01.5. Part 3.—After These Things

Part 3.—After These Things Section 1 — The Rapture of the Saved (Rev 4:1-11)

“But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” (1Th 4:13-18.)

We have now reached the third and final main division of our book. The things which John saw on that memorable Lord’s Day in Patmos were described for us in the first chapter. The earthly career of the churches and their failure as a center of testimony— “the things which are”— were set forth in the seven letters of Rev 2:1-29 and Rev 3:1-22. The third section begins with Rev 4:1 and includes all the rest of 10 the book. It is a detailed description of what shall follow the close of the Church age— “the things which shall come to pass after these things.”

“After these things I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard, a voice as of a trumpet speaking with me, One saying, Come up hither, and I will show thee the things which must come to pass after these things.” (Rev 4:1) The door opened in Heaven is a symbol easy of understanding, for there is but one door into Heaven—even Jesus Himself, who said, “I am the Door; by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” The voice, as of a trumpet, is the voice of Jesus, as John explains, the first voice which he heard. The words, “Come up hither!” are possibly the very words we shall hear when “the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout.” (1Th 4:16.) When He raised Lazarus from the dead He shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” When He comes for His people, His dead and living saints, He will again shout with a loud voice, saying, “Come up hither!” It is hard for John to describe what followed. “Straightway,” he says, “I was in the Spirit.” He was, like Paul’s “man in Christ,” caught up into Paradise, to see the Lord face to face. There are some experiences which words cannot define, and this was one of them. So will it be for every Christian when Jesus comes. All shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. We shall never be able to tell anyone all about it; it is too great for human language. “The dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them.” It is our hope that we may be among those who are alive at His coming. True, it will be glorious to be brought out of the grave by His shout of triumph, but,

“O Joy! O delight!
Should we go without dying!
No sickness, no sadness, no dread and no crying!
Caught up through the clouds with our Lord into glory,
When Jesus receives His own!”

John is at once occupied with the glorious Occupant of the throne. We shall never be done looking at Him. Eternity will hardly suffice for our gazing upon Him. What a glorious time will that be, when we shall always behold the face of our Father, which is in Heaven! But there are other thrones, four-and-twenty of them. The number of these thrones and the elders occupying them is the number of the courses in the Aaronic priesthood. Thus these elders are enthroned priests. They wear golden, incorruptible crowns. All these marks indicate that here we have the Church of God enthroned in Heaven with her Lord. He hath made us kings and priests and we shall reign with Him. The lightnings and thunders and voices proceeding from the throne show that the throne of grace has become a throne of judgment. And yet there is the rainbow around and above, all speaking of grace to follow the flood of wrath about to burst upon the rebellious earth. “In wrath” He will “remember mercy.” The glassy sea is typical, as the laver and molten sea of the Tabernacle and the Temple, of the Word of God. The four living creatures appear elsewhere in Scripture, and are always in connection with the manifestation of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ. They first appear as the cherubim with the flaming sword at the east of the Garden of Eden, guarding the Way of the Tree of Life. Then we see them as they overshadowed the mercy-seat in the Tabernacle of Moses, and the Temple of Solomon; they were embroidered on the vail, which typified His flesh (Heb 10:19-22); they were seen in Ezekiel’s vision of the glory of God, and they correspond with the four Gospels, in which we see Jesus showing forth, in a fourfold way, the glory of the Father. In Matthew He appears as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the King of Israel— “the first living creature was like a lion.” In Mark He is the devoted Servant, toiling patiently, according to His Father’s will, and finally laying down His life for others—“the second living creature was like an ox.” In Luke He is seen as Son of Man, the representative of a lost race, identified with it and bearing its sins—“the third living creature had a face as of a man.” In John He is the Son of God, the Heavenly Visitor, coming forth from Heaven and returning to Heaven—“the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle.” The names of Deity employed in the song of praise of the four living creatures, “Lord God Almighty”—Jehovah Elohim Shaddai—are all Hebrew names and connected with Jewish covenant relations, showing that the Church is not now in view, having been taken from the earth, and that God is about to resume definite relation with His people Israel. In the song in which the elders join at the close of the chapter He is addressed as “Our Lord and our God,” which is far more appropriate to the Church. However, when He shall come in the clouds of Heaven with power and great glory, they which pierced Him shall recognize in their Messiah the Jehovah of the Old Covenant and the Jesus of the New, and He will then be their Lord as well as ours, and their God as well as ours—our Lord and our God! Blessed be His holy name for ever and ever!

Section 2 —The Great Day of Redemption (Rev 5:1-14)

“The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.” (Rom 8:18.)

Rev 4:1-11 closes with a glad chorus of praise and thanksgiving to God. As the fifth opens, our prophet is gazing with rapt ecstasy upon that glorious One sitting upon the throne. “And I saw in the right hand of Him that sat on the throne a book (or scroll) written within and on the back, close sealed with seven seals.” (Rev 5:1) Whatever this scroll was, it was clearly a complete record of something. It was completely filled, for it was written within and on the back; it was completely sealed, for it was sealed with seven seals. It is also obvious that the opening of the scroll was a matter of intense importance. No one was found worthy either to open the book, or to loose its seals, or even to look thereon. John was greatly overcome by this fact, and wept much because no one was found worthy to open the book or look thereon.

Then one of the elders spoke. The elders, as we have seen, represented the enthroned Church, and surely the Church knows Who is the worthy One. If it be a question of who is worthy, there can be but one answer. “Weep not,” said the elder. “Behold, the Lion that is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath overcome, to open the book and the seven seals thereof.” (Rev 5:5)

Well do we know Him. He is the Root and Offspring of David, and the Bright and Morning Star. Surely, He hath overcome. But how? “And I saw in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, having seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the Earth.” (Rev 5:6) He overcame as a Lamb (Isa 53:7), and all our overcoming is by the blood of the Lamb. (Rev 12:11.) John saw Him as a Lamb standing. He now sits for us at the right hand of God; in that day “He shall stand as an ensign for the people” (Isa 11:10); “Jehovah standeth up to plead; He standeth to judge the peoples.” (Isa 3:13.) But how strange is this language! He was as a Lamb standing, “as though it had been slain.” Blessed be God, the Lamb slain was not holden by the bands of death! He was dead, but He is alive again; He was slain, but He standeth! And He has all power, as shown by the seven horns, and all wisdom, as shown by the seven eyes, “which are the seven Spirits of God”—a figure of the fullness of the Holy Spirit. (Compare Zec 3:8-10, Zec 4:1-10.)

“And He came, and he taketh it out of the right hand of Him that sat on the throne.” (Rev 5:7) Whatever the significance of this act, so briefly described, it must have been tremendously important, for all Heaven straightway burst into joyous acclaim, the moment it was accomplished. “And when He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sing a new song, saying, Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and madest them to be unto our God a Kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the Earth.

“And I saw, and I heard a voice of many angels round about the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honour, and glory, and blessing.

“And every created thing which is in the Heaven, and on the Earth, and under the Earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying, Unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honour, and the glory, and the dominion, for ever and ever.

“And the four living creatures said, Amen. And the elders fell down and worshipped." (Rev 5:8-14) From the character of these remarkable songs, and by comparing with other Scriptures, we may find the meaning of the mysterious book and the circumstances surrounding its transfer into our Lord’s hands. The book is very evidently nothing else but the title deed to this “Earth and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein." His at the beginning by right of creation, it now becomes His forever by right of redemption. Jesus appears in this picture as the Goel or Kinsman-Redeemer, claiming and establishing His right of redemption. In Dan 7:1-28 there is a prophetic description of the transfer of universal dominion into the hands of the Lord Jesus. Beginning at the ninth verse, Daniel says: “I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did sit, Whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure wool: His throne was like the fiery flame, and His wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him: thousand thousands ministered unto Him and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened. * * * * * I saw in the night visions, and, behold, One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of Heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a Kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. ***** And the Kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the Kingdom under the whole Heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.” (Dan 7:9-10; Dan 7:13-14; Dan 7:27.) In Php 2:10-11, it is declared that, according to God’s eternal purpose, the time is coming when at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in Heaven, and things on Earth, and things under the Earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father The fulfillment of that word is seen in the chapter before us. An illustration of this great event is given in the thirty-second chapter of Jeremiah. (See especially Rev 5:14-15.) The incident described there is very likely recorded as a type.

Another very beautiful illustration is seen in the story of Ruth. Jesus is our Boaz—our Mighty Man of Wealth. He hath redeemed us. No one else could have done it. He alone was able and He alone was worthy. His right will be unquestioned in that day. No one but Him could loose the seals. We are all by nature in bondage to the Prince of this World —in the power of the enemy—sold under sin. He hath prevailed for us and bought us back.

This, then, is that for which everything waits and towards which everything tends— the great Day of Redemption. This is the day in Paul’s mind when in the midst of affliction he cries out, “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward. For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. * * * The creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” (Rom 8:18-23.) Our eyes should ever be on that Day, as the apostle exhorts us, in Eph 4:30, to “grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, by Whom ye are sealed unto the Day of Redemption.” May we not, then, join in the glad alleluias of the heavenly choirs? for we are amongst those who, “having believed, were sealed with the Holy Spirit of Promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, unto the redemption of the purchased possession.”

Section 3 —The Wrath to Come (Rev 6:1-17, Rev 7:1-17, Rev 8:1-13, Rev 9:1-21, Rev 10:1-11, Rev 11:1-19)

“Ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from Heaven, Whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, Who delivereth us from the wrath to come.” (1Th 1:9-10.) The law of structure in The Revelation is exactly similar to that in Daniel’s Prophecy. The opening vision in Daniel, the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, gives the full history of the Times of the Gentiles, or the period of Gentile political domination in the Earth, beginning with Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar and reaching down to the Beast-King of the End Time and even to the Christ Himself as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, sitting upon David’s throne. The succeeding visions in Daniel are mostly parallel with this dream of the Chaldean monarch, each successive vision, however, taking up the story at a new point and proceeding with greater detail. This principle is found also in The Revelation. The seven seals give the complete history of the awful judgments to come upon the world after the Church is caught up to meet the Lord in the air. Then the seven trumpets run parallel with the seals, though from a new view point and in greater detail. So with the seven vials or bowls also. These successive groups of sevens are but three pictures of what will go on in the Earth during the seven years defined as the seventieth week of Daniel and spoken of by the prophet, and by our Lord Jesus in Mat 24:1-51, as the time of The Great Tribulation. This period includes “the wrath to come” (1Th 1:9-10), “the day of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer 30:7). It will be the time of God’s great and sore judgment upon the world for the rejection of His Son. The Church of God will be delivered from passing through this furnace of affliction by the Rapture which precedes it, though there will be so-called churches in the world through it all. Many institutions are called churches which have no right to the name, and there are multitudes of persons professing to be Christians who have never been born again. All these will be left behind when He comes for His people, but every child of God by the new birth will surely go with Him. All the judgments of “The Great Tribulation” will be witnessed from Heaven by the enthroned and glorified people of God, as they were thus witnessed by the Apostle John as their representative. The Seven Seals. In Mat 24:1-51 our Lord Jesus gave a summary of the judgments of “The Great Tribulation,” which we shall find to correspond precisely with the story of the seven seals. He pointed out that in that day there should be, first, false Christs, deceiving’ many. In connection with the first seal the rider on the white horse is a false Christ, doubtless the Beast-King of Rev 13:1-18, presenting himself as a great and triumphant ruler, having great success, going forth conquering and to conquer. Secondly, our Lord said there should be wars and rumors of wars. The second seal brings forth a rider on a blood red horse, who takes peace from the Earth. Thirdly, we are warned of that inevitable follower of universal war, that is, universal famine. And under the third seal there is seen a rider on a black horse, bringing great famine, during which it will take a whole day’s wages to buy a quart of wheat or three quarts of barley. The oil and wine, being luxuries instead of necessities, are not affected. Pestilences and earthquakes are the next thing on the programme in Mat 24:1-51 and the fourth rider is Death on a pale horse with Hades following, the very Earth opening wide her greedy mouth for the unwonted harvest of death, the result of war and famine and pestilence. The seven seals are divided into groups of four and three, the reason for which will appear as we go on. Under the fifth seal we find our Lord’s words true again, for He said there should be afflictions, many killed for their witness to the truth, the Gospel of the Kingdom being preached, for a testimony unto all nations. So here we see the souls of these martyrs under the altar crying for vengeance. Their language identifies them as Jews, and Jews will be the evangelists of that day. The Lord Jesus, in His Olivet discourse, next went on to describe the great convulsions of nature to follow these afflictions of His people. He said that the sun and moon should be darkened, the stars falling from Heaven and the powers of the Heavens shaken. The sixth seal brings all this to pass. The silence for a half hour in Heaven, followed by thunder and voices and lightnings and an earthquake, all the signs of judgment, is, I doubt not, the sign of the Son of Man in Heaven— to be followed by His coming in the clouds of Heaven with power and great glory to set up His throne and reign. The Tribulation Saints. In the seventh chapter we have a parenthetical passage, telling us of the Tribulation saints who are turned to the Lord in the midst of the awful scenes of judgment described in this book. There are the 144,000 of the Jewish remnant and then the innumerable company of palm bearers, those who have come up out of The Great Tribulation, having washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Thus we see that by means of judgment God will bring multitudes to Himself out of the heathen nations and that then, as always, in wrath He will remember mercy. The seventh seal (Rev 8:1-5) shows the prayers of the saints, uniting with the incense from the golden altar, and bringing down upon the rebellious world the terrible judgments immediately preceding the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of Heaven with power and great glory. The Seven Trumpets.

Trumpets are typical of convocation, and the judgment of the trumpets is preparatory to the regathering of Israel to their own land. The siege of Jericho, when the seven blasts upon seven trumpets by the seven priests after the sevenfold march about the city on the seventh day were followed by the destruction of the city, finds its antitype in the trumpet judgments of the Apocalypse. Jericho, the accursed city, is ever a type of this world abiding under the curse and wrath of God.

There is great danger in supposing everything in The Revelation to be symbolical. While there is no doubt that symbols abound in the book, they are carefully distinguished, and our rule of interpretation holds good here as elsewhere. “If the plain sense make good sense, seek no other sense.” The seven trumpet judgments, as in the case of the seals, are divided into two groups. Four is the Earth or world number, and the first four judgments are seen to affect the natural world and men only indirectly. The phenomena are such as are usually explained away as due to natural causes, leaving God out of the calculation. The last three, and three is the Trinity number, are called the woe judgments, and are such as cannot thus be explained, as in them the hand of God is more directly discernible. God cannot always be explained away, much as His enemies may desire it. The first trumpet brings hail and fire, mingled with blood, and results in terrible devastation in field and forest. God thus begins to speak to men in His sore displeasure, the Day of Grace having passed. The second judgment affects the sea, turning part of it into blood and destroying life in a third part of it. So far, these judgments resemble those brought upon Pharoah when God had determined to deliver His people Israel. A greater Exodus will follow the judgments of the trumpets. The star falling from Heaven in the third judgment symbolizes Satan, whose expulsion from Heaven is described in detail in chapter Rev 12:7-12. (Compare Isa 14:12-15.) The wormwood judgment is in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prediction in Jer 9:12-16, of his Prophecy. Israel and Palestine seem to be more especially involved. The fourth trumpet is similar to the sixth seal, except that it is limited to a third part of the sun, moon and stars. From Amo 8:9-10 Israel seems to be especially concerned here also.

Under the fifth trumpet the first of the three great woes comes upon the Earth. The star fallen to the Earth is the same as in the third judgment, that is, Satan. He releases from the Abyss a terrible army of “locusts, like unto horses prepared for war.” This army is seen in Joe 2:1-32. The leader is called “Abaddon” in Hebrew and “Apollyon” in Greek, both meaning “Destroyer” in English. He is doubtless the Beast-King, the “man of sin,” the “son of perdition,” the “angel of the Abyss.” We shall become better acquainted with this terrible character in the succeeding chapters. He is the same as the rider on the white horse under the first seal judgment.

Two hundred millions is the amazing number of the army seen under the sixth trumpet in the second woe judgment. They are demons from the abyss, sent forth to torment men, “as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man.” The third woe and the seventh trumpet are parallel with the seventh seal, bringing us up to the point of the coming of Messiah to reign on the Earth. Our Lord Jesus describes the same event in Mat 24:29-30. In Rev 10:1-11 and Rev 11:1-19 we have a parenthetical passage which comes in between the sixth and seventh trumpets. The Strong Angel in Rev 10:1-11 is none other than the Lord Jesus Himself. A comparison with Dan 10:5-6; Dan 12:6-7 will explain this paragraph. Jerusalem is seen in chapter n, with the Temple restored, as in Eze 40:1-49, but the city is to be trodden down of the Gentiles forty-two months, or three and a half years, the latter half of the seven years mentioned heretofore. (Compare Luk 21:24.) The two witnesses of Rev 11:1-19 are probably Elijah and Enoch, who were translated without death in view of their coming death in the streets of Jerusalem in the great Day of Tribulation.

Section 4 —The Trinity of Evil (Rev 12:1-17 and Rev 13:1-18) “For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.” (2Th 2:11) Our studies so far have brought us to the end of the seven trumpet judgments, simultaneous with the end of the seven seal judgments and also, as we shall see later, with the end of the seven vial or bowl judgments. Each of the sevenfold series of judgments brings us to the end of the period of seven years following the Rapture or catching up of the Church and to the very eve of the Revelation of the Lord Jesus from Heaven with myriads of His saints to execute judgment upon all.

Rev 12:1-17 takes us back again, and not only to the beginning of the seven-years period, but away back to the beginning of the Christian era, now nineteen centuries ago, and nearly a hundred years before John’s exile to Patmos. The woman arrayed with the sun, having the moon under her feet and upon her head twelve stars, travailing in birth, is Israel “of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came.” The sun is symbolical of the Son of God Who to Israel is the Sun of Righteousness. The moon is the Church of God, shining with the reflected light of her absent Lord. The woman appears between the sun and moon, showing Israel’s place historically. The crown of twelve stars stands for the twelve tribes of Israel, seen as a unit from God’s standpoint. These symbols are familiar to Bible students as coming from the Old Testament Scriptures. (Compare Rev 1:14-18; Gen 37:9-10; Mal 4:2.) The Great Red Dragon. The Devil is next seen, as a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns. The seven heads doubtless suggest the perfection of diabolical subtlety and wisdom, while horns are everywhere a type of kingship, and there are diadems on the seven heads. The horns are ten, being the number of government. We have here, in short, Satan in full regalia and pomp as the Prince and God of this World. He is also seen as Prince of the Power of the Air, for his tail draweth a third part of the stars of Heaven and did cast them to the Earth. As we see from the next chapter, these stars are the fallen angels or demons who are to be cast down to the Earth with him. The dragon stands before the woman that is about to be delivered, that when she is delivered he may devour her Child. Thus did Satan stand, prior to our Lord’s birth in Bethlehem, ready to destroy the Holy Child Jesus. Herod the Great was actuated by satanic energy when he slaughtered the infants in the vain hope of killing the Heir to David’s throne.

“And she was delivered of a Son, a Man Child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.” We well know Him. It is He Who died on the cross for us that we might live and reign with Him. It is He of Whom the prophet sang, “Unto us a Child is born; unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon His Kingdom.” (Isa 9:6-7.) It is He of Whom Gabriel announced, “The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His Kingdom there shall be no end.” (Luk 1:33.) It is He to Whom the promise was given: “Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for Thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Psa 2:8-9.) The next thing told to us is that “the Child was caught up unto God, and unto His throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that there they may nourish her a thousand, two hundred and threescore days." This shows that the woman in the type is not the Virgin Mary, and the fleeing into the wilderness is not Mary’s flight into Egypt, for the woman does not flee into the wilderness with her Child, but after her Child has been caught up to Heaven. And her flight is not for the safety of her Child, as was Mary’s, but for her own protection. The woman is the Jewish people in a figure. (See Isa 9:6; Isa 26:17; Isa 66:6-9; Mic 4:9-10.) But the student is apt to find great difficulty here, and there is much need of following very diligently as the Spirit of Truth guides us in our study, ever remembering the divine rule of interpretation to “compare spiritual things with spiritual." We are surprised, perhaps, at finding no mention of our Lord’s earthly life or His death on the cross. This is because He is presented here not in His humiliation as the Man of Sorrows, but rather in His exaltation as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Of course, John knew all about the thirty-three years of our Lord’s earthly career, but John’s pen was guided by the Holy Spirit and it was aside from His purpose to speak here of the sufferings of Christ. He is occupied, instead, with the glory that shall follow them. (See 1Pe 1:11.) The catching up of the Man Child unto God and unto His throne does not speak of the Ascension of Jesus from Mount Olivet, for that would be out of its proper place here. The ascension in the Spirit’s mind is rather the catching up of the spiritual body of Christ, the event described in 1Th 4:1-18 and elsewhere. The Man Child is not yet complete. Up there in Heaven there is our Lord Jesus in His physical body, but in the spiritual sense His body is still here. The Church is “His body, the fullness of Him which filleth all in all." (Eph 1:23.) “We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones." (Eph 5:30.) “For as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body." (1Co 12:12-13.) The Man Child is still in the process of birth. Thus the apostle writes in Gal 4:19, “My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you." The Holy Spirit is now in the world, working in the Church both to will and to do of His good pleasure, building up the body of Christ, and this will go on “till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown Man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’ (Php 2:13; Eph 4:11-13.) This truth, as to the relation between the head and the body of Christ, is seen in 1Ti 3:16 : “Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; He Who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory.” The order preserved here shows that Christ is seen as not yet received up in glory. That is yet future and will be fulfilled at the Rapture of the Church. And the woman, that is, Israel, is still suffering. It is ever true that salvation is of the Jews and it is through the suffering and humiliation of Israel that the Man Child is coming to perfection. Let us never forget our debt to the Jews and let us see to it that so far as in us lies, our debt is paid by the faithful preaching of the Gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. The great red dragon is still seeking to devour the Man Child. The true Church of God, in the midst of the mass of lukewarm profession, is well known to our enemy and as cordially hated and cruelly persecuted as ever. The period of 1,260 days, during which Israel is nourished in the wilderness, is the former half of the seven-years period following the taking out of the Church. During the remaining three and a half years the nation will suffer terrible judgments. In Rev 12:7-9 we have a description of a war in heaven between the opposing armies of Michael and Satan, resulting in the Devil and his angels being cast down to the Earth. There follows rejoicing in Heaven and a warning of coming woe to the Earth. This brings us to the middle of Daniel’s “seventieth week," when The Great Tribulation proper will begin. The Man of Sin. The Beast-King appears in connection with the revived Roman Empire in Rev 13:1-10. The picture is identical with that of the beasts of Daniel’s vision, the Beast-King comprising the features of them all. His reign as the world’s monarch will be the logical heading up of Gentile dominion and he will reign over all lands by the energy of Satan. The world will then throw off its mask and openly worship the dragon and the beast. The seven heads and ten horns of the dragon are seen here, showing that Satan has given all his power to the man of sin. The ten horns have crowns on them, corresponding with the ten toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s image. The Beast King thus appears as a Roman prince, ruling over the ten-fold form of the revived Roman Empire. He is seen in our chapter as reigning over the whole Earth. He is at the height of his power, and has forty-two months or three and one-half years yet to reign. He now breaks his league with Israel and begins those relentless persecutions so often foretold in the Word of God. He blasphemes God and makes war with the saints. Universal dominion, which was offered to the Lord Jesus and refused, is given to the false Messiah and all that dwell on the Earth shall worship him, save only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. This evil king is the “little horn” of Daniel’s prophecy. He comes up out of the sea of the Gentile world and is the prince of a Gentile power, though Dan 11:37 intimates that he is an apostate Jew. The False Prophet.

Still another beast is seen in the remaining paragraph of Rev 13:1-18. This is the false prophet, taking the place in the Trinity of Evil occupied by the Holy Spirit in the Godhead. This is the consummation of the Devil’s work. He is a liar and the father of lies and his most subtle form of deception is to imitate the things of God. God has His wise virgins, Satan has his foolish ones; outwardly they appear alike. God sows good seed, Satan sows tares. God plants the true vine, Satan plants “the vine of the Earth.” God has a bride, Satan has a harlot. God has a city, the New Jerusalem; Satan also has a city, the corrupt Babylon. God has a Man, the Lord Christ; Satan has a man, the Beast-King. God’s Man is the Son of God; Satan’s man is the son of perdition. Finally, God is manifested in the form of the Holy Trinity; Satan is manifested in the form of the Trinity of Evil. The second beast is seen coming up out of the Earth, which probably intimates his connection with Israel, the earthly people. He poses as a prophet. He is the Devil’s messenger, coming forth as an angel of light and a minister of righteousness. There are two horns, like a lamb, in imitation of the Lamb of God, but his speech savors of the fires of Hell—“he spake like a dragon.” He directs the worship of the world to the Beast-King. He does great miracles, even calling down fire from Heaven. Finally he sets up an image of the Beast-King in the Holy Place of the Temple of God at Jerusalem, causes the image to breathe and to speak. This is the Abomination of Desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet and by our Lord Jesus. All people are compelled to worship the image on pain of death and to receive the mark of the beast upon their hands and foreheads. Those who refuse find themselves unable to buy or sell anything anywhere. This will be the logical heading up of the boycott system. The number of the beast, 666, is, of course, symbolical, being the number of incompleteness thrice repeated. It is ever short of the perfect seven, showing that however the Beast King may try to show himself forth as God he will fail to deceive at least the very elect. It is significant that the numerical equivalent of the name of Jesus is 888, eight being the number of resurrection and eternal triumph.

It may seem a strange thing that the world, with all its wisdom and culture, could be so deceived by the man of sin, and be led into the worship of such a character. But all becomes clear when we remember that man by wisdom never knew God, and that the seeming triumph of Satan is really a judgment upon this unbelieving and ungodly world from the hand of God Himself. It is because men will not have the truth that they are turned aside to error. As it is written, “For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie; that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2Th 2:11-12, 1911 Bible).

Section 5 — Encouragement and Warning (Rev 14:1-20 and Rev 15:1-8) “Fear God and give Him glory; for the hour of His judgment is come.” (Rev 14:7.) The opening paragraph of Rev 14:1-20 show? us the Lamb standing on Mount Zion and with Him 144,000 having His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads. There seems to be no reasonable doubt that this company is the same as the 144,000 sealed Israelites seen in Rev 7:1-17. They are doubtless the Jewish remnant so often seen in the Psalms and Prophecies. There is great joy in Heaven manifested by the music heard by John, for the time is come for Israel to “blossom and bud and fill the face of the world with fruit.” (Isa 27:6.) They are spoken of as virgins, as in Mat 25:1-46, for they not guilty of that friendship with the would which is enmity toward God and which the Scriptures call adultery. They turn to the Lord during the time of The Great Tribulation and follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. The vision of the Lord Jesus on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, the place of God’s earthly rest and the place of grace for Israel, is anticipative, and is given just here as showing the sharp contrast between God’s King upon His holy hill of Zion, and Satan’s creation, the Abomination of Desolation, in the Temple of God, showing himself forth as God. (2Th 2:4.) The same contrast is drawn in Isa 41:21-24 and Isa 42:1-4. In the former paragraph God is addressing the gods of idolatry: “Produce your cause, saith Jehovah; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth and declare unto us what shall happen: declare ye the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or show us things to come. Declare the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods; yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. Behold, ye are nothing, and your work is of naught; an abomination is he that chooseth you.”

Now note the contrast in Isa 42:1-25 : “Behold, My Servant, Whom I uphold; My Chosen, in Whom My soul delighteth. I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry, nor lift up His voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street. A bruised reed will He not break, and a dimly burning wick will He not quench. He will bring forth justice in truth. He will not fail nor be discouraged till He have set justice in the Earth, and the isles shall wait for His law." The promise is that “a Redeemer will come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob." (Isa 59:20.) “Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath. Thus saith Jehovah, I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth, and the mountain of Jehovah of Hosts, the Holy Mountain." (Zec 8:2-3.) In that day it will be a great honor to be called a Jew and to be identified with the city of Jerusalem. “Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: It shall yet come to pass that there shall come people, and the inhabitants of many cities; and the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying: Let us go speedily to entreat the favor of Jehovah, and to seek Jehovah of Hosts: I will go also; Yea, many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek Jehovah of Hosts in Jerusalem, and to entreat the favor of Jehovah. Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: In those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold, our of all the languages of the nations, they shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you." (Zec 8:20-23.)

All that, however, must be preceded by terrible judgments upon Israel and upon all the nations, for this world has yet to answer for the murder of the Son of God. These judgments are depicted in the book of The Revelation, and we have this anticipative vision of the Lamb on Mount Zion to remind us, as we are again and again reminded in the book, that in wrath God remembers mercy. The Sevenfold Warning.

Rev 14:6-20, Rev 15:1-8, there is a sevenfold series of warnings for those yet upon the earth after the Church is caught out. These final alarms immediately precede the last series of judgments, the seven vials or bowls, containing the seven plagues.

First, there is an angel flying in mid-heaven preaching the eternal Gospel unto them that dwell on the Earth, and unto every nation and tribe and tongue and people; and he saith with a great voice, “Fear God and give Him glory; for the hour of His judgment is come; and worship Him that made the Heaven and the Earth and sea and fountains of waters." This is very different from the Gospel we preach to-day. Now, it pleases God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. And for preachers He chooses the weak things and despised. In that day the preacher will be an angel flying in mid-heaven. Our message is, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” The angel’s message is, “Fear God for the hour of His judgment is come.” Men are fond of saying that they have not sufficient evidence of the truth of our Gospel; in that day they will not be able so to reply to the flying angel. But they will not believe then, any more than now. The fact is that the world hates God and the Word of God, and men did not believe, even when One rose from the dead. The second angel brings warning of the fall of Babylon, that great ungodly system in which men seek refuge rather than turn to God. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great, that hath made all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” The collapse of Babylon is not actually seen here, but simply announced beforehand, that men may not say they were not warned in time to separate from her. It is prophetic, like the words of Jesus, when He said, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven,” a prophecy which still awaits fulfillment. The third warning also comes from an angel, following the others; that is, flying in mid-heaven, and saying with a great voice, “If any man worshippeth the beast and his image, and receiveth a mark on his forehead or upon his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of His anger; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, they that worship the beast and his image, and whoso receiveth the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints, they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”

What a terrible alternative will be presented to men during those dreadful days! They must choose between worshipping the Devil and the Beast-King on the one hand, and worshipping God and His Christ on the other. If they give their allegiance to the only true God they must lay down their lives for the testimony of Jesus; if they bow to the man of sin there is the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of His anger! Very likely these people are living all about us to-day. Asleep are they and will not be aroused; they are blind and in love with darkness. O, that God may breathe His own mighty power into the message as we cry into their ears—Fly for your lives! The end of all things is at hand! God’s hour has struck and the Judge is at the door! Flee from the coming wrath! If they ask, Whither shall we go? Whither, indeed, but unto Him who bore the wrath of God for us? Jesus invites us, and He alone can save. We need not fear to trust Him for He is the Mighty God and He is able. The fourth warning is given in the audible words of the Holy Spirit of God, speaking from Heaven, and commanding His servant John, to write, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; for their works follow with them.” This warning is given for the benefit of the witnesses in that day who may be tempted to compromise with evil in order to preserve their lives. It is always true that those who die in the Lord are blessed; but this Scripture is for the Lord’s suffering ones in the awful scenes of The Great Tribulation. Blessed, indeed, shall be those who count not their lives dear to them, but lay them down for the love of the truth. Of these it is written later (Rev 20:4-6) “They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years should be finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection.”

Now this series of seven warnings, like all the sevenfold groups in our book, is divided into two parts, quite perceptibly. As usual, the first group contains four warnings and the second one consists of three. Four is the world or Earth number and three the heavenly, the Trinity number. The first four of these warnings come in the form of words—the words of God addressed to men. They seem more natural, so to speak, than the final three. Men will explain them away as due to perfectly natural causes, as when God spoke out of Heaven in the days of Jesus’ earthly ministry men said it was thunder, a perfectly natural thing. The last three of the warnings are very different. Men shall not be able to explain them and leave God out. They are plainly supernatural and the hand of God is clearly seen in them. The fifth warning is the reaping of the harvest of the Earth by the sharp sickle of the Son of Man, Who maketh the cloud His chariot. It is the harvest at the end of the Age, to which Jesus referred in the parable of the wheat and the tares in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. “In the time of the harvest,” said He, “I will say to the reapers, gather up first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn. * * * * * The harvest is the end of the Age, and the reapers are angels. As therefore the tares are gathered up and burned with fire; so shall it be in the end of the Age. The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears, let him hear.” This makes our study perfectly clear. The angels are seen in Rev 14:1-20 of The Revelation gathering out the tares and binding them in bundles for burning; the wheat we shall see, gathered into the barn, in Rev 15:1-8. The sixth warning is the vintage of the Earth reaped with the sharp sickle of another angel. The vine of the Earth is Israel, planted and faithfully tended by the Lord, Who looked for grapes, but found only wild grapes. It was the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts at the beginning, even His pleasant plant; but he looked for justice, and, behold, oppression; for righteousness, and, behold, a cry. (Isa 5:1-30) “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness,” saith Jehovah in Hos 9:10, but after all His care He had to say, “Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself.” (Hos 10:1) When the Lord sent for His fruit, His messengers were beaten and stoned and killed. Then he sent His Son and they took him and cast Him forth, out of the vineyard and killed Him. (Mat 21:33-46.) Thus Israel became the vine of the Earth and Jesus Himself, after being cast out of the vineyard, was planted by His Father the Husbandman as the true Vine. (John 15:1-27) As for the coming judgment, God has said, “They shall thoroughly glean the remnant of Israel as a vine.” (Jer 6:9.) We have here a picture of the last great war of the nations against Israel and Jerusalem described in Joe 3:1-21 : “Proclaim ye this among the nations; prepare war; stir up the mighty men; let all the men of war draw near, let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong. Haste ye, and come, all ye nations round about, and gather yourselves together: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Jehovah. Let the nations bestir themselves, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all the nations round about. Put ye in the sickle for the vintage is ripe: come, tread ye; for the winepress is full, the vats overflow; for their wickedness is great." This will be Jerusalem’s last baptism of blood. “Jehovah shall roar from Zion and utter His voice from Jerusalem; and the Heavens and the Earth shall shake: but Jehovah shall be a refuge unto His people, and a stronghold to the children of Israel. So shall ye know that I am Jehovah your God, dwelling in Zion My holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her anymore." (See also Zec 14:1-21.)

Sixteen hundred furlongs, or two hundred miles, is the distance from Dan to Beersheba, that is, the length of Palestine. The whole land is pictured as submerged in a sea of blood from the winepress of the wrath of God trodden without the city. There would be no need for such a judgment if men would but have taken refuge under the blood of Jesus. They hated Him, and killed Him, and there is nothing for them but that He shall tread down the peoples in His anger and make them drunk in his wrath and pour out their life-blood upon the earth. (Isa 63:1-19) The seventh warning is set aside for a moment by a parenthetical paragraph in Rev 15:1-8, in which we are given a glimpse of the wheat in the Lord’s granary. I doubt not that this is the identical company seen in Rev 7:1-17, the great multitude which no man could number, they that come out of The Great Tribulation, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue. They sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, a sevenfold psalm of holy joy and praise.

Then comes the seventh warning in the elaborate preparations for the seven last plagues, the bowl judgments. There it stands, the written word, throughout the centuries, and the world rushes heedlessly on, pausing only to curl the lip and hurl the sneer at the poor little company of expectant ones, the “stargazers,” who are seeking feebly to warn the crowd and stem the awful tide. “Where is the promise of His coming?” is the jeering question heard on every hand. May God help us to be faithful and cry aloud, whether they hear or forbear. Let our loins be girt about and our lamps burning and we ourselves like unto men who wait for their Lord to return. His last word to us was “Behold, I come quickly.” Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Section 6 — The Seven Last Plagues (Rev 16:1-21)

“Now therefore be ye not scoffers, lest your bonds be made strong; for a decree of destruction have I heard from the Lord, Jehovah of Hosts, upon the whole Earth.” (Isa 28:22.)

Seven is the numerical key to the book of The Revelation. Seven is the complete number and the whole book is made up of sevenfold, that is complete, narratives of different phases of the coming judgments. Each series of seven is complete in itself, telling the story from its own point of view. We shall utterly miss the drift of the book if we fail to see this uniform law of structure pervading it throughout.

Again, the seven is always divided into four and three, the Earth number and the Trinity number, for perfectly obvious reasons. In the fourfold group God is seen but indirectly, as He works upon or through nature, and not directly upon men. In the threefold group God comes out into the open and works directly, in such a way as to compel men to see that God is and that He cannot be explained away.

Still further, the sevens will always be found divided into sixes and ones, a parenthetical passage being placed between the sixth and seventh point in the series. Six is the number of incompleteness and one is the unity number, setting forth the oneness of the Godhead. God, before completing the series in each case, pauses to remind men that He will not forget mercy and He will not make a full end. It is thus He spoke to Israel in Mal 3:6 : “I am Jehovah, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.”

Now all this is seen in the sixteenth chapter. Just as was the case in the seven seal judgments and the seven trumpet judgments, so also in the seven vial or bowl judgments, we are brought right down to the end of the period of The Great Tribulation, and in the later chapters we shall find unfolded in detail what is here given in summarized and condensed form. It may also be noticed that in the first four of these last plagues God deals with the things of nature and through them deals indirectly with men, while in the last three plagues His hand is made bare as He lays it heavily and directly upon rebellious men themselves. The parenthesis is also seen between the sixth and seventh judgments, as before.

There is every indication that the world is just now on the eve of the great crisis of the end-time of this Dispensation. The seven letters to the Asiatic churches in Rev 2:1-29 and Rev 3:1-22 our book show that the churches are finishing their earthly career and our expectant Lord is about to come for His waiting people. After that, all these dreadful and direful judgments will burst upon the Earth and God will reckon with men for their rejection of the Christ. This world must answer for the murder of the Son of God. Our business in this little while is to be serving the living and true God and waiting for His Son from Heaven.

“Even so, Lord Jesus, come;
Hope of all our hopes the sum,
Take Thy waiting people home.”

According to Daniel’s prophecy, it will be remembered, a period of seven years is yet needed to complete the Jewish Age in which Daniel lived and prophesied. The Church, like Peter’s sheet, has been let down from Heaven and must be taken up again into Heaven before the seven-years period will begin. Immediately after the Rapture or catching-up of the Church, the Beast-King, the last great Gentile ruler, will make his appearance at the head of the nations. Israel also will bow down to him and he will make an alliance with the Jews for the seven years. He will keep his part of the compact for three and a half years and at the end of that time he will break his league, stopping the Judaic worship in the restored Temple at Jerusalem and substituting the grossest idolatry. Then will begin The Great Tribulation proper, the Day’ of Wrath, the time of Jacob’s trouble. Israel shall suffer awful persecutions at the hands of the proud king, and finally all men everywhere will be compelled on pain of death to worship the king and receive the mark, 666, the number of his name, branded upon their foreheads or hands. Those who refuse will be boycotted everywhere, and unable to hold commerce with their fellow-men; no man shall be able to buy or to sell, save he that hath the mark, even the name of the beast or the number of his name. On the other hand, those who yield allegiance to the great king and allow themselves to be branded with his mark, shall suffer eternal torment, drinking of the wine of the wrath of God, prepared unmixed in the cup of His anger. The point of beginning in the seven last plagues is plainly indicated in Rev 16:1-21. The first bowl of the wrath of God is poured out and a noisome and grievous sore appears upon the men that have the mark of the beast and that have worshipped his image. This fixes the time of the beginning of these plagues at a point subsequent to the middle of the seven years period. The seven last plagues, therefore, are all confined to the time of The Great Tribulation itself. The sea is affected by the second plague, its waters turning into blood like the blood of a dead man, and every living thing in the *ea dies. The rivers and springs are next in order and the third plague turns all their waters into blood. The angel of the waters is heard justifying this awful catastrophe as a righteous act of God in judgment upon the world which has poured out the life-blood of saints and prophets; it is now meet that the blood-shedders should have blood to drink. The altar of the Temple is also heard speaking out, saying, “Yea, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgments." In this our Day of Grace the altar is speaking out better things than the blood of Abel; but we are studying of the Day of Judgment, when the doors of grace shall have been shut, and in that Day the only judgment for men will be righteous judgment; and who shall be able to stand? The sun is next touched by the hand of God and it scorches men with fire. That great orb of day which has been for the many centuries the source of all good for physical man—light, life and health—will become an unbearable plague, killing men with its intense heat. Just so will the Son of God, the Light of the World, the Life of His people, and the Sun of Righteousness, become in that day a destroying, blazing flame, bringing awful vengeance to those who refuse to honor His Father. “For our God is a consuming fire."

What will be the effect of all this upon the hearts of men? It will only harden them more and more. As the Word goes on to say, “they blasphemed the name of God, who hath the power over these plagues; and they repented not, to give Him glory.” The Word of God is as a fire and as a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. If hearts resist the mighty power of the Gospel of Christ, so will they resist the terrible visitations of judgment. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.”

Four plagues have been described and all of them are what men would try to explain away as natural phenomena, due to natural causes. Just so do men to-day seek to account for the acts of God in His world upon purely natural grounds, as if such an explanation disposed of God. Is not God in nature? Is He the God of the supernatural only? Is He not also the God of the natural? We have not yet learned to know God if we suppose that anything, either natural or supernatural, can happen without Him.

Well, He will not always be so easily explained away and men will not always be able to reckon without Him. In the final three of the plagues the phenomena will be of such a character as to compel men to acknowledge the workings of the Almighty One, even as the magicians of Egypt reached a limit beyond which they could not go and at which they had to say, “This is the finger of God.” The fifth plague affects the Beast-King’ throne and his Kingdom becomes darkened and his subjects gnaw their tongues for pain. They are now face to face with the great fact that they have the living God to deal with. What is the result? Just this: “They blasphemed the God of Heaven because of their pains and their sores; and they repented not of their works.” The sixth judgment dries up the bed of the great river Euphrates that the way might be made ready for the kings that come from the sun rising. What is this for? We shall see directly. Evil spirits now go forth from the dragon, the beast and the false prophet, spirits of demons working signs, or miracles; which go forth unto, or upon, the kings of the whole world, to gather them together unto the war of the Great Day of God Almighty.

Just here our parenthesis comes in and very sweet and precious it is. Jesus speaks, interrupting the narrative just long enough to say, “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.” It is just like our precious Lord to give this timely word of encouragement and admonition to His faithful remnant who shall be longing for His glorious appearing in that dark hour.

Rev 16:16 follows the parenthesis and informs us of the work of the evil spirits. It is to gather the kings of the Earth to Har-Magedon for the great battle against the Lord and His people. The battle is not seen here; it is only that the kings are assembling to get ready for the battle. Now we understand why Euphrates was dried up: that made possible this gathering of the kings of the East with those of the rest of the world, with their armies, for the last great struggle in rebellion against the Lord and His Christ. The battle itself is described later on. The seventh angel pours out his bowl upon the air; and there comes forth a great voice out of the Temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done.” The wrath of God is finished in the seventh plague. This brings us again to the sign of the Son of Man in Heaven, just on the eve of His glorious appearing with His saints to execute judgment upon all. The last plague is accompanied by lightnings and voices and thunders; and also by “a great earthquake, such as was not since there were men upon the earth, so great an earthquake, so mighty.” The fall of Babylon is again mentioned as occurring in connection with the last plague; the full description of her fall is given in the next two chapters. “And every island fled away and the mountains were not found.” Finally, “a great hail, every stone about the weight of u talent, cometh down out of Heaven upon men.” A talent is about a hundred pounds. The law of God to Israel provided that blasphemers should be stoned to death. This law will be executed in the last plague by the descent of these enormous hail-stones out of Heaven. The result of this judgment is that men go on blaspheming God, because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof is exceeding great. Thus it appears that these judgments are not remedial, but punitive, in their purpose and effect. And this is the goal towards which this world is hastening on! The fool is saying in his heart, ‘(‘There is no God;” and he goes on saying it until he makes himself believe it. The world is rushing pell-mell into the whirling vortex of the awful wrath of God, and to the feeble voice of warning the reply comes, “Let us alone; we are too busy to think of such things.” The old indictment still stands—they will not have God in their knowledge. But our God is faithful and He has never left Himself without a witness. Beginning with Enoch, the seventh from Adam, the prophets have been crying out, “Behold, the Lord cometh with myriads of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have ungodly wrought, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” For those who may be troubled by the teaching that the Church of Christ must pass through The Great Tribulation before she is caught away to meet her Lord, it should be sufficient to observe that, according to the Word of God, The Great Tribulation is a visitation of God’s wrath upon His enemies. In the seven last plagues “is completed the wrath of God” (Rev 15:1); and the seven vials connected with those plagues are “the vials of the wrath of God” (Rev 16:1). This is “the wrath to come” from which our Lord delivers us (1Th 1:9-10; 1Th 5:8-10).

It is true that tribulation is our appointed portion here. Our Lord Himself has so warned us, saying, “In the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33), and the Apostle to the Gentiles declared that “through much tribulation” we must enter into the Kingdom of God (Acts 14:22); but the tribulation thus appointed to us is inflicted by God’s enemies upon God’s people. The Great Tribulation is quite another matter, for it comes from God Himself, and is His judgment upon His enemies. It can never touch us who are under the blood, for we are not to come into judgment (John 5:24).

Too, in the holy reckoning of the Righteous Judge of All the Earth, we have already, in the person of our Substitute, endured the woes of Calvary, where the billows and waves of God’s wrath passed over us. We are now “accepted in the Beloved,” being “members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones;” and we need have no fear, for “He keepeth all His bones: not one of them is broken.”

Section 7 — Babylon the Great (Rev 17:1-18 and Rev 18:1-24) “True and righteous are His judgments; for He hath judged the great harlot.” (Rev 19:2.) The fall of the great Babylon has been announced twice in The Revelation before we come to the detailed account of it in Rev 17:1-18 and Rev 18:1-24. This is the Spirit’s method all through the book, as has been shown in our previous studies. Babylon appears in these chapters in two figures; first, as a woman, and then as a city. This is to show, first, Babylon’s character, and then the results of her crimes. The same rule obtains in the succeeding chapters, where another woman and city are seen in a double figure. Great contrast, however, is observed between the two women and between the two cities. Babylon is shown as a filthy and dissolute harlot and a wicked and doomed city; the New Jerusalem is a spotless and faithful bride and a holy and glorified city. John is taken into the wilderness to see the judgment of the great harlot, while the bride of the Lamb is seen coming from Heaven. Both are mysteries, however, and both are seen by the seer of Patmos only while he is in the Spirit. So if we are to discern these things we must see to it that we are “in the Spirit." The New Jerusalem is a figure of the true Church of God, the Lamb’s bride. The great Babylon is a type of the false Church. This false Church is left in the world after the true Church is caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and here we see the harlot in all her shame. She is seated upon the beast with the seven heads and ten horns, which is easily recognized as the Beast-King of the first part of the 13th chapter. It is the revived Roman Empire with the Beast-King on the throne, but he himself ruled and controlled by the professing Church. This, of course, is early in the seven years period following the Rapture and before the Beast-King tears off his mask. He for the time being is subject to the woman. His seven heads and ten horns, therefore, are without crowns in this picture. The woman is arrayed in costly apparel, but she is drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus. Posing as the “mystery hid in God," and holding in her hand the golden cup, she sets herself forth as the faithful spouse of the heavenly Bridegroom; but her cup is not the cup of blessing, for it is full of abominations and uncleannesses. Abominations are a Bible type of idolatries, and this professing Church is idolatrous and abominable, in spite of her fair outward appearance. In this woman seated upon the beast there are combined the two principles of Balaam and Jezebel. Balaam led the Lord’s people into unholy alliance and criminal intercourse with the world, and Jezebel forced the Lord’s people into gross idolatry; and both acted under the cover of religion. Nothing in the wide world is so hateful to God as religion when used as a cover for corruption. In the angel’s explanation to John we find that the seven heads stand not only for seven kings, but also for seven mountains on which the woman sitteth. Then in verse 18 we see that the woman is the great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth. This cannot mean the literal ancient Babylon, for that city was built not upon mountains, but on the plain of Shinar, and it had, long before John’s day, ceased to reign over the kings of the Earth. The city which wielded universal sovereignty in John’s time was Rome, and everybody knows that Rome was built upon seven hills.

Why is the city called Babylon? For the same reason that old Jerusalem is called Sodom and Gomorrah in the earlier part of this book. Jerusalem had become so corrupt and blinded with sin that when her Lord came to her, she nailed Him to the cross. So Rome in its last state is to partake of the spirit of Babylon. Beginning with Nimrod’s city and the tower of the Babel builders, Babylon always stood for opposition to God and His people. Babylon began with man exalting himself as an individual in Gen 10:1-32, and with men combining for mutual glory in Gen 11:1-32. Its logical figure-head is seen in Nebuchadnezzar, walking in his royal palace and saying, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the royal dwelling place, by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” Now, this Nebuchadnezzar was a religious man. We must not think that because he did not know the true God, therefore he had no religion. On the contrary, all his acts were done in the name of religion. But his religion was that of the natural man and was opposed to that religion which is pure and undefiled before our God and Father. His religion was to exalt himself and to count God out. The image he set up on the plain of Dura was an image of himself, all of gold. God had made known His purpose, and that purpose was that Babylon should constitute but one of four great Gentile world-powers. It did not suit Nebuchadnezzar that he should be the head of gold merely—he proposed to be the whole thing; so he set up his image in defiance of the eternal purpose of God. God had said Babylon should die and pass away; man said Babylon should never die. The issue was thus joined. Now note the result: In due time Nebuchadnezzar passed from the scene, and one night Belshazzar, his grandson, had a great feast with a thousand of his lords. He became drunker than usual and defiled the vessels of the Temple of God, which had been taken from Jerusalem. In the same hour Babylon’s doom was written upon the wall and in that same night Belshazzar was slain and Darius the Mede received the kingdom.

Thus will it be with the mystical Babylon. She has a great deal of religion, and claims to be the sole fountain of divine authority in the earth. The Lord’s purpose for His Church is that she should live as a stranger and pilgrim in the earth during the days of His rejection. But she has settled down upon the Earth and forgotten her Lord. Outwardly she is gorgeously arrayed and men look upon her and say, Surely, this is the bride of Christ. Nay, she is full of rottenness, despite her fair appearance. God called her to a place of suffering and sorrow, but she has chosen the path of ease and luxury. God’s plan for her was that she should hate even the garment spotted by the flesh, but she has played the wanton and brought disgrace upon His name. God’s desire for her was that she should be separated from the world, but she has joined herself to the world, which lieth in the Wicked One. World-hatred and persecution were marked out for her, but she thought she knew a better way. The way of the cross is a lonely way and she greatly preferred the way of worldly triumph. The Prince and God of this World once offered to the Son of God all the Kingdoms of the world for a moment of worship. The Christ put the devilish suggestion from Him with loathing. Yet here we see His professed bride actually seated on the beast, ruling the Kingdoms of the world, having ascended the defiled throne once spurned by the Lord Jesus.

Babylon is worldwide in its extent. The waters which John saw where the harlot sitteth, “are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.” The center of the system, however, is the seven-hilled city, and thus the so-called Roman Catholic Church is identified as the thing signified by the miserable woman sitting in the seat of temporal power. No one will deny that this has ever been and now is the aim of the papacy. The picture is perfect and no detail is missing. Surely, she is arrayed in purple and scarlet and decked with gold, precious stones and pearls. Idol-worship is a part of her system, and alliance with the world is her great desire. Claiming to be the sole representative of Christ on Earth, she has guilty relations with His enemies. Drunken, indeed, is she, with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, for she is guilty of the murder of many millions of them—and all this in the name of religion! But the spirit of Babylon is by no means confined to the Roman Church. Wherever there is fellowship with the world on the part of the professed followers of God, there is Babylon. The woman on the beast, mark you, i» not only a harlot herself, but she is the “mother of harlots and of the abominations of the Earth.” She has many daughters, and Babylon includes every religious institution, whether Catholic so-called or Protestant so-called, which seeks to mix godliness with worldliness. This world is under the sentence of God’s wrath and is hastening to its execution, and wherever there is among God’s people, either a guilty subjection to the world, or a guilty supremacy over the world, there is Babylon, and God hates Babylon, wherever found. Our Lord does not will it that His bride should be either the world’s slave or its mistress. The word Babylon means “confusion,” and God is not the God of confusion. He would have the line of demarcation drawn deep between His friends and His enemies. He calls us to separation, and mixture of the clean with the unclean can only result in uncleanness all through—“the whole lump leavened.” An almost universal mark of Babylon is seen in our day among the so-called Christian churches in the constant appeal to unbelievers for money “for the support of the Lord’s work.” It is a sight to make angels weep and demons laugh when the bride of Christ is seen by the roadside with arms outstretched, seeking alms from her Lord’s enemies. What a grievous thing it must be in His eyes to behold His betrothed wife posing as a beggar before an ungodly world! Mark this well: Wherever the world’s support is resorted to or accepted in connection with the name and work of the Lord, there is Babylon. The principle of Babylon is apparent everywhere, the mystery of iniquity already working. There is a great lust even among the Lord’s people for worldly position and power. We want people to be converted and brought out of the world into the Church, especially “our Church”—but we want them to bring their worldly influence and power along with them. This is the Babylonish garment and wedge of gold, which has ever been a snare to the people of God, marring their fellowship and spoiling their testimony. But there is to be an enormous development of the mystical Babylon after the real Church of Christ has been caught away. The restraining power of the Holy Spirit will then be removed and there will be no hindrance to the workings of the Evil One. There will still be a so-called “Christian Church” in the world, having elaborate formalities and alluring ritualism—the form of godliness without its power. There will be much eloquent preaching and entrancing music, and the harlot will be arrayed in purple and scarlet and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls. There will then be perfect union of Church and State, with the so-called Church on top—the woman sitting on the beast. The growth of this false Church will be amazing and everybody will rush to join its membership, including possibly even those who are turning to God under the judgments of seals, trumpets and bowls. Then shall the voice be heard out of Heaven, saying “Come, forth, My people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues: for her sins have reached unto Heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.” This command, I say, is for that future time when the Church of God shall have been taken to Heaven and this false pretending Church is in the world. As for the present day, we are to shun Babylon wherever we find her, and hate even now the polluting and withering blight of contact with her. We may not separate from the sphere of profession—we cannot do that without openly denying our Lord —but we may and we ought to keep ourselves from idols. It is not for us to spue the Church out before the Lord does, but we surely must keep ourselves unspotted from the world. May God help us to know His will and do it! The disgraceful collapse of the ancient Baby Ion of the Chaldees was a faint foreshadowing of the miserable end of the mystical Babylon the Great. After the confederated kings under the Beast-King have made war against the Lamb and suffered defeat, they turn against the woman and utterly destroy her. The eighteenth chapter is almost entirely occupied with the mourning of the world over the great and terrible fall of the ungodly system which for all the centuries has taken the place in men’s hearts and thoughts that rightly belongs to God alone. The kings of the Earth, the merchants of the Earth and the shipmasters and sailors and traders by sea, all unite in the general weeping and wailing. A long list of articles of merchandise is given as characterizing the great city. Twenty-eight separate things are enumerated, arranged in seven classes. There are, first, costly ornaments of gold, silver and precious stones and pearls; second, costly raiment of fine linen and purple and silk and scarlet; third, costly furniture, all thyine wood, and every vessel of ivory, and every vessel made of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble; fourth, costly perfumes, cinnamon and odours and ointments and frankincense; fifth, costly food, wine and oil, fine flour, wheat, beasts and sheep; sixth, costly equipages, horses and chariots; and finally, the seventh class, men’s bodies and souls—“slaves and souls of men."

Babylon evidently lived in luxury if we may judge from this glimpse into her store-house. The list begins with gold, and ends with the souls of men. Gold is the chief object of man’s desire, while human souls are the least valued thing, even in the estimate of nominal Christianity. Her end is according to her works, for with her sorcery were all the nations deceived, “and in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that have been slain upon the Earth.” May God hasten the day when all these things shall come to pass!

Section 8 — The Two Great Suppers (Rev 19:1-21) “And He hath on His garment and on His thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” (Rev 19:16.)

Rev 19:1-21 opens with a grand hallelujah chorus in which are heard the joyous acclamations of the heavenly hosts. The cause of the outburst is the destruction of the great false Church, seen in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters as the miserable harlot sitting in the place of temporal power, and as the great city reigning over the kings of the Earth.

“After these things,” John tells us, “I heard as it were a great voice of a great multitude in Heaven, saying, ‘Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God: for true and righteous are His judgments; for He hath judged the great harlot, her that corrupted the Earth with her fornication, and He hath avenged the blood of His servants at her hand." And a second time they say, ‘Hallelujah!’ ”

There are those who object to this word, Hallelujah, nowadays, for it offends their sense of propriety and seemliness; but if they ever get into Heaven they will hear a great deal of it and it behooves them to get used to it here, so it will not shock them when they get there. It is a beautiful word, transliterated from the Hebrew, meaning “Praise ye Jehovah,” and that is Heaven’s keynote for time and for eternity.

“And her smoke goeth up for ever and ever.” What a solemn word is this! But a moment ago the professing Church was enjoying her guilty triumph, saying in her heart, “I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall in no wise see mourning.” Therefore, according to the eternal Word, in one day have her plagues come, death and mourning and famine, and she was utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judged her. (Rev 18:7-8) And now we see her smoke— the smoke of her torment—going up for ever and ever. Another heavenly word comes forth in the adoring worship of the four-and-twenty elders and the four living creatures: It is “Amen,” together with the “Hallelujah!” So be it; praise ye the Lord! This is their response to the acts of God in judgment upon the revolting thing which called itself Christian while living in guilty intercourse with the anti-Christian world and the Beast-King himself. A voice from the throne—that is, the King’s voice—is now heard, saying, “Give praise to our God, all ye His servants, ye that fear Him, the small and the great.” Evidently the foregoing praises, however great, had come from but certain selected companies of the Lord’s servants; but immediately, at the command of the great King on His heavenly throne, we hear the transporting strains, in which all His servants join, the small and the great—“the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord, our God, the Almighty, reigneth.’ ” That will be a glad day for the Lord’s servants. We could not sing such a song to-day, for though the Lord, our God, even now is the Almighty One, and though the God of this World, our arch enemy and adversary, is restrained by the hand of our God; yet it is still true that the whole world lieth in the Wicked One, and we are still called upon to wrestle, not against flesh and blood indeed, but against principalities and powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenlies. It will be different in that day, for the Lord our God, the Almighty, will make bare His arm and take to Himself His great power and reign. The long suffering of God is the great mystery of this present time, but His might and majesty will not always be concealed from view. For the present:

“Careless seems the great Avenger.
History’s pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness
’Twixt old systems and the Word:
Truth forever on the scaffold;

Wrong for ever on the throne—
But that scaffold sways the future,
And, beyond the dim unknown,
Standeth God, within the shadows,
Keeping watch above His own.” But the mighty song of the heavenly choir has a forward aspect as well as a backward. There is joy not only over the final overthrow and destruction of the false Church, but also because of the glorious manifestation of the true Church: “Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let us give glory unto Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.” Blessed be God! He will not forget His promise to His children. He will exalt them in due time. From this point we see no more of the four and-twenty elders, representing the Church of God, for the Church is now given its true place as the wife of the Lamb. The Judgment of Believers’ Works before the bema or judgment seat of Christ has taken place, for here the Church is seen arrayed in fine linen, bright and pure, the fine linen symbolizing the righteous acts of the saints.

There are guests at the marriage supper of the Lamb and John is specially commanded to write of them, “Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” The Old Testament Prophets will be there, headed by John the Baptist, the last and greatest of them—the friends of the Bridegroom rejoicing greatly because of the Bridegroom’s voice. There will be the great company of Old Testament believers, the spirits of just men made perfect. The General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn will constitute the radiant bride, shining forth in the glory of the Father, God the Judge of all, and owing everything to her Lord and Husband, even Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things than that of Abel.

These are great things and overpowering to the finite mind, and we need the reminder just here—“These are the true words of God.” We are not following a cunningly devised fable. We are reading the true words of God. He is not a man, that He should lie. His Word is settled for ever in Heaven and is true from the beginning. May He graciously deliver us from the awful sin of making Him a liar, and help us to believe Him. The apostle is well-nigh overcome by these wonderful visions and falls down before his angelic guide in worship. He is quickly rebuked, however, and warned that worship belongs to God alone. His attention is directed to Jesus as the center of all these apocalyptic visions and theme of the prophetic Word, “for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” It is well to ponder this statement carefully and to learn from it that the written Word is not to be understood except as unfolding to us the person of Him who is Himself the Living Word. This is the key to all prophecy, and prophecy in its broadest sense includes the whole of the Scriptures. The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. And now what a glorious sight meets our eyes! The Heavens are opened and riding upon a white horse we see our Lord Himself, the Faithful and True, coming forth with power and great glory, to judge and make war. He is very unlike that poor despised peasant carpenter with marred visage and humble mien, for “His eyes are a flame of fire, and upon His head are many diadems; and He hath a name written which no one knoweth but He Himself.” But it is “this same Jesus,” for He is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood; and His name is called, “The Word of God.” His bride accompanies Him in the armies which are in Heaven, following Him upon white horses. This is “the Revelation of the Lord Jesus from Heaven with His messengers of power, in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God, and to them that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus: who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might, when He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be marveled at in all them that believed in that day.” (2Th 1:7-10) His followers are on white horses like His own, for they share His glory, according to the promise, “When He shall be manifested we shall also be manifested with Him in glory," (Col 3:4), and again, “When He shall appear, we shall be like Him." (1Jn 3:2) The sharp sword proceeding out of His mouth is the eternal Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever, and by which the world shall be judged—with it He shall smite the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron. He comes as King of Kings and Lord of Lords and in establishing His Lordship He treads the winepress of the wrath of God, the Almighty. This was all told out by the prophet Isaiah in his sixty-third chapter, as we saw in a former study. It is the great battle of Har-Magedon, referred to in Rev 16:1-21. This awful battle, in which the satanic hordes, led by the Beast-King at the head of the kings of the Earth, are gathered together to make war against Him that sits upon the horse, and against His army, is preceded by the announcement of an angel standing in the sun and calling to the birds flying in mid-heaven to come and be gathered together unto the Great Supper of God, that they may eat the flesh of kings, captains and mighty men, and of horses and horsemen, and of all men, freemen and slaves, small and great. The battle is a short one and the issue i& quickly settled. It is the Lord Himself who does all the fighting against the confederated armies of the world, and all the killing is by the sword proceeding from His mouth. The Beast-King and the False Prophet are cast into the lake of fire and brimstone and their armies are slain by that Word of God which is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword; and all the birds are filled with their flesh.

What a terrible picture this is! Let it be remembered that the Artist who painted it is God Himself. He has in His great compassion told us beforehand concerning things not seen as yet, and He tells us that all these things must shortly come to pass. What does it all mean to you? I ask you, my friends out of Christ, is it wise for you to put away from you God’s gracious offer of present and eternal salvation? What will it profit you to make the most of this world, if in the next you find yourself forever banished from the presence of the Lord and plunged in the depths of eternal misery and torment? And you, my worldly Christian friend—can I call you Brother? Are you a Christian in fact as well as in name? Were you ever born again or did you just experience some indefinite temporary emotion? Is your name written in Heaven or merely on the roll of some of the churches? The churches, for the most part, are hopelessly apostate, and the Lord is about to spue them out of His mouth: where will you be then? You are lusting after the things of the world—are you sure that you are not of the world? You are miserable among the Lord’s people and your soul loathes the light Bread of God sent down from Heaven; you are hankering for the cucumbers and leeks and onions and garlic of Egypt—are you certain that you ever really left Egypt? You say a man must live, even if to do so he resorts to the tricks of the Devil—are you perfectly satisfied that you are not of the Devil’s brood, after all? What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith. Look well to your foundations, for the floods will soon come and if your foundation be wrong, your fair building will go down. Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Build only upon Him —trust only in Him—and then you need not fear the coming of the Day of Wrath. Blessed be His Name for ever and ever! Amen.

“O, that Thy Name may be sounded
Afar over Earth and sea,
Till the dead awaken and praise Thee,
And the dumb lips sing to Thee!
Sound forth as a song of triumph
Wherever man’s foot has trod.
The despised, the derided message,
The foolishness of God.
Jesus, dishonored and dying,
A felon on either side—
Jesus, the song of the drunkards,
Jesus, the Crucified!
Name of God’s tender comfort,
Name of His glorious power,
Name that is song and sweetness,
The strong everlasting tower.
Jesus, the Lamb accepted,
Jesus, the Priest on His throne—
Jesus, the King Who is coming—
Jesus, Thy Name alone!"

Section 9 — The Millennial Reign (Rev 20:1-15)

“With righteousness shall He judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the Earth; and He shall smite the Earth with the rod of His mouth; and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of His waist, and faithfulness the girdle of his loins.” (Isa 11:4-5.)

It is important in the study of the prophetic Word to keep in mind the order of events. Let us remember that the first thing on the program, as revealed in the Scriptures, is the catching out of the Church to meet the Lord in the air. This great event is the hope of the Lord’s people, and a blessed hope it is. We are not to look for the conversion of the world through the preaching of the Gospel. The world will not be saved in that way. We are not told to expect any such thing, but we are exhorted to be expecting Him. He is at the very door, and at any moment He may come for us. Nothing could be plainer than the testimony of God upon this subject. “The Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.” We believe God and we are looking, moment by moment, for our Lord’s return. Every Christian should occupy this attitude—serving the living and true God and waiting for His Son from Heaven. The departure of the Church from the Earth will be but temporary. She will return with her Lord when He comes in the clouds of Heaven with power and great glory to judge the world and reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Wherever He goes she will go, for she is His bride and the promise is “so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

Following the Rapture of the Church—that is, her catching up to meet the Lord in the air—there will take place in Heaven the Judgment of Believers’ Works, described in 1Co 3:11-15. After this will come the Marriage of the Lamb. On the Earth there will be the terrible judgments of the seals, trumpets and bowls, of which we have been studying in this book. An innumerable multitude out of all nations will turn to God, and millions will suffer martyrdom for the name of Jesus. A remnant of Israel will be converted and God will use these Jewish believers to evangelize the Gentile world. They will go everywhere preaching and saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come. What that end is, we saw in our last study. It is the fulfillment of Enoch’s prophecy—“Behold! The Lord cometh with myriads of His saints to execute judgment upon all.”

What a contrast between the first and second advents of our Lord! He will come, not now as a helpless babe, but as a mighty warrior; not now as a Man of Sorrows, to be led as a lamb to the slaughter, but as a glorious King and Potentate, to judge and to make war.

"He is coming! He is coming!
Not as once He came before
Wailing infant, born in weakness,
On a lowly stable floor;
But upon a cloud of glory,
In the crimson-tinted sky.
Where we see the golden sunrise
In the rosy distance lie.

"He is coming! He is coming!
Not in pain and shame and woe:
With the thorn-crown on His forehead
And the blood-drops trickling slow;
But with diadem upon Him
And a scepter in His hand,
And the saints all ranged before Him,
A transfigured happy band.

“He is coming! He is coming!
Not as once He wandered through
All the hostile land of Judah,
With His followers poor and few;
But with all the holy angels
Waiting ’round His judgment seat,
And the chosen twelve apostles,
Sitting, crowned, at His feet.” The Battle of Har-Magedon occurs immediately upon His glorious appearing, and the Beast-King and False Prophet are cast alive into the burning lake, while their armies are slain by the breath of His mouth. The Great Supper of God follows, all the birds of the air being filled with the flesh of the slain. The analysis of the twentieth chapter is sevenfold. We are told here (1) of the binding of Satan; (2) of the first resurrection; (3) of the Millennial reign of the Lord Jesus and His saints; (4) of the loosing of Satan; (5) of the last war; (6) of the judgment of Satan; and (7) of the second resurrection and second death. The Binding of Satan.

There is a widespread notion that Satan is a myth; and it is safe to say that nothing could please him more. Being a liar from the beginning, doubtless he has manufactured this most subtle and artful of lies—that there is no Devil; for it is entirely according to his purpose that men should not believe in his existence. This mysterious personage figures very largely in Scripture. He is not only a very real person, as shown by the personal names, personal pronouns and personal acts attributed to him, but he is a very great person as well. In nature he is a spirit—“the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." He is evidently the spiritual king described in the wonderful language of Eze 28:11-17. He is a fallen being, for Jesus says of him in John 8:44, that he abode (or, continued) not in the truth, and in 1Ti 3:6, it is written that pride was the cause of his fall. He is not one of the fallen angels spoken of in Jude 1:6 and 2Pe 2:4, for they are in everlasting bonds, while he is still at large, and goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He has a Kingdom, and Jesus spoke of it in Mat 12:26. He has agents in the unseen world, including angels, principalities and powers, the hosts of wicked spirits in the Heavens, the demons of the air. He also has agents in this visible world. Men and women who are in rebellion against God are referred to in the Scriptures as children of their father, the Devil. He has ministers also, but these are always in disguise, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ and ministers of righteousness. (2Co 11:13-15; Rev 3:9.)

Satan has great power. He is the Prince of this World, the God of this World, the Prince of the Power of the Air. But his power, though great, and even supernatural, is not divine and is not unlimited. Satan is hasting to a terrible fate, which is described in our chapter. He has already been judged and the wrath of God will presently overtake and overwhelm him. Meanwhile, though the whole world lieth in the Wicked One, he is nevertheless restrained by the hand of Omnipotence, and our God has set the bounds, beyond which he cannot pass, and He Who is able to make the wrath of men to praise Him is even using the arch enemy himself to test the human heart and accomplish the divine purpose.

It is hardly necessary to say in this place that the popular notion that the Devil is a king in Hell has no foundation in the Scriptures. He has never yet had his headquarters in Hell, though that place is specially prepared for the Devil and his angels. And when he does go into Hell, it will not be as a king, but as the most abject sufferer there. His dwelling place at this present time is in the Heavens; and he has access from time to time into the presence of God Himself, where he accuses the brethren day and night. He will be cast out of Heaven with his angels after the Rapture of the Church, as prophesied and described in the twelfth chapter of The Revelation. He will raise up and energize the Beast King and the False Prophet, as seen in chapter thirteen. He will gather the world’s armies to battle against the Lord and His saints at Har-Magedon in Palestine, as set forth in chapter nineteen; and He will be cast into the Abyss for a thousand years, as we read in the opening paragraph of chapter twenty.

It seems to be a very easy matter to chain the Devil. When the time comes the Lord just sends an angel with a chain and the thing is done. Sometimes you have despaired and been tempted to think that our God has been overpowered by our strong enemy. Never fear; that issue was settled long ago at a personal meeting between our Lord and the adversary. When God is ready it will be a perfectly easy matter to shut the Devil up in a cage for a thousand years. He would be put into the lake of fire at once, along with the beast and false prophet, but the Lord has further use for him after a while and in the meantime one angel is quite sufficient to care for him. The First Resurrection.

Then comes the glorious vision of the blessed and holy ones that have part in the first resurrection. There are the enthroned saints who come forth out of Heaven with the Lord. There are also the witnesses of Jesus who have laid down their lives for Him during the terrors of The Great Tribulation. Their bodies are raised from the dead and they are given a place among the enthroned ones. They live and reign with Christ a thousand years. Literally, the word here is “they came to life, and were kings with Christ for a thousand years." The lost dead—the rest of the dead —-remain in their graves during the Millennial Age; they live not again until the thousand years shall be finished. This is the first resurrection, and only the saved ones have part in it. This is surely very plain language and it would seem impossible to misunderstand it. And yet men go on talking and writing of “the general resurrection." There will never be such a thing. The resurrections will be a thousand years apart. All will be raised from the dead, “but every man in his own order." Only they that are Christ’s at His coming; only those who are in Jesus, either asleep in Him or alive and remaining unto His coming, will have part in the first resurrection. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years." The Millennial Kingdom. And what shall be said of the Millennium itself? This word, derived from the Latin “mille" and “annum,” meaning “a thousand years" has for all the ages been the theme of poetry and prophecy. Though not the eternal state, it will be an age of indescribable blessedness. Think of it! Satan restrained and Jesus on the throne! The whole world one vast empire, its capital at Jerusalem; and absolute righteousness and perfect peace everywhere! The curse removed from the human race and the whole creation redeemed from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God! The wilderness blossoming as a rose; thorns and briers giving away to fir-trees and myrtle trees! The whole Earth filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea! When the Son of God will be no longer despised and rejected, but honored and acclaimed as the Ruler of the World. The horrible butchery of war stopped—for He shall judge between the nations and will decide concerning many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore!

O may God hasten the glad day! We long for our Lord to come, for all this awaits His coming. He will bring joy and gladness. He will bring peace and salvation.

“Hail to the Lord’s Anointed—
Great David’s Greater Son!
When to the time appointed
The rolling years shall run,
He comes to break oppression.
To set the captive free,
To take away transgression And rule in equity.

“The heavens—which now conceal Him
In counsels deep and wise—
In glory shall reveal Him
To our rejoicing eyes;
He Who with hands uplifted
Went from the Earth below,
Shall come again all gifted,
His blessing to bestow.

“He shall come down like showers
Upon the new-mown grass,
And joy and hope, like flowers,
Spring up where He doth pass;
Before Him, on the mountains,
Shall peace, the herald, go;
And righteousness, in fountains,
From hill to valley flow.

“Kings shall fall down before Him,
And gold and incense bring;
All nations shall adore Him,
His praise all people sing;
Outstretched His wide dominion,
O’er river, sea and shore,
Far as the eagle’s pinion
Or dove’s light wing can soar.” The Loosing of Satan. The remainder of the chapter reveals again the dark background of sin and its awful work. Satan is temporarily released and the evil of the human heart is again demonstrated. Innumerable millions of men and women have been born during the Millennial Age, but many of them have not been born again, and their hearts are far from God, though yielding outward obedience. The loosing of Satan is to sift out the wheat from the chaff. An immense army is gathered together in rebellion against the Lord, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. The Last War.

Gog and Magog is doubtless a symbolic expression, based upon the name of the foe of Jehovah’s people Israel, as found in Eze 38:1-23, Eze 39:1-29. Gog is the Prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, which are all included in the Russian empire. God has already begun dealing with the empire of Russia, bringing it into judgment for its cruelty toward His ancient people, and this is but a foretaste of the coming judgment. The prophecy of Eze 38:1-23, Eze 39:1-29, however, have to do with events before the Millennium, while our chapter is dealing with the great Post-Millennial conflict. Satan leads his armies up over the breadth of the earth and surrounds the camp of the saints and the beloved city—Jerusalem—and fire comes down out of Heaven and devours them. Surely, “our God is a consuming fire," The Judgment of Satan. The Devil’s work is ended now, and we see him consigned to the lake of fire, where are also the beast and false prophet; “and they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.” The Second Resurrection and the Second Death.

Finally, we are called upon to view the awful scenes of the Judgment of the Wicked Dead. This is not the general judgment, for there is no such thing in Scripture. Only the lost are seen before the Great White Throne in this Judgment. The saved have all been gathered into their Father’s house long ago, and now the wicked, the impenitent rebels against the goodness of God, are to be called to account. What a solemn sight now meets the gaze of our apostle! Nowhere in all literature is there such a majestic and awful description as this:

“And I saw a Great White Throne, and Him that sat upon it, from Whose face the Earth and the Heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life; and the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works. 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, every man, according to their works. And Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, even the lake of fire. And if any was not found written in the Book of Life, he was cast into the lake of fire." That is all. How very brief—and yet how comprehensive and full of terrible meaning! Not a soul saved out of all that vast throng of humanity! And why? Is it because they were sinners? Surely not; for, then must we all perish. Judged only according to our works, we should all sink into Hell. What then? Are they lost because they were greater sinners than others? Nay, not that, for sin is sin, and our holy God cannot look upon it in any degree nor in any form. These perished, not because they were condemned by the books, but because their names were not found in the Book of Life.

O, my reader, is your name there? Is it there? Are you sure of it? Is there any slightest doubt of it? Let me beg of you, let me beseech you, let me implore you—give all diligence to make your calling and election sure. O, that I might shout it in your ears so that it would reach your heart—are you saved? Have you eternal life? What are you trusting? Don’t be deceived! Look not to yourself—your life will damn you. Look not to your neighbor—no man can by any means redeem his brother. Look not to your baptism or your Church-membership or to the many works, mighty or otherwise, done in the Lord’s Name—to many such workers He will say in that day, “I never knew you! Depart from me, ye that work iniquity!"

Thanks be to God, there are many who are resting on the Rock which the floods can never move. How precious is Jesus to these! They speak not of the filthy rags of their own righteousnesses. They sing rather,

“Oh, I am my Beloved’s
And my Beloved’s mine!
He brings a poor vile sinner
Into His house of wine.
I stand upon His merit,
I know no other stand,
Not e’en where glory dwelleth
In Immanuel’s Land.”

These shall not be ashamed before Him at His coming. May God grant that every one of us may thus put our trust alone in Him! For He is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them, Section 10 — The New Heaven and the New Earth (Rev 21:1-8)

“Behold, I create new Heavens and a new Earth; and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” (Isa 65:17.)

Rev 21:1 has reference to Rev 20:11. In this latter John told us that he saw a Great White Throne, and Him that sat upon it, from whose face the Earth and the Heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. Then after describing the Judgment of the Wicked Dead, he goes on to say, “I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth; for the first Heaven and the first Earth are passed away.” In 2Pe 3:10-14, the same thing is described in greater detail. Peter writes: “The Day of the Lord will come as a thief, in which the Heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the Earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the Day 106 of God, by reason of which the Heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. But, according to His promise, we look for new Heavens and a new Earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for these things, give diligence that ye may be found in peace, without spot and blameless in His sight.”

We notice that Peter places all this in the period called the Day of the Lord, and from this and other Scriptures we learn that the Day of the Lord, beginning with the coming of the Son of man to judge the world, goes right through the Millennium itself and to the very end of time and the threshold of Eternity. Man has his day at this present time—the Day of the Lord is surely coming, and coming “as a thief,” to those who are out of Christ and not ready for its coming. The word to His own people is, “Ye are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” (1Th 5:4.) The new Heaven and Earth will doubtless be the present Heaven and Earth in their renewed and final condition. To quote Peter again (2Pe 3:3-7): “In the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willfully forget, that there were Heavens from of old, and an Earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the Word of God; by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished; but the Heavens that now are, and the Earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the Day of Judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”

Thus the Earth and Heaven which come out of the flood, though really the same as those which passed into and through it, are spoken of as new, for they were renewed and renovated by the purifying waters. The change that awaits them will be decidedly more radical, for they will be made new by the baptism of fire. The Heaven and Earth which now are must be purified, for they have long been the abode of Satan and sin. In the new Heaven and the new Earth righteousness is to dwell. Righteousness is a rare thing in the Earth now —indeed, God plainly declares that “there is none righteous; no, not one.” In that day there will be no unrighteousness. Righteousness is preached now; it is God’s gift to him that believeth; but that has to do with our position rather than our condition; our standing rather than our state. In us, that is, in our flesh, dwelleth no good thing. In the Millennium righteousness will reign; but in the eternal state righteousness will dwell, or abide, forever. Evil is rampant now; it will be re^ strained during the Thousand Years; but in the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times there will be no evil—for the former things are passed away.

All this will be brought about by the mighty hand of the Lord Jesus Himself. This is shown by the words addressed by the Father to the Eternal Son in Psa 102:25-27, and quoted in Heb 1:10-12 : “Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the Earth, and the Heavens are the works of Thy hands: they shall perish; but Thou continuest: and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a mantle shalt Thou roll them up, as a garment, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.” No More Sea.

“And the sea is no more.” The ocean would seem to be a necessary thing for the present Earth, but in the renewed Earth the sea will have disappeared. This is doubtless true in both the literal and the spiritual sense. The sea in the Bible is ever a type of the restless, rebellious world, as in Isa 57:20-21—“The wicked are like the troubled sea; for it cannot rest, and its waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace; saith my God, to the wicked.” For the present it is Jehovah who shuts up the sea with doors, making clouds the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and marking out for it His bound, setting bars and doors and saying, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed. (Job 38:8-11.) Once He allowed the sea to swallow up the Earth, and the waters stood above the mountains, but at His rebuke they fled and at the voice of His thunder they hasted away; and He hath set a bound that they may not pass over, that they turn not again to cover the Earth. (Psa 104:6-9.)

Thus does God deal with the sea of waters and the sea of sin. But the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be, and it will be a glad day when there shall be no sea and when the Earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah as the waters now cover the sea. The Holy City. In Rev 21:2 John says: “I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband." This is the bride, the Lamb’s wife, whose description in detail we have in our next study. In the glorious times that are coming everything will center about the two Jerusalem’s. There will be the restored and greatly enlarged earthly Jerusalem, the center and metropolis of the Millennial kingdom, and there will also be the heavenly Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb. I doubt not that the renewed Earth will be the possession and dwelling-place of the people of Israel in the eternal state, and that the Church of God, which is even now His heavenly people, will reside forever in the heavenly city.

Isaiah cheered his brethren in Israel by his glowing prophecies concerning the future glory of the earthly city. In Isa 65:17-19, God speaks through His servant, saying: “Behold, I create new Heavens and a new Earth; and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in her people; and there shall be heard in her no more the voice of weeping and the voice of crying.” The Eternal State. The great voice out of the throne, so often heard in this book, the voice of the Great King, is now heard, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them and they shall be His peoples, and God Himself shall be with them and be their God; and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, anymore; the first things are passed away.”

This, then, is the consummation of all things. And He that sitteth on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And then, just as the poor heart seems ready to burst for the very greatness of the revelations, He speaks again, saying, “Write: for these words are faithful and true.” Well He knows how prone to unbelief is the human heart. We are constantly saying to ourselves that it is all too great, too wonderful for us; it is surely too good to be true. Nay, but it is all true. These words are true and faithful, for they are from Him Whose name is the True and Faithful Witness. They are so true that all is as good as done already—“And He said unto me, they are come to pass.” He knows the end from the beginning, for He Himself is the A and the Z, the Beginning and the Ending. And He says, “They are come to pass!”

And, oh, how His heart goes out for the sinner! He cannot give you up, my unsaved friend. Listen to Him: “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” Are you longing for these things? Your longing is your title to them: they belong to “him that is a thirst.” There is no stint. All is given and all is given freely. “He that overcometh shall inherit these things and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.

How shall you overcome? There is but one way; it is by the blood of the Lamb. He is the great Overcomer and He has overcome for you; and you have but to take freely of the water of life. He has labored and you need only to enter into His labors. And if you do not enter in—what then? Ah; what then? There is a dreadful alternative. May God cause these words to sink down into your ears and even into your very heart. There is enough and to spare for the thirsty comer—for he is the overcomer; he shall inherit these things. “But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death.” This horrible punishment, though prepared especially for the Devil and his angels, is nevertheless surely in store for men who will not receive the love of the truth that they may be saved. Men are going down to Hell like a flock, only because they hate God and Heaven. The carnal mind is enmity against God, and an unregenerate man would soon turn a Heaven into a Hell. Whoever goes down to the pit will have himself to blame for it, for no man will suffer damnation but for the one sin of rejecting the light of the knowledge of God which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (See John 1:9; John 3:18-19; John 5:9-12.) Jesus bore all the sins of the human race in His own body on the tree and the only sin which can now consign men to perdition is the sin of making God a liar and counting the blood of the covenant an unholy thing. To such, “our God is a consuming fire;” for, though He is kind and merciful. He is also righteous and holy, and He will not hold guiltless the haters and despisers of Jesus. In Mark 3:1-35 there is a significant incident bearing upon this point. The Lord Jesus was working miracles, which His enemies felt called upon to explain. Of course, the true explanation was that He was filled with the Holy Spirit of God, Who wrought these wonders through Him. Unwilling to admit this, “the Scribes which came down from Jerusalem” said that Jesus had the Prince of the Demons indwelling Him. In reply, the Lord Jesus uttered a most solemn warning: “Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme; But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation; because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.”

Essentially, this sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit was pure hatred toward the Son of God. It was a fitting, though awful, climax to all that He had endured from these “blind guides.” It shows to what terrible lengths the carnal mind, which is enmity against God, will go. Everything depends upon this greatest of all questions: What will you do with Jesus, Which is called Christ? He is the Fountain: come to Him and drink. “Let Him that is athirst come!” Come just as you are and whoever you are, for He has said, “Him that cometh, I will in no wise cast out.”

“In the great and terrible wilderness
I wandered in thirst and dread;
The burning sands were beneath my feet,
And the tierce glow overhead.
The fiery serpents and scorpions dire
Dwelt in that lonely land,
And around and afar, as a glimmering sea,
The shadowless, trackless sand.

“Then came a day in my journey drear
When I sank on the weary road,
And there fell a shadow across the waste—
The shade of the wings of God.
The shadow solemn, and dark, and still,
Lay cool on the purple sand;
The shadow deep of a mighty Rock,
In a weary, thirsty land.

“Of old from Heaven the thunder fell,
And that mighty Rock was riven,
And a river of water flowed down to me—
A stream of the rain of Heaven.
And the hand that reft with the thunder dread
The Rock of the Ages hoar,
Down to my lips the waters led,
And I thirsted never more. For out of the great eternal deep
Those glorious waters flowed;
They flowed from the fathomless depths of joy,
They flowed from the heart of God.
From the depths of the tenderness all unknown,
That passeth knowledge, they flow;
I know it as ages of bliss roll on,
Yet I never shall say, ‘I know.’

“And there, before the Rock that was riven,
At the feet of the Lord who died.
I drink of the depths of the love of Heaven, The mighty, exhaustless tide.
Drink, drink abundantly, O beloved!
I was smitten, accursed for thee.
O, lips as lilies, O mouth most sweet
That tell Thy heart to me!”

Section 11 — Our Saviour’s Parting Word (Rev 21:9-27, Rev 22:1-21) “Surely, I come quickly.” (Rev 22:20.)

Some questions may have risen in the reader’s mind with reference to the details of the Millennial period. We must be careful not to run before the Lord and seek to become wise above that which is written, for it has not pleased Him to reveal to us as yet all the things which shall come to pass. He has, however, graciously opened His heart to us regarding these things and we must be equally careful not to lag behind Him as He seeks to lead us into the truth. The true principle was given to Israel, through Moses, in Deu 29:29—“The secret things belong unto Jehovah our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” In answer to these questions it may be pointed out that the whole world will not be converted at the opening of the Thousand Years. Satan will be bound, but the flesh will still be here, and the mind of the flesh is not subject to the law of God. Righteousness will rule, for the Earth shall then be under the scepter of the Lord Jesus as King of Nations, and He will be able to enforce His decrees. Those who rebel He “will break in pieces like a potter’s vessel,” and willingly or unwillingly, every knee shall finally bow and every tongue confess His lordship, His power and His right to rule.

Israel will be converted to God in advance of the other nations. And probably not all Israel at once, for as David reigned first over Judah for seven and a half years in Hebron and then thirty-three years over all Israel in Jerusalem; so, doubtless, the dispersed of Judah will be the first to look upon Him whom they pierced and hail Him as their King. The work of building the great metropolitan city of Jerusalem, with its immense Temple and other buildings, will be begun, and in due time the Lord Jesus will gather together all Israel in such a way as to astonish and amaze the world. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the Earth. In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is His name whereby He shall be called, ’The Lord Our Righteousness.’ Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, ’The Lord liveth, Which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; no but, ’The Lord liveth, Which brought up and Which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries/ whither I had driven them, and they shall dwell in their own land.” (Jer 23:5-8.) The Earthly Jerusalem. The restored earthly Jerusalem, the metropolitan capital and commercial and political center of the Millennial Kingdom of Heaven, which will then be established in the Earth, must not be confused with “the Holy City, New Jerusalem,” which will not be situated on the Earth, but rather in the air, over the Earth. The earthly city is fully and circumstantially described in Eze 40:1-49,, Eze 41:1-26, Eze 42:1-20, Eze 43:1-27, Eze 44:1-31, Eze 45:1-25, Eze 46:1-24, Eze 47:1-23, Eze 48:1-35, together with the restored Temple and the surroundings of the city. The present city of Jerusalem, trodden down of the Gentiles, is a small thing compared with the city shown to Ezekiel and described by him. The restored city will be over nine miles square, with a circuit of thirty-seven miles. The present city has never exceeded four or five miles in circumference. The Temple of the Millennial city will be a mile square. The city will occupy a plain including the site of old Jerusalem and much more, which will be prepared for it by a great earthquake when the Lord’s feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives at His coming to take His great power and reign. “And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof, toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.” (Zec 14:4.) The earthquake will open a great water-way connecting Jerusalem with the Mediterranean Sea on the one hand and the Dead Sea on the other. “And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea; in summer and in winter shall it be. And the Lord shall be King over all the Earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and His name one. All the land shall be turned as a plain from Geba to Rimmon, south of Jerusalem; and it shall be lifted up, and inhabited in her place, from Benjamin’s gate unto the place of the first gate, unto the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananeel unto the king’s winepresses.” (Zec 14:8-10.) The Dead Sea and its surrounding waste land will be reclaimed from their present barrenness by these great physical changes and the Syrian Desert will be irrigated into a garden of verdant beauty and rich fruitfulness. (Eze 47:8-12.) The restored Land of Palestine will be much larger than that over which David reigned and will occupy all that territory lying between the Mediterranean Sea on the west, the Red Sea And Persian Gulf on the south, the River Euphrates on the east, and the Caspian and Black Seas on the north. It will be the most advantageously located land in the world and all nations shall gravitate towards it. The Lord Jesus will reign in visible majesty and power, occupying the throne of David in the great restored city. The whole Earth, redeemed from the curse, will be a fruitful field of luxuriance and beauty. The Heavenly Jerusalem. The Holy City, New Jerusalem, will be all this time located over the Earth and visible from it, as the sun is now visible from it. The Church of God, the Lamb’s wife, will be associated, as queen, with her Lord in His reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The throne, as the seat of universal power, will be located in the heavenly Jerusalem, while the throne having local and special relation to Israel will be in the earthly city. The nation of Israel will then become a Kingdom of Priests and through them the knowledge of God will be disseminated amongst the nations. In that day they that come of Jacob shall take root: Israel shall blossom and bud and fill the face of the world with fruit. (Isa 27:6.) Of that day it is written: “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord; and all the kindred of the nations shall worship before Thee. For the Kingdom is the Lord’s; and He is the Governor among the nations. A seed shall serve Him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He hath done this.” (Psa 22:27-31.) And again: “The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear Thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. In His days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the Earth.” (Psa 72:3-8.) The heart fails as one seeks to grasp the glories to be revealed in these things not seen as yet. Language breaks down as one attempts to describe the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. And what then? Shall we say that because these things are too great for us, therefore they are too great also for God? Nay, for our God is a great God and it is He that hath created the Heaven and the Earth by His mighty power and stretched-out arm, and there is nothing too hard for Him.

Well, then, let us look at this wonderful city, which hath the foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. We must go away in the Spirit with John to a mountain great and high, for this wondrous spectacle must be seen in the right perspective. From Rev 21:9-27, Rev 22:1-5 we have a description of the city as it will appear during the Millennium, located above the Earth and visible from it. Its final and eternal state is seen in our previous study, in Rev 21:1-8.

Now, look at it. It is not a shadow, but a substantial reality—the only real city in the universe, for it will continue forever. It is seen, fresh from the hands of its divine Maker and Builder; “descending out of Heaven from God,” and “having the glory of God.” The prayer of Moses, the man of God, for his people, is always the prayer of God’s chosen ones—“Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.” This prayer will be fully answered in the New Jerusalem, for when the bride, the Lamb’s wife, bursts upon the wondering gaze of the nations it will be as “having the glory of God.” That being true, it follows, as a matter of course, that “her light is like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.” The city is surrounded on its four sides by a wall great and high, but the gates are always open in every direction. The names of the twelve tribes of Israel are written on the gates of pearl, for “salvation is of the Jews,” and it is not God’s purpose that we shall ever forget it. The gates would never have been opened but for that salvation coming to us through the now despised and dispersed nation. God will yet show that He hath not cast away His people forever, and in that day all Israel shall be saved. The twelve apostles of the Lamb are named on the foundations of this great city, for the Church of God is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone. (Eph 2:20.) This is a literal city, an actual city, a material city. I am sorry for the man who feels bound to dispose of this great city by the means of “spiritualizing,” falsely so-called. God has told out His heart to us here, and far be it from us to toss His word aside as a light thing. Here are walls great and high, radiant with all the glorious jewelry of heaven. Here are gates and foundations, with names deeply engraved upon them. Shall we say that these are unreal and without actual existence? We have not so learned the Word of the Living God. Our apostle now witnesses the measurement of the heavenly Jerusalem, as did Ezekiel in the case of the restored earthly Jerusalem. It is done with a golden reed—surely a true measurement. The city is foursquare, being twelve thousand furlongs, or fifteen hundred miles long and fifteen hundred miles wide, covering an area of two and a quarter millions of square miles. This is over two-thirds as great as the total area of the United States, omitting Alaska. Such a city as this, set down upon the earth, would stretch from Portland, Maine, to New Orleans, Louisiana, and from Savannah, Georgia, to Denver, Colorado. It would cover the whole continent of Europe with Russia left out, and have a half million square miles to spare. It is over half as large as the whole Chinese Empire, being nearly one-third larger than China proper, and one fourth larger than India. Side by side within the walls of this city there would be more than room for forty-nine Pennsylvania’s, fourteen Delawares, one Rhode Island and two Districts of Columbia. The whole city is surrounded by a wall 144 cubits, or over two hundred feet, in thickness. But these figures have to do only with the flat area of the city. The record declares that the height of the city is equal to its length and breadth. I do not know what this can mean, unless it means what it says. The city is a cube, or perhaps a pyramid, 1,500 miles in length and breadth and height: the Word of God solemnly assures us that “the length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal.” It was this city that Jesus had in mind when He said: “In my Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.” He is now at work upon our building, not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. In due time He will come again to receive us unto Himself. God speed the day! The New Jerusalem will contain no Temple, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are the Temple thereof. The city will have no need for sun or moon, for the Lamb is its lamp. And the nations shall walk in the light thereof. Nothing unclean or unholy shall enter those portals, but only they which are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. This heavenly city, like the earthly one, will have a river. It is the River of the Water bf Life, flowing out of the throne of God and ’of the Lamb. Its banks will be shaded by the Tree of Life, bearing fruit every month, the heavenly food for the heavenly people, and its leaves will be for the healing of the nations. The curse is forever wiped out to give place to the throne of God and of the Lamb. He is seen there surrounded by His servants rendering glad service, with His name on their foreheads. How much better this than the horrid mark of the beast! “And they shall reign for ever and ever.”

“These Words Are True”

O, Master, is it all true? Is it all true? Listen: Jesus Our Lord is speaking through His angel and John is writing it down: “And He said unto me, ’These words are faithful and true; and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show unto His servants the things which must shortly come to pass. And behold, I come quickly. Blessed is He that keepeth the words of the prophecy of this book.’”

John forgets himself and again falls in adoration at the angel’s feet, and is again rebuked, with the warning, "Worship God!” Then the apostle is commanded not to seal up the words of the prophecy of this book “for the time is at hand.” Daniel was given exactly opposite instructions concerning his book (Dan 12:4): “Thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the Time of the End.” The Time of the End is upon us, and neither Daniel nor The Revelation is now sealed. It is the privilege and the duty of every Christian to know and understand them. When the end of the Millennial Age is come, the door of grace will indeed be shut. After that time is passed there will be no more invitations for men to come to God. The condition of the sinner will then be fixed and unchangeable, except that it may grow worse and worse. The unrighteous and the filthy will do unrighteousness and filthiness still or “yet more” (R. V. margin). On the other hand, the righteous and the holy shall be privileged to grow in righteousness and holiness still or “yet more.” This is the decree of the Coming One, the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Within the city are the blessed, and without are the accursed. The testimony is plain and it is sure.

These things are for the Christian; they are the message of the Lord Jesus “for the churches.” “I Jesus have sent my angel to testify unto you these things for the churches.” “I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright, the Morning Star.” (Rev 22:16) He is the Sun of Righteousness to Israel, but to the Church He is the Bright and Morning Star, rising long before the Sun, to herald the dawn of the approaching day. And yet there is room! Is any sinner out of, Christ reading these words? To such “the] Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” That “Come!” is from the very heart of God and it has been sounding out for thousands of years. “And he that heareth, let him say, Come!” Pass along the word, “Come!” “And he that is athirst, Come!” O, how He wants you! He cannot give you up, and His long suffering leadeth you to repentance; His long suffering is salvation. And yet again: “He that will— whosoever will—let him take the water of life freely.”

Now comes a warning. Men must not meddle with God’s book. If any man alters it in any way, his doom is irretrievably sealed, for God shall add the plagues to him and take away his part from the Tree of Life and the Holy City. His Parting Message.

We have reached the end of The Revelation and of the Bible itself. There is but one more word, and in that word we shall hear the parting message of our Saviour. For centuries there is to be deep silence. The Word of God is to be precious, for there will be no open vision in those days. (Compare 1Sa 3:1.) We strain our ears to catch the final word from the lips of our blessed Lord. What shall it be? Now He speaks and as we listen we hear: “Surely, I come quickly!”

Blessed words! Forgotten, indeed, and set at naught by the world and even by hosts of His own professed followers, but precious to many who have been privileged to realize in some measure the power of the blessed hope!

“Quickly?” someone asks. What did He mean by that, when He must have known He would not come for nearly two thousand years? Did He mean to deceive? God forbid! No; for this word translated “quickly” does not necessarily mean “soon,” but, rather, “suddenly.” He did not promise to come soon, but He meant us to understand that when He comes it will be suddenly and without further warning. We are to be ever prepared, with our loins girt about and our lamps burning. This is ever our place and position “serving the living and true God and waiting for His Son from Heaven.”

“Surely, I come quickly!” This is His word; and our hearts leap with the responsive echo voiced by the beloved disciple—“Amen! Even so, COME, LORD JESUS!”

“Lord Jesus, come!
Nor let us longer roam
Afar from Thee and that bright place
Where we shall see Thee face to face.

Lord Jesus, come!
“Lord Jesus, come!
Thine absence here we mourn;
No joy we know apart from Thee,
No sorrow in Thy presence see.
Come, Jesus, come!

“Lord Jesus, come!
And claim us as Thine own;
With longing hearts the path we tread
Which Thee oft high to glory led.
Come, Saviour, come!

“Lord Jesus, come!
And take Thy people home;
That all Thy flock, so scattered he*
With Thee in glory may appeal.
Lord Jesus, come!”