Gospel. As to who the

212 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
two witnesses, the forerunners of Messiah, were
to be, there was considerable variation of opinion.
One of them was generally understood to be
Elijah, the other sometimes Moses, sometimes
Enoch, sometimes Jeremiah. Their function,
according to Jewish anticipation, was to bear
public witness to the falling away of God's people
under the influence of Antichrist, and to urge
them to repentance. The tradition becomes clear
as to its details and connections from the second
century onwards, and is thus set forth by
Bousset. From this time onwards, "an Apoca
lyptic tradition concerning the appearance of
Antichrist can be shown to exist, which cannot
have had its first rise at the point where we
recognise it, but bad a much higher antiquity.
According to this tradition, it was expected that
in Jerusalem itself a God-resisting power would
make its appearance, which is conceived now as
tyrant, now rather as a false Messiah, and that it
would force the whole people into apostasy. It
shall collect in Jerusalem a great host drawn
from many various nations, and exercise its
terrible domination for three years and a half.
Then will stand forth against this Power the
two witnesses (an idea, the origin of which is
still obscure). According to tradition, they are
Elijah and Enoch. They will unmask the Anti
christ, and, following on their preaching, a large

CHAPTEE X.-XI. 13 213
number of the Jews will again turn away from
Antichrist, and be converted to the old faith. On
that account Antichrist will slay the witnesses,
and then the believers will flee into the wilder
ness."* This well-established and long-persisting
tradition enables us to fix the primary meaning
of the salient points in the prophecy before us.
It refers to the earthly Jerusalem. Within its
walls the two witnesses are to do their work.
The duration of their prophesying is to cor
respond with the duration of the domination of
Antichrist. The miraculous powers which are
assigned to them are the same as those recorded
as having been used by Elijah and by Moses.
The "peoples and tribes and nations" who look
upon their dead bodies are those assembled in
Jerusalem in obedience to the summons of the
Antichrist. In all this we see ideas and parts of a tradition
which have their original home in Judaism. If
we find a Christian Apostle incorporating them
here in his own Apocalypse, the interesting
questions for us are, Why he does it ? and, How
he does it ? That he must have attached a new,
a Christian, interpretation to this earlier prophecy
is plain, first, from the fact that he makes use of
it, and', secondly, from the traits and touches
which are plainly added by his own hand.
* Bousset, Offenbarung des Johannes, p. 383.

214 THE BOQK OF EEVELATION
Among them the most conspicuous and most
touching is the phrase, " Where also their Lord
was crucified." How eloquent that is, first, of
the Apostle's own connection with that tragedy,
then of his deep appreciation of its meaning.
That single touch changes the whole character
of the passage, as that event changed the signifi
cance of Jerusalem. Apart from that, it was a city
which " spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt."
With that, viewed in the light of that great fact,
it had become once more the symbol of God's
peaceful dwelling with men. And He was " their
Lord," that is to say, the witnesses of whom
St. John is thinking are now men who have
hailed Christ as Lord and God. And this pre
pares us for the most striking alteration which
the old material undergoes at his hand, the de
scription of the resurrection of ythe " witnesses."
"After the three days and a half, the breath of
life from God entered into them, and they stood
upon their feet." To this feature in this prophecy
there is no parallel in the Jewish tradition. We
see, therefore, bow the Apostle handled the
material which he was led to employ ; can we
trace any reason for its use?
We have to find, if possible, the link between
the ideas with which the Apostle's mind was
filled in consequence of his visions in Patmos,
and this group of ideas with which he was

CHAPTEE X.-XI. 13 215
supplied by memory. Two such links suggest
themselves. One is the reference, in verse 7, to
"the beast that cometh up out of the abyss,"
which is to make war with the witnesses, " and
overwhelm them and kill them." If this descrip
tion of the anti-Messias formed part of the
traditional material (and the way in which the
description is introduced points in that direction),
it may have been, in part at least, because of this
that the Apostle quoted this passage, giving to it
an application to the circumstances of the Church,
and adding to it the promise of resurrection.
There was what the Jews expected, Jerusalem in
ruins, the witnesses for God slain by Antichrist,
the nations of the world assembled to gape and
mock at their dead bodies. And if there was that
in his own vision of the future which corresponded
with this at many points, the world in ruins, the
monster out of the abyss tyrannising over the
people of God, those who kept the testimony of
Jesus, paying for their faithfulness with their
lives, there was also this, which changed it all,
that these witnesses for Christ lived again, and
"heard a great voice from heaven saying unto
them, Come up hither."
Another, and possibly a stronger, link might
be found in the word "witnesses " itself, and the
ideas connected with it. In its Greek form and
other cognate words, it occupies an important

216 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
place in the Apocalypse. The Apostle was con
scious that in the very act of delivering the
contents of the book, he was " bearing witness "
of the word of God (i. 2) ; it was because of his
"witnessing" to Jesus that he found himself
banished to Patmos. It was because of "the
witnessing of Jesus " that those had been slain,
whose souls are gathered beneath the altar (vi. 9) .
The one man, apart from the author, whose
name is mentioned in the book is Antipas, " my
faithful witness " (ii. 13). The word which John
uses has passed over into our language in its
Greek form of " martyr," and has undergone a
narrowing of its meaning to one who suffers death
for Christ's sake. - But for the Apostle the witness
ing both before and in the death, or suffering,
was equally important with the death itself. The
idea has equal prominence in the Fourth Gospel,
and is, indeed, one of the links by which the
"Johannine" writings are united together.* If
the Messiah, whose coming was still awaited by
the Jews, was to have "witnesses" to prepare
His way, the Christ, whose immediate return was
the centre of John's Eevelation, must have, them
also, not two, but many of them, as many as
* The word rendered above by " witness-bearing " (in the
English versions usually "testimony") occurs nine times
in the Apocalypse, fourteen times in the Fourth Gospel,
six times in the Epistles of John, elsewhere in the New
Testament seven times only.

CHAPTEE X.-XI. 13 217
truly looked for His appearing. The point of
contact between the Apostle's mind, quickened
by his vision, and this earlier prophecy, would be
not the number of the witnesses, nor yet the great
men of old with whom they were traditionally
identified, but their function, to bear witness over
against a rebellious people, and their fate, to
suffer the last penalty at the hands of Antichrist.
Not different was the function, not dissimilar
might be the fate of those who were " witnesses "
for the returning Christ. Only in these points
was their position different, that for them their
Lord had been crucified, and for them the
summons would come from heaven, "Come up.
hither." It was this which gave the old prophecy
value in the Apostle's sight, and it was by the
addition of these two great Christian ideas' of
the death of Christ and the resurrection of His
faithful witnesses, that he gives it a Christian
interpretation and a place in his Apocalypse.

THE THIED PAEENTHESIS s THE VISION
OF THE WOMAN, THE MAN-CHILD,
AND THE DEAGON
Rev. xii.
The picture of the future which the Apostle has
seen and is charged to describe contains three
main elements — the judgment of God upon a
wicked and unbelieving world, the sufferings of
the Church' as the victim of world-powers which
have authority to exercise their tyranny for a
season, and the final victory of Christ followed
by the glories and peace of heaven. These
elements interpenetrate one another throughout
the book, but in different sections one element or
other predominates. Thus, in the section which
we have just left (chaps, vi.-xi.), the main
contents is concerned with the process of judg
ment by which God vindicates His righteousness
before the return of Christ. In the closing
section (chaps, xix.-xxii.) the governing idea is
that of the victory of Christ and the bliss of the
redeemed. In that with which we have now to
218

CHAPTEE XII. 219
do (chaps, xii.-xvlii.) it is the enemies of the
Church, their tyranny, and the sufferings she is
to endure at their hands round which the visions
are grouped. The fourteenth chapter provides a
contrast and relief, but the author's task in these
chapters is to unveil the enemies of the Church
and to explain their power.
The second parenthesis has been followed by
the completion of the series of judgments ushered
in by the trumpets ; a definite pause has been
reached in the unrolling of the Vision of Judg
ment, which is resumed and completed in the
fifteenth and sixteenth chapters. The tenth
chapter, with its vision of the " little book " and
its suggestion of a new experience of insight into
the future, accompanied by the declaration, " thou
shalt prophesy again," prepares us for a new
subject and what looks like a fresh start. The
subject is the enemies of the Church, treated
most fully in the thirteenth chapter ; and to that
we have in the chapter before us an introduction,
which also is a parenthesis.* With the two
* One purpose of this description given to the three
passages is to facilitate a comprehensive view of the book
as a whole. Possibly the whole three chapters (xii.-xiv.)
should be reckoned as a parenthesis here; the Vision of
Judgment would then stand as a compact whole. This is
the view taken in the Century Bible, but it might seem to
ignore the salient importance of chap. xiii. ; and it is better,
perhaps, to confine the description to chapter xii., always

220 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
chapters which follow, it also breaks the con
tinuity of the Vision of Judgment. And we shall
find that it partakes in a marked degree of the
characteristics by which the first and second
parentheses are marked.
The difficulty of this chapter is obvious to every
reader. It is probably felt to be the most difficult
chapter in the book. The narrative itself is
straightforward enough, but it introduces us to
a course of events so extraordinary that we can
neither picture them as actually happening, nor
interpret them as symbols. And yet we are
conscious of an elusive substance below the
surface of the picture which, could we but grasp
it, would prove to be familiar as household words,
and yet precious as a new discovery. " Through
its fissures we get hints " of the birth of Christ,
of the attempted destruction of the child by
Herod, of His ascension to God, of the discom
fiture of the powers of evil, and the certain
victory of the saints. And yet, were this the
presentation in vision-form of the events of
Christ's life, are these the events, we ask our
selves, which the Apostle John would relate to
the exclusion of others — the death, the resurrec-
remembering that the Vision of the Bowls is still to come.
It is important to observe that on this arrangement each of
the three " parentheses " not only contains, but largely or
almost wholly consists of, material quoted by the writer.

CHAPTEE XII. 221
tion? And how are we to account for and
interpret the strange imagery in which the
allusions to these events, if such they be, are
embedded and even expressed?
To take only one example, verses 15 and 16
give us a picture to which there is no parallel
and no key in all the symbolism of Scripture,
for which commentators and expositors have
sought in vain to find a satisfactory interpreta
tion in the history of the Church. " The serpent
cast out of his mouth after the woman water asa
river, that he might cause her to be carried away
by the stream. And the earth helped the woman,
and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed
up the river which the dragon cast out of his
mouth." Of all the explanations of this strange
picture which have been offered, that of Dean
Alford is perhaps the most plausible. He lays
stress on the numerous parallels found in this
chapter to the experiences of Israel escaping from
Egypt. " There we have the flight into the
wilderness; there, again, the forty-two stations
corresponding to the forty-two months of the
three years and a half of this prophecy; there;
too, the miraculous passage of the Eed Sea, not
indeed in strict correspondence with this last
feature, but at least suggestive of it." But it
may be asked how would these allusions to the
Exodus be in place after what is understood to

222 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
describe the birth of the Messiah, or of Jesus ?
Or what is there in the experience of Israel
before the Exodus. which might be symbolised by
the birth of the child ? Proceeding to an historical
interpretation, Alford suggests that the river may
stand for the Eoman armies which threatened to
sweep away Christianity in the wreck of the
Jewish nation ; or of the persecution which
followed the Church into her retreats, but even
tually became absorbed by the civil power turning
Christian; or of the influx of heretical opinions
from the pagan philosophies, which threatened to
swamp the true faith. We may indee,d see in
one, or in all, of these events historical analogy
to what is symbolically predicted here ; but only
the first can be said to lie within the horizon of
the future, as the Apostle saw it, and that is
hardly adequate to the rest of the prophecy.
Besides, is it conceivable that, with any of these
generalities before bis mind, the Seer would have
thrown them into the form of such symbols as
these? Indeed, does not the interpretation leave
much, and that just the most perplexing part, of
the imagery unexplained? The earth "helping
the woman" by swallowing up the river finds
no parallel in any event in the history of the
Church. ' We cannot, therefore, but concur in
the conclusion to which Alford comes : " I con
fess that not one of these [interpretations] seems

CHAPTEE XII. 223
to me satisfactorily to answer the conditions ; nor
do we gain anything by their combination."
The possibilities of explanation of this chapter
as it stands, appearing thus to be exhausted, we
may be prepared to test the suggestion that here
again, for the third time, we have the Apostle
quoting an earlier prophecy,- to which he gives a
Christian interpretation. We observe, in the first
place, the remarkable and unusual way in which
the chapter opens. The writer does not say that
he saw this vision ; in this instance alone of all
the visions recorded in his book, the account
begins thus, " And there was seen." And here
only that which was seen is described as " a sign."
These points seem at once to differentiate this
vision from those seen by John himself. The sign
was seen "in the sky," that is to say, on the
plane of a vision, so that no difficulty need be felt
when subsequently we find the child being caught
up to heaven as though from earth, or the woman
fleeing "into the wilderness." The woman gives
birth to a child, " who is to rule all nations with a
rod of iron." That puts beyond question who is
meant by the child. The quotation from the
Messianic Psalm shows that he is the Messiah.
Still, this might be either the Messiah looked for
by the Jews, or Jesus, the Messiah whom the
Christians believed to have come. But he is
caught up, apparently at once, to the throne of

224 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
God ; and here the vision breaks away from the
history of Jesus ; we hear no more of the child.
But if the child stands originally not for Jesus,
but for the Messiah, then the woman stands for
Israel, probably the ideal Israel, whose glory is
described with unimaginable splendour in the first
verse, " a woman arrayed with the Sun, and the
moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown
of twelve stars." The main interest of the
prophecy rests upon the woman, her fortunes, and
her fate. The dragon, the Antichrist, had been at
first the enemy of her child, the Messiah ; but the
end of the prophecy describes how he became
incensed against the woman herself, and " perse
cuted the woman which brought forth the man-
child." The reason is that in the meantime there
has been " war in heaven." " Michael and his
angels " have fought with the dragon, and have
prevailed, and the great dragon has been cast
down to the earth with his angels. But why
" Michael " ? His name stands for a figure which
is prominent enough in the Apocalyptic literature
of the Jews, but is mentioned only twice in the
New Testament. ,The allusion in Jude (verse 9) is
almost certainly based upon something related in
the Assumption of Moses; does it not seem as
though there must be a similar source for the
allusion here ? It was entirely in accordance with
the conceptions of Judaism that Michael should

CHAPTEE XII. 225
appear as the champion of Israel,* as the captain
of the hosts of the Lord. But Christian thought
assigns that place and function to Christ Jesus,
and to Him alone. It is He who, later on in this
same book, appears at the head of "the armies
which are in heaven" ; it is against Him that "the
kings of the earth and their armies are gathered
together to make war" (xix. 20). If we find that
in this passage another takes His place, the pre
sumption is very strong that the Apostle is making
use of older, and of Jewish material, t
The dragon being overcome by the angelic
champion of Israel and " cast out Of heaven,"
proceeds to wreak his vengeance on those to
whom he owes his discomfiture. But help comes
to the woman. She flees " into the wilderness,"
and there is nourished for the period over which
the reign of Antichrist extends. Another attempt
on the part of her enemy to compass her destruc
tion is frustrated by "the earth opening her mouth
and swallowing up the river " ; after which the
dragon, waxing yet more wroth, goes away " to
make war with the rest of her seed."
* Cf. Dan. xii. 1, with x. 13.
\ See R. H. Charles, art. " Michael," in Hastings'
Dictionary of the Bible. " Here the figure of Michael thrusts
aside that of the Messiah : for it is Michael and not the
Child that overthrows Satan when storming the heavens — a
fact which speaks strongly for the Jewish origin of most of
Rev. xii." 16

226 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
Up to this point we found nothing in this
chapter so easily detachable from its context,
which conflicts with the theory that in its original
form it was a Jewish prophecy; and we have
found not a little to support it. In that form it
would be a prophecy of the " Messianic woes,"
which were to fall upon Israel before the coming
of the Messiah, "the sufferings that lead up to
the Christ."* The peculiar feature of this
prophecy would be that these woes are described
as following on the birth of the child who was to
be the Messiah. And that is the very point on
which we may suppose that the Apostle's mind
would fasten. For him and for his fellow-believers
in Jesus that child had been already born, accord
ing to prophecy. Moreover, He ascended to the
throne of God, and His followers were waiting
anxiously for His return. The sufferings which,
according to this prophecy, were to be the portion
of ideal Israel, were of the same kind, and due to
the same evil forces as those which, according to
John's own vision, were to be the portion of
Christ's true Church. This prophecy, therefore,
had a meaning for Christ's disciples, which was
plain to the man who had seen the vision of His
return; it gave a clue to the understanding of
that tribulation through which the Church was
about to pass. The case is parallel to the wit-
* 1 Pet. i. 11 ; see Expositor, 1905, pp. 234 ff.

CHAPTEE XII. 227
nesses in the eleventh chapter. If Israel was to
have witnesses going before the Messiah, and to
suffer many things at the hand of Antichrist
before Messiah came, much more must the Church
have her witnesses, and " make up that which
was lacking " in the sufferings which were to be
endured before Jesus the Christ returned.
We see now how this prophecy, which had first
been current in Jewish circles, may have presented
itself to the mind of St. John as capable of appli
cation to the Christians, for whom he wrote.
Before mentioning another point of attachment,
let us observe the indications of the way in which
he interpreted it, and how he adapted it for his
own purpose. There are two passages which are
undoubtedly added by his hand, verses 10 and 11,
and the end of verse 17. In these passages we
hear again the great language of the Apocalypse.
In the first we have the proclamation of victory
over Satan with its ringing note of triumph, and
its emphasis on the rank and authority of Christ :
" Now is come the salvation, and the power, and
the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his
Christ." We note that Michael has no place in
this song of victory ; on the contrary, it is
suggested that Satan has been overcome by " our
brethren," who " loved not their life even unto
death " ; and they overcame him " because of the
blood of the Lamb." They are the martyrs for

228 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the testimony of Jesus, whom even in heaven the
Accuser has accused,* but in vain. " These are
they which have washed their robes, and made
them white in the blood of the Lamb " ; and in
the power of that sacrifice they prevail even
against their fell accuser.
In the second of these passages (verse 17b) we
have the clue to the Apostle's interpretation of
the figure of the woman. At the beginning of
the prophecy this figure stood for him as for those
who first heard it, as representing Israel; for a
Jew it would be Israel from which the Messiah
was to spring ; for the Christian Apostle it would
be Israel out of which Jesus had been born. But
the ideal Israel, " arrayed with the sun," who gives
birth to the Christ, is interpreted at the close of
the prophecy, as the mother of His "brethren" ;
"her seed," which for a Jew would mean faithful
members of the Covenant-people, is now explained
as equivalent to those " which keep the command
ments of God, and hold the testimony of Jesus."
The presence of these words shows that John now
understood by the woman the Church of Christ.
Her "seed" were the disciples of Christ against
whom "the old serpent, Satan," was bringing all
his power to bear.
This brings us to another and probably a very
important point of contact between the mind of
* Cf. Zech. iii. 1-4.

CHAPTEE XII. 229
the Apostle filled with the contents of his own
vision, and this remembered piece of prophecy.
We have noticed the general analogy to events in
the life of Jesus and the close correspondence
between the persecution of faithful Israel pre
sented in the prophecy and the tribulation to fall
upon the Church, anticipated by St. John ;
another point of contact may be found in the
power by which both the persecution of Israel
and the persecution of the Church are set in
motion. In chap. xii. we are told how the
dragon, being cast out of heaven, began to per
secute the woman and her seed; in chap, xiii.,
when John describes his own vision, the agent
of persecution is " the beast," and it is " the
dragon " that " gave him his power, and his
throne, and his authority." Again we find an
analogy between the second parenthesis and the
third. As the former introduces "the beast that
cometh up out of the abyss," so the latter intro
duces the dragon which gave him his power.
Among other reasons which led the Apostle to
incorporate this earlier prophecy, we may see
this", that it shows that the power behind the
beast is the same which pursued Jesus with its
hatred, had laid wait for Him, tempted Him,
finally compassed His death ; but the same also
which He had spurned, thwarted, overcome, and
trodden under foot in His resurrection. Moreover,

230 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
this prophecy describes how Satan has been
overthrown, and cast out of heaven. His very
activity on earth is due to his defeat in heaven.
And St. John is fully purposed that through all
that follows of the revelation of persecution and
suffering to come, his readers shall have this
great fact vividly present to their minds. Their
enemy, their accuser, the power behind their
persecutors is potent upon earth; but he has
been overthrown in heaven ; he knoweth " that
he hath but a short time." Let them know it too.

THE MONSTEOUS POWEE OF EVIL
Rev. xiii.
The reading adopted by the Eevised Version
which yields the translation, " he stood by the
sand of the sea," and makes this clause part of
the last verse of the previous chapter, is the one
which is attested by the best authorities; and
although many of the editors still prefer the old
reading, " I" stood," the new one helps to mark
emphatically the connection between the two
chapters. The monstrous Powers of Evil whose
appearance and activities are to be described in
the thirteenth chapter, owe their " power and
authority " to the dragon, " the old serpent," or
Satan. It was the dragon that men worshipped,
when they " bowed to the authority of the
beast " ; and the foregoing chapter has served a
double purpose in introducing the present vision.
In the first place, it has explained how the dragon
comes to be active in the affairs of earth, and
specially bent on persecuting the disciples of
Jesus. He had sought to destroy the child of the
231

232 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
woman — Israel ; and when he had been foiled in
that attempt, then had followed " war in heaven,"
the end of which was that the dragon was " cast
down to the earth." Cast down from heaven, he
proceeds to persecute the woman, in whom the
Apostle now recognises the Church of Christ, and
" to make war with the rest of her seed, which
keep the commandments of God, and hold the
testimony of Jesus." And he does this by giving
power to "the beast." But the twelfth chapter
does yet more than provide this explanation of
the source of the beast's authority: it sets
forth the supremely important fact that for
all his power on earth, and the dreadful
cruelty with which he exercises it, the dragon
has been overthrown in heaven ; it follows
that he must ere long be overthrown on
earth. In heaven there is already great joy over
the casting down of the " accuser of the
brethren " : then the song of triumph is already
heard: "Now is come the salvation, and the
power, and the kingdom, of our God, and the
authority of his Christ." And though there
must needs be "woe for the earth," it is only
"for a short time." By setting this ancient
vision-prophecy in advance of his own vision of
the two monsters, St. John does the best that
could be done to kindle the courage of those who
have to face such a future. The effect of the two

CHAPTEE XIII, 233
chapters taken together is indeed to present in a
highly pictorial form the exact situation described
by Christ : " In the world ye shall have tribula
tion : but be of good cheer, I have overcome the
world." The enmity of the defeated Satan wreaks itself
upon the Church of his Vanquisher through the
power and^ cruelty of the first monster ; and the
power of the first monster is promoted and his
cruelty abetted by the second monster which is
here described. Now, these strange figures stand
for very real things, for forces and personalities
which were only too real for the Christians of Asia
Minor at the end of the first century ; but these
again may be recognised as the incarnation of
" spiritual wickedness " which did not cease to be
active when the forces of the first century passed
away, but moves in other forces and it may be in
other personalities which are no less real in this
twentieth century. We have to find what these
figures meant for the writer and the first readers
of the Apocalypse, and the question of what they
respectively stand for, leads us on to a field of
study, which, though it may be unfamiliar, is
nevertheless of fascinating interest.
Before proceeding, however, to the explanation
of these figures, it may be well to deal with a
possible objection coming from those to whom
the attempt to find any explanation may seem

234 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
hopeless if not absurd. These apocalyptic figures
are so bizarre, in some of their details so fantastic,
that they resemble what indeed they purport to
be, the contents of a dream or a vision ; a beast
with ten horns and seven heads, with diadems
the horns, and upon the heads " names of blas
phemy," is a figure as difficult to take seriously as
it is remote from experience. Do not such figures
by their very incoherence warn us off from any
attempt to find a meaning for them, other than
as adding, perhaps, to the impression of horror
and catastrophe ? To such objections the answer
is provided by even a cursory examination of the
other books which belong to the apocalyptic class.
There we find that figures such as these, and even
more fantastic ones, play an even greater part
than they do in the Apocalypse of St. John; that
they belong, in fact, to a system of conventional
symbolism which was employed by these writers
•for the purpose of conveying quite definite ideas.
This is placed beyond doubt by the interpretation
of the symbols, by which in several cases they are
accompanied. The earliest case both of the use
of such symbols and their interpretation is found
in the apocalyptic portion of the Book of Daniel.
There, in the seventh chapter, we have a vision
of four monsters, a lion with eagle's wings, one
" like a bear," one like a leopard, and one with
ten horns ; and the explanation is added: " These

CHAPTEE XIII. 235
great monsters, which are four, are four kings,
which shall arise out of the earth " (vii. 17) ; and,
" The ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings
that shall arise " (vii. 24). Whether this passage
in Daniel was the earliest instance of the use of
this symbolism, or not, there can be no doubt that
it became the source or model of much subsequent
writing of the same kind. Each successive writer
of an Apocalypse was to some extent an inter
preter of earlier apocalyptic predictions. And
he indicated his interpretation largely by the way
in which he handled the traditional symbols, by
alterations and modifications which he introduced
into the pictures left by one or other of his
predecessors. In the fourth Book of Ezra, an
Apocalypse which was written about the same
time as the Eevelation of John, we find
this kind of symbolic writing most highly de
veloped. Here are a succession of visions in
which birds and animals of monstrous shape
appear; and each of them is followed by an
interpretation given by an angel. To take only
one example. An eagle is seen rising out of the
sea, which has three heads, twelve wings, and
eight "secondary" wings. A voice proceeding
out of the body commands the wings to awake at
their proper time, but the heads to sleep for the
present. The wings accordingly awake, and
"reign," the earlier ones for longer, the later

236 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
ones for shorter, periods, and then disappear.
Then the heads are roused; the middle one
devours some of the "secondary" wings, and
disappears, whereupon one of the others destroys
the third. Then a lion is seen which rebukes the
eagle, and announces that judgment is about to
overtake it.
The interpretation of this vision, which is given
by the angel, will show the way in which these
apocalyptic symbols were used. " The eagle
whom thou sawest rising up out of the sea, is the
fourth kingdom which appeared to thy brother
Daniel in his vision ; it is true, it was not so
interpreted to him as I am now to interpret it
to thee." The twelve wings are then explained
to mean "twelve kings" who are to reign one
after another. The eight " secondary " wings
are also kings, but kings whose reigns are to be
short. The three heads represent three kings
who are to rule with more energy and do more
mischief than all the rest. The " disappearance"
of one head signifies that that king is to die in
his bed. The other two are to die by the sword.
" The lion, however, which burst forth out of the
wood before thine eyes, with a mighty roar, who
spoke to the eagle, and rebuked it for all its sins,
that is the Messiah whom the Most High hath
kept unto the end of the days, who shall arise
and stand forth from the seed of David."

CHAPTEE XIII. 237
Assisted by this interpretation, modern scholars
have recognised in the eagle the Eoman Empire ;
in the twelve wings, twelve emperors, beginning
with Caesar ; in the " secondary " wings like pre
tenders to the throne, or, more probably, local
governors of Syria and Egypt ; and in the three
heads, the Emperors Vespasian, Titus, and
Domitian. Thus, in an Apocalypse, which is
practically contemporary with our own we find
figures and statements made about them which
are of the same type as those which meet us
here; and we find also that the central figure
is a symbol for the Eoman Empire, its wings
symbols for emperors and rulers, and the things
which happen to them symbolic expressions of
what has happened or is to happen to the persons
they represent. We see further that the special
contribution of any one writer of an, Apocalypse
may have to be sought, not in the main figures,
which form, as it were, the common basis of
apocalyptic tradition, but in the modification
which he introduces. The monster in Daniel
has " ten horns " ; if the monster here has
" seven heads " as well, the addition is made
with definite purpose, in order to bring the figure
into relation with a new historical situation. It
is clear, therefore, that we are justified in looking
for an explanation of these figures and of the
special features by which they are distinguished.

238 THE BOOK OF REVELATION
They represent political or social realities, and
their action reproduces the action of forces by
which the Christians were, or were to be,
seriously affected.
"I (or he) stood on the shore of the sea," on
the shore of the Mediterranean, " and I saw a
monster coming up out of the sea," that is as
a power whose seat was in the West. The
monster was " like unto a leopard, and his feet
were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the
mouth of a lion." Plainly the writer had before
his mind the vision of Daniel, and means to
suggest that this new power combines in itself
the forces and qualities of the world-empires which
had gone before, the Babylonian, the Median,
and the Persian. The power which does so at
the end of the first century and takes the place of
Daniel's four kingdoms as controlling the earthly
destinies of God's people, is the Eoman Empire.
The monster has ten horns and seven heads.
These represent kings (xvii. 10), in this case
Eoman "Emperors." Upon the horns are
diadems, upon the heads "names of blasphemy."
The distinction gives a possible clue to the
respective significance of the heads and the
horns. The ten horns represent the whole of the
ten rulers of the Empire who wore the crown ;
the seven heads, those of the ten who bore also
the " names of blasphemy," that is, those who

CHAPTEE XIII. 239
reigned long enough to have temples erected in
their honour under the name of "The Divine
Augustus." It is not certain whether the reckon
ing of the " ten " is to begin from Augustus, or
from Julius Caesar; but in either case three of
the number (Galba, Otto, and Vitellius) reigned
only for a few months; and it is not probable
that worship was demanded from the Christians
of Asia Minor for their names as it was for the
others. The most striking detail in this picture is the
statement that one of the heads was " as though
it had been smitten unto death ; and his death-
stroke was healed." The clue to the meaning
of this symbol is to be sought in connection with
the passage in xvii. 10, 11, where we are told that
of the seven kings, " the five are fallen, the one
is, the other is not yet come ; and when he
cometh, he must continue a little while. And
the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an
eighth, and is of the seven." In the one case,
one of the heads is apparently smitten unto
death, but its death-stroke is healed. In the
other case, one of the seven, who is described as,
par excellence, the monster, was, and is not, but
is to revive or re-appear, to rank as the eighth
of the series. In both these passages we
have an allusion to the same legend in slightly
different forms. The death of the Emperor Nero

240 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
took place under somewhat mysterious circum
stances, and shortly afterwards the rumour
became widely prevalent that he was not really
dead, but had escaped, and was in the East
biding his time, in order to return and recover
his throne. The story remained current until the
end of the century, and when it was no longer
probable that Nero was alive, it took the form
of an expectation that he would return from the
dead to wreak vengeance on his enemies.
It is Nero, then, who is represented by " the
wounded head," and though the monster stands
in the first place for the Imperial power, yet as
it was in Nero that this power had specially
concentrated itself against the Christians, he is
represented by the monster itself. It was he
who had made Eome " drunken with the blood
of the martyrs." The language of St. Augustine
shows how such a representation of his character
was justified. " It was Nero Caesar who was the
first to reach the summit, and, as it were, the
citadel, of this vice ; for so great was bis licen
tiousness that one would have thought there was
nothing manly to be dreaded in him : and such
his cruelty, that, had not the contrary been
known, no one would have thought there was
anything effeminate in his character." * It is
not difficult to understand how to John, Nero
* Augustine : De Civitate, v. 19.

CHAPTEE XIII. 241
seemed to gather up into himself all the evil
personality of the empire in its relation to the
Church, and so was capable of being symbolised
by the monster itself. And at the end of this
chapter the Apostle gives as " the number of the
beast," a number which half conceals and half
reveals the name of Nero.
The possibility of a number standing for a
name depends, of course, on the fact that both
in Hebrew and in Greek the letters of the
alphabet did duty also as numerals, so that
every name, and, indeed, every word, bad a
certain numerical value arrived at by adding
together the values of the letters of which it was
composed. As to this particular number, 666,
there are few names of persons prominent in
history which cannot, by some means or other,
be made to yield that as the total value of their
component letters. Mohammed, Luther, and
Napoleon have all been seriously suggested.
There are, however, only two names which
deserve consideration. One is Latemos, the
Greek form of Latinus, which might conceivably
describe the Eoman Emperor or race. But there
is no actual case of the word occurring in this
form, and even if there were, it would be a
curious designation to choose for either the
Eoman race or the Eoman Emperor. The most
probable explanation is that which finds in the
17

242 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
mystic number the name of " Nero Caesar " spelt
in Hebrew letters. The choice of the Hebrew
form is probably due to the writer's desire to fit
this name to a number which was already con
nected with some manifestation of Antichrist.
Contemporary Christian (?) speculation had dis
covered that the numerical value of the name
" Jesus " was 888, and 666 was a number
symbolically fitted to represent Antichrist.
The first monster, therefore, represents the
Imperial Power of Eome, incarnate in the persons
of the successive emperors, but specially in Nero,
and in the case of seven of them at least, actually
demanding worship from their subjects as being
gods on earth ; and the dread was that, if Nero
returned to the throne, the pressure and the
recklessness of this demand would be indefinitely
increased. In a word, the shape taken by the
monstrous power of evil when this book was
written was that hideous travesty of religion,
Emperor-worship, to which we have already
found frequent allusion in the letters to the seven
Churches. Other forms of heathenism and idolatry
might be avoided by the Christians at the cost
only of social ostracism and petty persecution;
but this, the public acknowledgment of the Em
peror as God, was enforced as the test of loyalty
and good citizenship. It was the refusal of the
Christians to conform to this imperial worship

CHAPTEE XIII. 243
that "formed the test by which they could be
detected, and the reason why they were out
lawed; their refusal was interpreted as a proof
of disloyalty and treason, for it was a refusal to
acquiesce in, and be members of, the imperial
unity." Of this we find striking evidence, dating
from early in the second century, in the letter of
Pliny to the Emperor Trajan, where we read :
" As for those who said they neither were nor
ever had been Christians, I thought it right to
let them go, since they recited a prayer 'to the
gods at my dictation, made supphcation with
incense and wine to your statue, which I had
ordered to be brought into court for the purpose
together with the images of the gods, and, more
over, cursed Christ, not one of which things (so
it is said) those who are really Christians can be
made to do." No ! for in their eyes to " make
supplication with incense and wine to the statue "
of a man was utter blasphemy and idolatry, and
the image of the Emperor set up in a temple for
the worship of men was "the Abomination of
Desolation standing where it ought not."
The power of the first monster is supported
and enforced upon men by the second monster.
This the Apostle sees " coming up from the
land " ; it was indigenous in Asia. " He maketh
the earth and them that dwell therein to worship
the first beast." It is possible that as the first

244 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
monster stands for the Imperial Power in its
blasphemous claim to be worshipped, so the
second may stand for the Provincial Govern-)
ment, whose business it would be, especially in
Asia, to foster and enforce this worship in every
possible way. The sentence, " He executeth all
the authority of the first beast in his sight," may
be thought to support this. And this is the
view taken by Professor Eamsay, who sees in the
two horns of this monster a reference to the
" double aspect of civil and religious adminis
tration." " The provincial administration or
ganised the State religion of the emperors.
The imperial regulation that all loyal subjects
must conform to the State religion and take
part in the imperial ritual, was carried out
according to the regulations framed by the
Commune, which arranged the ritual, superin
tended and directed its performance, ordered the
building of temples and the erection of statues,
fixed the holidays, and so on." *
The present writer is still inclined to think
that the second monster stands for the priests
of the imperial cult, attached to the imperial
temples. The " horns like a lamb " by which it
is distinguished would then be an allusion to
the mitred head-dress of these priests, and
verses 13-15 would receive a natural interpreta-
* Ramsay, loc. ciL, p. 97.

CHAPTEE XIII. 245
tion adequate to the emphatic position which
they occupy. "He doeth great signs, that he
should even make fire to come down out of heaven
upon the earth in the sight of men. And it
was given unto him to give breath unto it,
even to the image of the beast, that the image
of the beast should both speak, and cause that
as many as should not worship the image of the
beast should be killed." The allusion is doubt
less to pretended miracles and temple trickery by
which these priests imposed upon the credulity
of the people. The use of such means was only
too common in the pagan religions of the time,
although there is no other evidence that it was
employed to promote the imperial worship.
Magicians were held in high esteem, such as
Simon the magician in Cyprus, Apollonius of
Tyana, Apelles of Ascalon at the court of Cali
gula; and they maintained their reputation by
the performance of pretended miracles of a
similar kind. Of Simon it was related that he
caused statues to move and lifeless things to come
alive. The fact that in xvi. 13 the " false
prophet " appears to be a synonym for the
second beast, confirms this explanation. It re
presents the organised priesthood of the imperial
cult, who used force and persuasion and "magic "
besides in order to "make the earth and them
that dwell therein worship the first beast,"

246 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
As a means of distinguishing the worshippers
of the Emperor from those who refused to con
form, it is here suggested that these priests had
secured, or would proceed to secure, the actual
branding of all such with a "mark" upon the
hand or the forehead. "He causeth all, the
small and the great, and the rich and the poor,
and the free and the bond, that there be given
them a mark on their right band or upon their
forehead." It is not necessary to discuss the
many guesses that have been made as to the
meaning of this " mark of the beast." The
most hopeful have been those which connect
it with the branding of slaves or soldiers, or the
tattooing of caste-marks or emblems of a god.
The mark evidently contains or consists in the
name or the number of the beast, has some
special reference to the Emperor who is asso
ciated with the beast, and is capable of being
appealed to in connection with buying and
selling. " Marks," literally " charagmata," which
fulfil these conditions have recently been dis
covered, impressed by seals upon papyrus docu
ments found in Egypt. A representation of one
of them will be found in Deissmann's Bible
Studies.* These seals were inscribed with the
name of the reigning Emperor and with the year
of his reign ; some of them probably contained
* See Deissmann, Bible Studies, p. 241 fi.

CHAPTEE XIII. 247
his effigy ; and they were used on documents con
nected with buying and selling. It cannot be
said that the use of these seals on legal docu
ments wholly explains the language of this
passage ; it does not account for the receiving
of the mark upon the hand or the forehead. But
it may well have provided the basis for such a
prophetic anticipation. Or, if the use of such
a seal were made imperative in buying and
selling (and its use might be arbitrarily ex
tended as a means of persecution), and if the
use of it were felt by the Christians to be a
tacit acknowledgment of Emperor-idolatry, it is
not difficult to understand how those who made
use of it in trade might be said to have accepted
the mark of the beast, and how those who re
fused might find it impossible to . buy or sell.
And however the mark itself is to be explained,
it is clear that it was used, or to be used, in con
nection with " some unknown, but not in itself
improbable, attempt, either through official regu
lation or informal ' boycott ' to injure the Asian
Christians by preventing dealings with traders
and shopkeepers who had not proved their loyalty
to the Emperor." *
This, then, is the meaning of this twofold
vision. It represents in symbolic but most
* On the whole question of the mark and the mode of it,
see Ramsay, loc. cit., p. 105, ff.

248 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
impressive form the grim reality with which
the Christians of the period, and especially those
in Asia, were engaged, in a conflict which must
be fatal to one or to the other ; and the equally
real force of a venal priesthood which employed
the arts of deception and tyranny in order to
strengthen the authority of Emperor-worship.
Neither is it difficult to see how both the one
symbol and the other are typical of other forms
in which the same spirit has taken shape.
Emperor-worship was perhaps the grossest and
most flagrant case of the one; but it is not by
any means the only occasion in history in which
men have sought to prostitute the religious
instinct to the service of political ambition,
when the State or the Church has ventured to
claim for itself the authority, and in some sense
even the worship, which belong to God alone.
And those who see in the Papacy of the Middle
Ages one of the incarnations of this spirit, have
a great deal to say for their opinion. When
the Pope declared that he was the "Vicar of
God " upon earth, and claimed to govern men's
consciences, opinions, and conduct by a fiat as
absolute as if it were divine; when the Papacy
set up false forms of worship and idolatrous
images throughout Europe, and persecuted to
the death those who felt such things to be
blasphemous and derogatory to the honour of

CHAPTEE XIII. 249
God — the parallel to what is here described is
too close to be denied. And such a power
asserting itself over against God has never been
without its willing instruments, its venal servants,
who engineer the great deception and enforce
the human tyranny. And again the parallel is
too clear to be overlooked between the priest
hood which served and enforced Caesar-worship
in Asia Minor, and the priesthood which in the
Middle Ages served the Papacy, inventing or
adopting many a trick by which the superstitious
were beguiled into a false religion — the winking
virgins, the blood-stained hosts, the cottage
carried through the air, the blood liquefying once
a year, and so forth — all designed and con
tributing to establish the authority of a system
which confuses religion and politics. And it is
not a little strange that the very land where
this Caesar-worship and this Caesar-priesthood
flourished, proves to be the original home of
one at least of these false worships, which Eome
has engrafted on the Christian faith, the worship
of the Virgin Mary.
But we must not rest satisfied with recognising
these forms alone as incarnations of the same evil
spirit which was manifested in these monsters ;
there are others which are more nearly akin to our
own modes of thought, for which we ourselves
have more responsibility. From time to time

250 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the " Spirit of the Age," as it is called, is one
hostile to God, to Christ, and to righteousness,
and it is found taking shape in some system of
thought, some convention of opinion, or some
tyranny of social custom. In our day it is
materialism in its many forms, in reckless pursuit
of pleasure, in scornful contempt of duty, in
hideous denial of all that is spiritual in man.
This is the idol set up for men to worship;
and those who refuse or hesitate are made to
suffer in their comfort and opportunities, if not
in their reputation and person. Crowds of
thoughtless or unscrupulous men press into the
service of the idol's priesthood. By speech and
pen, in books and journals, and in less open
ways, they seek to establish the authority of
the evil thing. They pursue with scorn and
hatred those who refuse to fall down and wor
ship the golden image. They employ all the
tricks of language and sophistical argument to
inveigle even the servants of God into disloyalty
to Him and His cause. And with some they
succeed. On all the pressure is very great to
" worship the beast."
Now, what has this book to say regarding
these things ? First, " here is the patience and
faith of the saints." God calls upon His people
to endure the tyranny, if need be, of public
opinion hostile to His cause ; the scorn, if need

CHAPTEE XIII. 251
be, of many who seem to be leaders of our time ;
the loss, it may be, which is involved in loyalty
to Christ and righteousness. Here is the faith
of the saints, the evidence of their conviction
that the Lord reigneth, that "there is a city
bright, whose gates are closed to sin," that to
be right with God is better than to enjoy the
favour of men. And here is the patience of the
saints, their opportunity of steady endurance, of
manifesting and developing that quality by which
they "win their souls."
And, secondly, the book teaches, with vivid
reiteration, that all these things are marked for
destruction, total and final. In a later vision
the prophet sees how " the beast was taken, and
with him the false prophet that wrought signs
in his sight wherewith he deceived them that
received the mark of the beast ; and they twain
were cast into the lake of fire."
" The wages of sin is death " ; and the systems
of falsehood and iniquity, the most imposing
empires of worldliness, carry in them the seeds
of sure destruction, a destruction which involves
those who have wilfully surrendered themselves
to be their servants. The wages of sin is death,
but " the gift of God is eternal life."

ANTICIPATOEY VISIONS OF THE
JUDGMENT
Rev. xiv.
This chapter is apt to give much perplexity to
the attentive reader, and it certainly raises in
superable difficulties in the way of those who
look for one sequence of events from the begin
ning to the end of the Eevelation, or at any rate
from the beginning of the fourth chapter. That
there is no such sequence we have already found
reason to think ; what sequences there may be are
brief and self-contained; their relation to one
another is not consecutive, but is governed and
explained by the vision-origin and vision-character
of the whole, by the fact that the Apostle is
describing things which he has seen as in a
picture.* In this chapter we have a series of
brief paragraphs, describing different episodes in
the vision of the End. When we reach its close,
it appears once more as if there were nothing
more to follow, except the winding-up of judg-
* See above, p. 184 f.

CHAPTEE XIV. 253
ment. We have seen the Lamb upon Mount
Zion attended by a great company of the re
deemed ; we have heard four angels each making
a proclamation which seems to be final ; we have
seen "one like unto the Son of man" coming
on the clouds of heaven, and casting his sickle
to the earth for the harvest of Judgment ; we
have seen even the treading of "the wine-press
of the wrath of God." And yet when we pass
on to the next chapters, we are to find the long
series of judgments connected with the pouring
of the bowls, a vision of Babylon still standing,
and the going forth of Christ to the final conflict
and victory.
The verse which from one point of view raises
the difficulty in the most acute form, really points
out the true explanation. "And another, a second
angel, followed, saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon
the great, which hath made all nations to drink
of the wine of the wrath of her fornication "
(verse 8). Solemn proclamation is made that
Eome, the incarnation of the spirit of Babylon,
has fallen from her high place. Nevertheless,
in the seventeenth chapter, we come to a vision
of the same city seated on the seven hills, and
in all her power and splendour; and in the
eighteenth chapter, after this proclamation has
been repeated, we have the Triumph-song over
Babylon as newly fallen. Only one explanation

254 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
is possible. This is one of the salient features
in the great vision-picture of the future which
the Apostle has seen, and in this chapter he takes,
as it were, a comprehensive sweep, gathering
up and recording this and others of 'the salient
points, some of which he afterwards returns to
describe in fulness of detail. It is analogous to
the process which Browning saw in the history
of the Gospels. There, "what first were guessed
as points, are now seen stars." Here, the points
are seen and registered, which are afterwards
to be expanded and described on a larger scale.
Bearing this in mind, we escape the necessity
that would otherwise be felt of fitting these
visions into a consecutive scheme. The contents
of some of them will be found to recur; others
do not present themselves again; they all form
part of the vision of the End. The first of these,
in which we see " the Lamb standing on the
Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty
and four thousand, bearing his name, and the
name of his Father, upon their foreheads,"
probably owes its place here to that principle of
contrast which is so effective in the construction
of the Apocalypse. The previous chapter has
contained a terrible picture of the forces which
were arrayed against the Church of Christ, the
first monster and the second monster, and behind
them both the dragon. The Church had already

CHAPTEE XIV. 255
suffered for her loyalty to the testimony of Jesus ;
but it was part of the Apostle's message that
the pressure and persecution were to become
yet more severe. "No man should be able to
buy or to sell, save he that hath the mark, even
the name of the beast, or the number of his
name." If the sword and the lion failed to drive
the Christian into dishonour, the simple method
of starvation would be tried : and so great would
be the misery that " all that dwell on the earth
shall worship the beast, every one whose name
hath not been written in the book of life of the
Lamb " (xiii. 8).
To this picture of the impending tribulation
so dark and menacing, the Apostle sets in con
trast that portion of his vision in which the
peace and security of the redeemed are displayed.
Not all of the redeemed are here thought of
or described, but a special number and a special
class. The identity of the number here with
the number of "the sealed" in the first half
of chapter vii. has led to attempts being made
to explain both passages as concerned with the
same persons ; but the recognition of the former
passage as one of the writer's quotations from
Jewish literature removes the last reason for
pressing this identity. The 144,000 here belong
to the Apostle's own circle of thought; they
are not all the redeemed, for these are " a multi-

256 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
tude whom no man can number " ; neither is
the number of them to be taken literally; it
expresses a body of men which is large, complete,
and compact. They belong to a special class
in the Church, those who are " virgins," and
have lived a life of ascetic chastity. These
clauses are certainly to be taken in their literal
sense, and as representing a high estimate of
Christian asceticism. The reason for such an
estimate is probably to be found in the reaction
against the prevailing corruption of heathenism,
and, within the Church, in the desire to find
a counterpoise to the false teaching, the "doctrine
of Balaam," which had invaded several of the
churches. This company is seen gathered round
the Lamb on Mount Zion. Whether this is to
be thought of as the earthly or the heavenly
Jerusalem is not easy to decide. Probably it
is the former, and the underlying idea is that
those who have made their breach with the corrup
tion of the world complete, walk with Christ in
perfect security, whatever tribulation or perse
cution may befall. They " follow the Lamb
whithersoever he goeth." If we are to think
of them as not yet glorified through death, they
are those who are privileged, while yet on earth,
to " dwell in the secret place of the Most High."
And as they have refused to receive upon their
foreheads the mark of the beast, they bear the

CHAPTEE XIV. 257
name of Christ and the name of the Father
conspicuously upon them.
Asceticism, like "having all things in common,"
and some other things in the early Church, may
have had its place as a temporary expedient,
a testimony which even a blind world could not
ignore, to the Christian standard of self-control.
But it forms no part of the permanent Christian
ideal. Against the particular form of it referred
to here St. Paul had once and again to raise
a warning voice : * and even in this book the
recognition and consecration of the marriage-
state is to be inferred from the imagery of
chaps, xxi. and xxii. But there is a deep truth
expressed through the vision. Beneath a form
which had only a temporary justification, we
see the determination to make complete surrender
to Christ, and to keep oneself " unspotted from
the world " at all costs. And this is still the
secret of facing a hostile world, of enduring
persecution and temptation, and all the time
walking with Christ upon the Mount of God.
And they who thus refuse the badge of the
world's favour do receive the great names upon
their hearts, the acknowledgment by God, first
secret and then manifest to all, that they are
His. It is they also who can learn "the new
song " which is sung " before the throne." Even
* 1 Tim. iv. 3, cf. v. 14 ; 1 Cor. vii. 9, 28.
18

258 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
as they walk the dusty ways of the world, and
cannot but hear its voices of contempt or menace,
the music of this song steals down into their
hearts, and they are at peace.
Of the four proclamations which follow (verses
6 to 13), the first three, each of which is made by
an angel, announce the imminence or the cer
tainty of judgment, the fourth pronounces the
blessedness of those who from the moment that
judgment begins, " die in the Lord." What is
meant by the phrase " an eternal gospel," is
plain from the account of the angel's message in
verse 7. It is not " the Gospel" in the sense
which has become technical in the Church, but a
proclamation of the nearness of judgment, and
a summons to fear and worship God. The use
of the word "gospel" and. the burden of the
message are closely parallel to the passage at the
beginning of St. Mark, describing the opening of
our Lord's ministry.* Jesus came into Galilee
"preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,
and saying, Eepent ye, and believe in the gospel."
In both cases the near approach of the Divine
event was the " good news " ; and those who
received it as such would testify thereto by
showing repentance and the fear of God, and wor
shipping Him in faith, f To this general announce
ment that " the hour of judgment is come," there
* Mark i. 14, 15. + Cf. also Acts xiv. 15.

CHAPTEE XIV. 259
succeed two proclamations of judgment in par
ticular cases. The first, referred to above,
announces that " Babylon is fallen " ; the second
pronounces the doom of those who worship the
beast and receive his mark upon their forehead.
No man can escape from bearing either " the mark
of the beast," or " the name of Christ and the
name of his Father." And as the blessedness of
the latter is great and manifest, so also is the
penalty to be borne by the former, in the day
when the judgment is set. The imagery in
which this penalty is described is almost wholly
derived from the Old Testament, and ultimately
from the manner of destruction which fell upon
Sodom, or from the daily spectacle, seen from
Jerusalem, of the destruction of all manner of
corrupt things in the valley of Tophet.* But
the Apocalypse itself supplies the parallel to one
feature in the description (" They have no rest
day and night"), and the contrast is a poignant
one : " They have no rest day and night, saying,
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord" {iv. 8). Thus,
" immediately before the great decisive struggle
the writer holds up before the eyes of the faithful
the fate of every one who succumbs in the conflict
with the beast. The Apocalypse is a declaration
of war against the worship of the Caesars "
(Bousset). The proclamation closes with the
* Cf. Is. xxx. 33 ; xxxiv. 8-10 : Deut. xxix. 23 : Job xviii. 15.

260 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
arresting words, " Here is the patience of the
saints, they that keep the commandments of God
and the faith of Jesus." Here and now is the
patience, the endurance, of the saints to approve
itself. The moment has arrived when the
prophecy is about to pass into realisation. He
whose name is not written in the Lamb's book
of life will worship the beast. Let men make
their choice. The opportunity of choice is fast
running out. And let those who have chosen
Christ, and by Him been chosen, not be surprised
when they are laid hold of by the civil power.
Neither let them resist. " If any man is for
captivity, into captivity he goeth : if any man
killeth with the, sword, with the sword must he
be killed " (xiii. 10). "That is to say, let there
be no armed, fruitless, and unbelieving resistance,
but submission. Herein shall show itself the
faith and endurance of the saints. These words
would make plain to the reader, who was hot yet
aware of it, what terrible actuality there was for
him in this prophecy. It is no question of things
belonging to later times : to-morrow or to-day
may see the test applied to thee." *
The fourth proclamation (v. 13) stands in
closest relation with that which precedes it.
" Blessed are the dead who from now onwards
die in the Lord." Whatever more general
* Johannes Weiss, loc. cit., p. 20,

CHAPTEE XIV. 261
significance we may now attach to these words,
they have a special meaning for those to whom
they were first addressed. The alternative to
worshipping the beast would, in many cases at
least, be death ; the Apostle does not ignore that ;
rather is he anxious to make it plain. But to die
for Christ's sake and in Christ would " from
henceforth," from the point when the final
struggle has begun, have a new blessedness
attached to it. Up to this point, the souls even
of the martyrs beneath the altar of God are
crying "with a great voice," saying, How long?
(vi. 10) ; and as they have been exhorted to wait
" yet for a little time, until their fellow-servants
also which should be killed, should be fulfilled "
(vi. 11), so for their fellow-servants then was
this special privilege that the bliss which awaited
them would be at once complete.* " The har
vest of the earth is about to be reaped ; the
vintage of the earth is about to be gathered. At
this time it is that the complete blessedness of
the holy dead commences : when the garner is
filled, and the chaff cast out. And that not
because of their deliverance from any purgatorial
fires, but because of the completion of this
* That these two classes of martyrs were clearly differ
entiated by the writer, is plain from the care with which he
specifies both in xx. 4 : " them that had been beheaded for
the testimony of Jesus," and " such as worshipped not the
beast."

262 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
number of their brethren, and the full capacities
of bliss brought in by the resurrection" (Alford).
Such a representation of the condition of the
blessed dead is inevitable so long as we continue
to think of them under the conditions of time.
They cannot but watch with eager, anxious
interest the struggle which still goes on upon
earth ; if we are to run our race conscious of that
" great cloud of witnesses," we cannot think of
them as indifferent to the issue. And even the
perfect certainty which they may have that the
victory will lie with their Lord and with His
Church, may not cover the question, Who will
stand, and who will fall? It is only when we
realise the timelessness of a spiritual existence
that we can think of i^heir bliss as complete
" without us " (Heb. xi. 40), even while the struggle
is going on below, and the issue of individual
human choice still hangs in the balance.
These proclamations fitly issue in the descrip
tions of the Judgment which follow, descriptions
which are brief and anticipatory, as explained
above. "And I saw, and behold, a white cloud;
and on the cloud one sitting like unto the Son of
man." There can be no doubt that in this figure
we are to see the Lord Christ Himself returning
in glory to judge the world. It is the same
figure as that which John saw at the beginning
of his vision (i. 12), though the attitude and attire

CHAPTEE XIV. 263
are different. It was under this description that
Jesus had chosen to present Himself to men ; it
was in this form that He had told His disciples
to expect His final return: "Hereafter, ye shall
see the Son of man coming in the clouds of
heaven." John sees the Jesus whom he had
known returning in more than Messianic glory.
On His head is the diadem of royal majesty, and
in His hand " a sharp sickle." It might give us
a moment's perplexity to find that this majestic
figure apparently waits for a signal from an angel
ere He casts His sickle to the earth ; and yet the
representation is in consonance with our Lord's
own word : " Of that day and that hour, knoweth
no man, neither the Son of man, but my Father
Only." The angel of verse 15 is the messenger
of the Father, who is sent to tell the Son of man
that "the hour to reap is come." "And he that
sat on the cloud cast his sickle upon the earth ;
and the earth was reaped." The detailed de
scription of how the earth is to be reaped is to be
sought elsewhere in the Eevelation; what follows
the reaping is described in xx. 11-15.
" The reapers are the angels " ; * but the
harvest is not complete when the corn has been
reaped ; the vintage remains, and the vision goes
on to describe how that is gathered in. Nothing
from which fruit can properly be expected is
* Matt. xiii. 39.

264 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
omitted from the harvesting of God. Just as
the description of the earth's reaping recalls the
imagery of our Lord's parable of the tares, so
that of the "vintage" is coloured by reminis
cences of passages in the Old Testament. Isaiah's
great parable of "the vineyard of the Lord of
hosts" had made familiar the idea of Israel's
responsibility to yield fruit for her Maker; and
the gathering of the vintage had long been a
symbol for the summons to judgment. In the
imagery of the twentieth verse, however, for which
there is no parallel in the Old Testament, the
Seer may have been following later developments
of the Jewish tradition, in which "the winepress
of the wrath of God " was located, like the valley
of Hinnom, " outside the city." There is a
striking parallel to the rest of the verse in the
Book of Enoch : " From dawn to sunset they
shall slay one another, and the steed will go up
to the breast in the blood of the sinners, and the
waggon sink in to all its height, . . . and the
Most High will arise in that day, to hold the
great judgment over all sinners." Thus, the
details of this vision, like much of the book as a
whole, appear to take their colouring from each
of the three schools in which the Apostle has been
a pupil, the prophecies of the Old Testament,
the Jewish Apocalypse, and the teaching of his
Master while on earth. But the centre of the
vision is that same Master, returning to com-

CHAPTEE XIV. 265
mence, without further delay, the harvest and
vintage of the earth.
The question has been raised whether this
reaping and vintage represent the ingathering
first of the saints, and then of the wicked, or
whether both represent the gathering of all men
alike. Dean Alford answers, with considerable
hesitation, that the harvest is the ingathering of
the saints, and the vintage the assembling of the
wicked for judgment. So, too, Dr. Milligan.
But the passage in Joel (iii. 13), to which this is
closely parallel, makes both harvest and vintage
to be figures of judgment, in which no such distinc
tion is drawn ; and Jeremiah also (li. 33) speaks of
the "harvest" as the time of God's vengeance.
No such distinction between vintage and harvest
is suggested in our text, and the recognition of
the fact that this is only an anticipatory pre
diction of what is afterwards to be more fully
disclosed, makes it unnecessary for us to seek for
any classification here. Harvest and vintage
together represent the gathering of all mankind
before the judgment-seat of God. The separation
of the tares from the wheat is not yet, but imme
diately to follow. The winepress is trodden, but
the marriage-supper has still to be described.
What the Apostle would fix our attention on
here is the twofold fact of Christ's return as
Judge, and the certainty that "we must all
appear before his judgment-seat."

THE FALL OF BABYLON— EOME
Rev. xvii.-xix. 10
The pouring of the seventh bowl, which is
recorded at the end of the sixteenth chapter,
brought to a close the threefold vision of Judg
ment ; it is followed by a great voice out of the
Temple, saying, " It is done " ; and, however
we may interpret the connection between the
Seals, the Trumpets, and the Bowls, we naturally
expect that after this the end must follow swiftly.
But instead of the rapid winding up of history,
and of the Book of Eevelation, together, we find
the book taking, as it were, a new start, and the
visions of judgment being further unrolled in a
new series which occupies the five following
chapters. We have the vision of the great harlot
and her destruction (xvii.-xix. 10), the vision of
the returning and victorious Christ (xix. 11-xx.),
and the vision of the New Jerusalem (xxi.-xxii. 5).
Before examining the first of these new visions,
we have to consider the relation of this new
and unexpected expansion of ( the book to that
central part in which the prediction of judg-

CHAPTEE XVII.-XIX. 10 267
ment seems to be already complete. This is
the more important because this relation is
not the same as that which connects the three
series of the central vision one with the other.
In explanation of the strange phenomenon that
whereas each of these series brings us to the
verge of the end, but only to make way for a
new one, it has been suggested that this is in
accordance with the method of God in history,
namely, that from time to time judgment falls
on men and nations, judgment which seems to
be final (and is final for some age or for some
individual), but the end is not yet ; the world
begins again ; its life goes on outwardly as before.
There has been what we call a " crisis," though
we seldom remember that a crisis means a
" judgment," a sifting and classifying of men, a
dismissing of some into outer darkness, a deter
mination of destiny by character. There has
been a judgment, but its scope is not universal,
and it is followed not by the final end, but by a
new era of the Divine discipline of men or of
a man. But this explanation does not apply to the
connection between that central vision and these
chapters which follow it. The germ of each of
the later visions is contained in what has gone
before; they are expansions of features in the
earlier description which were only lightly

268 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
touched. We shall, in fact, find the clue to
the connection of these chapters with the fore
going in the truly pictorial character of the
writer's experience and of his book. The effect
of this will be evident if we imagine one attempt
ing to describe any famous picture which happens
to contain many figures, groups, and distinct
though connected episodes. Let us suppose it
was Michael Angelo's great picture in the Sistine
Chapel, which is an attempt to depict the Last
Judgment. One look at it is sufficient to create
a great and complex impression, and to fix on
the memory the chief masses of the composition.
You recognise what it represents; you see the
great central figure of the victorious Christ
dominating the whole; you take in the various
groups above, below, to left and right; you
understand that they represent the contrasted
fate of the evil and the good ; and you receive
a profound impression of the awe and majesty
of the scene. And all that at one glance. There
is the contents of your vision, the contents of the
picture as seen, but not yet studied. But suppose
the vision remains ; suppose you sit down before
the picture and study it, examine all its various
parts, see how they are connected, and how they
severally contribute to the total impression. Then
go away and try to describe it ; you will find that
your description is marked by many of the charac-

CHAPTEE XVII.-XIX. 10 269
teristics which perplex us in the construction of
this book. It will be an attempt to describe
in a series of paragraphs what you yourself saw
at one glance, and the overwhelming impression
made by the whole will be continually interfering
with the effort to describe the parts. The eye
of memory may begin by reconstructing the
groups at the base of the picture, the judgments
executed upon earth ; but it would suddenly be
swept obliquely upwards to recover one of the
scenes in heaven ; from that it would travel
downwards again to catch and record the wistful
longing of men and women upon earth before
whose weary hope this day is breaking with
great joy, and thence across to a group of proud
and self-sufficient sinners, under whose feet the
earth they thought so solid is gaping to let them
drop into the abyss. And, all the while, the
central figure of the Judge would be asserting
its imperious power to draw attention to itself.
Such an attempt to describe in words this famous
picture of the Judgment, if carried out on any but
the most mechanical lines, would reveal many
instructive parallels with features in the construc
tion of John's Apocalypse ; and, in particular, it
would throw light on the way in which not
infrequently he mentions briefly some element
in his vision of the future, seems to have passed
from it, but, at a later point in the book, returns

270 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
to the same subject, and now describes it in full.
An important illustration of this is found in
connection with the Vision of the New Jerusalem,
the Lamb's Bride. The detailed description of
this is found in the twenty-first chapter ; but
already in the nineteenth chapter there are found
anticipatory allusions to the Bride, the marriage,
and the marriage-supper of the Lamb. Similarly,
in xi. 7, we have an anticipatory reference to
" the beast that cometh up out of the abyss,"
the full description of which is reserved for
chaps, xiii. and xviii. It is the same character
istic of style which we are to recognise here,
finding in it what would otherwise be perplexing.
We have already heard when the seventh bowl
was poured the solemn proclamation, " The cities
of the nations fell ; and Babylon the great was
remembered in the sight of God, to give unto her
the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath"
(xvi. 19) : and even earlier than that St. John
had heard a similar proclamation from the lips
of an angel : "Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great,
which hath made all nations to drink of the wine
of the wrath of her fornication " (xiv. 8). Now,
in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters he
returns to that section in his Vision of Judgment
to describe with great minuteness first the woman
— Babylon, and then the judgment which should
befall her — just as one describing Michael Angelo's

CHAPTEE XVII.-XIX. 10 271
picture might come back to an episode therein
which he had already mentioned, in order to
describe it with a fulness of detail which makes
it almost a picture by itself.
A wonderful picture it is, glowing with colour
and palpitating with feeling, feeling which is
almost too strong for the framework of human
language and symbol in which it is enclosed. A
woman, robed in garments of imperial purple and
scarlet, " decked with gold and precious stones,"
and holding in her hand a golden cup. She is
a city, seated, like Nineveh and Babylon of old,
"upon many waters," and also like Rome, upon
seven hills ; and these seven hills again are the
seven heads of the beast, nay, it is on the beast
itself that she is carried, itself aglow with the
imperial colour, and "full of names of blasphemy."
Upon her forehead is a name written, " Mystery,
Babylon the great." The word " mystery " calls
attention to a symbol which requires, and has
received, an interpretation. "Babylon" is the
symbolic name of this city : her actual name is
Eome. The "many waters" represent in her
case the innumerable "peoples, and multitudes,
and nations, and tongues " over which Eome
holds sway. The seven hills, on which, accord
ing to tradition, she is planted, represent the
seven Emperors, on whose authority the city's
power is broadly based. "Five of them are

272 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
fallen," Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius,
and Nero; "one is," namely, Vespasian ; "the
other is not yet come." That is to say, the vision
belongs to the reign of Vespasian, the sixth
Emperor ; the reign of Titus his successor and
its brief duration are predicted in the phrase,,
"When he (the seventh) cometh, he must con
tinue (but) a little while." And once more a
single one of the heads appears to absorb and
concentrate to itself all the personality of the
monster, and we read of the beast that " was,
and is not, and is about to come up out of the
abyss," a reference to the dreaded return of
Nero, who had made Eome drunken with the
blood of the saints. He is one " of the seven " ;
and on his return he will be "the eighth."
Neither is he to return alone, but with "ten
kings," who are represented by the " ten horns."
They have " received no kingdom as yet," but are
to share the brief authority of the beast. They do
not, therefore, find their antitypes in any of the
Eoman rulers, but most probably represent the
Parthian rulers, the independent " satraps,"
the "kings from the sun-rising" (xvi. 12), at
whose head Nero was to return. They are to
hate the woman, and to make her desolate and
naked, and burn her utterly with fire ; but also
they are to make war against the Lamb, " and
the Lamb shall overcome them."

CHAPTEE XVII.-XIX. 10 * 273
There she sits, the imperial city which is the
concrete embodiment of the imperial power, full
of the " names of blasphemy," the imperial titles,
" Divine Augustus," not only borne by the
Emperor, but repeated a thousand times on
temples, statues, coins, so that the city reeked
with this offence. There she sits, arrayed in
the purple, glittering with the treasures amassed
through centuries of conquest and commerce, but
holding in her hand the cup full of abominations.
What these abominations were, we learn from
the pages of Tacitus, or the satires of Juvenal.
Eome had been for a couple of centuries a " sink
of the nations," a receptacle into which poured
the offscourings of many peoples, men and women
who came to minister to and prey upon, the vices
and sensuality of the populace, to teach them the
latest iniquities of the East. Eome, according
to Tacitus, was the city "where all kinds of
enormity and filthy shame meet together and
become fashionable." These were her "abomi
nations," and under Nero, whose reign had but
recently closed, she had drunk to intoxication of
the blood of God's saints. Again we turn to
Tacitus and read : " A vast multitude were con
victed, not so much of arson, as of hatred pf the
human race. And they were not only put to
death, but put to death with insult, in that they
were either dressed up in skins of beasts to perish
19

274 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
by the worrying of dogs, or else put on crosses to
be set on fire, and, when the daylight failed, to
be burnt as torches by night." These were the
martyrs of Jesus, and Eome, let loose upon them
by the half -crazy Emperor, was " drunken with
their blood."
That is the meaning of this vision. We have
spoken of it as a vision of Eome, though the
name here given to the woman is not Eome, but
" Babylon the great." Other interpretations have,
of course, been given, for example, that she repre
sents Papal (not Imperial) Eome, or, again, the
Church herself given over to iniquity. But,
whatever just applications and meanings we may
afterwards find to be addressed to either of these,
the first thing is to ascertain what the symbol
meant for the writer of this book and for his
earliest readers. And on this point there can be
no doubt. In these chapters, as so frequently
elsewhere, the Apostle is making use of a symbol
which had acquired a certain well-defined signifi
cance for God's people in the course of their
national history, a significance which had been
stamped upon their consciousness by the ancient
prophets of Israel.
A careful comparison of the parallel passages,
especially those in Isaiah and Jeremiah, will show
how much of the imagery of these chapters had
formed part of the characteristics of Babylon in

CHAPTEE XVII.-XIX. 10 275
the Old Testament ; and the ease with which the
various elements in this description are here
transferred from Babylon to Eome depends on
the identity of the spirit by which the two cities
are informed, the spirit of worldliness and of
hostility to God and His Church. This, the
essential characteristic of Babylon, has been well
seized by Dr. Adam Smith in his commentary on
Isaiah. " Throughout the extent of Bible history I
from Genesis to Eevelation, one city remains, |
which in fact and symbol is execrated as the/
enemy of God and the stronghold of evil. In
Genesis we are called to see its foundation, as
of the first city that wandering men established
and the quick ruin which fell upon its impious
builders. By the prophets we hear it cursed as
the oppressor of God's people, the temptress of
nations, full of cruelty and wantonness. And in •
the Book of Eevelation its character and curse
are transferred to Eome, and New Babylon stands
over against New Jerusalem. Babylon is the/
Atheist of the Old Testament, as she is the Anti- i
christ of the New. Her haughtiness and secure
pride are the fruit of an atheistic self-sufficiency, j
' I am, and there is none besides me. I shall !
not sit as a widow ; neither shall I know the loss ;
of children,' are the words which the prophet
puts upon the lips of the city. And the same j
spirit inspires the New Babylon of the Apocalypse. |

276 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
She saith in her heart : ' I sit a queen, and am
no widow, and shall in no wise see mourning.' "*
" Therefore in one day shall her plagues come,
death and mourning and famine" ; and the vision
of the woman in the seventeenth chapter is
followed by a description of her overthrow in the
eighteenth. Just as the picture of Eome in her
pride is painted with colours which are largely
borrowed from the pictures of Babylon drawn by
the prophets, so also this prophetic description of
her fall. It is full of reminiscences, in particular,
of Isaiah's great ode upon the fallen city.
"Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great." Like
a trumpet heralding the approaching day of
deliverance these words would fall upon the ear
of the Church writhing under the oppression
of blasphemous Imperialism. What inspiration
it demanded, what faith in the vindicating power
of the Divine righteousness, to proclaim with
such triumphant certainty the overthrow of earth's
mightiest power ! Even the splendid power and
dramatic scorn of the passage + in Isaiah find no
unworthy parallel in this passage where the Seer
depicts the ruin of Eome in its completeness and
its shame. He lets us appreciate the greatness
and the unexpectedness of the catastrophe, in-
* See G. A. Smith : Isaiah ii. p. 188 ff.
t It should by all means be read and studied in the forcible
and rhythmical translation given by Dr. G. A. Smith.

CHAPTER XVII.-XIX. 10 277
directly but not less effectively, by describing the
surprise and dismay which overwhelm her allies,
her customers, the purveyors of her luxury.
" The merchants of the earth weep and mourn
over her, for no man buyeth her merchandise any
more." He shows us the kings "standing afar
off for fear of her torment," lest they too should
be engulfed in that furnace — the merchants
recalling all the invoices they had made out, and
crushed with the thought that their great market
was at an end — all of them, down to the slave-
gatherers of the East, whose business had
collapsed. Even the sailors and the shipowners,
those who depended for their livelihood on Eome's
great carrying trade, are seen standing afar off,
wringing their hands in utter dismay. For
Eome, great Eome, has fallen. And to complete
the picture, still with the aid of materials supplied
by the Old Testament, St. John takes his readers
now into the heart of the city, where there is
darkness and silence ; business has stopped ;
music is dumb ; life has fled. What a picture it
is of destruction, sudden, and utter, and appalling !
And it is just the picture which comes into the
mind of one who walks down the echoing streets
of a place like Pompeii.
It is indeed difficult to fix the point of time at
which this prophecy found its fulfilment. It is
almost equally difficult to say at what point of

278 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
time since the fifth century its fulfilment has not
been one of the plain facts of history. Like all
God's judgments it came slowly, and it came
suddenly, both by evolution and by crisis. We
see it working in the slow decay of political and
moral force which set in from the beginning of
the second century, in the paralysing effects of
those social poisons which Eome had admitted
into her system, slavery and lust, avarice and
luxury, eating away the life of the people, until
the great name and power of Eome was but a
hollow shell. And then, at one blow, it collapsed.
The "barbarians," the untutored, unspoilt race
of the North and East, threw off their reverence
for the name of Eome, and sweeping all the
empire's defences before them, besieged, captured,
and possessed the capital itself. The capture and
sack of Eome by Alaric the Goth is probably the
most striking of the many forms in which this
prophecy has found its fulfilment — an event,
the echoes of which reverberated throughout the
known world, startling Jerome in bis cell at
Bethlehem, and rousing Augustine in his African
bishopric to write in his City of God what is not
only the epitaph of "Eome," but the greatest
vindication of God's hand in history.
But while we may see in this event the most
striking material fulfilment of the prophecy, we
must not forget to mark its slow fulfilment also

CHAPTEE XVII.-XIX. 10 279
in the overthrow of the blasphemous Emperor-
worship, in the victory of the Lamb over this
monstrous foe, and of the Church, which had the
spirit of the Lamb, over world-powers, which to all
human judgment were immeasurably its superior.
And then we are led to discover the message
of the vision for ourselves and for all time, the
inexpugnable righteousness of God and its assured
victory over all the might and seeming majesty
of wickedness and wrong. But specially the pro
phecy has reference to the forms in which wrong
and wickedness incarnate themselves in the life
of great cities. Professor Adam Smith's words
concerning Isaiah's prophecy on Babylon apply
with equal force here : " Do not let us choke our
interest in this prophecy, as so many students of
prophecy do, in the ruins and dust which were
its primary fulfilment. The shell of Babylon,'
the gorgeous city which rose by the banks of the |
Euphrates, has indeed sunk into heaps ; but
Babylon herself is not dead. Babylon never]
dies. To the conscience of Christ's Seer, this
mother of harlots, though dead and deserted in
the East, came to life again in the West. To the
city of Eome in his day John transferred, word
by word, the phrases of [Isaiah and Jeremiah]. J
Eome was Babylon so far as Eome was filled
with cruelty, with arrogance, with trust in riches,
with credulity in divination, with that waste of j

280 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
mental and moral power which Juvenal exposed
in her. But we are not to leave the matter even
here ; we are to use that freedom with John
which John uses with the prophets. We are
to pass by the particular fulfilment of his words,
in which he and his day were interested, because
it can only have a historical and secondary
interest to us in the face of other Babylons in
our own day, with which our consciences, if
they are quick, ought to be busy. Some honest
people continue to confine the references in the
Book of Eevelation to the city and Church of
Eome. It is quite true that John meant the
Eome of his day; it is quite true that many
features of his Babylon may be traced upon the
successor of the Eoman Empire, the Eoman
Church. But what is that to us with incarna
tions of the Babylonian spirit so much nearer
ourselves for infection and for danger than the
i Church of Eome can ever be ? " *
In order to quicken and educate our own
consciences in this matter, we cannot do better
than go back nearly fifteen centuries, and read
the passage in which Augustine described the
spirit of Babylon as he saw it incarnate in
Imperial Eome.
" The worshippers and admirers of these gods
* G. A Smith : Isaiah ii. p. 199.

CHAPTEE XVIL-XIX. 10 281
delight in imitating their scandalous iniquities,
and are nowise concerned that the Bepublic be
less depraved and licentious. Only let it remain
undefeated, they say, only let it flourish and
abound in resources : let it be glorious by its
victories, or still better, secure in peace ; and
what matters it to us ? This is our concern,
that every man be able to increase his wealth
so as to supply his daily prodigalities, and so
that the powerful may subject the weak for
their own purposes. Let the poor court the
rich for a living, and that under their protec
tion they may enjoy a sluggish tranquillity;
and let the rich abuse the poor as their dependents,
to minister to their pride. Let the people applaud
not those who protect their interests, but those
who provide them with pleasure. Let no severe
duty be commanded, no impurity forbidden.
Let kings estimate their prosperity, not by the
righteousness, but by the servility of their subjects.
Let the provinces stand loyal to the kings, not
as moral guides, but as lords of their possessions
and purveyors of their pleasures : not with a
hearty reverence, but a crooked and servile fear.
Let the laws take cognisance rather of the injury
done to another man's property than of that done
to one's own person. If a man be a nuisance
to his neighbour, or injure his property, family, or
person, let him be actionable; but in his own

282 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
affairs let every one with impunity do what he
will in company with his own family and with
those who willingly join him. Let there be a plenti
ful public supply of prostitutes for every one who
wishes to use them, but specially for those who
are too poor to keep one for their private use.
Let there be erected houses of the largest and
most ornate description : in these let there be
provided the most sumptuous banquets, where
every one who pleases may, by day or night,
play, drink, vomit, dissipate. Let there be
everywhere heard the rustling of dancers, the loud,
immodest laughter of the theatre ; let a suc
cession of the most cruel and the most voluptuous
pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement. If
such happiness is distasteful to any, let him be
branded as a public enemy : and if any attempt
to modify or put an end to it, let him be silenced,
banished, put an end to. Let these be reckoned
the true gods who procure for the people this
condition of things, and preserve it when once
possessed." *
How familiar it all sounds, and how modern !
It would not require a very minute study of our
public life for a single week to find nearly, if not
quite all of these ideas enunciated with dogmatic
certitude, and appealed to as the principles by
which a people should be guided. They are the
* Augustine, City of God, ii. 20.

CHAPTEE XVII.-XIX. 10 283
outcome of the temper of the world in its opposi
tion to God. And this is the temper of Babylon;
and who shall dare to say that it is not the
temper of much of our modern civilisation, the
temper which is fostered especially in our great
cities ?
It is impossible that God's people should not ,
feel the pressure and the pain of dwelling in an
atmosphere infected to any great extent with a'
temper of this kind. They would not be God's!
people if they did not. But let them welcome|
both the pressure and the pain. They are the
stigmata, the mark of the Lord Jesus, the weight
of the Cross. And if we ask, further, What saith
the Lord touching these things? here it is
written in His Word, and confirmed by history :
they are marked for destruction. "The Lamb
shall overcome them ; for he is King of kings
and Lord of lords." " Fallen, fallen, is Babylon
the great." And while every impulse of humanity,
of patriotism, of religion, combines with three
fold power to urge us to strive for the crushing,
and checking, and removal of these tempers of
Babylon within the body social or ecclesiastical to
which we may belong, and to pray without ceasing
that God -may deliver us from the unclean spirits
of cruelty, vanity of knowledge, vanity of wealth,
lust, and luxury, forgetfulness of God and idolatry
of self, — there is also that other counsel to be

284 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
remembered, " Come forth, my people, out of her,
that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that
ye receive not of her plagues," the summons
which is addressed to us individually to resist the
infection of the spirit of Babylon, to deny our
hearts to her lures, and steel them against her
threats, to know ourselves redeemed, purchased
to be a people of God's own possession, to know
it because, even in the midst of " a crooked and
perverse generation," we " live not unto ourselves,
but unto God." V
EPILOGUE TO THE VISION OF BABYLON
Rev. xix. 1-10
The twofold vision of Babylon and Babylon
fallen is followed by this short section, which
serves as an epilogue to chaps, xvii. and xviii., and
also as a prologue to chapters which follow, and
so forms the link by which these two sections
of the book are connected. Viewed as an epi
logue, it shows us the writer pursuing the method
with which we are already familiar by setting
over against the dark pictures of evil on earth
which have occupied the previous chapter this
glowing picture of joy and praising multitudes in
heaven. We are allowed to hear the burst of
praise which goes up from the heavenly hosts when

CHAPTEE XVH.-XIX. 10 285
that great judgment is accomplished. There is
no separation of interests between the Church
militant and the Church triumphant. The struggle
on earth is watched as with breathless interest by
the redeemed and by the angelic beings in heaven.
And to them it is given to acclaim with perfect
understanding the great deeds of God. " Salva
tion, and glory, and power belong to our God :
for true and righteous are his judgments ; for he
hath judged the great harlot." Once more, as in
the Hymn of Creation, the Hymn of Eedemption,
and after the sounding of the seventh trumpet,
"the four and twenty elders and the four living
creatures " fall down and worship God ; and the
voice of a great multitude proclaims, " Halle
lujah : for the Lord our God, the Almighty,
reigneth." These verses thus provide a pause in the
action, and the summing-up in striking form of
the events which have been recorded in the fore
going chapter : but also they link them with what
is to follow through the mention for the first time
of the great idea round which the later chapters
turn. " Let us rejoice, and be exceeding glad . . .
for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his
wife hath made herself ready." * The last verses
of this paragraph sound as if they were meant to
be the closing chords of the Apostle's work ; but
* See further, pp. 303 ff.

286 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
with this new and insistent note sounding through
them we are prepared to find that, although it
comes to a well-marked pause, it is only to move
forward again with a further upward sweep
towards the end.

SEVEN VISIONS CONCEBNItfG THE
END
Rev. xix. 11 — xxi. 1
The division of the Apocalypse into chapters has
been peculiarly unfortunate at this point. There
should certainly have been a break at the end of
the tenth verse, where one of the most strongly
marked pauses in the book occurs, and probably it
would be better to make the section which begins
here include the first verse at least of chap. xx.
The earlier verses of xix., though they include a
striking case of " anticipatory prediction," belong
to the prophecy on Babylon, and when we pass to
the eleventh verse, we find the first of a series of
seven visions, closely related to one another, and all
connected with various aspects of the End. All
of these begin with the simple phrase, "And I
saw," and all are bound by many subtle links
of connection, by community of subject and of
phraseology, with earlier sections of the book. If
the careful reader were to underline first those
phrases which have appeared in the previous
287

288 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
chapters and then those which are closely parallel
to the language of the Old Testament, he would
prepare for himself an instructive lesson.
The Apostle comes at last to describe his vision
of the End. Even this, the end of the last things,
was never far away for him ; the beginning of
them was close at hand, and the intervening
process of judgment was made up of "things
which must come to pass shortly," that is, swiftly
as well as soon. But his survey of these intervening
things is over : it is the final Judgment which
now appears, and the first stage of it is the final
conflict between Christ and His enemies. In the
first vision (vers. 11-16) we see the figure of
Christ leading forth the armies of heaven. It is
through the opened heaven that He is seen, and
probably on the plane of heaven that He wages
war. It is not with flesh and blood that He is to
engage, but with " principalities and powers,"
with " the rulers of the darkness of this world,"
with the spiritual forces which give support and
authority to the forces of evil upon earth. The
garment in which He is arrayed is one which
has been dipped in blood ; He recalls the figure
in Isaiah, coming " with dyed garments from
Bozrah." There the reference is to the blood of
His enemies : but here the stains upon the robe
are symbolic of that self-sacrifice in the power of
which He goes forth to conquer. Other features

CHAPTEE XIX. 11— XXI. 1 289
in the vision, especially those set forth in the
fifteenth verse, are attributes consecrated by long
tradition, as belonging to Messiah — " Out of his
mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that with it he
should smite the nations (Is. xi. 4) : and he shall
rule them with a rod of iron (Ps. ii. 9) : and he
treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the
wrath of Almighty God " (Is. Ixiii. 3). But the
vision has other features, for which no such
parallel can be found ; and they are the names
which belong to this majestic Eider. One of these
is " written," but known to no one but Himself.
It is useless, therefore, to speculate as to what
that name might be : but there can be no little
doubt as to its significance. It is not either of the
names which follow, but another, a secret " name
of power," representing the inmost Divine being
of Christ, in the possession of which He is " able
to save to the uttermost them that come unto God
by him." The second name is not written, but it is
known, and it is the same name by which John the
Evangelist describes Him who " was made flesh,
and dwelt among us." Thus both the names for
Christ which are most characteristic of the Fourth
Gospel, "the Lamb" and "the Word of God,"
are found also as names for Him in the Apoca
lypse, and there alone. This is not the place to
discuss either the meaning or the history of this
name ; but the application of it to Christ marks
20

290 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
the recognition of His supra-mundane and pre-
existent being, as One who was "in the be
ginning," and "with God." The third of these
names takes us yet a step further. It is open to
be read of all, inscribed upon the Eider's robe
and on His sword-girdle — " King of kings and
Lord of lords."- It is hardly necessary to point
out the significance of this name, but we must
weigh well what it means, that a description
which in the Old Testament and in later Jewish
literature was assigned to the Most High God, is
here applied to Jesus returning for judgment. It
would be impossible to conceive of a Jew applying
this title to the Messiah, or to any being at all,
except one whom he recognised as God : and
when we find one who certainly belonged to the
circle of Jesus' disciples, describing this as His
title, we have a measure of the revolution through
which his thought had passed, and also of the
impression which Jesus, by His life, character,
and teaching, by His death and resurrection, had
made.* Is it not the rank, and the divinity, thus
repeatedly, simply, and absolutely ascribed to
Jesus in the Apocalypse, which secures its hold
upon Christian hearts ?
The second vision (17-18) is that of an angel
"standing in the sun," as the centre of the
heavens from which a summons might be issued
* See pp. 24 ff.

CHAPTEE XIX. 11— XXI. 1 291
to all the world, and summoning " all the birds
that fly in mid-heaven" to gather to the feast
of the slain. It is closely parallel to a passage
in Ezekiel (xxxix. 17-20) : " Speak unto the birds
of every sort, and to every beast of the field.
Assemble yourselves and come ; gather your
selves on every side to my sacrifice." It recalls
also our Lord's saying, "Where the carcase is,
there shall the eagles be gathered together."
This summons to a field strewn with dead is
followed by a vision of the enemies of Christ
going forth to meet Him (l*jf-21). The day of
Armageddon has come, and the final struggle
between the armies of God and the embattled
hosts of His enemies. " The kings of the earth "
are those who owe their authority to the beast,
or those whom he has summoned to his aid
(xvii. 12-14). The vision contains no description
of the conflict, but passes straight to the issue ;
the beast is taken, and with him the "false
prophet," by whom is plainly to be understood
the second monster of chapter xvii., the priest
hood of the imperial cult, which wrought the
signs or pretended miracles, " wherewith he
deceived them that had received the mark of
the beast." These are taken and " cast into
the lake of fire." The destruction of the beast
by fire is found in Daniel (vii. 12) : " I tarried
even till the beast was slain, and his body

292 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
destroyed ; and he was given to be burned with
fire." , The figure of a "lake of fire that burneth
with brimstone " is found only in the Apocalypse;
elsewhere, in the New Testament we read of
the valley of " unquenchable fire," or " the
Gehenna of fire," as the doom of the wicked.
Ge-henna, or the Valley of Hinnom, had been
the scene of abominable sacrifices, when Ahaz
and Manasseh caused their children to pass
through the fire "to Moloch," and ever after
wards it was a place accursed, used for the
destruction of all manner of unclean things.
From the time of Isaiah onward (xxx. 33),
Tophet, "the high places" of which were in
the valley of the Son of Hinnom,* was a symbol
of the burning judgment of God, and used typically
as the scene of its execution.
In the fourth vision we see the evil wrought
by the beast and the kings in his train pursued
to its source in "the dragon, the old serpent,
which is the Devil and Satan." An angel is
seen with the key of "the abyss" and a great
chain in his hand ; with the chain he binds
Satan, and having cast him into the abyss, seals
and fastens it with the key, that there he may
be kept for a thousand years. A comparison
with verse 10 shows that "the abyss" is not
to be understood as the place of final punishment.
* Jer, vii. 31 ; xxxii. 15.

CHAPTEE XIX. 11— XXI. 1 293
The word meaning "bottomless," or "the bottom
less place," is connected with ideas anciently
current regarding the configuration of the earth
and the way it was supported. The earth being
conceived as a flat disc floating on "a firmament"
of waters, the "abyss" stood for the immeasurable
depths beneath the earth, to which there was
understood to be access by a shaft, capable of
being sealed.* The period of Satan's confinement
is no doubt to be understood as corresponding
with the period of the martyrs' reign "with
Christ" (xx. 4), and will best be considered in
connection with that.
The next vision is that of the First Eesurrection,
a resurrection which includes only those who have
died the martyr-death. It has been maintained,
to the contrary, that this resurrection includes
two classes, first, those "that have been beheaded
for the testimony of Jesus," and then those that
"worshipped not the beast," and that the second
of these classes represent men still living upon
the earth, who have successfully resisted the
temptations and the apostasy. But in the first
place, the Apostle says that he saw " the souls "
of both classes : evidently he thinks of both alike
* See Century Bible, note on Rev. ix. 1, and references.
there. There is an interesting parallel in the prayer of
Manasseh : " O Lord Almighty . . . who hast shut up the
deep (the abyss), and sealed it by thy terrible and glorious
name " (cit. Bousset).

294 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
as having passed into a disembodied state. And,
further, he says of both classes that "they lived";
and though it might be possible to understand by
that "they continued to live," if it referred to one
class alone, it is most improbable that the same
word is used of the two classes in the two con
trasted meanings, " they came to be alive," and
" they continued to live." And, thirdly, the next
sentence shows that the writer is thinking only
of the dead; "the rest of the dead (those that
had not died the martyr-death) lived not until
the thousand years should be finished." And the
closing sentence of the description, " This is the
first resurrection," taken in connection with the
opening one, "I saw the souls," seem to leave us
no alternative but to regard both classes referred
to within these limits as consisting of those who
had died and now were made alive.*
Few questions in which the Apocalypse of St.
John was involved have been longer or more
hotly debated than this of the millennial reign of
Christ, in which some of His followers are to
share. That this book was appealed to in
support of one view was one reason why it had
so much difficulty in obtaining recognition as
* It should be said that both Bousset and Bernhard Weiss
(die Apokalypse, p. 519) take the opposite view, holding that
those who have refused the mark of the beast and not been
martyred, do also partake in the millennial reign, though
not, of course, in the first resurrection.

CHAPTEE XIX. 11— XXI. 1 295
part of the New Testament canon. There are
a few other passages in the New Testament in
which allusion has been found to this expectation;
but here only is it distinctly formulated ; among
first-century writings it appears only in one other
document, the Epistle of Barnabas.* There are
three points to be studied in connection with this
millennial reign, the persons who are to share in
it, the duration which is assigned to it, and the
scene or sphere in which it is exercised, whether
in heaven or upon earth. With regard to the
first, the persons who are to "reign with Christ,"
we have stated, and given reason for, our opinion,
that they are those who have died a martyr-death
" for the testimony of Jesus." There is, however,
a strongly supported opinion, that they include
also those who, being still alive at the time of the
"first resurrection," have not received the mark
of the beast. On the second point, it is one of
the great services rendered by Dr. Milligan to
the understanding of this book that he stated
so firmly the conventional nature of the time-
reckoning, " a thousand years." " The funda
mental principle to be kept in view is this : that
the thousand years mentioned in this passage
express no period of time. They are not a
figure for the whole Christian era, now extending
to nearly nineteen hundred years. Nor do they
* Bartlett, Apostolic Age, p. 377.

296 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
denote a certain space of time, longer or shorter,
it may be, than the present dispensation, and to
be in the view of some preceded, in the view
of others followed, by the Second Advent of our
Lord. They embody an idea ; and that idea,
whether applied to the subjugation of Satan, or
to the triumph of the saints, is the idea of com
pleteness or perfection. Satan is bound for a
thousand years ; that is, he is completely bound.
The saints reign for a thousand years; that is,
they are introduced into a state of perfect and
glorious victory." Apart from the general prin
ciples which guide the selection of these numbers
in the Apocalypse, we may recognise here a
combination of the declaration in Psalm xc. that
unto God " a thousand years are as one day,"
with the narrative of Creation in Genesis, with
the seventh day marked off as a day of rest.
The time-reckoning here does not express the
duration, but the character of the period. As
to the third point, the sphere of the millennial
reign, the chief thing to be observed is, that there
is nothing to indicate whether it is on earth or
in heaven that " they reign with Christ." It
may be to the same class that the Apostle
assigns the " thrones " of which be speaks in
the beginning of the verse. In that case it is in
or from heaven that they rule. And, even if
that argument be precarious, the probabilities

CHAPTEE XIX. 11-XXI. 1 297
point in the same direction. We recall the pro
mise in the letter to Laodicea: "To him that
overcometh will I give to sit with me in my
throne : " a promise which is not to be under
stood as connected with a visible kingship of
Christ upon earth. There is certainly no neces
sity, therefore, to create difficulties of another
kind, by supposing that this vision of the future
involves a "double return" of Christ to the
earth. There is nothing in the passage to
support that suggestion." *
"Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the
first resurrection." For that resurrection is not
followed by any judgment, there being no neces
sity for it, and therefore " over these " the second
death can have no power. It was one of the
great objects of the Apostolic work to brace
the courage of the Christians in Asia to meet
the coming persecution with a heroism that
despised death, and to that end he sets before
them the glory of those who sealed their testi
mony with their life-blood, and the hope of this
special privilege that they should be partakers in
a " first resurrection," and in the reign of Christ,
anterior to the final Judgment.
* " That they reigned with Christ, by no means involves
that the returning Christ remains on earth : it is also pos
sible for Him to exercise His Messianic sovereignty, through
which He restores the perfect rule of God on earth, from the
throne of God." B. Weiss, Apocalypse, ad loc.

298 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
In the following verses (7, 8) St. John appears
to incorporate a fragment of earlier prophecy.
The sudden transition from the narrative descrip
tive of a vision to the prophetic future, the
reference to "Gog and Magog" as symbols of a
world hostile to the people of God, and the
allusions to Jerusalem as the object of their
attack, all point in this direction. Gog and
Magog, which in Ezekiel (xxxviii.-xxxix.) stand
apparently for a prince and the land over which
he rules, are here conceived as two peoples, or
the people of the earth regarded as divided intp
two ; they come up in great hordes to attack
"the beloved city," "the camp of the saints,"*
being moved thereto by the instigation of Satan,.
loosed, we are not told how, from "his prison."
But they are destroyed by fire " out of heaven,"
and the devil " which deceived them " is cast into
the lake of fire.
The sixth vision (verses 11-15), brief as it is,
contains all that the Eevelation has to say about
the Last Judgment, that great assize which is
to follow the resurrection. There is no more
impressive picture even in this book where such
pictures abound. It says so little, and yet all is
* The phrase " the camp of the saints " probably referred
in the first instance to Israel encamped in the wilderness ;
cf. Deut. xxiii. 14, "thy camp shall be holy." The word is
the same which is found in Heb. xiii. 13, "without the
camp."

CHAPTEE XIX. 11— XXI. 1 299
said. The throne dazzling with the whiteness of
the Divine purity ; the Judge, reverently indicated,
but not named ; the whole material fabric of the
universe gone, fled, so that there are not even
rocks which men may call upon to fall on them ;
"the dead, the great and the small, standing
before the throne," and, besides, nothing but the
books in which their works are written, and that
other book, the Book of Life. It may be asked,
Who are these dead? And the answer has been
given that they are the wicked alone, that this
judgment is a judgment only for condemnation.
On the theory supported above, that those who
partake in the first resurrection are the martyrs
only, such an understanding of this passage would
be hardly possible. But, apart from that, it seems
decidedly improbable. In the first place, the
Apostle has told us (xx. 5), " the rest of the dead
lived not " at the first resurrection, and some
place must be found in his vision of the future
for the resurrection of those who are not included
in either of the two classes described in verse 4,
for those who did not have the opportunity of
testifying either in life or in death by their
resistance to the beast. The particular test
applied to these was far from being one applied
to all humanity. And it would seem that we
must either narrow the scope of this vision to
include only those wicked who had met this tejst

300 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
and failed, or extend it to include the good and
bad alike. Again, this is the only representation
of the final Judgment which appears to be con
sistent with what other passages in the New
Testament would lead us to expect. In what is
the closest parallel to this passage which we have
we are told by Christ Himself that " all nations "
shall be gathered before the Son of man, and then
"he shall separate them one from another as a
shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats." *
And this, indeed, is the only view which is
suggested by the wording of this passage, one
which it would require very strong argument to
disturb. The phrase " the small and the great,"
which is of frequent occurrence in the Apocalypse,
is a synonym for " all men " (except where it is
expressly limited — xi. 18). And no limitation is
really suggested by verse 13 : " The sea gave up
the dead which were in it ; and death and Hades
gave up the dead which were in them." On the
contrary, these three seem intended to exhaust
the places where the dead are to be found; the
mention of the sea emphasises the Apostle's
desire to convey the universal character of this
resurrection and the subsequent judgment. Not
even those are forgotten whose bodies man has
not been able to find. Neither can it be effec-
* Matt. xxv. 31 f. : cf. Acts xvii. 31 ; Rom. xiv. 10 ; 2 Cor.
v. 10.

CHAPTEE XIX. 11— XXI. 1 301
tively maintained that " the books" contain only
the record of evil deeds, and of the evil deeds of
the wicked. The idea of books containing a
record of human action can be traced back to
Daniel vii. 10: " The judgment was set, and the
books were opened " ; * and it is nowhere indicated
that only one class of deeds is recorded, or the
deeds of only one class of men.
"We must all appear before the judgment-seat
of Christ." That is the fact whereof St. John
has vision here. Not even those are exempt
whose names are written in " the book of life."
Judged according to their works alone, it might
be that even " the righteous scarcely be saved."
Even those who build on the true foundation may
have built with "wood, hay, stubble," as well as
with " gold, silver, precious stones." And even
their work must be made manifest " when the
day shall declare it." "The fire shall try every
man's work of what sort it is." And yet, though
a man's work be destroyed, " he himself shall be
saved; yet so as by fire." t What St. Paul sets
before us under one figure, St. John does under
another. The books are opened wherein is con
tained the record of what a man has done, good
and bad. The best, the purest of men might
* See Driver's note on the passage, and cf. Psa. lvi. 8 ;
Isaiah lxv. 6.
t 1 Pet. iv. 17-18 ; 1 Cor. iii. 11-15.

302 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
well shrink before such a prospect. Even were
we to expect that a balance should be struck, are
there many of us who would stand ? But there
is another book, the Lamb's Book of Life, the
citizen-roll of the New Jerusalem. And it is the
very glory of our Gospel that those who have
humbly trusted in Christ as their Saviour may
appeal from the record of their own works even
as His professed disciples, to the record that they
are His. "Not by works of righteousness which
we have done, but according to his mercy, he
saved us." The letter to the Church in Sardis
gives warning of the possibility that a man may
so reject or forget his Saviour as to have his
name " blotted out of the book of life." In such
a case the appeal would be from a dark record to
an erasure yet more sad. It is not because of the
witness of "the books," but because his name is
absent from " the book," that according to this
vision a man suffers the last penalty of the second
death. "Eejoice," said Jesus to His disciples,
"rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
For when the books are opened, the Book of Life
is opened too. And still it is " according to their
works " that men are judged ; for " this is the
will of God, that ye believe on him whom he
hath sent."

JEEUSALEM FEOM ABOVE
Rev. xxi.-xxii. 5
This is the last of the visions seen by St. John
in Patmos and recorded in this book, the vision
of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, "prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband." It is not
the first time that allusion has been made to this
symbolic figure and this symbolic marriage. In the
burst of praise which follows on the judgment of
Babylon (xix. 1-10) this is one of the notes we hear,
one which specially catches the ear alike because
of its novelty and of the beauty of its symbolism.
"Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad ... for
the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife
hath made herself ready." But between that
anticipatory announcement and this detailed
account of the bride-city much has intervened —
the description of the final Judgment, the return
of Christ, the destruction of the monster, the
Eesurrection in its two stages, the judgment of
men according to their works, and the destruc
tion of Hades and even of Death itself. In a
303

304 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
word, ere this vision is described by John in all its
splendour the visions of Judgment are complete ;
it only remains to describe "the things that God
hath prepared for them that love him."
Now these are things concerning which St.
Paul has told us that " eye hath not seen, neither
hath ear heard them, neither have they entered
into the heart of man to conceive."
And we mark at once a broad distinction
between the way in which this book depicts
the judgments which are to fall on earth and
its inhabitants, and the way in which it describes
the bliss which is to be the portion of God's own
people in heaven. We have found that the judg
ments are depicted in terms of events which had
actually occurred in history, which do occur in
human experience; war civil and international,
famine, plague, and pestilence, earthquake and
eclipse, the poisoning of wells and devastation
by locusts — these are the things, and this is the
kind of thing, which supplies the Apostle with
material for his description of judgment. Each
of them is heightened in effect by the complete
ness of the subsequent ruin, by the wide area of
the world's surface which is affected, or, it may
be, by being traced to a hellish origin, and being
revealed as the visible instrument of diabolic
powers ; but in their intrinsic character these
judgments are all of them such things as men

CHAPTEE XXI.-XXII. 5 305
know either by their own experience or by the
report of others.
When we turn from these to the description of
the joys and glories of heaven, thd first thing we
are struck with is the omission of nearly every
thing corresponding to the experience of enjoy
ment on earth. It is true, the city is described in
terms of great splendour ; its foundations are all
manner of precious stones, its gates of pearl, its
streets of gold, and the radiance which streams
from it as the radiance of the diamond ; but this
is a description of the glory which irradiates it,
as "having the glory of God." Of positive bliss
for those that dwell in this heavenly city the only
suggestion which is connected with the experience
of men as men upon earth is found in " the tree
of life, which bare all manner of fruit, and yielded
her fruit every month." And that is introduced
not as ministering to the appetite and sensuous
enjoyment of those who dwell in the city, but as
marking the removal of the previous curse, the
restoration of the first condition of life in the
Garden of Eden, before man was condemned to
"eat bread in the sweat of his face." All the
other features of the heavenly condition which
are noted by John are either negative (no more
sea, no more night, no more death, no more
curse) or spiritual and religious (" the tabernacle
of God is with men": "I will give unto him
21

306 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life
freely" : " the Lord God giveth them light, and
they shall reign for ever and ever "). These are
the positive characteristics of the life of the city
on which the Apostle lays all the emphasis ; and
they are things which have simply no meaning
for the non-religious man.
There is, therefore, a striking and important
contrast between the Christian anticipation of
heaven as here portrayed and the non-Christian
pictures of Paradise. And this is true not only
of the pictures painted by the fancy of the Greeks,
or by the ingenuity of Mohammed, but also of
those which would be most familiar to St. John,
the pictures of Paradise which are found in the
later Jewish literature. Without being sensual
in the evil significance of the word, as are some
of the other extra-Biblical anticipations, those of
the Jewish Apocalypses are largely, if not mainly,
sensuous ; that is to say, they delight to repre
sent the righteous as enjoying in Paradise the
pleasures of physical life which may have been
denied to them on earth. The delights of heaven
are painted in very earthly colours, and are set
forth as consisting largely in the gratification of
physical desire. The contrast in this Christian
expectation of the future is all the more striking
because as regards the glories of the city the
description in our Apocalypse has many parallels

CHAPTEE XXI.-XXII. 5 307
in the Jewish literature. In many details it
follows very closely Ezekiel's vision of the ideal
city ; * but it omits all of one side of what was
the popular religious anticipation among Jews of
the first century. The omission must have been
conscious, if not deliberate. In other words,
Christian thought and hope concerning the
nature of the heavenly bliss do move on a
higher plane ; and this Apostle also had learned
and comprehended the truth enunciated by St.
Paul, "flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God."
St. John sets forth the heavenly habitation of
God's people as a city. That is the first main
feature in bis vision ; and it is not affected by the
fact that the description he gives of the city is
obviously an ideal one, one as far removed from
possibility as from reality. This is seen not only
in the area which the city is said to cover, thirteen
hundred miles in length by thirteen hundred miles
in breadth, but in the further statement that the
height of it is equal to its length and breadth.
When we realise that the city of John's vision
is a cube in shape, and one which is thirteen
hundred miles high, it becomes plain that there
is, as Dr. Milligan says, an intentional " absence
of verisimilitude " in the description. The dimen
sions of the city, like its shape and everything
* Ezek. xl. ff.

308 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
that belongs to it, are beyond the compass of
human experience. Unimaginable vastness and
unimaginable glpry, these are the outward
characteristics which the Apostle's language
should impress upon our minds. But though
its outward form and splendour are such as
" eye hath not seen," such as it profits not to
attempt to realise in detail, it has certain inward
characteristics negative and positive ; and it is on
these that our attention should be fixed.
And, first, it is a city in all the moral sig
nificance of that idea. A city is first the
ambition and then the despair of man. The
great lesson of this vision is that it remains the
ideal of God. Babylon in all its incarnations,
from the first on the Euphrates, through that
set upon the Tiber, to those we know on the
Seine or on the Thames, stands for the human
instinct of fellowship and mutual co-operation,
but also for the reiterated human experience that
a great city is a great evil. In vain do we try
to stem the steady tide of population setting
from the country to town. In vain do we
deplore the growth of these enormous communi
ties. " Back to the land " is a kind of despairing
watchword, for the simple reason that so few
wish to go. The instinct of the race is against
it. The city is the great loadstone ; men are
proud of a city; they name themselves by its

CHAPTEE XXI.-XXII. 5 309
name; they sun themselves in its power and
splendour. And yet in the hands of men the
city has become a monster which devours its
children. We hardly dare to look at the spoil-
heaps of outworn humanity out of which its
wealth has been extracted, at the misery and
vice on the top of which most of its comfort and
splendour rests. It contains great areas in which
it would be a kind of torture for men of tender
heart and refined feeling to be compelled to dwell.
And all our effort, legislative, philanthropic, and
religious, seems to fail piteously in the attempt to
meet the evils inseparably connected with a great
city. Man wrestles despairingly with the monster
he has called into being. And God " prepares for
them a city." Here is an amazing antinomy,
and an eloquent one ; an instinct practically
universal, practically ineradicable ; an experience
of moral and social failure, repeated from age to
age, from country to country, from one civilisa
tion to another ; a kind of cry from all who care
for the best life of their fellow-men, " God help
us to keep our cities small " ; and yet the ideal life
which God sets before us as the life of heaven is
the life of a city, with streets, and walls, and gates,
and " boys and girls playing in the streets thereof."
Fpr the instinct to seek a common life, to
form a complicated web of mutual sympathy and
dependence, which is represented by a city, is

310 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
after all a true one, and the opportunity for its
exercise essential alike to man's true happiness
and to the full development of his powers. "It
is not good for man to be alone " ; neither is it
good for a family to be alone, nor yet for a group
of families ; and this vision shows us " the far-off
Divine event " as realised in the corporate life of
humanity, in a society so vast that none of God's
children is left out of it, and yet so compact that
it can best be described as the society of those
who dwell in one city.
The existence of such a society and its heavenly
character are made possible by the other attributes
of the city which is described by John, and, first,
by those which may be called its negative attri
butes. Human thought and human language
alike fail in the attempt to depict it as it is, but
full success attends the effort to show what it is
not. It is a city without pain, without darkness,
without death. These great shadows, which throw
their gruesome shapes across every city man has
known, all the blacker for the sunshine of the
happiness that edges them, these grim shadows
are no more. " There shall be no night there,"
no waning of the power and glory of the day, no
coming of that dark " wherein the beasts of the
forest do creep forth," when —
" The searching eye of heaven is hid,
And thieves and robbers range abroad unseen,
In murder and in outrage."

CHAPTEE XXI.-XXII. 5 311
But, in a sense yet more to be accounted of, there
is no darkness falling on the human mind, no
cold clutch of fear upon the heart round which the
night of sorrow piles her shrouds, no ignorance,
benumbing one set of faculties and galvanising
another into the spurious activities of superstition
and dread of the unseen. God is the light of that
city, and every shadow of doubt, and ignorance,
and fear has passed away.
There shall be "no pain." If only we knew
some spot of earth, some island of the blest, of
which it could be said, " There pain is impos
sible," how we should strain and struggle, not
to get thither ourselves, but to send thither this
one or that one whom we love. What competi
tion there would be to be the sender, not the
sent ! And here is the place, not on earth, but
beyond the narrow stream of death, where there
is no pain, no grief, no heartbreak, no wounding
of hearts made tender by their affection. If we
knew of such a place we should say it was
heaven ; and here it is, and it is heaven, the
place which Christ has gone to prepare for His
own. No night, no pain, and no death. If death be
the covered way which leads to life like that, we
feel almost as though we should miss it from the
scheme of things. And when we do realise, as
St. John helps us to do, what heaven is, we can

312 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
cry triumphantly, with St. Paul, " 0 death, where
is thy sting?" We can sing with St. Francis,
" Blessed be Thou, my Lord, for our dear sister,
death." But, albeit death has lost its sting for
those who " know whom they have believed,"
it remains a very bitter thing for those who are
" left." So long as human hearts are bound up
in the bundle of life together by ties of affection
and love, so long as human lives lean upon one
another for support and sympathy, so long must
death remain an enemy of human happiness ;
and few indeed must be the hearts which do not
respond, as with a great sigh of relief, to this
promise. Whatever human ties are of such a
character that they can be re-knit yonder, may
be entered into here, and enjoyed without fear
of " the abhorred shears." Man's last enemy is
slain. Christ "hath abolished death, and brought
life and immortality to light."
There are still two other features of this
heavenly city which are also negative in cha
racter, but distinct from those which have gone
before : there is no curse, and there is no temple.
Ignorance, pain, and death have gone, because
the curse, the cause of them, is finally lifted off
from those who call this city home. For " curse"
stands for sin in its effects on human life, for sin
as clouding and perverting the knowledge of God,
as sowing in man's constitution the seeds of

CHAPTEE XXI.-XXII. 5 313
sickness and of pain, as introducing into human
society the divisive forces of selfishness and
cruelty, as giving to death its sting. Even the
vision of the restored Jerusalem seen by Isaiah
had to find a place for " sinners of a hundred
years old," on whom even there a curse rested. *
But this heavenly city of the Apocalypse knows
no more curse. The second chapter in our Bible
shows us man before the curse fell ; this, the last
chapter but one, shows us his condition when the
curse has been utterly removed. And all that
lies between shows us God at work — to remove
the curse.
And while the curse still stood — indeed, so long
as it stands — there was, and is, a temple in the
city of God; because, so long a temple is
necessary. Sin has blighted the whole spiritual
landscape as with a blast of fire. It has made
man so blind to God's presence that it seems as
though He were banished from the world of His
own making. And even those who heard His
voice, as though of One far off, and groped after
Him in the darkness, seemed to grope in vain.
And, not without Divine instigation, they made
a temple, a place cut off and separate, wherein
they might better realise His presence, and more
clearly hear His voice. They were to make a
tabernacle in the wilderness,, a temple in the
* Isa. lxv. 20.

314 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
Holy City. They were to make a temple in their
time, one day in seven cut off and consecrated to
the service of God. They were to make a temple
in their hearts, to have part at least of their life
and hope walled in and consecrated, that it might
not be trampled and polluted by the tumultuous
herds of worldly thoughts and ambitions. They
were to " sanctify the Lord God in their hearts."
And so long as men dwell here under the con
ditions of earthly life, they cannot do without
these temples, the place, the time, the thoughts
marked off for God, the place where we learn the
secret of realising His presence in life, the time
when we claim and proclaim His fellowship with
ourselves, our fellowship with Him, the thoughts
which, of set purpose, we direct toward the mani
festation of His love in Christ, and of His will in
duty. But there is no temple there ; for the
simple reason that none is needed. That which
now has to be delimited from the world, and set
apart for God — yes, and held with determina
tion and force of will against invading hosts —
has there expanded to cover the whole area
of human experience and activity. God's pre
sence has no longer to be sought ; it is known ;
it is felt, universal and all-pervading as the
light of day. " The tabernacle of God is with
men." The direct and conscious service of
God is not limited to any portion of time, of

CHAPTEE XXI.-XXII. 5 315
life, or of thought; to be is to serve Him, and
to live is to worship. Therefore, there is no
temple there.
These words will soon be used, if they are not,
in a sense, true already, of that famous Temple
of Philae in Upper Egypt. There it has stood for
two millenniums and more, visited from genera
tion to generation by men who came to worship
the gods to whom they supposed that the fertility
of Egypt was due. Now it is enisled and half
submerged in the vast lake of Assouan, which
secures the perennial flow of life-giving waters
to the land below. So there is no temple
in heaven, because that of which it was the
symbol has taken its place. " The taber
nacle of God is with men," and "the river of
the water of life " flows through " the streets
thereof." Two other features mark the heavenly city, and
they are of a positive kind. " His servants shall
serve him." There is a distinction between the
two words in the Greek, which is not readily repro
duced in English. "His bond-servants shall render
him the service of ministry." The inhabitants of
the city " see his face," and serve Him with
unclouded vision and with undivided love. This
opens what is perhaps the most satisfying of all
the avenues of vision into the heavenly state. It
assures us, first of all, of continuance. Death

316 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
is not an end of the activities and energies which
have been consecrated to God. It is not the
great breaking off it seems to us who stand
around, and see its work, but the setting free of
old powers for new developments. If one looks
back it seems the end of a career ; if forward, it
seems a career's beginning : in reality it is neither,
but an incident of continuous life. Those qualities
which we recognise to inhere particularly in the
soul or spirit of man attend him to the world
beyond. " He that has been righteous, shall be
righteous still; he that has been holy, shall be
holy still." And so with other qualities of
man's inmost nature — love, justice, generosity,
whatever he has had here, wherewith he can
claim or offer to serve God — remains part of his
personality, and finds its function in the life to
come. Only to all such qualities and powers
is now given a heightened efficiency. All the
limitations disappear by which they have been
cabined and confined ; the physical limitations,
weakness, sickness, want of vitality, which
checked the energies of the soul ; the social limi
tations, want of opportunity, hindrances arising
from human relationship ; the mental limitations
resulting in mistakes, errors, misconceptions ; and,
above all, the spiritual limitations, the cramping,
debilitating influence of sin and sinful habit ; all
these disappear:

CHAPTEE XXI.-XXII. 5 317
" Fretless and free,
Soul, clap thy pinion ;
Earth have dominion,
Body, o'er thee ! "
And thus the promise of the hfe to come in
volves not only continuity, but also completion.
Stagnation is as incompatible with the life that
is lived in the heavenly city as it is with true
hfe here. To represent heaven as a place qf rest
merely is to present it as a place where men
would be less truly men than before. Peace and
fellowship with God do not exclude activity;
rather must they stimulate it.
" I count that heaven itself
Is only work to surer issues."
Heaven means the bringing to maturity and
perfection of those powers and energies which are
only partially developed here. " His servants
shall do him service " : in love without a grain of
selfishness, in faith without a spasm of doubt, in
knowledge without a shadow of uncertainty. All
" those instincts immature," all " those purposes
unsure," which we recognise in ourselves or have
guessed in others, find their full development,
their completion, when " that which is in part is
done away." "What here is faithfully begun
Shall be completed, not undone."

318 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
And the same element in the vision gives us
the final note pf the heavenly life, Content. " They
see his face." They are satisfied. That may
seem at first sight but a feeble presentation of
the joy and the glories of life in heaven ; but it
contains, perhaps expresses, them all. To have a
craving for love which only God can satisfy, and
yet to be content ; to have a desire for holiness
not less than the holiness of God, and yet to be
content; to have the infinite capacities of an
eternal spirit set free from the trammels of earth
and the body of earth, and yet to be content ; to
look back and see the meaning of it all ; to look
forward and know that time and change, grief
and sin, are for ever left behind — is not that a
heaven, one worth waiting for, one worth living
for ? "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy
likeness," said the Psalmist; and when we
ponder his words, we see that human language
can express no higher bliss : "I shall be
satisfied." These, then, are the internal characteristics
which mark the life of " the New Jerusalem." No
pain, no darkness, no death, no curse. Continuity
and completion of all in man that is truly akin
to God, and, therewith, content. Beside these,
outward glories and splendours, however great,
sink into insignificance. And these characterise
the life of redeemed men who live in a city. By

CHAPTEE XXI.-XXII. 5 319
that figure is disclosed their relation to one
another. It is a common life of individuals, who
retain their individuality, but are associated
together by common interests for ends which they
pursue in common. But there is yet another
aspect of this common life. The Apostle's store
of images is not yet exhausted. One remains,
which sets forth the relation of the whole to God.
This heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, is at the
same time " the bride, the Lamb's wife." Here
the great Christian idea of the Church in its
absolute unity finds its culmination, we may say
its transfiguration. The individual redeemed
who compose the multitude that no man can
number, who as dwellers in the city still preserve
their individualities, are now regarded in their
oneness in .Christ, as forming but one body, one
personality, and that personality is the Bride of
Christ. Far back in Hebrew history God had revealed
His relation to His own people under figures drawn
from human love and the bond of marriage. It
was in this form that the great revelation centred
itself which came to Hosea through the tragedy
of his own home : " I will betroth thee unto me
for ever: yea, I will betroth thee unto me in
righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving
kindness, and in mercies." * Later prophets find
* Hos. ii. 19.

320 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
in the same thought the deepest interpretation
of the undeserved mercies of God. " Thy Maker
is thine husband ; the Lord of hosts is his name." *
"As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so
shall thy God rejoice over thee." t And here
once more the place which in the Old Testament
is occupied by God, is offered with entire simplicity
and unconsciousness of any derogation to the
Divine dignity, to the Lamb, Christ. The Church
is His bride. Neither is this thought confined
to St. John or to the Apocalypse. It was familiar
to St. Paul, and the way he employs it shows that
he could count on its being familiar to the
Christians to whom he wrote. For he appeals to
it as an acknowledged fact, from which he may
deduce practical counsel for those who stand in
the human relationship, its type. "Husbands,
love your wives, even as Christ also loved the
church . . . that be might present it to himself
a glorious church." \ This, which St. Paul calls
" a great mystery," meaning a deep and wondrous
thing now revealed, is what is presented to St.
John in vision form. The ideal of human
marriage is a type of the relation between Christ
and His people in which both find perfect self-
realisation, perfect satisfaction. And so St. John
* Is. liv. 5.
t Is. lxii. 5 ; cf. Ezek. xvi. 6-16.
I Eph. v. 25-27.

CHAPTEE XXI.-XXII. 5 321
beholds the consummation of redemption, the
final completion of the work of Christ, in " the
marriage supper of the Lamb," when He " presents
to himself" the Church for which He gave
Himself, and which He has sanctified and
cleansed, "as a bride adorned for her husband."

22

THE EPILOGUE
Rev. xxii. 8-21
The vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, the felicity
of " just men made perfect," is the culminating
point in the Eevelation to and through John.
When that has been described, nothing remains
but to bring his book to a close, as he does in
these last fourteen verses. Of necessity, these
verses correspond to a musical diminuendo, down
which the exalted ecstasy sinks rapidly to rest,
reaching again the level of daily life, and daily
waiting for the end.
"I John am he that heard and saw these
things." In these words we hear again the note
of personal experience which was struck in the
first chapter, but also the notes of wonder that to
him so great a privilege had been granted, and of
assurance that, for all the wonder, it was true.
Thus we detect subtle harmonies of mind with
the declaration with which the first' Epistle of
John commences : " That which we have seen
and heard, declare we unto, you." The Apostle
has " come to himself," and like David in Brown-

CHAPTEE XXII. 8-21 323
ing's poem, "can scarce dare believe in what
marvels but now he took part." He remembers
that, overwhelmed with the majesty and beauty
of the things he saw, he flung himself at the feet
of the angel who had showed them to him, only
to receive new cause for wonder in the declaration
that he and his collocutor are of equal standing in
the sight of God. "I am no more than thou,"
says the angel in effect ; " I, and thou, and thy
brethren the prophets, and those who keep the
words of this book, are all but fellow-servants."
And so, " I John, your brother and fellow-partaker
in the tribulation, and kingdom, and patience,
that are in Christ, have learnt this, that I and
you are fellow-servants with the angels. Above
us there is only God." *
From this point onwards the angel is silent;
and it is the words of Christ Himself that the
Apostle records. And we find in these words
many echoes of what he has already heard from
the same lips. It is as though be leant his ear
from afar to that voice which was " as the voice of
many waters," and caught now only the stronger
* It is the opinion of Bousset (Offenbarung, p. 493) that,
in the rejection by the angel of John's offer to worship him,
we have the Apostle's protest, twice repeated (cf. xix. 10),
against the worship of angels, which, not unknown in later
Judaism, was beginning to invade the Christian Church,
possibly along the channel of Jewish Christianity. Compare
Col. ii. 18.

324 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
notes of its rhythmical beat. " Behold, -I come
quickly"; "I am Alpha and Omega"; "I am
the root and offspring of David " ; " He that is
athirst, let him come " ; "I come quickly." He
seems to be recording not so much what he heard
when the visions were ended, as the great key
sentences of our Lord's communications to him,
the words of Christ on which he built the fabric
of his faith and the stronghold of his patience.
But in the midst of these utterances, already
familiar in his ear and ours, he hears the com
mand : " Seal not up the words of the prophecy of
this book"; and the reason is assigned, namely,
that " the time is at hand." It is impossible not
to feel that a contrast is here intended with the
instructions given once and again to Daniel regard
ing his visions. " Thou, 0 Daniel, shut up the
words, and seal the book, even to the time of the
end." " The vision is true ; but shut thou up the
vision, for it belongeth to many days to come." *
For Daniel the end was still many days and years \
away, and the closed record of his vision was to j
be kept as it were in proof of the Divine Provi- '
dence which guided events to their destined issue :
for John the end seemed very near, and the
book of his vision was to be left open, that men
might draw comfort and encouragement from
its contents during the storms of judgment.
* Dan. xii. 4 ; viii. 26 ; cf. xii. 9.

CHAPTEE XXII. 8-21 325
This immediately impending end gives also the
explanation of the following verse : " He that is
unjust, let him be unjust still; ... he that is
holy, let him be holy still." That is to say, the
judgment is so near that men's characters, and so
their destinies, are practically fixed ; there is no
longer fear of fleck or stain on the holiness of
the holy, no longer hope of retrieval for those
who have chosen to be unjust, impure. The
" day of salvation " is passed ; the choice is made,
and the door is shut.
It may be that what St. John and the primi
tive Church as a whole anticipated as the end,
proved, when it came, to be only an end; the
end indeed for those on whom the judgment fell,
but only one of the many stages by which the end
draws near. And it would be unwise indeed
were we to allow questions about what they
thought, about the meaning of the end, or the
form and date of its arrival, to distract our atten
tion from the really important thing, namely,
that, come the end how it may, in the crash
of falling worlds, or with the whisper, "He is
gone," — this is what it means : he that is holy,
shall remain holy; he that is impure, shall
remain impure. " Let such men rest
Content with what they judged the best ;
Let the unjust usurp at will ;
The filthy shall be filthy still ;

326 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
Miser, there waits the gold for thee!
Hater, indulge thine enmity !
And thou, whose heaven self-ordained
Was to enjoy earth unrestrained,
Do it. Take thy world ! Expend
Eternity upon its shows,
Flung to thee freely as a rose
Out of a summer's opulence
Over the Eden-barrier, whence
Thou art excluded. Knock in vain.''
After all, heaven is not a place, though we
needs must think of it as such ; heaven is a
condition localised. The condition is that of
just men made perfect, that is, of men who have
loved justice, have hungered and thirsted after
righteousness, have been conscious of coming
short, at every turn, of the righteousness of God,
and now — are satisfied. It is the condition of
men who have striven with all too imperfect
success to keep their garments "unspotted from
the world," and now "walk with Christ in
white," beyond the reach of stain from selfish
ness or sin. The end — for them the hoped-for.
end — is the moment when the fruits of the
Spirit in themselves are made perfect and made
permanent. Neither is hell a place, though we think of it
as such. It also is a condition localised, the
condition of having chosen evil and having the
choice made permanent, sated lust compelled

CHAPTEE XXII. 8-21 327
to feed for ever on the ashes of dead passion,
the Circe-rout of God-denying revelry fixed down
as the unevadable routine of eternity.
Does even the picture of the New Jerusalem
give a more soul -satisfying account of heaven
than this ? Does art or poetry, human eloquence
or even the Word of God in any other place, give
a picture of the condition of those who reject God
so appalling as this? And given the condition,
chosen by the two classes of men respectively,
the issue is inevitable. "Myself am hell," if
I have said to evil, " Be thou my god."
It may be doubted whether any man would
consciously commit sin against himself or against
his neighbour, if he did not have somewhere
about him the idea that he could stop when he
thought fit, that he knew when to draw the line,
that he would be able to pull up before he had
gone too far. And it is just this possibility of
stopping, this prudential limitation, which is
finally swept away by judgment when it comes.
And that judgment falls on some one every hour.
It falls on sin of every kind. The man who has
chosen idleness will at last be unable to rise to
any effort of labour; the selfish will grow in
selfishness till the voices that call for his sym
pathy and help fail to reach his ear, and the man
who has deliberately turned away from God will
seek Him in the day of need, and find— nothing.

328 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
It is from such disastrous ending to life that
God offers to men a way of escape in offering
a means by which they may be delivered from
sin in all its forms. There is One to whom the
name of " Jesus" was given, because He should
"save his people from their sins"; from these
very tempers, dispositions, habits, which would
make a hell of heaven itself for a man who had
them. And even one who has shuddered at the
near prospect of making final choice of evil, and
prayed a prayer so near to hopelessness as this,
" Thou Love of God ! Or, let me die,
Or grant what shall seem heaven almost t
Let me not know that all is lost,
Though lost it be :
Let that old life be mine — no more —
With limitations as before,
With darkness, hunger, toil, distress ;
Be all the earth a wilderness:
Only let me go on, go on,
Still hoping ever and anon
To reach one eve the Better Land" —
even such an one may know a Saviour who comes
and waits to save. And if John's vision of the
certainty and awfulness of judgment does stir
in us the sense of personal unfitness to share
the life of heaven, it is to this Saviour that he
sends us.
As we take our stand with John, straining eye
and ear to catch the last fringes of the departing

CHAPTEE XXII. 8-21 ' 329
vision and the last echoes of the heavenly voice,
this is what, with him, we see and hear, the
figure and the voice of Christ. The Book of
Eevelation has greatly served other great pur
poses. It has revealed as no other single book
in the Bible that eternal background which gives
their true meaning to events in space and time, —
God " who created all things," because of whose
will they are and were created, the Lamb, "slain
before the foundation of the world," the symbol
of that eternal love in God which of necessity
becomes suffering when it passes under the
shadow cast by human sin. It reveals the
secular march of human history, as men, genera
tions, peoples, ripen for judgment, and fall before
its scythe; the even-handed justice of God,
meting out retribution to the wicked, and salva
tion to His faithful ones ; the flimsy character
of the stoutest bulwarks and champions of evil,
and the sure victory of righteousness and of God.
All this has been set forth with a force of con
viction and a wealth of illustration to which even
Holy Scripture affords no parallel ; and from all
this God's people in " Asia " were to draw fresh
courage for the grim conflict in which they were
engaged, and fresh hope to sustain them in the
dark days of persecution.
It has been the primary object of the foregoing
chapters to make clear the meaning and purpose

330 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
of the book, as a whole as well as in its parts, and
that mainly by showing the connection between
the parts and the contribution they severally
make to the total impression. If the meaning
of these parts, the links which connect them,
and the relation in which they stand to one
another, have been pointed out with any measure
of success, it will not be necessary to have
recourse to any of the modern theories of the
composition of the Apocalypse. The history of
these theories is extremely interesting, and the
investigations on which they are based have
greatly contributed to our understanding of the
book ; but, in so far as they seek to distinguish
different documents and the work of different
hands, in the book as it lies before us, it cannot
be said that any one of them has succeeded in
commending itself as probable. On the contrary,
the impression gains ground that the book is
from the hand of one man. The passages which
have furnished many of the arguments in favour
of a " documentary hypothesis," appear to be
capable of a simple explanation, if we regard
them as quotations made by the Apostle. And
the probability of this is increased in the case of
one who beyond question makes copious use
of other documents, the prophetic books of the
Old Testament. It would be only natural to sup
pose that the same man might make use also

CHAPTEE XXII. 8-21 331
of traditional material, cognate to his subject,
which might be found in apocalyptic literature
subsequent to the close of the Old Testament
canon. We found the clearest case of this in the
seventh chapter, where the Apostle appears first
to quote a document of Jewish origin, and then,
in the second half of the chapter, to build on that,
its Christian counterpart, in which we see both
contrast and completion. We found the same
again in the eleventh chapter, and a simple
explanation of the difficult vision of the measur
ing of the Temple, and the two witnesses ; and
once more, in the twelfth chapter, where the
vision of the woman, the child, and the dragon,
which on any other hypothesis is full of difficulty,
is incorporated as the basis and explanation of
the vision of the monster by which it is followed.
Another thing which greatly helps to clear
away the difficulties that have gathered round
this book, is the recognition of the fact that it
contains no chronology of the future. There are
many sincere students of the Bible who have
been repelled from the study, and even from the
use, of the Apocalypse, by the foolish fashion of
treating it as a kind of cryptogram, the solution
of which would give dates and particulars con
cerning the end of the world. As we have seen,
the attempt to treat it so is not only made in
defiance of our Lord's plain warnings, but rests

332 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
on a misconception of the character of the
figures and numerals used throughout the book
These numbers, whether applied to days, months,
or years, are used in a purely conventional way,
and describe not the duration of a period, but its
character. In other words, what St. John saw
was exactly what he says he saw — a vision, a
picture. He saw it "in the flat." Behind his
picture of events in time there was never wanting
the background of external realities; but what
perspective the foreground had was very short ;
for St. John the very furthest event which he
foresaw was very near. He gives us to see the
principles on which the Divine process moves to
judgment ; but he does not give us any material
by which it would be possible to reckon when the
last hour will strike.
And the same consideration, that this is a
record of things seen, a series of veritable vision-
pictures, throws further light on that feature of
the book to which reference has just been made,
one which the hasty reader sometimes finds
perplexing, namely, the repeated, one might
almost say the regular, alternation of the scenes,
from heaven to earth, and back to heaven. This
is what John has seen, heaven behind the show
of earth ; and were we speaking of him as of an
ordinary writer, we should say that this was his
governing purpose, to set everything that hap-

CHAPTEE XXII. 8-21 333
pens, or is to happen, on earth, in the light of
what already is, and always will be, in heaven.
This is what gives his book at once its title, its
meaning, and its value. It is the Apocalypse, the
unveiling of those eternal facts which are hidden
from us by the veil of sense, God in the heavenly
temple, the Lamb slain, the Lamb victorious, the
Son of man holding the Churches in His hand,
the powers of evil already vanquished and cast
out of heaven. And much of what is otherwise
perplexing in the construction of the book,
becomes plain when we recognise the nature of
the writer's task, the difficulties that attend it,
and his constant effort to hold events in time in
close relation to the facts of eternity.
It is not suggested that the meaning of every
detail is yet clear, or all the subtle links by which
one part of the vision is connected with another ;
the book is full of symbolism which owed its
meaning partly to ideas, partly to practices, many
of which have long been forgotten. But here
again a great deal is gained when we have recog
nised that all these symbols had a definite
meaning for the writer's own time, and that most
of them, if not all, had a history of their own. It
would be difficult to point to any of these symbols
which is certainly used for the first time; some
of them have a history which, can be traced back
for many centuries. These are mainly such as

334 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
are of Jewish origin. For others, it is only as
by the efforts of investigation in many different
fields we are enabled to reconstruct the social
and religious situation in Asia when this book
was written, that some of them will yield up their
full meaning. In this respect, as in others, much
progress has been made in the last few years.
The most recent discoveries of Professor Eamsay
are likely to throw light on points which are still
obscure, on the white stone, and the " mark of
the beast," and the forms of persecution. The
book and the monuments of the land for which it
was first written are beginning reciprocally to
illuminate one another, and every fresh discovery
confirms the living relation between the two.
But we need not wait for perfect understanding
of all the details, or even for a completely satis
factory history of its contents, in order to grasp
its meaning and to feel its power. Whether we
see behind the veil when lifted the tranquil
securities of heaven or the confused and heroic
struggles of earth, there stands ever as the centre
figure, veiled or manifest, Christ. It is He through
whom the Eevelation comes ; it is He who moves,
seen only by the Apostle, in and out among the
seven candlesticks ; it is He /who alone is found
worthy to open the sealed Book of Judgment.
From first to last His presence is felt, even when
it is not expressly alluded to ; what He has done,

CHAPTEE XXII. 8-21 335
what He has undergone, for men, is what can,
and alone can, transfigure life. It is this which
gives the Apocalypse its place at the close and
climax of the New Testament, this which gives it
its place in the heart of Christ's disciples. It
describes as no other book does the glory of our
ascended Lord, and the triumphant issue of His
conflict with evil ; the pictures which it draws of
heaven and those that dwell there, of the new life
where "there shall be no more sorrow, nor crying,
neither shall there be any more pain," commend
themselves to the Christian heart not alone for
their intrinsic beauty, but because Christ is so
plainly set forth as the Lord of that life, and His
sacrifice as the way by which men attain to it.
And, as the light of the setting sun lingers
longest " on those dear hills where first he rose,"
so St. John dwells at the end of his book on what
had first inspired him to write, the Person and
Message of his Lord. That figure with which he
held converse in the opening chapter, has in the
interval expanded, as it were, so that all history
and all heaven seem to be included in the revela
tion which comes through Him. And now the
Seer's vision contracts again, to behold Christ
alone. His interest, which has swept round the
seven Churches, taking in their individuality, their
danger, their opportunity, which has embraced
the rise and fall of kings, the overthrow of

336 THE BOOK OF EEVELATION
imperial tyranny, and the destruction of the forces
of evil, contracts again, and focuses on one point
— Jesus. Once more he hears his Master speak
as in the old days in Galilee, "I, Jesus." For
John they are the same, the Lamb whose exalted
glory shines on every page of his book, and Jesus,
He that was once " of Nazareth." And so, his
hope, which has shot out to include " all nations
and kindreds and tongues," to lay hold on heaven
itself, is now focussed as on one Person, so on one
Event, Jesus and His coming. All is in Him ;
all hangs on that. All else is forgotten, the pains
and anxieties of the Church on earth, the peace
and felicity of the Church in heaven. The book
goes out on a kind of fugue on the word, " Come."
"The Spirit and the Bride say, Come"; the Spirit
searching the deep things of man and interpret
ing the unwritten yearnings of the race, saith,
" Come " ; the Bride, the Church of Christ,
weary yet willing to wait, willing to wait yet
weary, saith, "Come." And he "that heareth
and understandeth " all that is meant by the
coming, saith, " Come." And all together, the
Spirit, the Church, and the men who have heard,
unite to plead with the man who has not found
the water of life, and with tender urgency bid
him " Come," and take freely, in order that
having drunk from the well of salvation he may
add his voice to their prayer. And the answer

CHAPTEE XXII. 8-21 337
falls : " Behold, I come quickly." "I go to
prepare a place for you ; and, if I go, I will come
again, and take you to myself."
" He lifts me to the golden doors :
The flashes come and go ;
All heaven bursts her starry floors,
And strews her lights below,
And deepens on and up: the gates
Roll back, and far within
For me the heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin."
Blessed are they who, after reading "the words
of the book of this prophecy," can say, "Even so,
come, Lord Jesus."

CNWIN BKOTHEBB. LIMITED. PRINTERS, WOKING AND LONDON.
23

Evangelical Doctrine — Bible Truth
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Second Edition. Crown 8vo. Cloth, 6a.

CONTENTS.

III.

IV.

I. " Catholic " and " Protest
ant."
II. The Affirmations of Pro
testantism.
The "Unity" of Catholi
cism.
What is the Scriptural
Meaning of "The Gos
pel " I
V. The Prayer-book Service
and the Church Year.
VI. Baptismal Regeneration.
VII. The Meaning of Baptism.
VIII. The Lord's Supper.

IX. The Lord's Supper : The
Figurative View.
X. The Lord's Supper : The
Anglo-Catholic View.
XI. The Lord's Supper : The
Catholic Reformed View.
XII. Christian Sacrifice : False
and True.
XIII. The Christian Ministry :
Is it a Priesthood f
XIV. Church Government.
XV. Church and Ministry.
XVI. Apostolical Succession.
XVII. the Church.

Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P., writes : " I have read many books on the
Ritualistic question these last few years, but none are equal to this
in clearness, vivacity, and conspicuous fairness — the argument never
halts for a moment, but carries on the reader from stage to stage with a
delightful sense of mastery. I cannot doubt that it will prove of great
value in the present stage of English opinion."
" The book, as a whole, is one to be read, and moreover is eminently
readable. Mr. Scott writes with a courage and a sense of masterylthat
are quite refreshing." — Christian World.
" A study in historical theology most creditable to the author, most
profitable to us all." — Expository Times.
" At last we have an evangelical reply to that most specious and
misleading book, ' Church Doctrine — Bible Truth,' which has done
such service for Ritualistic error. We are puzzled to know what
Evangelicals have been doing to let Sadler's work go unanswered all
these years . . . Mr. Anderson Scott has rendered great services to
the cause of truth by this book. It is a singularly fresh and forceful
presentation of the Evangelical position. He has no difficulty in
showing the fallacies and absurdities of the Ritualistic position, and
the baselessness of its appeal to Scripture and primitive Church life
Mr. Scott makes his points tell with real force, and his grip of the
essential doctrine is strong and tenacious." — Life of Faith.
" Able, interesting, and timely." — Leeds Mercury.
" A very able book indeed." — Literary World.

London : Hodder & Stoughton, 27, Paternoster Row.

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