saw in the previous vision) both the wild-beast and also the false prophet (were thrown); and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. the they represent Satan as rendered more fierce and cruel by his fall. "Woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath a little time. And when serpent saw that he was cast down to the earth, he persecuted the woman.' '1 And all this was mentioned by anticipation in the epistle to suffering Smyrna, 'The devil is about to cast some of into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days.' 2 you Now comes that which shows us the necessity of the introduction of another vision, embracing the whole period between the two advents, to clear up the mysterious withdrawal of the serpent from the scenery of the visions, and the fact that for a fixed period of time he is obliged to allow the complete establishment of the religion of Jesus in the Roman world, and to be satisfied with the corruption of that woman whom he cannot destroy, and her employment as one of his instruments for the persecution of the remnant of her own children who remain faithful. For a fixed period of time St. John sees the serpent standing aside and carrying on his hateful work by others. He is cast down to the earth and to the sea, and out of the sea comes up a wildbeast as his viceroy, and out of the earth a false prophet calling himself the viceroy of the Lamb, but speaking with the serpent's voice. Then the great final and universal apostasy of all the kings of the earth against the Lamb is represented in the vision of the sixth vial as the result of the united influences of the serpent, the wildbeast, and the false prophet.3 But in this apostasy the actors visible on the scene are the human agents, who carry on the serpent's warfare for him. This vision represents them all as fully and finally destroyed. But has the serpent escaped? The vision of chapter xx. answers this question in the negative; explains the meaning of his long absence from the scene, and gives another description, with some additional details, of the last great apostasy and its results. In the previous vision the prophet saw the end of all the wicked in the lake of fire. Here he sees that the instigator of their crimes was not allowed to escape. The lake of fire and brimstone into which the wicked are thrown Rev. xii. 12, 13. 2 Rev. ii. 10. Rev, xvi. 13, 14. 11 And I saw a great white throne, and him who sat upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven 12 fled, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things written in 13 the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, each man according to his deeds. 14 And death and Hades were cast into the lake of was prepared of old, not for them, but for the devil and his angels. They have fallen into it by listening to the serpent's seductive voice, and by joining with him in his great rebellion against the Lord and His Church. 11-13. The last judgment is more plainly described; it embraces all, small and great, of every age; the books are the memories of men; the book of life is the memory of Him who knoweth the way of the righteous, and the secrets of the hearts of all His creatures. 14, 15. There shall be no more death, no more use for the grave, 'the lake of fire' has consumed them with all those whose hearts are eternally alienated from the love of God. Will these ever cease to exist? or will they experience a living death, a second death, a state of eternal exclusion from the presence of those who love God and one another? They have deliberately chosen war for peace, hatred for love, the pleasures of sense instead of the joys of loving God and doing good to man. They have made Self their god; will they ever find a better? Giving themselves up to the spirit of evil, they have rushed violently with the herd of swine down the precipice into the abyss; will anyone fetch them up again from the deep? or will they be for ever choked by the waters ? Only One can answer these questions for us; and He has certainly said of him who sold his Master for money, 'It had been good for that man if he had never been born;' and of others, 'It were better for them that a millstone were hanged about their neck and 15 fire; this is the second death, the lake of fire. And if any man was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire. that they should be cast into the sea than that they should lead into sin one of these little ones that believe in me.' CHAPTER XXI. 1-27 A vision of the Eternal kingdom of Christ; of those who will enter it, and of those who will be excluded from it. 1 AND I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had departed, and the 1. The last conspiracy of evil having ended in the full and final destruction of the serpent, the wild-beast, the false prophet, and of all who belonged to them, the Eternal and glorious reign of the saints begins, destined to last not for a thousand years but for ever. This is the kingdom foretold by Daniel and all the prophets; and not that described in the previous chapter, which referred only to the happiness of the souls of saints and martyrs in the paradise of God during the intermediate state. The prophet beholds in this vision a symbolic picture of the 'new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,' of which St. Peter speaks.' It matters little to us whether our final home shall be on this globe, renovated after the fires of judgment, or elsewhere. The first heaven and the first earth will have passed away from us, when righteousness has taken the place of sin, rest of labour, peace of strife, love of hatred, joy of sorrow, an eternal life of an ever-living death. The sea is a glorious object to behold; and, if there are material splendours in our new home at all like those on which the cleansed eye looks with so much delight even here, even when bedimmed with the mist of many tears, then surely one of the most beautiful of the phenomena of a material world will not be absent from the home of God's saints. But the sea, all through this highly figurative prophecy, has been made the symbol of that abyss or prison in which the serpent was for a time bound, and out of which he sent the scorpion-locusts, the wildbeast and the false prophet, to work his will on earth. In that sense at any rate there will be no 1 2 Peter iii. 13. 2 sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, 3 prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice out of heaven, saying, Behold, the dwelling of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his people; and God 4 himself, even their God, shall be with them; and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there any longer be sorrow or crying or toil; for the first more sea in the world of the risen saints. 2. The Church of the redeemed, the kingdom of God cleansed at last from all things that offend, the garner in which the wheat is gathered after the tares and chaff have been consumed, is here called the Holy City, New Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb. Before the cleansing of the judgment she had been called the Holy City trodden under foot by the Gentiles, the Jerusalem in which the Lord was crucified, Sodom, Egypt, Babylon, and the harlot of the wild-beast, the rival and enemy of the Lamb. She is here adorned for her husband because the time of her eternal espousals has come, the longexpected marriage of the Lamb.1 3, 4. The happiness of heaven consists in the presence of God and the absence of sorrow. must take things in the order in We which God has placed them. If unto you that laugh now! for ye 'Rev. xix. 7. ? St. Luke vi. 21, 25; St. Matt. v. 4. 4 1 Cor. xv. 25. |