Chapter VIII: Part IV: =The Foes of the Kingdom= (2)

There is, however, one detail in this part of the description of the beast often overlooked, but which may carry us far on our way to decipher the secret of the number. The number of the name is not monopolized by the beast; it does not exhaust itself in any single individual. We are told that “no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” The beast has followers who imbibe his spirit and partake of his characteristics, and to whom his name and number are equally appropriate. It is more in keeping with this statement, as well as with other details, to interpret the beast as a principle rather than a person, as being some spirit of evil which, assuming prominence in some man or organization, is yet shared by many men and organizations. The ascetic, false prophetism which fulfills the other details of the description coincides also with this.

If, following out the rule of interpretation which has guided us hitherto, and assuming that John drew his prediction of the future from facts and tendencies existing in his day, we read the epistles contained in chapters ii and iii, we shall find that among the perils which threatened the apostolic Church none was more imminent than that which is called “the doctrine of the Nicolaitans,” which was but a reproduction of the heresy of Balaam, the gifted and formidable rival and antagonist of Moses; the name Nicolaus, indeed, meaning in Greek the same that Balaam does in Hebrew. So deep a mark did Balaam make that throughout the Old Testament, as well as the New, he stands as the representative, as he was the first example, of that spirit of false prophetism which, beginning as ascetism, degenerates into antinomianism and prostitutes genius to the service of the flesh. Now, it is certainly true, as Züllig shows,¹ that the words “Balaam, the son of Beor, soothsayer,” if written in Hebrew letters do make up the sum six hundred and sixty-six. It seems, therefore, probable that some embodiment of his insidious spirit, some reproduction of his deadly doctrine, with its resultant lawless practices, is the solution of this mysterious symbol, the second beast, against which John earnestly warns the Church in all ages to guard itself as the most dangerous foe to the kingdom of Christ. And possibly the archæological researches which are now bringing to light much of the hidden history of earlier ages may yet discover to us the sect which served as the basis of his warning.

¹ _Bleek, Lectures on the Apocalypse_, p. 285.

The interpretation which has here been put upon the symbols of the two wild beasts――namely, that they represent, the one the spirit of worldliness, the other that autospiritualism or self-centered piety which, for lack of a more comprehensive phrase, may be designated as false prophetism or false asceticism――derives some confirmation from the fact that their resulting effects have been such as the author of the Revelation predicted. Worldliness seems the baser of the two, but its dominion is briefer and less stable. As the mind can never be content with agnosticism, but must by necessity search for some explanation of the mystery of being until satisfaction is gained, so the heart can never fully rest in hopes and themes and joys which are only earthly. The religious instincts inherent in and inalienable from our nature will assert themselves and cry for God. On the other hand, asceticism, while it seems to present a loftier ideal and holds men thereby with a more permanent grasp, is all the more baleful by reason of its deceptiveness. It veils pride, ambition, malice, selfishness, under the guise of superior sanctity, which, while imposing on others by its well-masked duplicity, lulls its victims into almost hopeless slumber by its hypocrisy. Those whom it allures by its professions of superior piety it mocks with disappointing dreams. It is the dark shadow that always waits on holiness and liberty; it is the special temptation that besets souls seeking after purity and knowledge; while worldliness is that to which those are most prone who mingle much with the world and deal with earthly realities. If, on the one hand, it is easy for men to fall into the danger of using their heaven-given faculties for the ignoble purpose of gratifying their lower desires or of turning stones to bread simply that they may live, it is equally easy, on the other, to wander into the opposite error of presuming rashly upon God’s providence and mercy, although humility has degenerated into boasting and love has been perverted to censoriousness. From neither tendency can the regeneration of the world come; both are alike enemies of God and of man.

4. _Anticipations of Victory._――It is one of the characteristic peculiarities of St. John’s literary style to introduce a subject which for the moment he merely suggests to our notice, returning to it subsequently in order that he may amplify and complete it. He goes over his work again and again, each time adding some new touch, with the purpose of bringing out in greater prominence some detail of his subject. While each section, therefore, contains in measure an epitome of the whole, in each one some single point is more specifically and elaborately discussed. There is, it is true, advance of thought; but the eagle of the apostolic band moves in circles, bringing into notice of his keen eye every part of the field over which he soars, while each swoop of his wing carries him a little beyond his former orbit, so that his progress is in spirals. The principle which controlled him seems to have been that of presenting to us in sharp and striking antithesis the contrasts between conflicting ideas, while he holds them under our observation.

It is also characteristic of a disposition like St. John’s, and of a life so contemplative and secluded as his was, to view things in the light of their essential principles; not as they become, modified by contact and in relation with each other, but as they radically and germinally are. By consequence such minds, instead of being occupied with the intermediate changes, pass at once to ultimate results and see the end in the beginning.

An instance of this appears in the fourteenth chapter, which is really but an epilogue to the preceding chapters. In the twelfth and thirteenth chapters we have had presented to our vision the formidable enemies with which the Christian believer must struggle. They have been described most graphically and with a fullness of detail not subsequently exceeded. The _dramatis personæ_ are all put upon the stage, and no new actors in the tragedy of existence need be expected. But these enemies are sufficiently numerous and terrible to excite apprehension and awaken earnest inquiries as to our means of resistance and possibilities of success. The seer, therefore, pauses for a moment to review the resources put within our reach and to assure us of their adequacy. “Greater is he that is in you,” he says, “than he that is in the world.” And he fully indorses the emphatic declaration of Paul, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”

In prophesying victory over the dragon and the beasts to the saints of Christ, John separates them into two classes, as he had done in chapter vii. This is not in any spirit of Jewish narrowness or exclusiveness. He had long gotten beyond that and learned to call no man common whom God had cleansed. Even Paul, the apostle of the uncircumcision, recognized a distinction between the Jew, who was first, and the Gentile; so there can be alleged against John no bigotry in recognizing the distinction, inasmuch as he foreshadows equal victory to both classes. There can hardly be a question that by the “hundred forty and four thousand” John meant Israelites after the flesh; for they “stood on the mount Sion;” they sang a song which none others but themselves could learn, namely, the song of Moses and of the Lamb ( xv, 3); they were “the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb” (xiv, 4); they were without “guile,” with reference no doubt to John i, 47. They were “virgins,” having the true asceticism――freedom from ungodliness and worldly lusts. There was reason for rejoicing to a Jew like John in the fact that, in spite of the opposition of the rulers and Herods among the chosen people to whom had been committed the oracles of God, and on the very spots of the crucifixion and resurrection, so many of his former co-religionists had become disciples of Christ and followed the Lamb whithersoever he led them.

But the word of God is not bound, nor is it the exclusive property of any race; and the seer immediately adds the vision of the multitudes of “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” to whom “the everlasting Gospel” was preached and among whom it found adherents. The fullness of the times had come, and Gentiles might “fear God, and give glory to him,” the one Creator of “heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”

One new feature is now introduced. Babylon, which occupies so much of the subsequent part of the Apocalypse, is here for the first time mentioned. Babylon, it will be attempted to show, is not another adversary, but an apostate Church which has succumbed to adversaries and thereby become a counterfeit and rival to Christianity. It is here brought upon the stage by anticipation, and its doom foretold, to give completer assurance of the coming victory over all forms and results of sin and evil.

The age in which John lived was an age of martyrdom. How severely this fact tried “the patience” and faith of the early Christians we know from hints in other apostolical writings. Paul found it necessary to show to his brethren in Rome that if they suffered with Christ it was that they might be also glorified together with him. Peter, too, comforts those whose faith was being so sorely tried with the assurance that the trial of their faith was “more precious than of gold that perisheth,” and would be “found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” And so John gives to the Church of his day the glad tidings that, although God buries his workmen, he carries on his work; that they, if they died “in the Lord,” should “rest from their labors;” and that “their works” should survive and go on winning victories after their departure.

If it should be asked how or with what weapons they were to overcome, John gives the answer which is found so often in the Book of Revelation that it is one of the keys to unlock its mysteries――they overcome “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation xii, 11); by which latter expression is meant, doubtless, the Scriptures, as explained in the chapter upon the two witnesses. That the two visions which now follow, the harvest of the world and the vintage scene, refer to these two weapons of success furnishes an explanation of them so simple and easy that it is strange they should have occasioned so much difficulty to commentators.

The prophet Joel, from whose writings these visions are drawn (Joel iii, 13), probably among the earliest and certainly among the greatest of the Hebrew seers, appears to have been gifted with a foresight of the future remarkable even for one of that extraordinary body of men. The final and complete triumph of God’s cause over all opposing foes in and through Zion, and the deliverance of the Church from all bondage, oppression, and danger, preceded by a plentiful outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all classes, ages, and conditions, stood out before him as a certain and assured fact. The details of the methods by which this result was to be achieved were not revealed to him, nor is it surprising that, being thus left to himself, he could conceive of no other instrumentalities than those which in his experience of human affairs had passed under his own observation. This is not the only instance in which the apostles of the New Testament, while confirming the prophets of the Old as to results, have discerned more clearly the power of spiritual forces, and for swords and carnal weapons and rods of iron have substituted the more peaceful instrumentalities of the sword of the Spirit, the breath of the Messiah’s lips, and the staff of the Good Shepherd.

The writer of the Revelation, expanding and evangelizing the vision of Joel, saw “a white cloud,” and One “like unto the Son of man” sitting thereon, “having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.” “Out of the temple” an angel came and cried to him, “Thrust in thy sickle, ... for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” Whereupon he cast his sickle upon the earth, and “the earth was reaped.”

In these words surely a reference is to be seen to the words of our Lord himself uttered in the hearing of John and recorded in Matthew xxiv, 14, 30, 31: “And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.... And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

This metaphor of the harvest as the result of the sowing of God’s word is one of the most common to be found in the Scriptures. “The sower soweth the word” (Mark iv, 14), or “the word of the kingdom” (Matthew xiii, 19), or “the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you” (1 Peter i, 25). “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself [that is, automatically and spontaneously].... But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come” (Mark iv, 26‒29).

That “the word of God is quick and powerful” (Hebrews iv, 12); that it has God’s life in it (John vi, 63); that it is the great weapon of warfare, defensive and offensive, to the Church and the believer; that it is the incorruptible seed by which men are born into the kingdom (1 Peter i, 23); that it is the instrument whereby we are sanctified (John xvii, 17), is the concurrent declaration of the Scriptures themselves. That it is to be preached by apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers is the commission binding on all: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark xvi, 15). This Bible is sufficient of itself, all other things are only ancillary; “in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians vi, 9). All literature and art and culture and science are but as “the grass” that “withereth,” or “the flower” that “fadeth;” “but the word of our God shall stand forever.” And the martyrs of the apostolical age had the inspired assurance of John to console them, that if they faithfully bore witness to the word they might fall, but “their works” would follow on after them. And in so saying he is only reëchoing the words which he himself had heard from the Master, “One soweth, and another reapeth” (John iv, 37). And John shows how completely he had gotten away from Jewish narrowness and absorbed the Master’s spirit, in his recognition of the fact that the Bible is for every nation and kindred and people.

The other instrumentality of victory put within the reach of the Church, namely, the all-sufficient “blood of the Lamb,” is beautifully illustrated in the vintage vision, which has most needlessly perplexed commentators.

An angel――not now the Son of man――is seen coming “out of the temple which is in heaven” with a sharp sickle. Another angel came out from the altar, who is described as having “power over fire” (the same combination as is found in Isaiah vi, 6), and at his cry the sickle was thrust into the earth, and the clusters of fully ripe grapes gathered and cast “into the great wine press of the wrath of God.”

It is hardly possible to read these words without seeing in them a reference to Isaiah lxiii, 1‒6. By the great mass of believers the words are interpreted as an allusion to and a prophecy of the atoning work of Christ. It certainly seems that the writer of the Revelation so understood them, not only from the connection of this vintage scene with the blood of the Lamb, but also from Revelation xix, 11‒16, where the same connection of the two themes, the “sharp sword” issuing from the mouth of Christ, that is, the word of God, and the “vesture dipped in blood,” with the treading of the wine press, is found.

Our belief in the plenary inspiration of the writers of the Scriptures does not compel us to the conviction that they always comprehended the full import of their message, or that all the particulars embraced therein stood out clearly and plainly in their minds. This is one of the instances in which prophets and wise men desired to see the things which we in the kingdom of Christ see, but did not see them. Every man in painting mental pictures must of necessity use colors with which his own mind is acquainted, and which he has acquired by experience and observation. And Isaiah and the other prophets, in the age and with the surroundings in the midst of which they lived, had no other means of conveying to the minds of men the true revelations which were given to them of the suffering and victorious Messiah than terms such as they saw exemplified in the world of history and in the men about them. Any other terms would have been incomprehensible, and so have failed of their purpose to help and inspirit. And the divinity of the Bible is seen conspicuously in this――that the framework in which its glorious pictures were set is capable of expansion to the times in which we live and the larger views we have, without fracture or distortion. The signs and symbols which by divine illumination were presented to them have come down to us; but we, with the clearer light of the Sun of righteousness, can read intelligently what were hieroglyphics to them, and, looking with unveiled face, can behold therein the glory of God. That John, in thus quoting from Isaiah, has Calvary and Gethsemane in his thoughts is shown by his specifying particularly that “the wine press was trodden without the city,” bringing out the truth, of which Hebrews xiii, 12, is the witness, that “Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.”

It is true that in the prophecy of Isaiah there appears an element of vengeance and wrath that does not comport with our ideas of salvation and redemption, and even repels. The element is still there; but the New Testament teaches us that all that was lonely, painful, agonizing in human redemption was borne by the Christ for us. We are “bought with a price,” but he paid it. He was “made a curse for us.” He “bare our sins in his own body on the tree,” and by his “stripes” we are “healed.” However feeble may be the traces of vicariousness in nature, human life is full of it, is built about it. All love is manifested in vicarious suffering. Scarce any rise but that some fall; scarce any become rich but that others become poor; there is hardly a smile or a laugh of joy for which some pain is not felt or some tear not shed somewhere. And, if God manifests his love by sending “his Son to be the propitiation for our sins,” this is but an illustration of the truth, as apparent in the spiritual world as in that of nature, of the transmutation of forces; the sum not being increased or diminished, but the places and modes of manifestation changing.

The remainder of the vintage scene may be easily explained, difficult as it has seemed to most interpreters, by applying the key which is put into our hands, if we accept the solution offered above.

We must now for almost the first time take up the prophecy of Ezekiel, which from this place onward almost singly rules the Apocalypse, and the careful study of which will throw light upon what seems most obscure.

We are told that “blood came out of the wine press, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”

Turning to Ezekiel, we find that the last chapters of that great prophecy are taken up with a beautiful description, ideal and figurative, doubtless, of the restored temple, holy city, and land of the new Israel of God. In the forty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel the dimensions of this ideal land are very carefully stated. The boundary line of it was, on the north side, Hamath, in latitude thirty-four degrees twenty minutes, and, on the south, a line drawn from Tamar, at the southern border of the Dead Sea, to Kadesh, a brook emptying into the Mediterranean. If, now, we measure on a map the distance between these lines, we shall find it to be two hundred miles, or sixteen hundred furlongs.

This whole space, comprehending all of the Holy Land, was thus entirely covered with the blood which flowed from the wine press trodden by the Son of God. Could there be a more complete statement of the all-sufficiency of that atoning blood? It is the same truth presented to us here which John has elsewhere in plainer prose revealed to our faith: “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

And as if still further to verify the statement he tells us that the blood reached to “the horse bridles.” There is an allusion in this to Zechariah xiv, 20, where we are told that in “the day of the Lord” there shall be “upon the bells [or, as the margin has it, ‘upon the bridles’] of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord.” The ideal land is not only covered in its whole extent with the atoning blood, but so deep is the stream that it buries all beneath it, except where upon the surface is displayed the significant inscription, “Holiness unto the Lord.” Surely there is no lack in the provisions of salvation. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Thus, then, in these beautiful visions is it shown that the believer and the Church are sufficiently armed for the encounter with any antagonist, however furious or formidable. We are supplied with “the sword of the Spirit” and “the blood of the Lamb.” Whatever the tasks may be that lie before us, having these, we have all necessary equipment. Nothing shall be able to harm us so long as we continue to be followers of God.

If the harvest scene illustrates the extent of divine grace, and is an emblem of the living seed which, small in its beginnings, grows into a great and widespreading tree under whose branches all the nations of earth may find shelter and rest, the vintage scene illustrates the depth to which salvation penetrates. The whole extent of human need is reached. Neither is there a want anywhere which may not be satisfied. And through the use of the divinely appointed means the kingdom of Christ may be brought to its ideal of perfection, in us and in the whole Church, until God shall, indeed, be all and in all.

PART V
The Counterfeit of the Kingdom, or the False Church