Revelation
Things That shall Be
PART
VI. (Chap. xvii. - xix. 4.)
BABYLON AND HER
OVERTHROW
BABYLON is already announced as fallen in the
fourteenth chapter, and as judged of God under the seventh vial; but we have
not yet seen what Babylon is, and we are not to be left to any uncertainty: she
has figured too largely in human history, and is too significant a lesson every
way, to be passed over in so brief a manner. We are therefore now to be taught
the "mystery of the woman." For she is a mystery; not like the Babylon of old,
the plain and straightforward enemy of the people of God: she is an enigma, a
riddle, so hard to read that numbers of God's people in every age have taken
her, harlot as she is, for the chaste spouse of the Lamb. Yet here for all ages
the riddle has been solved for those who are close enough to God to understand
it.
And the figure is gaudy enough to attract all eyes to her - seeking
even to do so. Let us look with care into what is before us in these chapters,
in which the woman is evidently the central object, the beast on which she is
sitting being only viewed in its relation to her. It is one of the angels of
the vials who exhibits her to the apostle, and his words naturally show us what
she is characteristically as the object of divine judgment. As described by
him, she is "the great whore that sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings
of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have
been made drunk with the wine of her fornication." As brought into sharp
contrast with the beast that carries her, we see that she is a woman, has the
human form, as the beast has not. A beast knows not God; and in Daniel we have
found the Gentile power losing the human appearance which it has in the king's
dream to take the bestial, as in the vision of the prophet. In Nebuchadnezzar
personally we see what causes the change; - that it is pride of heart which
forgets dependence upon God. The woman, on the other hand, professedly owns
God, and moreover, as a woman, takes the place of subjection to the man, - in
the symbol here, to Christ. When she is removed by judgment, the true bride is
seen, to whom she is in contrast, and not (as so many think) to the woman of
the twelfth chapter, who is mother, not bride, of Christ, and represents
Israel.
But the woman here is a harlot, in guilty relation with the
kings of the earth. Her lure is manifestly ambition, the desire of power on
earth, the refusal of the cross of Christ, - the place of rejection; and the
wine - the intoxication - of her fornication makes drunk the "dwellers upon
earth." These we have already seen to be a class of persons who with a higher
profession have their hearts on earthly things. (Phil. iii. i9; Rev. iii. xo;
xi. 10; xiii. 8.) These naturally drink in the poison of her doctrine.
To see her, John is carried away, however, into the wilderness; for the earth
is that, and all the efforts of those who fain would do so cannot redeem it
from this. There he sees the woman sitting on a scarlet-coloured beast, full of
names of blasphemy; easily identified as the beast of previous visions by its
seven heads and ten horns.
The beast is in a subjection to the woman
which we should not expect. It is the imperial power, but in a position
contrary to its nature as imperial, in this harmonizing with the interpretation
of the angel afterward, - the "beast that was, and is not." In some sort it is
; in some sort it is not; and this we have to remember, as we think of its
heads and horns. If the beast "is not," necessarily its heads and horns are
not. These are for identification, not as if they were existing while the woman
is being carried by it. In fact, she is now its head, and reigns over its body,
over the mass that was and that will be again the empire, but now "is
not."
What are we to say of the scarlet colour and the names of
blasphemy? Are they prospective, like the horns? The latter seems so,
evidently, and therefore it is more consistent to suppose the former also. The
difficulty of which may be relieved somewhat by the evident fact, that of these
seven heads, only one exists at a time, as we see by the angel's words: the
seven seen at once are again for identification, not as existing
simultaneously. The scarlet colour is that which typifies earthly glory which
is simply that: the beast's reign has no link with heaven. That it is full of
names, not merely words, of blasphemy, speaks of the assumption of titles which
are divine, and therefore blasphemous to assume. Altogether we see that it is
the beast of the future that is presented here, but which could not really
exist while carrying the woman. She could not exist in this relation to him, he
being the beast that he is, and thus the expression is fully justified, -
really alone explains the matter - the "beast that is not, and will
be."
There is clearly an identification of a certain kind all through.
While the woman reigns, that over which she reigns is still in nature but the
beast that was, and that after her reign will again be. There is no fundamental
change all through. The Romanized nations controlled by Rome are curbed, not
changed. And breaking from the curb, as did revolutionary France at the close
of the last century, the wild beast fangs and teeth at once display
themselves.
But we are now called to the consideration of the woman,
who, as reigning as the professed spouse of Christ over what was once the Roman
empire, is clearly seen to be what, as a system, we still call Rome: "that
great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth;" which did so even in
John's time, although to him appearing in a garb so strange that when he sees
her he wonders with a great wonder.
She is apparelled in purple and
scarlet, for she claims spiritual as well as earthly authority, and these are
colours which Rome, as we know, affects, God thus allowing her even to the
outward eye to assume the livery of her picture in Revelation. She is decked
too with gold and precious stones and pearls, figures of really divine and
spiritual truths, which, however, she only outwardly adorns herself with, and
indeed uses to make more enticing the cup of her intoxication: "having a golden
cup in her hand," says the apostle, "full of abominations and filthiness of her
fornications." Now we have her name: "And upon her forehead was a name written,
'Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the
Earth.'"
Her name is Mystery, yet it is written in her forehead. Her
character is plain if only you can read it. If you are pure, you may soon know
that she is not. If you are true, you may quite easily detect her falsehood. In
lands where she bears sway, as represented in this picture, she has managed to
divorce morality from religion, that all the world knows the width of the
breach. Her priests are used to convey the sacraments, and one need not look at
the hands too closely that do so needful a work. In truth it is an affair of
the hands, with the magic of a little breath, by means of which the most sinful
of His creatures can create the God that made him, and easily new create
another mortal like himself. This is a great mystery, which she herself
conceives as "sacrament," and you may see this clearly on her forehead then. It
is the trick of her trade, which without it could not exist. With it, a little
oil and water and spittle become of marvellous efficacy, a capital stock at
least out of which at the smallest cost the church creates riches and power,
and much that has unquestionable value in her eyes. "Babylon the great" means
"confusion the great."
Greater confusion there cannot be than that which
confounds matter and spirit, creature and Creator, makes water to wash the
soul, and brings the flesh of the Lord in heaven to feed literally with it men
on earth. Yet to this is the larger part of Christendom captive, feeding on
ashes, turned aside by a deceived heart, and they cannot deliver their souls,
nor say, " Is there not a lie in my right hand ?" (Is. xliv. 20.)
Nay,
this frightful system has scattered wide the seed of its false doctrine, and
the harlot mother has daughters like herself: she is the "mother of harlots and
abominations of the earth." Solemn words from the Spirit of truth, which may
well search many hearts in systems that seem severed far from Rome, as well as
those that more openly approach her. Who dare, with these awful scriptures
before them, speak smooth things as to the enormities of Rome? To be protestant
is indeed in itself no sign of acceptance with God, but no, to be protestant is
certainly not to be with God in a most important matter. This Roman Babylon is
not, moreover, some future form that is to be, though it may develop into worse
yet than we have seen. It is that which has been (in the paradoxal language
which yet is so lively a representation of the truth) seated upon the beast
while the beast "is not." It is Popery as we know it and have to do with it;
and woe to kings and rulers who truckle to it, or (again in the bold Scripture
words) commit fornication with it! "Come out from her, my people, that ye be
not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues!"
"And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the
martyrs of Jesus; and when I saw her," says the apostle, "I wondered with a
great wonder." Romish apologists have been forced by the evidence to admit that
it is Rome that is pictured here; but they say, and some Protestant
interpreters have joined them in it. that it is pagan Rome. But how little
cause of wonder to John in his Patmos banishment, that the heathen world should
persecute the saints! That this same Rome, professing Christianity, should do
it, this would be indeed a marvel. With us it is simple matter of history, and
we have ceased to wonder; while, alas! it is true that many today no longer
remember, and many more think we have no business to remember, the persecutor
of old. It was the temper of those cruel times of old, many urge nineteenth
century civilization has tamed the tiger, and Rome now loves her enemies, as
the Christian should. But abundant testimony shows how false is this assertion.
Here, just before her judgment, the apostle pronounces her condemnation for the
murder of God's saints still unrepented of. The angel now explains the mystery,
and begins with the beast. "The beast that was and is not" is clearly from the
point of view of the vision, as has been said. The rule of the woman
necessarily destroys beast- character, while it lasts. But the beast will awake
from its long sleep: it is "about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into
perdition." This coming up out of the abyss, however, as has been elsewhere
said, does not seem to be merely the revival of the empire: the key of the
abyss in the hands of the fallen star under the fifth trumpet, and the angel of
the abyss being the person who by the two languages of his name is the
"destroyer" of both Jew and Gentile, would lead us to believe that there was in
it the working of satanic power. This is strengthened by the connection of this
ascent with the "going into perdition" of that which comes up.
The
previous revival under the seventh head would thus be passed over; and the
prophecy hastens on to what is most important, the beast pictured here being
identified This is contrary, however, to the view taken of it when considering
the thirteenth chapter. But the difficulty of the "beast that was not" and the
"one is," spoken of the heads of the beast, seems in this way to find a better
solution. The paragraph as to this in the former place may therefore be
considered cancelled. in fact, in the prophecy itself, with its own eighth
head. (v. ii.) That it has only seven, as seen in the vision, is not against
this if the seventh and eighth heads are the same person. The unhappy "dwellers
upon the earth" wonder at this revival, whose names have not from the
foundation of the world been written in the book of the Lamb slain. Divine
grace is that alone which makes any to differ; and of this we are reminded
here. The power that works in the revival of the beast is plainly beyond that
of man; and how many in the present day seem to take for granted that what is
more than human power must be divine. This is the essence of the "strong
delusion" which God sends upon those who have not received the love of the
truth that they might be saved. Powers and signs and lying wonders confirm the
imperial last head in his pretension; and that they are "lying" means, not that
they are mere juggling and imposition, but that they are made to foster lies.
They shall wonder, "seeing how that the beast was and is not and shall be
present [again]."
And "here is the mind that hath wisdom," - the divine
secret for an understanding heart. First, as to the woman: "The seven heads are
seven mountains on which the woman sitteth." Surely there need not be much
doubt about the application of this; although some would apply it to a new
Babylon yet to be built on the Euphrates, and others would make the
interpreting word "mountains" to be still a figure of something else. They
might indeed easily build Babylon again, that is merely looking at things from
a human standpoint; but how could it be said of this new city that "in her was
found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all the slain upon the
earth"?
That Rome was the seven-hilled city is familiar to every
schoolboy; and its being a "geographical" mark need not make it unsuited to be
one, as Lange believes. It makes it plain, as God would have it surely for His
saints whose blood it would shed, and who would need the comfort of knowing
that He was against this "Mother and Mistress of churches," with all her
effrontery and the crowd that followed her.
God has even, if one might
say so, gone out of the way to give a needed plain mark of identification. For
it is not easy as a symbol to understand how the heads of the beast should be
the seat of the woman. But this does not make it harder for identification,
while it seems to illustrate the more the tender thought of God for His people,
of which the tokens can never be too many, and in a place like this, of what
special value!
But the heads are also seven kings, - consecutive, not
contemporaneous rulers; for five had already fallen, one was, and another was
yet to come, only to exist for a short time, the beast himself being the final
one. Five forms of government have been given by the historians as preceding
the imperial in Rome, this last being evidently the existing one in the
apostle's day. "One is" we must take as applying to the apostle's day; for at
the time of the vision the beast itself "is not," as we have seen. The only
other time present would be the time in which the apostle lived
himself.
The imperial head came to an end necessarily when the empire as
a whole broke up under the attacks of the barbarians; and to make, as Barnes
and others do, the exarch of Ravenna the seventh head of the world-empire is
either to overlook the plain terms of the prophecy, or else to pervert the
simple facts of history. The exarchate lasted about two hundred years, which
Barnes considers (comparatively) but a "short time;" and the papacy he
considers the eighth head. This falls with the exarchate; for the papacy would
then be but the seventh, and nothing would correspond.
The seventh head
began, according to Elliott, when Diocletian, already emperor, assumed the
diadem, - the symbol of despotic sovereignty after the eastern fashion; and he
quotes Gibbon's words, that, "like Augustus, Diocletian may be considered the
founder of a new empire." But if this were the seventh head, there was a gap,
between it and the papacy; and this must have been the time when the beast "was
not." This is better in some respects than Barnes, and may be really an
anticipative fulfillment, such as we find in the "historical" interpretation
generally. But it fails when we come to apply it consistently all through, as
where Elliott has to make the burning of the woman with fire by the ten horns
to be merely the devastation of the city and the Campagna prior to their giving
power to the beast, whereas it is really effected by the beast and the horns
together, and is the complete end of the ecclesiastical system which the woman
represents. It would be manifestly incongruous to suppose the papacy to hate
and consume the Roman Catholic church.
The scheme of prophecy involved
in all this, if taken as a whole, would destroy entirely the interpretation of
Revelation which has been given in these papers, and is negatived by all the
considerations that substantiate this. I do not propose, therefore, to go more
fully into it. When the papacy ruled the empire, it had ceased to be in a
proper sense, the empire, and then it was that according to the chapter before
us, the beast "was not." The true bestial character could not co-exist with
even the profession of Christianity.
The beast is necessarily,
therefore, secular, not ecclesiastical. When the secular empire fell, the beast
was not; though in that contradictory condition the woman might ride it. Since
that fall there has been no revival, and therefore as yet no seventh head. The
seventh head is constituted that, as I believe, by the union of ten portions of
the divided territory to give him power; and the preponderance of Russia in
Europe might easily bring about a coalition of this kind. The new imperial head
lasts but a short time, is smitten with the sword, possibly degraded to the
condition of a "little horn," is revived by the dreadful power of Satan acting
through the anti-christian second beast of the thirteenth chapter, assumes the
blasphemous character in whicn we have already seen him, and thus goes into
perdition at the appearing of the Lord.
This is the beast, as Revelation
contemplates him generally, identified with the eighth head, but who is of the
seventh, in fact, the seventh, which had the wound by the sword, yet lived.
Thus seen, all the passages seem to harmonize, - a harmony which is the main
argument for the truth of such an interpretation of them.
"And the ten
horns which thou sawest are ten kings which have received no kingdom as yet,
but they receive authority as kings one hour with the beast. These have one
mind, and give their power and authority unto the beast." Alas! they are united
against God and against His Christ: "These shall make war with the Lamb, and
the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings; and
they that are with Him, called, and chosen, and faithful."
Here we have
anticipated the conflict of the nineteenth chapter. These that are with Christ
are His redeemed people, as is plain. Angels might be "chosen and faithful,"
but only men are "called;" and when He comes forth as a warrior out of heaven,
they, as "the armies that were in heaven, follow Him." The rod of iron which He
has Himself is given to His people, and the closing scene in the conflict with
evil sees them in active and earnest sympathy with Him. The waters where the
harlot sat are next interpreted as "peoples and multitudes and nations and
tongues." With another meaning and intent than where it is spoken of Israel,
"her seed is in many waters." Her influence is wide-reaching and powerful; but
it is brought to an end: "and the ten horns which thou sawest and the beast;"-
so, and not "upon the beast," all authorities give it now - "these shall hate
the harlot, and make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn
her up with fire," That surely is not a temporary infliction, but a full end;
and beast and horns unite in it. She has trampled upon men, and, according to
the law of divine retribution, it is done to her. This has been partially seen
many times in the history of Rome, and the end of the last century was a
dreadful warning of what is soon to come more terribly still upon her. The very
profession of Christianity which she in time past used for purposes of gain and
power over men will no doubt, by the same retributive law, become at last the
millstone round her neck forever. And no eye will pity her. For it is God who
has "put into their hearts to do His will, and to come to one mind, and to give
their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be
accomplished."
How good to know amid all that day of terror that God is
supreme above all, in all, the devices of His enemies! Still "He maketh the
wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of it He restraineth." And this
is the time which will most fully demonstrate this. It is the day of the Lord1
upon all the pride of man to bring it low. It is the day when every refuge of
lies shall be swept away, and all the vanity of his thoughts shall be exposed.
"The idols He shall utterly abolish." Yea, those who have been their slaves
shall fling them to the moles and to the bats. "And the Lord alone shall be
exalted in that day." Then the way is prepared for blessing, wide in proportion
to the judgment which has introduced it.
The eighteenth chapter gives
the judgment from the divine side. The question has been naturally raised, Is
it another judgment? There is nothing here about beast or horns, - nothing of
man's intervention at all, - and there are signs apparently of another and
deeper woe than human hands could inflict. It is this last which is most
conclusive in the way of argument, and we shall examine it in its place.
Another angel descends out of heaven, having great authority: and the earth is
lighted with his glory. Earth is indeed now to be lighted, and with a glory
which is not of earth. Babylon is denounced as fallen, - not destroyed, as is
plain by what follows, but given up to a condition which is a spiritual
desolation, worse than the physical one of Babylon of old under which she has
long lain, and from which the terms seem derived. She has become the dwelling
place of demons - "knowing ones;" Satan's underlings, with the knowledge of
many centuries of acquaintance with fallen men, and serpent craft to use their
knowledge; a "hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and
hateful bird." The parable of the mustard seed comes necessarily to mind; and
without confining the words here to that, it is amazing to see how deliberately
filthy and impure Rome's system is. She binds her clergy to celibacy, forces
them to pollute their minds with the study of every kind of wickedness, and
then by her confessional system teaches them to pour this out into the minds of
those to whom she at once gives them access and power over them in the name of
religion itself!
What has brought a professing Christian body into so
terrible a condition as this bespeaks? We are answered here by reference once
more to her spiritual fornication with the nations and with the kings of the
earth, and to the profit which those make, who engage in her religious traffic.
As worldly power is before all things her aim, and she has heaven to barter in
return for it, the nations easily fall under her sway, and are intoxicated with
the "wine of the fury " - the madness - "of her fornication." First of all, it
is the masses at which she aims, and only as an expedient to secure these the
better, with the kings of the earth. Thus she can pose as democratic among
democrats, and as the protector of popular rights as against princes. In feudal
times, the church alone could fuse into herself all conditions of men, turning
the true and free equality of Chxistians into that which linked all together
into vassalage to herself; and so the power grew which was power to debase
herself to continually greater depths of evil. Simoniac to the finger-ends,
with her it is a settled thing that the "gift of God can be purchased with
money." And with her multiplicity of merchandise, which is put here in
catalogue, there will naturally be an abundant harvest for brokers. With these,
who live by her, she increases her ranks of zealous followers.
Another
voice now sounds from heaven, -"Come forth from her, my people, that ye partake
not of her sins, and that ye receive not her plagues; for her sins have heaped
themselves to heaven and God hath remembered her unrighteousnesses."
Even in Babylon, and thus late, therefore, there are those in her who are the
people of God. But they are called to separation. Rome is a false system which
yet retains what is saving truth. Souls may be saved in it, but the truth it
holds cannot save the false system in which it is found. Truth cannot save the
error men would ally with it, nor error destroy the truth. There are children
of God, alas! that "suffer Jezebel," but Jezebel's true children are another
matter: "I will kill them with death " is God's emphatic word. The testing time
comes when the roads that seemed to lie together are found to separate, and
then the necessity of separation comes. Truth and error cannot lead to the same
place, and he that pursues the road to the end will find what is at the
end.
"Recompense to her as she recompensed; according to her works,
double to her double: as she hath glorified herself, and lived luxuriously, so
much torment and sorrow give her. For she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and
am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore in one day shall her plagues
come on her, - death and sorrow and famine; and she shall be burned up with
fire: for strong is the Lord God who hath judged her."
The government of
God is equal handed, and for it the day of retribution cannot be lacking. "God
hath remembered" Babylon at last. In truth, He never lost sight of her for a
moment. But the wheels of His chariot seem often slow in turning, and there is
purpose in it: "I gave her space to repent," He says pitifully: but pity is not
weakness, - nay, it is the consciousness of strength that may make one slow.
There is no possibility of escape. No height or depth can hide from Him the
object of His search: - no greatness, no littleness. The day of reckoning comes
at last, and not an item will be dropped from the account.
Then follows
the wail of the kings of the earth for her, while they stand off in fear for
the calamity that is come upon her, more sentimental than the selfish cry of
the merchants, whose business with regard to her has slipped out of their
hands. And then comes the detail of it, article by article, - all the luxuries
of life, each of which has its price, and ending with "slaves, and souls of
men." If one had skill to run through the catalogue here, he would doubtless
find that each had its meaning; but we cannot attempt this now. The end of the
traffic is at hand, and the Canaanite is to be cast out of the house of the
Lord.
The lament of so many classes shows by how many links Rome has
attached men to herself. Her vaunted unity is large enough to include the most
various adaptations to the character of men. From the smoothest and most
luxurious life to the hardest and most ascetic, she can provide for all grades,
and leave room for large diversities of doctrine also. The suppleness of
Jesuitism is only that of her trained athletes, and the elasticity of its
ethics is only that of the subtlest ethereal distillation of her spirit. But
though she may have allurements even for the people of God, she has yet no link
with heaven; and while men are lamenting upon earth, heaven is bidden to
rejoice above, because God is judging her with the judgment that saints and
apostles and prophets have pronounced upon her.
Finally, and reminding
us of the prophetic action as to her prototype, "a strong angel took up a great
mill-stone, and cast it into the sea, saying, 'Thus with a mighty fall shall
Babylon the great city be cast down, and shall be found no more at all.'" And
then comes the extreme announcement of her desolation. Not merely shall her
merchandise be no more, there shall be no sign of life at all, - no pleasant
sound, no mechanic's craft, no menial work, no light of lamp, no voice of
bridegroom or of bride; and then the reason of her doom is again given: "For
thy merchants were the princes of the earth; for with thy sorcery were all
nations deceived. 'And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints,
and of all that have been slain upon the earth."
Interpretation is
hardly needed in all this. The detail of judgment seems intended rather to fix
the attention and give us serious consideration of what God judges at last in
this unsparing way. Surely it is needed now, when Christian men are being taken
with the wiles of one who in a day of conflict and uncertainty can hold out to
them a rest which is not Christ's rest; who in the midst of defection from the
faith can be the champion of orthodoxy while shutting up the word of life from
men; who can be all things to all men, not to save, but to destroy them: at
such a time, how great a need is there for pondering her doom as the word of
prophecy declares it, and the joy of heaven over the downfall of the sorceress
at last. Heaven indeed is full of joy and gratulation and worship: "After these
things, I heard as it were a great voice of a great multitude in heaven,
saying, 'Halleluiah ! salvation and honor and glory and power belong to our
God; for true and righteous are his judgments; for He hath judged the great
harlot which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and bath avenged the
blood of his servants at her hand.' And a second time they say, 'Halleluiah!'
And her smoke goeth up forever and ever. And the four and twenty elders fell
down and worshipped God, saying, 'Amen: halleluiah!'"
We may now briefly
discuss the question of how far there is indication here of a divine judgment,
apart from what is inflicted by the wild beast and its horns. These, we have
read, "shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and eat
her flesh, and burn her up with fire." In the present chapter, we have again,
"And she shall be burned up with fire; for strong is the Lord God who hath
judged her." The kings of the earth "wail over her when they look upon the
smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment." And so
with the merchants and the mariners. And finally we read, "Her smoke goeth up
forever and ever." Nothing in all this forces us to think of a special divine
judgment outside of what is inflicted by human instruments, except the last.
The last statement, I judge, does. It cannot but recall to our minds what is
said of the worshippers of the beast and false prophet in the fourteenth
chapter, where the same words are used; but this is not a judgment on earth at
all: could indeed "her smoke goeth up forever and ever" be said of any earthly
judgment? The words used are such as imply strict eternity: no earthly judgment
can endure in this way; and the language does not permit the idea that the
persistency is only that of the effects. No, it is eternity ratifying the
judgment of time, as it surely will do; and it is only when we have taken our
place, as it were, amid the throng in heaven, that this is seen.
But
thus, then, we seem to have here no positive declaration of any judgment of
Babylon on earth, save by the hands of the last head of western empire and his
kings. Yet the eighteenth chapter, we have still to remember, says nothing of
these kings: all is from God absolutely, and at least they are not considered.
It has been also suggested that it is the "city" rather than the woman (the
ecclesiastical system) that is before us in this chapter; but much cannot be
insisted on as to this, seeing that the identification of the woman with the
city is plainly stated in the last verse of the previous one, and also that the
terms even here suppose their identity.
On the other side, there is in
fact no absolute identity; nor is it difficult to think of the destruction of
the religious system without its involving at all that of the city; nor, again,
would one even suppose that the imperial head, with his subordinates, would
utterly destroy the ancient seat of his own empire. Here a divine judgment,
strictly and only that, taking up and enforcing the human one as of God,
becomes at least a natural thought, and worthy of consideration.
Outside of the book of Revelation, Scripture is in full harmony with this. The
millennial earth, as we may have occasion to see again, when we come to speak
more of it, is certainly to have witnesses of this kind to the righteous
judgment of God upon the objects of it. In it, as it were, heaven and hell are
both to be represented before the eyes of men, that they may be fully warned of
the wrath to come. During the present time, it is objected, there is not
sufficient witness; in the millennium, therefore, there shall be no room left
for doubt. Therefore while the cloud and fire rest as of old, but with wider
stretch, as of sheltering wings, over Jerusalem (Isa. iv. 5, 6; comp. Matt.
xxiii. 37), we have, on the other side, the open witness of the judgment upon
transgressors which the Lord Himself renders as a type of the deeper judgment
beyond. (Isa. lxvi. 23, 24, comp. Mark ix.)
Beside this, Edom remains
desolate, and, to come near to what is before us, Babylon also. (Isa. xiii. 1o;
xxxiv. 9, 2o.) How suitable that Rome, the seat of a power far worse and of far
longer continuance should be so visited! Such a judgment would fill out the
prophecy most fully and exactly. What a picture of eternal judgment is that of
Idumea, in that "year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion"! "And the
streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into
brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be
quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up forever." Rome is the
great Edom as it is the great Babylon, and it would be really strange if there
were not to be in her case a similar recompense. Barnes quotes from a traveler
in Italy in 1850 what is only a striking confirmation of the story told by all
who with eyes open have visited the country: "I behold everywhere, in Rome,
near Rome, and through the whole region from Rome to Naples, the most
astounding proofs, not merely of the possibility, but the probability, that the
whcde region of central Italy will one day be destroyed by such a catastrophe.
The soil of Rome is lava, with a volcanic subterranean action going on. At
Naples, the boiling sulphur is to be seen bubbling near the surface of the
earth. When I drew a stick along the ground, the sulphurous smoke followed the
indentation. . . . The entire country and district is volcanic. It is saturated
with beds of sulphur and the substrata of destruction. It seems as certainly
prepared for the flames as the wood and coal on the hearth are prepared for the
taper which shall kindle the fire to consume them. The divine hand alone seems
to me to hold the fire in check by a miracle as great as that which protected
the cities of the plain till the righteous Lot had made his escape to the
mountains."
That Rome's doom will be as thus indicated, we may well
believe. And it is in awful suitability that she that has kindled so often the
fire for God's saints should thus be herself a monumental fire of His vengeance
in the day in which He visits for these things!
PART VII. (Chap. xix. 5 - xxii.)
THE
CONSUMMATION THE MARRIAGE OF THE LAMB. (Chap. xix. 5 - Ia.) 17
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