The
Third Vision
THE SEVEN TRUMPETS, CHAPS. VIII. IX. X. XI.
We have now reached the close of the second vision, and it might be
supposed that the catastrophe by which it was concluded is so complete and
exhaustive that there could be no room for any further development. But it is
not so. And here we have again to call attention to one of the leading features
in the structure of the Apocalypse. It is not a continuous and progressive
sequence of events, but a continually recurring representation of substantially
the same tragic history in fresh forms and new phases. Dr. Wordsworth, almost
alone among the interpreters of this book, has comprehended this characteristic
of its structure. At the same time every new vision enlarges the sphere of our
observation and heightens the interest by the introduction of new incidents and
actors.
OPENING OF THE SEVENTH
SEAL.
CHAP. viii. 1.---‘And when
he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of
half an hour.’
The seventh seal, strictly speaking, belongs to the former
vision; but it will be observed that the catastrophe of that vision occurs
under the sixth seal, and that the seventh becomes simply the connecting link
between the second vision and the third,---between the seals and the trumpets.
This no doubt intimates the close relation susisting between them. We cannot
conceive of the events denoted by the seven trumpets as subsequent in point of
time to the events represented as taking place at the opening of the sixth
seal, for that would involve inextricable confusion and incongruity. It appears
the most reasonable supposition that we have here, in the vision of the seven
trumpets, a fresh unfolding of the desolating judgments which were about to
overwhelm the doomed land of Judea. Dr. Wordsworth observes: ‘The seven
trumpets do not differ in time from the seven seals, but rather
synchronise with them.’ We doubt whether this is the correct way of stating the
synchronism. We think the whole vision of the trumpets forms part of the
catastrophe under the sixth seal.
THE FIRST FOUR TRUMPETS.
CHAP. viii. 7-12.---‘The first
angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they
were cast upon the earth’ [land], etc.
The vision opens with a proem, or introduction, according to
the usual structure of the apocalyptic visions. The standpoint of the Seer is
still heaven, though the scene on which the main action of the piece is take to
place is the earth, or rather the land. It cannot be too carefully borne in
mind that it is Israel,---Judea, Jerusalem,---on which the prophet is gazing.
To roam over the breadth of the whole earth, and to bring into the question all
time and all nations, is not only to bewilder the reader in a labyrinth of
perplexities, but wholly to miss the point and purport of the book. ‘The Doom
of Israel; or, the Last Days of Jerusalem,’ would be no unsuitable title for
the Apocalypse. The action of the piece, also, is comprised within a very brief
space of time,---for these things were ‘shortly to come to pass.’
To return to the vision. After an awful pause on the opening
of the seventh seal, significant of the solemn and mournful character of the
events which are about to take place, seven angels, or rather the seven
angels who stand before God, receive seven trumpets, which they are
commissioned successively to sound. Before they begin, however, an angel
presents to God the prayers of the saints, along with the smoke of much incense
from a golden censer, at the golden altar which was before the throne. This is
usually regarded as symbolical of the acceptableness of Christian worship
through the intercession and advocacy of the Mediator. But observe the effects
of the prayers. The angel takes the censer which had perfumed the prayers of
the saints, fills it with fire from the altar, and hurls it upon the land:
and immediately voices, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake follow.
Strange answers to prayer. But if we regard these prayers of the saints as the
appeals of the suffering and persecuted people of God, whom we have seen
represented in the former visions as crying aloud, ‘How long, O Lord, how
long?’ all becomes clear. The Lord will avenge the blood of His servants; His
wrath is kindled; swift retribution is at hand. The censer which censed the
prayers becomes the vehicle of judgment, and is cast upon the land, filled with
the fury of the Lord,---the fire from the altar before the throne.
Now, the seven angels prepared to sound, and each blast is
the signal for an act of judgment. It will be observed that the first four
trumpets, like the first four seals, differ from the remaining three. They have
a certain indefiniteness, and the symbols, though sublime and terrible, do not
seem susceptible of a particular historical verification. Probably they
correspond with those phenomenal perturbations of nature to which our Lord
alludes in His prophecy on the Mount of Olives as preceding the Parousia:
‘There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon
the earth [land] distress of nations, with perplexity: the sea and the waves
roaring’ (Luke xxi. 25). These are the very objects affected by the first four
trumpets, viz. the earth, the sea, the sun, the moon, the stars. Without
endeavouring, then, to find a specific explanation of these portents, it is
enough to regard them as the outward and visible signs of the divine
displeasure manifested towards the impenitent and unbelieving; symptoms that
the natural world was agitated and convulsed on account of the wickedness of
the time; emblems of the general dislocation and disorganisation of society
which preceded and portended the final catastrophe of the Jewish people.
The last three trumpets, however, are of a very different
character from the first four. They are indeed symbolical, like the others, but
the symbols are less indefinite and seem more capable of a historical
interpretation. The judgments under the first four trumpets are marked by what
we may call an artificial character; they affect the third part
of every thing,---the third part of the trees, the third part of the grass, the
third part of the sea, the third part of the fish, the third part of the ships,
the third part of the rivers, the third part of sun, the third part of the
moon, the third part of the stars, the third part of the day, the third part of
the night. It would be preposterous to require a historical verification of
such symbols. But the remaining trumpets appear to enter more into the domain
of reality and of history; and accordingly we shall find great light thrown
upon them by the Scriptures and by the contemporaneous history. That a special
importance is attached to these last trumpets is evident from the fact that
they are introduced by a note of warning:---
CHAP. viii. 13.---‘And I beheld,
and heard an eagle flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud
voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the land by reason of the other
voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound.’
This introductory note to the three woe-trumpets requires
some observations.
First, the reader will perceive that the true reading of the
text is eagle, not angel. ‘I heard an eagle flying through the
midst of heaven.’ This is the symbol of war and rapine. There is a striking
parallel to this representation in Hosea viii. 1: ‘Set the trumpet to thy
mouth. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord, because they
have transgressed my covenant.’ In the Apocalypse the eagle comes on the same
mission, announcing woe, war, and judgment.
Secondly, the reader will observe the persons on whom the
predicted woes are to fall,---‘the inhabiters of the land.’ As in chap. vi. 10,
so here, gh must be taken in a
restricted sense, as referring to the land of Israel. The rendering of gh by earth, instead
of land, and of aiwn by world, instead of age, have been most fruitful sources
of mistake and confusion in the interpretation of the New Testament. With
singular inconsistency our translators have rendered gh sometimes earth,
sometimes land, in almost consecutive verses, greatly obscuring the
sense. Thus in Luke xxi. 23, they render gh by land: ‘there shall be great distress in the land’ [epi thzghz], being compelled to
restrict the meaning by the next clause,---‘And wrath upon this people.’
But in the next verse but one, where the very same phrase recurs,---‘distress epi thz ghz,’---they render it ‘upon
the earth.’ In the passage now before us the woes are to be understood as
denounced, not upon the inhabitants of the globe, but of the land, that
is, of Judea.
THE FIFTH TRUMPET.
CHAP. ix. 1-12.---‘And the
fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fallen from heaven unto the earth: and to
him was given the key of the pit of the abyss. And he opened the pit of the
abyss; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace;
and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit . . .
And unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power . . .
And they have a king over them which is the angel of the abyss, whose name in
the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, and in the Greek tongue he hath his name
Apollyon. One woe is past; behold there come two woes more after this.’
On this symbolical representation Alford well
observes,---‘There is an endless Babel of allegorical and historical
interpretation of these locusts from the pit; ‘but while clearing the ground of
the heap of romantic speculation by which it has been encumbered, he abstains
from putting anything better in its place.
Without assuming to have more insight than other expositors,
we cannot but feel that the principle of interpretation on which we proceed,
and which is so obviously laid down by the Apocalypse itself, gives a great
advantage in the search and discovery of the true meaning. With our attention
fixed on a single spot of earth, and absolutely shut up to a very brief space
of time, it is comparatively easy to read the symbols, and still more
satisfactory to mark their perfect correspondence with facts.
Whatever obscurity there may be in this extraordinary
representation, it seems quite clear that it cannot refer to any human
army. On the contrary everything points to what is infernal and demoniac.
Considering the origin, the nature, and the leader of this mysterious host, it
is impossible to regard it in any other light than as a symbol of the irruption
of a baleful demon power. It is exactly as it is represented to be, the host
of hell swarming out upon the curse-stricken land of Israel. We have before
us a hideous picture of a historic reality, the utterly demoralised and, so to
speak, demon-possessed condition of the Jewish nation towards the tragic close
of its eventful history. Have we any ground for believing that the last
generation of the Jewish people was really worse than any of its predecessors?
Is it reasonable to suppose that this degeneracy had any connection with
Satanic influence? To both these questions we answer, Yes. We have a very
remarkable declaration of our Lord on these two points, which, we venture to
affirm, gives the key to the true interpretation of the symbols before us. In the
twelfth chapter of St. Matthew He compares the nation, or rather the generation
then existing, to a demoniac out of whom an unclean spirit had been expelled.
There had been a temporary moral reformation wrought in the nation by the
preaching of the second Elias, and by our Lord’s own labours. But the old
inveterate unbelief and impenitence soon returned, and returned in sevenfold
force:---
‘When the unclean spirit is gone
out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest, and findeth none.
Then he saith, I will return unto my house from whence I came out; and when he
is come he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh
with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and then enter in
and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even
so shall it be unto this wicked generation’ (Matt. xii. 43-45).
The closing sentence is full of significance. The guilty and
rebellious nation, which had rejected and crucified its King, was, in its last
stage of impenitence and obduracy, to be given over to the unrestrained
dominion of evil. The exorcised demon was at the last to return reinforced by a
legion.
We have abundant evidence in the pages of Josephus of the
truth of this representation. Again and again he declares that the nation had
become utterly corrupt and debased. ‘No generation,’ says he, ‘ever existed
more prolific in crime.’
‘I am of opinion,’ he says again,
‘that had the Romans deferred the punishment of these wretches, either the
earth would have opened, and swallowed up the city, or it would have been swept
away by a deluge, or have shared the thunderbolts of the land of Sodom. For it
produced a race far more ungodly than those who were thus visited.’---Josephus,
bk. v. chap. xiii.
Let us now look at the symbols of the fifth trumpet in the
light of these observations. There can be no question as to the identity of the
‘star fallen from heaven, to whom the key of the abyss is given.’ It can only
refer to Satan, whom our Lord beheld ‘as lightning fall from heaven’ (Luke x.
18); ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!’ (Isa.
xiv. 12.) The cloud of locusts issuing from the pit of the abyss---locusts
commissioned not to destroy vegetation, but to torment men---points not obscurely
to malignant spirits, the emissaries of Satan. The place from which they
proceed, the abyss, is distinctly spoken of in the gospels as the abode of the
demons. The legion cast out of the demoniac of Gadara besought our Lord ‘that
he would not command them to go out into the abyss’ (Luke viii. 31). The
locusts in the vision are represented as inflicting grievous torments on the
bodies of men; and this is in accordance with the statements of the New
Testament respecting the physical effect of demoniac possession---‘grievously
vexed with a devil’ (Matt. xv. 22). It need cause no difficulty that unclean
spirits should be symbolised by locusts, seeing they are also compared to
frogs, Rev. xvi. 13. As to the extraordinary appearance of the locusts, and their
power limited to five months’ duration, the best critics seem agreed that these
features are borrowed from the habits and appearance of the natural locust,
whose ravages, it is said, are confined to five months of the year, and whose
appearance in some degree resembles horses. (See Alford, Stuart, De Wette,
Ewald, etc.) It is enough, however, to regard such minutiae rather as poetical
imagery than symbolical traits. Finally, their king, ‘the angel of the abyss,’
whose name is Abaddon, and Apollyon, the Destroyer, can be no other than ‘the
ruler of the darkness of this world;’ ‘the prince of the power of the air;’
‘the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience.’ The malignant and
infernal dominion of Satan over the doomed nation was now established. Yet his
time was short, for ‘the prince of this world’ was soon to be ‘cast out.’
Meanwhile his emissaries had no power to injure the true servants of God, ‘but
only those men which had not the seal of God in their foreheads.’
Such is the invasion of this infernal host; all hell, as it
were, let loose upon the devoted land, turning Jerusalem into a pandemonium, a
habitation of devils, the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every
unclean and hateful bird. (Rev. xviii. 2).
THE SIXTH TRUMPET.
CHAP. ix. 13-21.---‘And the sixth
angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar
which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the
four angels which are bound on the great river Euphrates. And the four angels
were loosed, which had been prepared for the hour, and day, and month, and
year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the
horsemen was two myriads of myriads: and I heard the number of them,’ etc.
The sixth trumpet is introduced by the announcement,---‘The
first woe is past, behold, there are coming two woes still after these
things;’---indicating that their arrival is near: they are on the way---‘they
are coming’ [ercetai].
There is a certain resemblance between the vision here
depicted and the preceding. Both refer to a great and multitudinous host let
loose to punish men; in both the host is unlike any actual beings in rerum
natura, and yet both seem in some points to come within the region of
reality, and to be susceptible, in part at least, of a historical verification.
The first incident which follows the sounding of the sixth trumpet is the
command to ‘loose the four angels which are bound on the great river
Euphrates.’ Of this passage Alford says: ‘The whole imagery here has been a
crux interpretum as to who these angels are, and what is indicated by the
locality here described.’ It is in these crucial instances, which defy the
dexterity of the most cunning hand to pick the lock, that we prove the power of
our master-key. Let us fix first upon that which seems most literal in the
vision,---‘the great river Euphrates.’ That, at least, can scarcely be
symbolical. There are said to be four angels bound, not in the river,
but at, or on, the river [epi tw potamw]. The loosing of these four angels sets free a vast
horde of armed horsemen, with the strange and unnatural characteristics
described in the vision. What is the real and actual that we may
gather out of this highly wrought imagery? How is it that these horsemen come
from the region of the Euphrates? How is it that four angels are bound on that
river? Now it will be remembered that the locust invasion came from the
abyss of hell; this invading army comes from the Euphrates. This
fact serves to unriddle the mystery. The invading army that followed Titus to
the siege and capture of Jerusalem was actually drawn in very great measure
from the region of the Euphrates. That river formed the eastern frontier of the
Roman Empire, and we know as a matter of fact that it was kept by four legions,
which were regularly stationed there. These four legions we conceive to
be symbolised by the four angels bound at, or on, the
river. The ‘loosing of the angels’ is equivalent to the mobilising of the
legions, and we cannot but think the symbol as poetical, as it is
historically truthful. But, it will be said, Roman legions did not consist of
cavalry. True; but we know that along with the legionaries from the Euphrates
there came to the Jewish war auxiliary forces drawn from the very same region.
Antiochus of Commagene, who, as Tacitus tells us, was the richest of all the
kings who submitted to the authority of Rome, sent a contingent to the war. His
dominions were on the Euphrates. Sohemus, also, another powerful king, whose
territories were in the same region, sent a force to co-operate with the Roman
army under Titus. Now the troops of these Oriental kings were, like their
Parthian neighbours, mostly cavalry; and it is altogether consistent with the
nature of allegorical or symbolical representation that in such a book as the
Apocalypse these fierce foreign hordes of barbarian horsemen should assume the
appearance presented in the vision. They are multitudinous, monstrous,
fire-breathing, deadly; and so, no doubt, they seemed to the wretched
‘inhabiters of the land’ which they were commissioned to destroy. The invasion
may be fitly described in the analogous language of the prophet Isaiah: ‘The
Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle. They come from a far country,
from the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of his indignation, to
destroy the whole land’ (Isa. xiii. 4. 5).
It is in favour of this interpretation that there is a
manifest congruity in the invasion of the devoted land, first by a malignant
demon-host, and then by a mighty earthly army. Each fact is vouched for by
decisive historical evidence. Strip the vision of its drapery, and there is a
solid kernel of substantial fact. The dramatic unities of time, place, and action
are also preserved, and we are gradually conducted nearer and nearer to the
catastrophe under the seventh trumpet. But this is to anticipate.
An objection may be taken to this explanation of the vision
of the sixth trumpet, on account of the Euphratean hordes being commissioned to
destroy idolaters. Undoubtedly, the gross idolatry described in the
twentieth verse was not the national sin of Israel at that period, though it
had been in former ages. But there is too much reason for believing that very
many Jews did conform to heathenish practices both in the days of Herod the
Great and his descendents. We think, however, that in the sequel it will be
satisfactorily proved that in the Apocalypse the sin of idolatry is imputed to
those who, though not guilty of the literal worship of idols, were the
obstinate and impenitent enemies of Christ. (See exposition of chap. xvii.)
Finally, the true rendering of ver. 15 removes an obscurity
which has been the occasion of much perplexity and misconception. The four
angels bound at the Euphrates, and loosed by the angel of the sixth trumpet,
are declared to have been prepared,---not for an hour, and a day,
and a month, and a year, but for the hour, and day, and
month, and year: that is to say, destined by the will of God for a special
work, at a particular juncture; and at the appointed time they were let loose
to fulfil their providential mission. ‘The third part of men’ does not mean
that the third part of the human race, but the third part of ‘inhabitants of
the land’ (chap. viii. 13), on whom the woes are about to fall.
Episode
of the Angel and the Open Book.
I. We might have expected that now the seventh trumpet would
have sounded; but as in the vision of the seven seals, so here, the action is
interrupted for the introduction of episodes which afford space for fresh
matter which does not come strictly into the main current of the narrative.
CHAP. x. 1-11.---‘And I saw another
mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was
upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of
fire; and he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon
the sea, and his left foot on the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a
lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices,’ etc.
1. It is natural that we should be disposed at first to
regard this mighty angel, who appears as the interlocutor in this and the
following episode, as one of the ‘ministering spirits’ that do the bidding of the
Most High. But a fuller consideration precludes this supposition. The
attributes with which this angel is invested so closely resemble those ascribed
to our Lord in the first chapter, that the majority of interpreters agree in
the opinion that it is no other than the Saviour Himself who is here intended.
The glory-cloud with which he is clothed is a customary symbol of the
divine presence; the ‘rainbow about his head’ corresponding with the
rainbow round about the throne (chap. iv. 3); ‘his face as it were the sun;’
‘his feet as pillars of fire;’ his ‘voice as when a lion-roareth;’ all
these so exatly resemble the description in chap. i. 10-16 that it is scarcely
possible to come to any other conclusion than that this is a manifestation of
the Lord Himself.
2. But here is a further remarkable correspondence between
the appearance and action of this ‘might angel’ and St. Paul’s description of
the archangel in 1 Thess. iv. 16: ‘For the Lord himself shall descend from
heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of
God.’ There is certainly here a very singular coincidence. 1. The glorious
angel of the Apocalypse seems undoubtedly to be ‘the Lord himself.’ 2. Both are
said to ‘descend from heaven.’ 3. In each case he is represented as descending
with a ‘shout’. 4. In each case it is the voice of ‘the archangel.’
5. In each case the appearance of the angel, or Saviour, is associated with a trumpet.
6. The time also of this appearing appears to be the same: in the
Apocalypse it is on the eve of the sounding of the last trumpet, when ‘the
mystery of God shall be finished;’ while in the epistle it is on the eve of the
‘great consummation,’ or ‘the day of the Lord’ (1 Thess. v. 2).
3. It may be objected that the title ‘angel’ or even ‘archangel,’
is incompatible with the supreme dignity of the Son of God. But there can be no
question that the name angel is given in the Old Testament to the
Messiah, Isa. lxiii. 9; Mal. iii. 1. The name archangel is equivalent to
‘prince of the angels,’ the very phrase by which the Syriac version renders the
word in 1 Thess. iv. 16; in fact it would be more reasonable to object to the
title ‘archangel’ being given to any other than a divine person. It is in
harmony with other names confessedly belonging to Christ, as Arch, Arcwn, Archgoz,
Arciereuz, Arcipoimhn, so that there is a strong presumption that the title Arcaggeloz also belongs to Christ.
4. Hengstenberg maintains, and with much probability, that
there is only one archangel, and that he is possessed of a divine
nature. This archangel is named ‘Michael’ in St. Jude, ver. 9; but in
the Book of Daniel Michael is expressly identified with the Messiah
(Dan. xii. 1). Therefore archangel is a proper title of Christ.
5. It deserves notice that St. Paul speaks, not of the voice
of an archangel, but of the archangel, as if he were referring to
that which was well known and familiar to the persons to whom he was writing.
But where in the Scriptures do we find any allusion to ‘the voice of the
archangel and the trump of God’? Nowhere except in this very passage in the
Apocalypse. We infer that the Apocalypse was known to the Thessalonians, and
that St. Paul alluded to this very description.
6. Again, in the Epistles to the Thessalonians the voice of
the archangel is represented as awakening the sleeping saints. But whose voice
is that which calls the dead out of their graves? The voice of the Son of God.
‘The hour is coming in the which they that are in the graves shall hear his
voice, and shall come forth’ (John v. 25-29). The voice of the archangel,
therefore, is the voice of the Son of God. It will be observed, also, that the
sounding of the seventh trumpet is said to be ‘the time of the dead, that they
should be judged’ (Rev. xi. 18).
7. Lastly, that the mighty angel of Rev. x. 1 is a divine
person, and no other than the Lord Jesus Christ, seems decisively proved by
chap. xi. 3: ‘I will give power to my two witnesses,’ etc., where
the speaker is evidently a divine person, yet the same ‘mighty angel’ whom the
prophet beheld descend from heaven.
We therefore conclude that the ‘mighty angel’ of the
Apocalypse is identical with ‘the archangel’ of 1 Thessalonians, and is no
other than ‘the Lord himself.’
II. We come next to consider the utterance of the mighty
angel.
At first we might suppose that what the angel uttered was
kept a secret. We are told that at his shout seven thunders uttered their
voices; but when the Seer was proceeding to write their purport he was
forbidden so to do: ‘Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and
write them not’ (ver. 5).
The prophet, however, goes on to record what the angel did
and said. Standing with his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the
land, he lifts up his hand to heaven, and swears by Him that liveth for ever
and ever that there shall be no more time or respite. That is to say, ‘The end
is come; the long-suffering of God can no longer wit; the day of grace is about
to close; and no longer respite will be given.’
That this is the meaning of the declaration is evident from
what follows, ver. 7:---
‘But in the days of the voice of
the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then the mystery of God is
accomplished, according to his comforting announcement to his servants the
prophets.’
In other words, the seventh and last trumpet, which is just
about to sound, will bring the great predicted consummation. This intimate
connection between the appearing of the archangel and the sounding of the
seventh trumpet (which ushers in the consummation) is most suggestive, and
gives strong confirmation to all that has been advanced respecting the
correspondence of the scene before us with the description in 1 Thess. iv. 16.
But this seventh verse supplies also a singular and most
satisfactory confirmation of the views which have been already expressed with
regard to what is erroneously called ‘the preaching of the gospel to the dead’
(1 Pet. iv. 6). The reader will remember that in the passage referred to the
expression employed is ‘nekroiz euhggelisqh’ (literally, it was evangelised to the dead, i.e.
comforting announcement was made to the dead).
In the passage now before us (chap. x. 7) we discover the
original source of this peculiar expression ‘evangelised’ [enhggelisen], and on more minute
consideration we find an allusion, clear and distinct, to the very same
communication made to the dead which is referred to by St. Peter. The angel in
the vision swears---
‘that there shall be no longer
delay or respite . . . but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when
he is about to sound, then the mystery of God is completed, as he evangelised
his servants the prophets.’
In other words, ‘as he declared by a comforting
announcement to his servants the prophets.’
Here the question presents itself, When was this comforting
announcement made? Alford correctly answers this question. In his note upon
this verse he says---
‘that time should no longer be,
i.e. should no more intervene; in allusion to the answer given to the cry
of the souls of the martyrs, chap. vi. 11, kai erreqh avtoiz ina anapauswntai
eti cronon mikron. This whole series of trumpet judgments has been an answer
to the prayers of the saints, and now the vengeance is about to receive its
entire fulfilment; cronoz ouketi estai: the appointed delay is at an end.
That this is the meaning is shown by the all en taiz hmeraiz etc., which
follows.’
Next, to whom was this comforting announcement made? The
answer is, ‘to his servants the prophets.’ This clearly refers to those who, in
chap. vi. 9, are represented as ‘the souls of them that were slain for the word
of God, and for the testimony which they bore.’ For what is the function of a
prophet? Is it not to declare the word of the Lord, and to bear testimony for
the truth? In chap. vi. they are described as ‘having been slain,’ the fate
which Jesus predicted for His servants. ‘Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets:
and some of them ye shall kill and crucify’ (Matt. xxiii. 34). Jerusalem was
notoriously the murderess of the prophets. ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that
killest the prophets’ (Matt. xxiii. 37). ‘It cannot be that a prophet perish
out of Jerusalem’ (Luke xiii. 32). It was the blood of these martyrs that was
to be required of ‘that generation,’ and now the time was come.
Lastly, observe the period indicated in this comforting
announcement [euaggelion]. It is ‘in the days of
the voice of the seventh angel that the mystery of God shall be finished.’ Turn
to chap. xi. 18, which describes the result of the sounding of the seventh
trumpet, and what do we find? It is declared there, ‘Thy wrath is come, and
the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give
reward unto thy servants the prophets.’ How perfectly this coincides with
the statements in 1 Pet. iv. 6, as well as in Rev. vi. 9-11, and how obviously
they refer to the same period and the same event, hardly needs to be pointed
out. It raises probability to certainty, and demonstrates the truth of the
explanation already given, by a subtle and recondite correspondence which will
bear the most minute and critical inspection.
III. The open book in the hand of the angel (chap. x. 8-11).
The mighty angel is represented as holding in his hand a little book open. Of
its contents we are not informed, but we are greatly assisted in the
interpretation of the symbol by the manifest correspondence between the scene
in the Apocalypse and that described in Ezekiel ii. iii. In fact, they seem
counterparts of one another. The roll in Ezekiel corresponds with ‘the little
book.’ In the prophecy it is ‘the Lord’ who holds in His hand the roll,
and gives it to the prophet; an additional confirmation of the argument that it
is the Lord who in the Apocalypse holds the little book in His hand. In
both the prophecy and the Apocalypse the roll or book is open. In both,
the roll or book is eaten by the prophets; in both it is in the mouth
‘as honey for sweetness.’ The Apocalypse alone states that it was afterwards bitter
to the taste; but we may infer that the same characteristic equally applies to
Ezekiel’s roll. All these remarkable correspondences sufficiently prove that
the scene in the prophecy of Ezekiel is the prototype of the vision in the
Apocalypse. But the cief point ot be noticed
is the character of the contents of the little book, and this we are
enabled to determine by its parallel in the prophecy. The roll which Ezekiel
saw ‘was written within and without; and there was written therein
lamentations, and mourning, and woe’ (Ezek. ii. 10). We infer, therefore, that
in both the contents were bitter, for St. John, like Ezekiel, was the
messenger of coming woe to Israel, and this very vision belongs to the
woe-trumpets which sounded the signal of judgment.
The Measurement of the Temple.
CHAP. xi. 1, 2.---‘And there was
given to me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and
measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But
the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is
given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty
and two months.’
If anything were wanting to prove that in these apocalyptic
visions we are dealing with contemporary history, with facts and things extant
in the days of St. John, it would be supplied by the passage before us. Here we
have distinct and decisive evidence with respect to time and place.
The vision speaks of the city and temple of Jerusalem; the
literal city and the literal temple. They were therefore in existence when the
Apocalypse was written, for the vision before us predicts their destruction.
What can be more forced and unnatural, what more uncritical
and groundless than to interpret a statement like this as symbolical of the
Protestant Reformation and the Church of Rome? Such interpretations are indeed
a humiliating proof of the extravagance and credulity of some good men; but
they do incalculable mischief by setting an example of rash handling of the
Word of God, and passing off the fantastic speculations of men for the true
sayings of God. We have no right whatever to suppose that anything more or
anything else is intended here than the literal city of Jerusalem and the
literal temple of God.
The interlocutor in this vision is still the same ‘mighty
angel’ whose identity with ‘the archangel,’ ‘the Lord himself,’ we have
endeavoured to establish. The Seer receives a measuring rod or staff, and is
commanded to measure the temple of God, the altar, and the worshippers. We
naturally revert to the scene in Ezekiel xl., where the prophet sees an angel
with a line of flax and a measuring reed taking the dimensions of the temple
that was about to be built. But it is plain that in this apocalyptic vision it
is not construction that is intended by the symbol, but demolition and destruction.
It is important always to keep in mind that the whole action
of the Apocalypse is hastening on to a great catastrophe, now not far off.
Israel and Jerusalem are never for a moment out of sight. Two woe-trumpets have
already sounded the doom of the apostate nation, and the final consummation
only waits the blast of the third. The archangel has already declared that ‘no
more time shall be given,’ and the Seer has tasted the bitterness of the ‘libel,’---the
little book which contains the indictment and punishment of that wicked
generation.
In such circumstances nothing but coming destruction can be
the theme. That the measuring-rod or line is employed in Scripture as an emblem
of destruction is indisputable, more frequently indeed than of construction. A
few instances must suffice. In Lamentations ii. 7, 8, we find a passage which
might well be the interpretation of this apocalyptic vision: ‘The Lord hath
cast off his altar; he hath abhorred his sanctuary; he hath given up into the
hands of the enemy the walls of her palaces. The Lord hath purposed to destroy
the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line; he hath
not withdrawn his hand from destroying.’ Again, in the prophecy of Isaiah
concerning the destruction of Babylon (chap. xxxiv. 11) we read, ‘The cormorant
and the bittern shall possess it; and he shall stretch out upon it the line
of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.’ The prophet Amos also uses the
same emblem (Amos vii. 6-9): ‘Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood by
a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand. And the Lord said
unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumbline. Then said the Lord,
Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel: I will
not again pass by them any more: and the high places of Isaac shall be
desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,’ etc.
Another very suggestive passage occurs in 2 Kings xxi. 12, 13: ‘Behold, I am
bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it both
his ears shall tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of
Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab.’ (See also Psalm lx. 6;
Isaiah xxviii. 17.)
But not only is the measuring line or rod used as a symbol
of the destruction of places, but, what is more singular, of persons
also. There is a curious passage in 2 Samuel viii. 2 illustrative of this fact:
And David ‘smote Moab, and measured them with a line, casting them down to
the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full
line to keep alive.’ There is some obscurity in the passage, but the
meaning appears to be that the captives being ordered to lie down, a certain
portion was measured off, equal to two-thirds of the whole, who were appointed
to death, while the remaining third was spared. This explains, what would
otherwise be almost unintelligible, why in the vision the worshippers are
measured as well as the temple and the altar. We think it is plain, then, that
the command to measure ‘the temple, the altar, and them that worship therein’
is significant of the impending destruction which was about to overwhelm the
most sacred places of Judaism and the unhappy people themselves.
It will be remarked that one portion of the temple
precincts, ‘the court which is without the temple,’ is excepted from the
measurement: and for this a reason is assigned,---‘for it is given unto the
Gentiles.’ The passage reads thus: ‘The court which is without the temple cast
out, and measure it not,’ etc. There is some obscurity in this statement.
We know that there was a portion of the temple precincts called ‘the court of
the Gentiles;’ but that can hardly be the place alluded to here, for it would
be strange to speak of the court of the Gentiles being given to the Gentiles. It
is evident also that this abandonment of the outer court to the Gentiles is
referred to as something sacrilegious, being coupled with the statement, ‘And
the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.’ The reason,
therefore, for the exemption of the outer court from measurement may probably
be that the place was already desecrated; it was therefore ‘cast
out,’ rejected, as being no longer a holy place; it was profane and
unclean, being in the hands, and even under the feet, of the Gentiles.
Is there anything answering to these facts in the history of
the last days of Jerusalem? For that is the true problem which we have to
solve. Here the Jewish historian throws a vivid light upon the whole scene
described in the vision. Josephus tells us how, on the breaking out of the
Jewish war, the temple became the citadel and fortress of the insurgents; how
the different factions struggled for the possession of this vantage ground; and
how John, on of the rebel chiefs, held the temple with his crew of brigands
called the Zealots, while Simon, another and rival leader, occupied the city.
He tells us also how the Idumean force, which may properly be regarded as
belonging to the Gentiles, effected an entrance into the city under cover of
night, during the distraction caused by a terrific storm, and were admitted by
the Zealots, their confederates, within the sacred precincts of the temple. It
would appear that all through the period of the siege the city and temple
courts were in the possession of these wild and lawless men of Edom, who
carried rapine and bloodshed wherever they came. It was by them, and on this
occasion, that Ananus and Joshua, tow of the most eminent and venerable among
the high priests, were foully murdered, a crime to which Josephus ascribes the
subsequent capture of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Jewish commonwealth.
(See Traill’s Josephus, bk. iv. chap. v. sec. 2.)
Have we not here all the conditions of the problem fully
satisfied? The violent and sacrilegious invasion of the temple by the Zealots
and Idumeans, and the masterful occupation of the city by these banditti, who
trode it down under their feet during the period of the siege, seems to us
precisely to meet the requirements of the description. Surely it will not be
said that the Idumeans were not Gentiles? It is important to observe that this
phrase the Gentiles, or the nations [ta eqnh], so frequently occurring
in the New Testament, generally refers to the immediate neighbours of the Jews,
many of them dwelling with them, or beside them, in the land of Palestine.
Samaria was an eqnoz:
so was Idumea,
so was Batanaea, so was Galilee, so were the Tyrians and Sidonians; and the
phrase ‘all the nations,’ or ‘all the Gentiles,’ is often employed in this
limited sense as referring to the Palestinian nationalities. When our Lord sent
forth the twelve on their first missionary tour, and charged them not to go
into the way of the Gentiles, nor to enter into any city of the Samaritans, but
to go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, He did not mean by the
Gentiles the Greeks and the Romans, the Egyptians and the Persians, but the
home-Gentiles, as we may call them, whom the disciples could find without
overpassing the limits of Palestine. We are in danger sometimes of being misled
by the application of our modern geographical and ethnological ideas to the
thought and speech of our Lord’s time. The ideas of the Jews were rather
provincial than ecumenical: their world was Palestine, and to them ‘the
nations,’ or ‘the Gentiles,’ often meant no more than their nearest
neighbours, dwelling on the borders, and sometimes within the borders, of their
own land.
The passage which we are now considering throws light also
upon our Lord’s prediction in Luke xxi. 24: ‘And Jerusalem shall be trodden
down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled.’ Our
Lord, it is to be observed, is here speaking of the siege and capture of
Jerusalem, the very theme of the apocalyptic vision. It cannot be questioned
that our Lord’s reference to Jerusalem being trodden down by the Gentiles is
identical in meaning with the language in the vision,---‘The holy city shall
they [the Gentiles] tread under foot.’ Both passages must refer to the same act
and the same time: whatever is meant by the one is meant by the other. Since,
then, the allusion in the Apocalypse is to the violent and sacrilegious
occupation of Jerusalem and the temple by the hordes of Zealots and Edomites,
we conclude that our Lord, in His prediction, alludes to the same historical
fact.
But if so, what are we to understand by ‘the times of the
Gentiles’ in our Saviour’s prediction? It has been generally supposed that
this expression refers to some mystic period of unknown duration, extending, it
may be, over centuries and aeons, and still rolling on its uncompleted course.
But if this non-natural interpretation of words is to be applied to Scripture,
it is difficult to see what use there is in specifying any periods of time at
all. Surely, it is much more respectful to the Word of God to understand its
language as having some definite meaning. What, then, if ‘forty and two months’
should really mean forty-two months, and nothing more? The times of the
Gentiles can only mean the time during which Jerusalem is in their occupation.
That time is distinctly specified in the Apocalypse as forty-two months. Now
this is a period repeatedly spoken of in this book under different
designations. It is the ‘thousand two hundred and sixty days’ of the next
verse, and the ‘time, times and half a time’ of chap. xii. 14, that is to say, three
years and a half. Now it is evident that such a space of time in the
history of nations would be an insignificant point; but for a tumultuous and
lawless rabble to domineer over a great city for such a period would be
something portentous and terrible. The occupation of such a city by an armed
mob is not likely to continue over ages and centuries: it is an abnormal state
of things which must speedily terminate. Now this is exactly what happened in
the last days of Jerusalem. During the three years and an half which represent
with sufficient accuracy the duration of the Jewish war, Jerusalem was actually
in the hands and under the feet of a horde of ruffians, whom their own
countryman describes as ‘slaves, and the very dregs of society, the spurious
and polluted spawn of the nation.’ The last fatal struggle may be said to have
begun when Vespasian was sent by Nero, at the head of sixty thousand men, to
put down the rebellion. This was early in the year A.D. 67, and in August
A.D.70 the city and the temple were a heap of smoking ashes.
It is scarcely possible to conceive a more complete and
striking correspondence between prophecy and history than this, which needs no
dexterous manipulation and no non-natural interpretation, but the simple noting
of facts registered in the annals of the time.
The following observations of Professor Moses Stuart on this
passage are most important:---
‘"Forty and two months."
After all the investigation which I have been able to make I feel compelled to
believe that the writer refers to a literal and definite period, although not
so exact that a single day, or even a few days, of variation from it would
interfere with the object he has in view. It is certain that the invasion of
the Romans lasted just about the length of the period named, until Jerusalem
was taken. And although the city was not besieged so long, yet the metropolis
in this case, as in innumerable others in both Testaments, appears to stand for
the country of Judea. During the invasion of Judea by the Romans the faithful
testimony of the persecuted witnesses for Christianity is continued, while at
last they are slain. The patience of God in deferring so long the destruction
of the persecutors is displayed by this, and especially His mercy in continuing
to warn and reprove them. This is a natural, simple, and easy method of
interpretation, to say the least, and one which, although it is not difficult
to raise objections against it, I feel constrained to adopt.
Episode of the Two Witnesses.
CHAP. xi. 3-13.-‘And I will give
[power] unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred
and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and
the two candlesticks standing before the Lord of the earth. And if any man
willeth to hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their
enemies: and if any man willeth to hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.
These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their
prophecy: and have power over the waters to turn them to blood, and to smite
the earth [land] with every plague, as often as they will. And when they have
finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the abyss shall make
war against them, and overcome them, and kill them. And their dead body shall
lie in the [broad] street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom
and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. And they of the people and
kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an
half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that
dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send
gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt upon
the earth. And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered
into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw
them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up
hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld
them. And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the
city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the
remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.’
We now enter upon the investigation of one of the most
difficult problems contained in Scripture, and one which has exercised, we may
even say baffled, the research and ingenuity of critics and commentators up to
the present hour. Who are the two witnesses? Are they mythical or historical
persons? Are they symbols or actual realities? Do they represent principles or
individuals? The conjectures, for they are nothing more, which have been
propounded on this subject form one of the most curious chapters in the history
of Biblical interpretation. So complete is the bewilderment, and so
unsatisfactory the explanation, that many consider the problem insoluble, or
conclude that the witnesses have never yet appeared, but belong to the unknown
future.
It is one of the tests of a true theory of interpretation
that it should be a good working hypothesis. When the right key to the
Apocalypse is found it will open every lock. If this prophetic vision be, as we
believe it to be, the reproduction and expansion of the prophecy on the Mount
of Olives; and if we are to look for the dramatis personae who appear in
its scenes within the limits of the period to which that prophecy extends, then
the area of investigation becomes very restricted, and the probabilities of
discovery proportionately increased. In the inquiry respecting the identity of
the two witnesses we are shut up almost to a point of time. Some of the data
are precise enough. It will be seen that the period of their prophesying
is antecedent to the sounding of the seventh trumpet, that is, just previous to
the catastrophe of Jerusalem. The scene of their prophesying also is not
obscurely indicated: it is ‘the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom
and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.’ Nothwithstanding Alford’s
objections, which appear to have really no weight, there can be no reasonable
doubt that Jerusalem is the place intended, according to the general
consent of almost all commentators and the obvious requirements of the passage.
The question then is, What two persons living in the last days of the Jewish
commonwealth and in the city of Jerusalem, can be found to answer the description
of the two witnesses as given in the vision? That description is so marked and
minute that their identification ought not to be difficult. There are seven
lending characteristics:---
- They are witnesses of
Christ.
- They are two in
number.
- They are endowed with
miraculous powers.
- They are symbolically
represented by the two olive trees and two candlesticks seen in the vision
of Zechariah. (Zech. iv.)
- They prophesy in
sackcloth, i.e. their message is one of woe.
- They die a violent
death in the city, and their dead bodies are treated with ignominy.
- After three days and a
half they rise from the dead, and are taken up to heaven.
Before proceeding further in the inquiry it may be well to
notice the following remarks of Dr. Alford on the subject, with which we cordially
agree:---
‘The two witnesses, etc. No
solution has ever been given of this portion of the prophecy. Either the two
witnesses are literal,---two individual men,---or they are symbolical,---two
individuals taken as the concentration of principles and characteristics, and
this either in themselves, or as representing men who embodied those principles
and characteristics. . . . The article toiz seems as if
the two witnesses were well known, and distinct in their individuality. The dusin is
essential to the prophecy, and is not to be explained away. No interpretation
can be right which does not, either in individuals, or in characteristic lines
of testimony, retain and bring out this dualism.’
On the statement ‘clothed in sackcloth’ (in token of need of
repentance and of approaching judgment), Alford says:---
‘Certainly this portion of the prophetic description
strongly favours the individual interpretation. For, first, it is hard to
conceive how whole bodies of men and churches could be thus described; and,
secondly, the principal symbolical interpreters have left out, or passed very
slightly, this important particular. One does not see how bodies of men who
lived like other men (their being the victims of persecution in another matter)
can be said to have prophesied clothed in sackcloth.’
Again, on the
fifth verse:---
‘This whole description is most
difficult to apply on the allegorical interpretation; as it that which follows,
and, as might have been expected, the allegorists halt and are perplexed exceedingly.
The double announcement here seems to stamp the literal sense, and the ei tiz and dei autun
apoktanqhnai are decisive against any mere national application of the
words. Individuality could not be more strongly indicated.’
Again, on the miraculous powers ascribed to the
witnesses:---
‘All this points out the spirit and
power of Moses, combined with that of Elias. And, undoubtedly, it is in these
two directions that we must look for the two witnesses, or lines of witnesses.
The one impersonates the law, the other the prophets. The one reminds us of the
prophet whom God should raise up like unto Moses; the other of Elias the
prophet, who should come before the great and terrible day of the Lord.’
Entirely concurring in these observations, which state the
problem fairly, and conclusively set aside any allegorical interpretation as
incompatible with the plain requirements of the case, we now proceed to search
for the two witnesses of Christ who testified for their Lord and sealed their
testimony with their blood, in Jerusalem, in the last days of the Jewish
polity, and we have no hesitation in naming St. James and St. Peter as
the persons indicated.
1. St. James
We know as a matter of fact and of history that in the last
days of Jerusalem there lived in that city a Christian teacher eminent for his
sanctity, a faithful witness of Christ, endowed with the gifts of prophecy and
miracles, who prophesied in sackcloth, and who sealed his testimony with his
blood, being murdered in the streets of Jerusalem towards the closing days of
the Jewish commonwealth. This was ‘James, a servant of God, and of the Lord
Jesus Christ.’
Let us see how this name fulfills the requirements of the
problem. It is impossible to conceive a more adequate representation of the old
prophets and the law of Moses than the Apostle James. That he was a faithful
witness of Christ in Jerusalem is unquestionable. His habitual, if not his
fixed, residence was there: his relation to the church of Jerusalem makes this
all but certain. No man of that day had a better title to be called an Elijah.
No silken courtier, no prophesier of smooth things, but ascetic in his habits,
stern and bold in his denunciation of sin,---a man whose knees were callous,
like those of a camel, with much prayer; whose unflinching integrity and
primitive sanctity won for him even in that wicked city the appellation of the
Just: was not this the manner of man to ‘torment them that dwelt in the
land,’ and to answer to the description of a witness of Christ? We can still
hear the echo of those stern rebukes which galled the proud and covetous men
who ‘oppressed the hireling in his wages,’ and which predicted the
swiftly-coming wrath which was now so near,---‘Go to, ye rich men, weep and
howl for your miseries which are coming on. Ye heaped up treasures in the last
days.’ Who can with greater probability be named as one of the two prophet witnesses
of the last days than James of Jerusalem, ‘the Lord’s brother’?
Concerning the exact time and manner of the martyrdom of
this witness there may be some doubt, but of the fact itself, and of its having
taken place in the city of Jerusalem, there can be none. Thus far, at all
events, St. James, in the manner of his life and of his death, answers with
remarkable fitness to the description of the witnesses given in the Apocalypse.
The following observations by Dr. Schaff place in a striking
light the life and work of St. James of Jerusalem, and are eminently
appropriate to the subject under discussion:---
‘There was a necessity for the
ministry of James. If any could win over the ancient covenant people it was he.
It pleased God to set so high an example of the Old Testament piety in its
purest form among the Jews, to make conversion to the Gospel, even at the
eleventh hour, as easy as possible for them. But when they would not listen to
the voice of this last messenger of peace, then was the measure of the divine
patience exhausted, and the fearful and long-threatened judgment broke forth.
And thus was the mission of James fulfilled. He was not to outlive the
destruction of the Holy City and the temple. According to Hegesippus, he was
martyred in the year before that event, viz. A.D. 69.’
2. St. Peter.
But who is the other witness? Here we seem to be left wholly
in the dark. Stuart indeed suggests that we may regard the number two as
merely symbolical; but this seems an unwarrantable supposition. Besides, as the
Old Testament prototypes of the witnesses, ‘the two anointed ones’ of
Zechariah’s vision, were two persons, Zerubabbel and Joshua, it is only
congruous that the witnesses of the Apocalypse should be two persons.
Undoubtedly the second witness, like the first, must be sought among the
apostles. They were pre-eminently Christ’s witnesses, and possessed in the
highest degree the miraculous endowments ascribed to the witnesses in the
Apocalypse.
Now, what other apostle besides St. James had a recognised
connection with the church of Jerusalem; dwelt statedly in that city; lived up
to the eve of the dissolution of the Jewish polity; died a martyr’s death; and
suffered in Jerusalem? It may seem to some a wild conjecture to suggest the
name of St. Peter, as we venture to do; but it is by no means a random
guess, and we solicit a candid consideration of the arguments in favour of the
suggestion.
If it should appear that the habitual or fixed residence of
St. Peter was in Jerusalem; that there was an intimate, if not an official,
connection between him and the church of that city; and that St. Peter was in
Jerusalem on the eve of the Jewish revolt: all these circumstances would lend
great probability to the supposition that St. Peter was the other witness
associated with St. James.
What, then, are the facts of the case as shown in the New
Testament?
- We find St. Peter the
most prominent person at the original founding of the church of Jerusalem
on the day of Pentecost.
- We find St. Peter
summoned before the Sanhedrin as the representative of the Christians in
Jerusalem (Acts iv. 8; v.29).
- When the church of
Jerusalem was dispersed after the death of Stephen, St. Peter, with the
other apostles, continued in Jerusalem (Acts viii. 1).
- St. Peter was
delegated, along with St. John, to visit the Samaritans converted by the
preaching of Philip. After fulfilling their mission they returned to
Jerusalem (Acts viii. 25).
- When St. Peter was
called by a divine revelation to Caesarea to preach the Gospel to
Cornelius we find that he returned from Caesarea to Jerusalem (Acts xi.
2).
- It was in Jerusalem
that St. Peter was apprehended and imprisoned by Herod Agrippa I. after
the martyrdom of St. James ‘the brother of John’ (Acts xii. 3).
- On St. Paul’s
conversion we are told that ‘he did not go up to Jerusalem to them which
were apostles before him’ (Gal i. 17): which implies that there were
apostles residing in that city.
- Three years after his
conversion St. Paul goes up to Jerusalem. For what purpose? ‘To see
Peter;’ and he adds,---‘I abode with him fifteen days,’ implying that St.
Peter’s stated abode was in Jerusalem. On this occasion St. Paul saw only
one other apostle, viz. ‘James, the Lord’s brother’ (Gal. i. 18, 19).
- Fourteen years
afterwards St. Paul again visits Jerusalem. Whom does he find there? ‘James,
Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars’ (Gal. Ii. 1, 9).
- When Paul and Barnabas
were deputed by the church of Antioch to go to Jerusalem to consult the
apostles and elders respecting the imposition of the Jewish ritual upon
the Gentile converts, what apostles did they find in Jerusalem on that
occasion? St. Peter and St. James. (Acts xv. 2, 7, 13.)
- We find St. Peter and
St. James taking a leading part in the discussion of the question referred
to them by the church of Antioch; no other apostles being named as
present. (Acts xv. 6-22.)
- That St. Peter and St.
James had an official and recognised connection with the church of
Jerusalem is presumable from the terms of the letter addressed to the
Gentile churches in Antioch, etc. The document is styled ‘the decrees of
the apostles and elders which are in Jerusalem’ [twn en Ierosolumoiz], implying their
fixed abode there. (See Steiger on 1 Peter v. 31.)
- Judas and Silas,
having delivered the epistle to the church of Antioch, returned to
Jerusalem, ‘unto the apostles’ (Acts xv.33).
- We infer that St.
Peter was associated with St. James in the church of Jerusalem from the
fact that St. Peter, when miraculously brought out of prison, sent a
special message to St. James and the brethren,---‘Go, shew these things
unto James, and to the brethren’ (Acts xii. 17).
- St. Peter (in 1 Peter
v. 13) sends a salutation from ‘his son Marcus.’ If this means John
surnamed Mark, as is most probable, we know that his home was in
Jerusalem, where his mother had a house. (Acts xii. 12.)
- If it shall appear (as
we hope to show) that the Babylon of 1 Peter v. 13 is really Jerusalem, it
will be a decisive proof that St. Peter’s habitual place of residence was
in that city. The complete evidence, however, of the identity of Babylon
with Jerusalem must be reserved until we come to the consideration of Rev.
xvi. xvii.
- A comparison of the
epistles of St. James and St. Peter shows that both are addressed to the
same class of persons, viz. Jewish believers of the dispersion. (James i.
1; 1 Peter i. 1.) It is very suggestive, in connection with this inquiry,
to find these two apostles dwelling in the same city, officially connected
with the same church, associated in the same work, addressing the
believing Jews in foreign lands, and bearing witness to the same great
truths in advanced age, almost at the close of their life, and on the eve
of that great catastrophe which buried the city, the temple, and the
nation in one common ruin.
- Finally, it may be
affirmed that, whether these probabilities amount to demonstration or not,
no man could be named more answerable to the character of a witness for
Christ in the last days of Jerusalem than St. Peter. Of course, we reject
as unhistorical and incredible the lying legends of tradition which assign
to him a bishopric and a martyrdom in Rome. The imposture has received
only too respectful treatment at the hands of critics and commentators. It
is more than time that it should be relegated to the limbo of fable, with
other pious frauds of the same character. That St. Peter’s stated abode
was in Jerusalem is, we think, proved. That he lived up to the verge of
the Jewish revolt and war is evident from his epistles. That he died a
martyr’s death we know from our Lord’s prediction; and in his case we may
well say that the proverb would hold good, ‘It cannot be that a prophet
perish out of Jerusalem.’ As we read his epistles, and view them as the
testimony of one of the two apostolic witnesses of Christ in the doomed
city, a new emphasis is imparted to his mysterious utterance which
anticipates his own and his country’s fate, ‘The time is come when
judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us!’
How appalling the description of the evil times and evil men, as he saw
them in the last days, with his own eyes, in Jerusalem! While the last
chapter might be the final testimony of the prophet-witness to the guilty
land and city; the last warning-cry before the fiery storm of vengeance
burst: ‘The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night,’
etc. (2 Pet. iii. 10).
Let us now see how far the requirements of the apocalyptic
description are met by this identification of the two witnesses as St. James
and St. Peter.
They are two in number: ‘Individual men, well known, and
distinct in their individuality,’ as Alford truly says they must be. They are
more than this,---they are fellow-servants and brethren in Christ, associated
in the same work, the same church, the same city. The dualism, which
Alford says is essential to the right interpretation, is perfect. Still more
than this,---‘The one impersonates the law, the other the prophets.’ Who could
be a better representative of the law than St. James? though he does not the
less impersonate the prophets. St. James indeed strongly reminds us of Elias,
who might have been his model; the stern ascetic, whose mighty achievements in
prayer he commemorates in his epistle. St. Peter also, who may be called the
founder of the Jewish Christian church, reminds us of Moses, the founder of the
ancient Jewish church. What the old prophets were to Israel, St. James and St.
Peter were to their own generation, and especially to Jerusalem, the chief
scene of their life and labours. The period of their prophecy is also
remarkable; it is for the space of a thousand two hundred and threescore days,
or three years and a half, representing the duration of the Jewish war. They
prophecy in sackcloth: that is, their message is of coming judgment; the
denunciation of the wrath of God. They are likened to the two olive-trees and
the two candlesticks seen in the vision of Zechariah: that is, they are ‘the
two anointed ones’ on whom the unction of the Spirit has been poured, the
feeders and lights of the Christian church, as Zerubbabel and Joshua were the
feeders and lights of Israel in their day. They are endowed with miraculous powers,
a characteristic which must not be explained away, and which will apply only to
apostolic witnesses. They are to seal their testimony with their blood, and
thus far we find St. James and St. Peter perfectly fulfil the conditions of the
problem. We are sure that they were both martyrs of Christ, and that too in the
last days of the Jewish commonwealth. As regards the place where St. James’s
blood was shed we have credible historical evidence that it was in Jerusalem.
But here the light fails us, and henceforth we are compelled to grope and feel
our way. Of the death of St. Peter we possess no record; but the very silence
is suggestive. That the two chief persons in the church of Jerusalem should
fall victims to a suspicious government, or to popular fury, at the moment when
revolution was on the point of breaking out, or had already broken out, is only
too probable; that their dead bodies should lie unburied is in accordance with
what actually occurred in many instances during that fearful period of lawless
barbarity which preceded the fall of Jerusalem: but though we can go thus far
we can go no farther. They martyred witnesses are raised again to life after
three days and a half; they stand up on their feet, to the consternation of
their enemies and murderers; they ascend to heaven in a cloud, in view of those
who exulted over their dead bodies. If we are asked, Did this miracle take
place with respect to the martyred witnesses of Christ, ST. James and St.
Peter? we can only answer, We do not know. There is no evidence one way or
another. We only know that it was a distinct promise of Christ that at His
coming the living saints should be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. If
such a thing might take place on the large scale of tens of thousands, and hundreds
of thousands, there is no difficulty in supposing that it might take place in
the case of two individuals. If the ascension of Christ Himself is a credible
fact, it is not easy to see why the ascension of His two witnesses may not also
be a literal fact. But we do not dogmatise on the subject: the facts are before
us, and must be left to make their own impression on the mind of the reader. It
does not seem possible to resolve the whole into allegory. Where we have found
so much already of substantial fact and credible history, it seems inconsistent
and unreasonable to sublimate the conclusion into mere metaphor and symbol. We
therefore quit the subject with this one observation: Four-fifths at least of
the description in the Apocalypse suit the known history of St. James and St.
Peter, and no one can allege that the remainder may not be equally appropriate.
There remains, however, one circumstance to which we have
not adverted, viz. the enemy by whom the witnesses are slain. We read in ver.
7, ‘And when they shall have finished their testimony, the wild beast that
cometh up from the abyss shall make war upon them, and shall overcome them, and
kill them.’ This is the first mention made of a being that occupies a large
space in the subsequent part of the Book of Revelation---‘the wild beast from
the abyss.’ Here he is introduced proleptically, that is by anticipation. We
shall have much to say respecting this portentous being in the sequel, and only
now allude to the subject in order to note the fact that, whatever the symbol
may mean, it points to a powerful and deadly antagonist to Christ and His
people; and that to the agency of this monster the death of the two witnesses
is ascribed.
The ascension of the martyred witnesses to heaven is
immediately followed by an act of judgment inflicted on the guilty city in
which their blood was shed:---
Chap. xi. 13.---‘And in the same
hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and
there were slain in the earthquake seven thousand men, and the remnant were
affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.’
It is difficult to see how this can be regarded as merely
symbolical. It is a remarkable fact that we find in Josephus an account of an
incident which occurred during the Jewish war which in many respects bears a
striking resemblance to the events described in this passage. On that fatal
occasion, when the Idumean force was treacherously admitted into the city by
the Zealots, a fearful earthquake took place, and in the same night a great massacre
of the inhabitants of the city was perpetrated by these brigands. The statement
of Josephus is as follows:---
‘During the night a terrific storm
arose; the wind blew with tempestuous violence, and the rain fell in torrents;
the lightnings flashed without intermission, accompanied by fearful peals of
thunder, and the quaking earth resounded with mighty bellowings. The universe,
convulsed to its very base, appeared fraught with the destruction of mankind,
and it was easy to conjecture that these were portents of no trivial calamity.’
Taking advantage of the panic caused by the earthquake, the
Idumeans, who were in league with the Zealots, who occupied the temple,
succeeded in effecting an entrance into the city, when a fearful massacre
ensued. ‘The outer court of the temple,’ says Josephus, ‘was inundated with
blood, and the day dawned upon eight thousand five hundred dead.’
We do not quote this as the fulfilment of the scene in the
vision, although it may be so; but to show how much the symbols resemble actual
historical facts.
So ends the vision of the sixth seal with these impressive
words, ‘The second woe is past; behold, the third woe cometh quickly.’
THE SEVENTH TRUMPET.
Catastrophe
of the Trumpet Vision.
Chap. xi. 15-19.---‘And the seventh
angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdom of
the world is become our Lord’s and his Christ’s, and he shall reign for ever
and ever. And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their
thrones, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, saying, We give thee
thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast [and art to come]; because
thou hast taken thy great power, and hast reigned. And the nations were angry,
and thine anger came, and the time of the dead to be judged, and to give their
reward to thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear
thy name, both small and great; and to destroy the destroyers of the earth
[land]. And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of his covenant
was seen in his temple: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings,
and an earthquake, and a great hail.’
We now reach the last of the trumpet visions, and, as in
every other instance, we find that the vision culminates in a catastrophe---an
act of judgment inflicted on the enemies of God; and, on the other hand, the
triumph and felicity of His people. We have great pleasure in quoting here the
remarks of Dean Alford, who correctly apprehends the plan and structure of the
successive visions:---
‘All this,’ he says, ‘forms strong
ground for inference that the three series of visions---the seals, trumpets,
and vials---are not continuous, but resumptive; not indeed going over the same
ground with one another, either of time or of occurrence, but each evolving something
which was not in the former, and putting the course of God’s Providence in a
different light. It is true that the seals involve the trumpets, the trumpets
the vials; but it is not in mere temporal succession: the involution and
inclusion are far deeper,’ etc.
This is an important admission, and had the learned critic
carried the same principle of resumption into all the visions, it would
have given tenfold value to his apocalyptic exposition. The principle itself is
so legibly stamped upon the book that the marvel is how any one can miss it.
As for the symbols in the seventh trumpet-vision they are
exceedingly clear, and almost self-evident. Observe, it is ‘the last
trumpet’ which now sounds, and the events which follow are such as we might
expect at so great a consummation.
The first result is the proclamation of the kingdom of
God. This is the grand finale towards which, in one form or another all the
action of every vision tends. It is the theme of all prophecy; the terminus
ad quem of the gospels, the epistles, and the Apocalypse. The period of the
coming of the kingdom is most distinctly marked throughout the New Testament;
it is always associated with the ‘end of the age,’ or close of Jewish
dispensation [sunteleia
tou aiwnoz],
the resurrection, and the judgment. The seventh trumpet is the signal that ‘the
end’ is come, and that ‘the mystery of God’ is finished; it is therefore the
time for the proclamation that the kingdom of God has come. Messiah reigns; ‘He
hath put all enemies under his feet.’
We may here remark the singular consistency and harmony
between representations so unconnected and widely dissimilar as they may
appear, as the teachings of St. Paul and the visions of the Apocalypse. In the
fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul, speaking
of this very period, ‘the end,’ and the sounding of ‘the last
trumpet,’ intimates that it is the time when the kingdom of God
shall come, and when Christ shall ‘deliver up the kingdom to God, even the
Father.’ This appears to be the very transaction represented in the scene
before us. Messiah has overcome; He has put down all rule, and all authority,
and all power, i.e. the hostile and malignant Jewish antagonism which
has been the bitter enemy of His cause. But He has conquered the kingdom that
His Father may be supreme. Accordingly the chorus of elders before the throne
celebrate the resumption of the kingdom by the Father, saying, ‘We give thee
thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, because thou hast taken
thy great might, and hast reigned.’ This is a coincidence so subtle, and,
if we may so say, undesigned, as to give the force of demonstration to the
views which have been propounded.
The next result of the last trumpet is the declaration that
the time of the judgment of the dead is come, bringing recompense to the
people of God and retribution to His enemies (ver. 18).
We have here condensed into a few brief sentences the
essence of the eschatology of the New Testament. The wrath that so often was
declared to be coming is now come. It is the time of judgment for
the dead: which supposes their resurrection; it is the time for the vindication
of the martyrs of Christ, whose expostulation was heard in Rev. vi. 9, and for
the rewarding of all the faithful, both small and great; and it is the time of
retribution for the enemies of Christ, the destroyers of the land. In fact, the
whole catastrophe represents a time and an act of judgment, and the scene of
that judgment is the guilty land of Israel, and the time is ‘the end of the
age,’ the termination of the Jewish economy.
The verse which we have just considered is in remarkable
correspondence with the second Psalm. ‘The nations were angry’ is an allusion
to ‘Why do the nations [eqnh] rage?’ They are represented as in revolt against the King
of Zion, and are exhorted to make their submission, lest He be angry, and they
perish in His wrath. In the vision His wrath is come, and the destroyers of the
land perish in that wrath. How accurately all this represents the judgment on
the guilty rulers and people of Israel it would be superfluous to point out.
The scene is definitely localised by the expression thn ghn---that is to say, ‘the
land of Israel.’
The symbolical representation in the last verse (ver. 19)
seems susceptible of a satisfactory explanation. At the very moment of the doom
of Jerusalem, when city and temple perish together,---when all the ceremonial
and ritual of the earthly and transitory are swept away, the temple of God in
heaven is opened, and the ark of His covenant is seen in the temple. That is as
much as to say, the local and temporary passes, but is succeeded by the
heavenly and eternal; the earthly and figurative is superseded by the spiritual
and the true. We have in this representation a fine comment on the words of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, ‘The way into the holiest of all was not yet made
manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing.’ But no sooner is the
‘first tabernacle’ swept away than the temple in heaven is opened, and even the
sacred ark of the covenant, the shrine of the divine Presence and Glory, is
revealed to the eyes of men. Access into the holiest of all is no longer
forbidden, and ‘we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of
Jesus.’
So, amidst portentous manifestations of wrath and judgment
on the wicked,---‘lightnings, and thunders, and earthquake, and hail,’ the
recognised concomitants in the Old Testament of the divine presence and
power,---the vision of the seven trumpets closes.
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