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17 And I saw an angel standing on the sun; and he cried with a loud voice saying to all the birds that fly between the heaven and the earth, Come hither, gather yourselves together to the great feast of God, 18 that ye may devour the flesh of kings, and the flesh of chief captains, and the flesh of mighty ones, and the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all both free and bond, both small and great.

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And I saw the wild-beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war with him who sat on the horse and with his army. 20 And the wild-beast was seized and the false prophet who was with him, who had done the signs before him, by which he had deceived those who received the mark of the wild-beast, and those who worshipped

horses and clothed in linen white and clean; being His faithful people, having their robes made white ir the blood of the Lamb.

17, 18. The symbolic picture is consistent throughout. Under the image of a literal battle, the great victory of Christ over all evil is represented to us; and so the miserable end of the wicked is symbolised by the devouring of the carcasses of the slain by the vultures gathering together for their feast.

19, 20. We are not to suppose any literal conflict to take place at the last day between the armies of this world and the hosts of heaven. The whole vision is

figurative, and powerfully represents to us the warfare of the evil and ungodly with Christ and His people, and His full and final victory over them in the end. The last great conspiracy of the powers of this wicked world against Christ and His saints is here represented to us again under the symbol of a great battle. The same actors reappear here as in the vision of the sixth vial, when spirits issuing from the mouth of the serpent, the wildbeast, and the false prophet gather together all the powers of this world for the war of that great day of Almighty God.1 And as there they were finally

Rev. xvi. 13_17.

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Complete destruction of the Wicked.

XIX.

his likeness; these two were thrown alive into the 21 lake of fire which burneth with brimstone. And the rest were slain by the sword of him who sat on the horse, which issued forth from his mouth; and all the birds were sated with their flesh.

subdued at Harmageddon, the mountain of Megiddo; so here in this vision two of these enemies of the truth, the wild-beast and the false prophet, are cast into the lake of fire, into which the next vision will show us the third, the great serpent, cast together with them. We shall have the same last conspiracy of the world against the truth described in the next vision; in which the great serpent, the real author of evil, will appear in his own proper person, and be conquered for ever and cast, together with his agents, into the lake of fire.

21. This verse clearly proves the finality of this vision, and, therefore, that in the next vision we are carried back again to an earlier date, on that principle of recapitulation so constantly adopted throughout this prophecy. There is here evidently a final destruction of the wicked, and the complete victory of Christ over all the powers of evil. The ruler of this wicked world and His false prophet, and all who belong to them, are slain by the Word of God, by the sword of the Rider on the white horse, the great Hero of the whole drama.

Rev. xx 10

CHAPTER XX.

1-3 Satan is withheld for a thousand years from preventing the belief of the nations of Christendom in the truths of Revelation. 4-6 During the same period of time his agents persecute the faithful members of the Church, who, after the death of the body, reign with Christ, during the intermediate state, in the Paradise of God. 7-10 At the end of the thousand years, the withholding power is removed from Satan, and he brings about the final apostasy, followed by the destruction of himself and his agents. 11-15 The great Day of Judgment.

INTRODUCTION.

THE place of this vision in the prophecy has given rise to a very general but very strange misconception as to its meaning. It has been supposed to predict that a millennium, or a reign of the saints with Christ for a thousand years, is still future, and will follow the destruction of the enemies of the Church, and will then be itself followed by a universal conspiracy and diabolical rebellion of all the nations of the earth against the City of God. Most commentators feel how difficult it is to imagine that such a happy state of things should be followed by such a fearful catastrophe; but they seem to think that the place of the vision in the prophecy leaves them no escape from the difficulty.

'I cannot consent,' says Alford in his commentary on the passage, to distort the words from their plain sense and chronological place in the prophecy, on account of any considerations of difficulty, or any risk of abuses which the doctrine of the millennium may bring with it.' But it is just this close attention to the plain meaning of the words which will determine the true chronological place of the vision in the prophecy, and will prove, as a matter of exegesis, that the millennium cannot possibly be subsequent to the destruction of the wild-beast and the false prophet, but must embrace the whole, or at any rate a great part, of that period of time during which Christ is reigning upon His mediatorial throne in heaven, and during the greater part of which the serpent is removed from the scene of the

prophetic visions, while the wild-beast and the false prophet are carrying on his warfare for him against the saints of God upon this earth.

For what is to determine the chronological place of this vision in the prophecy? Surely not the fact that it occurs in chapter xx. of the book; that it was seen by the prophet and described by him after he had seen and described the preceding visions. Alford is the last writer who would maintain this. All through his commentary he exposes the insuperable difficulties with which those writers have to contend, who attempt the interpretation of the Apocalypse as a continuous prophecy, and not as a collection of synchronous visions, representing the same truth in different aspects, and clearing up in subsequent visions that which was obscure in those first seen and described.

Neither can the use of the conjunction 'and' prove that the state of things symbolised in this vision must necessarily follow, and may not synchronise with, the events described in the previous chapters of the prophecy. The prophet says, 'And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven;' because he is going on with the description of his visions without any break in his composition. He had seen a great many visions 'and' then he saw this one. But this one is an entirely new vision, very different from the others in its imagery, although mentioning some symbols already introduced in the previous visions, but there insufficiently explained. The same conjunction is used in every instance, even where it is quite certain that the prophet must be going back to the very beginning.

The best example of this may be seen at the beginning of chapter xii. That chapter figuratively describes the birth of Christ. But it is closely connected with the vision of the seventh trumpet which describes the very end of all things. Thou hast taken thy great power and hast reigned, and the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged, and that thou shouldst give reward to thy servants the prophets, and the saints, and to them that fear thy name, small and great, and that thou shouldst destroy them that destroy the earth.'

Then follows immediately the figurative description of the birth of Christ. The prophet goes on without any break whatever in his narrative of what he saw and heard. 'And the temple of God was opened in heaven. . . . And there appeared a great sign in heaven,' &c.1 If then the continued flow of the prophet's narrative and his use of the conjunction 'and' is to determine the chronological place of

1 Rev. xi. 17-19; xii. 1.

a vision in this prophecy, we must understand the vision of the travailing woman and the serpent to describe a state of things which is to follow the general resurrection of the dead and the day of judgment; that the birth of Him who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron, is to take place after He has come to judge and destroy the wicked and to give His final reward to His saints. If the absurdity of this supposition is at once apparent to all readers, then why is the continued flow of the prophet's narrative and his use of the conjunction 'and' coupling the vision of chapter xx. to a vision describing the destruction of all the wicked in the lake of fire, to determine the chronological place of the binding and destruction of the serpent, and of the thousand years' reign of the saints with Christ, so as to make it appear to describe a state of things which is to follow and not to precede the great battle of Harmageddon and the Second Advent of Christ to judgment?

If then the late occurrence of the vision in St. John's written book and its connection by a conjunction with the preceding vision do not fix its chronological place in the prophecy, what is to determine that place except the plain meaning of the words of the vision itself, and of that which precedes it?

Now the preceding vision describes in language, which cannot possibly be mistaken by any reader who has not some preconceived theory of interpretation to support, the full and final destruction of all the wicked.

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The great Hero of the drama appears again, followed by all His saints, to fight out to the end the last battle of good and evil. The wild-beast, the kings of the earth, the false prophet, and all that belong to them, are conquered for ever and cast alive into the lake of fire. And then, lest we should fancy that some of the wicked, some seed of evil, might still remain in the world, the prophet adds: The rest were slain with the sword which proceeded out of the mouth of him that sat upon the horse, and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.'' No figurative language could more unmistakably describe the complete destruction of all the wicked. We must indeed distort these words from their plain sense' before we can make room for a millennial reign of the saints with Christ, to be followed by a worse and more general apostasy than any yet described. We may well ask those who would hold out to us this most discouraging expectation, where the wicked are to come from who are to bring about this apostasy? The prophet has already declared to us the full and final destruction of them all.

1 Rev. xix. 21.

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