Revelation
Things That shall
Be
THE LION OF THE TRIBE OF
JUDAH
(Chap. v.)
AND now, in the right hand of Him that sits upon the
throne there is seen a book, or scroll, completely filled with writing, which
is, however, as to decipherment, completely hid from sight. It is the book of
the future, already and completely foreknown and settled in the divine
counsels: no room for any thing to be afterward supplied. Thank God, no tittle
of history that the future holds will put omniscience to shame, or show the
book of God's counsels to have escaped out of the hand of enthroned
omnipotence.
Yet if it remain there, who can penetrate it? The seven
seals show it to be absolutely hidden from saint or angel. Let it be proclaimed
with a voice mighty enough to reach all the inhabitants of heaven, earth, and
the underworld, there is nowhere any answer to the challenge, "Who is worthy to
open the book?"
God's counsels imply blessing. It may be indeed through
much tribulation - the light checkered with shadows - evening and morning
together making up the day. Even so, we name it "day" from the light, not from
the darkness. The conflict of good with evil must end in triumph, not in
defeat. And who is worthy to proclaim that triumph? Only He who can insure it
and carry it out; for this only it is, as we shall see, that opens the book. It
is no longer, at the time to which this change brings us, a question of making
prophetic announcements, but of manifesting God's purposes by decisive acts of
power. True, we are enabled, as having the prophecy, in measure to anticipate
what is to come. But that, with all its value for us, is not what we see in
this picture. It is not the inditing of a book, nor the uttering of a prophecy,
that we have before us, but the opening it by fultillment. Here, then, One
alone can be found "worthy" to open it. And though we know well who it is, yet
we must note the character in which He is introduced to us.
The prophet
weeps because no one is "found worthy to open the book, neither to look
thereon. And one of the elders saith unto me, 'Weep not : behold, the Lion of
the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book and the
seven seals thereof.'"
This is in complete and striking accord with
what we have already seen as to the change of dispensation which the vision
shows to be taking place. The time of gathering from heaven being fulfilled,
the body of Christ completed, and the saints of the New Testament period caught
up with those of former times to meet the Lord in the air, the fulfillment of
Old Testament prophecy, long suspended, begins again, and in the forefront of
the world's history Israel find their place as of old. The "Lion of the tribe
of Judah" here announces One who is taking up once more their cause, to crown
it with speedy and entire victory. Power is soon to manifest itself in that
sudden outburst of irresistible righteous anger of which the second psalm warns
the kings of the earth: "Be wise now, therefore, 0 ye kings! be instructed, ye
that are judges of the earth! Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with
reverence. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His
wrath shall suddenly kindle."
In this title, "Lion of the tribe of
Judah," the whole significance of Jacob's ancient prophecy flashes out. "Judah,
thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be upon the neck of
thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a
lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he hath stooped, he hath
couched as a lion, and as an old lion, - who shall rouse him up?"
From
this we must not disjoin what follows: "The sceptre shall not depart from
Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and to him
shall the gathering of the people be" (Gen. xlix. 8 - io).
Thus it is
Christ that Jacob has in spirit before him, when he sees Judah assuming the
lion-character. And when in David it actually rose up for a short time in the
predicted manner, the brief glory of his kingdom only foretold and heralded the
better glory of Christ's enduring one. And in this way the Lion of the tribe of
Judah is not only the "Branch of David," springing out of the cut-down tree,
but, as here, the Root also of David, from which David himself derives all real
significance.
It is plain, then, that now the appeal of the
eightyninth psalm is to be answered. David's throne is to be lifted up
from the dust, and Judah's long-delayed hope is to expand into fruition.
Strange is it to think how critics and commentators can, in the Lion of Judak
opening the book of God's counsels, see only the general truth of Christ upon
the throne of providential government, when it is plain, according to the
undoubted reference, that the thought of Judah's Lion is inseparably connected
with that of Judah taking the prey, and then couching with a front of power
which none will dare to excite: "Judah, thou art a lion's whelp; from the prey,
my son, thou art gone up: he hath couched as a lion - who shall rouse him
up?"
It is not only ignorance of Scripture, but also of the perfection
of Scripture, which operates in these beclouding views of the great prophecy
before us, in which every expression, every nicety of utterance, is to be
marked and estimated at its worth, because it has worth. If not one jot or one
tittle could pass from the law, as the Lord Himself declared, till all were
fulfilled, how impossible, then, for prophecy to have an irrelevant jot or
tittle which can be safely disregarded ! Go on, with this character that Christ
has now assumed present in the mind, and is it strange or doubtful what can be
meant by the sealing out of the twelve tribes, in the seventh chapter, with the
separate gathering of the Gentile multitude afterward, "come out of (not merely
great, but specifically) the great tribulation"? All is clear and consistent in
detail when we have correctly the general thought.
It is the Lion of
the tribe of Judah, then, who prevails to open the book. The hindrance to the
blessing of Israel and the earth is now removed. Christ has overcome. But how
then overcome? What could be the impediment to the execution of divine purposes
of goodness toward men, and how alone could evil be met, subdued, - nay, made
to minister to higher blessing? This is what is now to be declared.
"And I saw standing in the midst of the throne and of the four living
creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb, 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."
The Lamb is not here represented as upon
the throne, but in the midst of a circle formed by the throne, the living
creatures, and the elders. Lamb as He is (and the word used emphasizes the
connected thought of feebleness in some way), the attribute of perfect power is
seen in the seven horns as that of omniscience is seen in the seven eyes, with
the still more decisive interpretation given them. Still the feebleness is
again marked, and to the extreme, in the note appended that it was "as though
it had been slain." Weakness, then, we are to mark in the One depicted here as
well as power, and the evident tokens of past suffering even to death, although
alive out of death.
Evidently this is how He has prevailed. He has
conquered death through dying, conquered it in its own domain by going into it,
giving Himself a sacrifice, a vicarious offering, for the lamb was well known
as that. Sin has been thus met by atonement; evil triumphed over by good, the
might of pure love acting according to holiness, where power otherwise there
was none, or it was against the Sufferer. This was the victory that opened the
book.
But we must not read this as if it was meant to assure us that
the Christian view of the Lamb has replaced or set aside or come as in a
mystery to explain the Jewish conception of the Lion. This is the thought of
many, but it is entirely wrong and hopelessly confusing. The Lion and the Lamb
are but one blessed Person; and, moreover, One who remains, through whatever
changes of position, wholly unchanging Himself, - "Jesus Christ, the same
yesterday, to-day, and forever" (Heb. xiii. 8). This is true, and necessarily
true, and it is our joy and consolation for all time; but it does not turn
condemnation into salvation, or make the judgment of wrath a piping instead of
mourning.
The Lion of the tribe of Judah is not a mere Jewish notion,
but a true and scriptural conception. It is Jewish indeed - not Christian; and
for that very reason cannot be the equivalent of the "Lamb as it had been
slain." And yet it is in His victory over death that He acquires the power
which as the Lion of Judah He displays. This is how the two views, in
themselves so manifestly different, find their relation to one another.
Yet it is the Lamb that takes the book, and the Lion of the tribe of Judah who
does so. As the first, He is the Interpreter of the counsels of redeeming love,
as they embrace the whole circle of its objects. As the second, He takes up
Israel specifically to deliver them from surrounding enemies and establish them
in peace under the shield of His omnipotence. His title here has plainly to do
with power displayed against the foes of His people. And this is what plainly
gives the necessary standpoint from which we can see aright the meaning of the
chapters which follow for the larger part of the remainder of the book.
Yet it is no wonder that up in heaven, among the redeemed, it is as the Lamb
slain that the myriad voices celebrate Him, and the Lion of Judah seems to be
forgotten. This is not really so; nor does it show that the one title is not to
be distinguished from the other. When He acts according to the latter, we shall
find how intense are the sympathies of this heavenly throng. To no act of His
can there be indifference. But the praise and homage of heaven are to the Lamb
slain. Redemption is what declares Him to the heart, and that a redemption by
purchase, though redemption by power be its necessary complement. The Lamb
slain gives the one side; the Lion of the tribe of Judah speaks of the
other.
When the Lamb takes the book, the redemption song is heard in
heaven. "And when He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the four
and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them 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
out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and madest them unto our
God a kingdom and priests, and they shall reign over the earth."
In
this "new song," the living creatures and the elders are united. The angels we
find in the verses succeeding these, worshiping in a circle outside and in
other terms. This surely is another sign of what is taking place, and where the
vision brings us. The symbols of administrative government, which the living
creatures present to us, are now connected with redeemed men, and no longer
with angels. "Unto angels hath He not put in subjection the world to come
whereof we speak. But one in a certain place testified, saying, 'What is man,
that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that Thou visitest him? Thou
madest him a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst him with glory and
honour; Thou didst set him over the works of Thy hands" (Heb. ii. 5 -
8).
This is, of course, spoken of the Lord Jesus, but in Him man,
according to the will of God, comes to the place of authority in the world to
come, in which, in the book of Daniel, we find the angels. It is when the Son
of Man takes His own throne that the saints reign with Him. Thus, in this song
of redemption we have now "they shall reign over the earth." It is plain, then,
that the vision here brings us to the eve of the millennial day.
Not
only are the heavenly saints seen as about to enter on their reign over the
earth; they are already in their character as priests, "having golden bowls
full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." It is not said that they
are offering them: they are, in fact, at that moment in another attitude; and
this seems pointed out as to them, as if to be another of the marks of the
period which is now beginning. Observe, they are never looked at as themselves
interceding. They are charged with the prayers of others, but add nothing to
them. There are no supererogatory merits that they have acquired, to give
efficacy to what they present; and the prayers themselves are the incense, not
incense is added to them. Romanism finds here no atom of justification, such as
some have alleged; but the statement of the text is plain, and we must abide by
it. The risen saints are priests and kings to God. In the former capacity, they
have the incense prayers in their hand; in the latter, they are presently to
reign over the earth, so that the cherubic living creatures and the elders are
now seen together. Thus the period of the vision is made as plain as possible,
and the song of the redeemed is thus a "new" song, not because redemption
itself was yet a new thing, but because it was now, as far as heaven itself was
concerned, accomplished. Resurrection, the redemption of the body, was now
accomplished, and the Lamb about to commence what He alone could undertake -
the redemption by power of the earth also. At this point, the song of praise
celebrates the completion of all as to the singers save the reign over the
earth involved in what He is now taking in hand to do. Thus the song is
new.
But is it their own redemption they are celebrating? The text as
it used to be read made no doubt of this; but it is abandoned by the general
consent of the editors, who accept substantially what the R.V. gives, except
that, as to the last clause, there is still dispute whether it should be "they
reign" or "they shall reign." I prefer the latter, as most according to the
fact, authorities being divided. The result as to the whole is that the elders
do not say, "Thou hast redeemed us, and we shall reign," but "Thou hast
redeemed a people, and they shall reign." Instead of being specific, it is
general, as to who the people are, although the last clause limits it to the
heavenly family of the redeemed. The millennial saints do not reign over the
earth. They inherit it in peace and blessing, but it is they who suffer with
Christ who shall reign with Him (2 Tim. ii. 12).
The change puts
emphasis upon the redemption, rather than upon the persons who are partakers of
it; and this commends itself to spiritual apprehension. The Lamb and His
wondrous work fill the souls of His own with rapture as they fall before His
feet: "THOU wast slain, and hast redeemed to God." But there seems to me no
ground for what some allege from this change of text, that the heavenly saints
here are celebrating the redemption of others and not their own! Why should
this be? The language does not necessitate it; for if we say, "Thou hast
redeemed a people," even though we are speaking of ourselves, it is quite in
order to say, keeping up the third person all through, "and they shall reign."
I agree with those who hold the view with which I cannot agree, that there is a
company of martyrs after this who are, as such, to be joined to this heavenly
company, and who are seen in this way as added to them in chap. xx. 4 - 6. But
to think that in the vision before us the saints are praising Christ solely for
the redemption of another class than themselves, is, I venture to say, extreme
and incongruous. Surely we should not think, in praising Christ for redemption,
of wholly Omitting the thought that we ourselves are among the subjects of it!
Every consideration here, moreover, would forbid the supposition.
Outside the circle of the redeemed, the angels have now their place and their
praise. It has been often and justly remarked that they do not "sing." Their
peaceful lives, not subject to vicissitude, nor touched by sin, furnish no
various tones for melody. The harps which we have above are tuned down here,
where the Davids, signalized by their afflictions, are the sweet singers of
Israel. Wondrous and eternal fruit of earth's sorrow, though by divine grace
only, the redeemed among men will be the choir of heaven! Blessed be
God!
"And I beheld, and I heard the 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 as with
a great voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb that has been slain, to receive power and
riches and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing."
Redemption has thus added to the angels' praise. It is not to the Creator only.
And in this new praise, a new element of blessing, a new apprehension of God,
has entered into their hearts. They are nearer, though in this outside circle,
than they ever were before. In truth, though in some sense outside, our earthly
idea of distance fails to convey the thought. Larger and smaller measures of
apprehension there may be and will be, but true distance of the creature from
the Creator is in heaven the one impossibility, where of the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ every family is named. "Whither shall I go from Thy presence?" is
never whispered; and the whisper of it, even in heaven, would make it
hell.
And now, in a wider sweep again, -"Every creature which is in
heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, even
all that are in them, heard I saying, 'Blessing and honour and glory and power
be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.'
And the four living creatures said, 'Amen,' and the elders fell down and
worshipped."
This is the voice of the lower creation in echo to the
praise of heaven. It is such a response as many of the psalms call for in view
of the coming of the Lord; and is another mark of the time of the vision. The
earth under the desolation of the fall has for the time lost its place, as it
might seem, and wandered as a planet from its orbit into the starless silence
around. Christ, as her central Sun, has come back to her after the long polar
darkness, and her voices wake up as the spring returns. Blessed it is to
realise (so simple and natural as it is) the response to this response on the
part of the human elders, as this sound is heard. The governmental powers of
earth - the living creatures - utter their glad "Amen" to it. Earth is to repay
the long labour and service of rule at last. And the elders, with their own
memories of sin and darkness (now forever but memories, though undying), hear
it in a thrill of sympathetic joy that (as all the joy of heaven) melts into
adoration: "The elders fell down and worshipped."
THE OPENING OF THE SEALS: THE FIRST FOUR SEALS.
(Chap. vi. i, 2.)
THE Lamb having taken the book,
the opening of the seals at once follows. When they are all loosed, - and not
before, - then the book is fully opened. The seals then give us the
introduction to the book, rather than (as many have imagined,) the complete
contents. Beyond the seals lie the trumpets, contrasted with the seals in their
nature: the latter are divine secrets opened to faith; the trumpets,
loud-voiced calls to the whole earth. These go on to the setting up of the
kingdom in the seventh trumpet; and after that, we have only separate visions
giving the details of special parts, until in the nineteenth chapter we reach
again a connected series of events, stretching from the marriage of the Lamb
through the millennium to the great white throne.
The opening of the
seals, then, gives us events introductory, as regards both time and character,
to what follows, and which have their importance largely in this very fact. The
opening of them is the key to the book; for when they are opened, the book is.
Yet they only set us upon the threshold of the great events which precede the
setting up of the kingdom of Christ, the time of the trumpets; while on the
other hand they contain the germ and prophecy of these, which spring out of
them as it were necessarily.
In the Lord's great prophecy of Matt.
xxiv., which similarly sets before us the time of the end, we have, before the
period of special tribulation connected with the abomination of desolation in
the holy place, an order of things which has often been compared with what we
find under the seals. Nor can we compare them without being struck with the
resemblance. The Lord specifies here, as warning-signs of His coming, false
Christs, wars, and rumours of wars, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, and
persecution of His people. In the first and second seals we have
correspondingly war - that of conquest and civil war; in the third, famine; in
the fourth, pestilence; in the fifth, the cry of the martyrs; and in the sixth,
a great earthquake, though perhaps only as a symbol of national convulsion.
Only the false Christs seem to be entirely omitted, and some have therefore
imagined that the rider on the white horse in the first seal - coming, it must
be admitted, in the right place to preserve the harmony with the gospel, -
might fill the gap. But this we must look at later on. The correspondence is
sufficiently striking to confirm strongly the thought that the seals refer to
the same period as does the passage in the gospel, the time preceding and
introducing the great tribulation of the end.
Looking again at the
seals, we find they are divided, like most other septenary series, into four
and three; the first four being marked from the rest by the horse and rider
which is in each, and by the call of the living beings by which each is
introduced. Their relation to each other is plainer (or more outward) than in
the case of the last three, as may be observed also in such series generally.
And how beautiful and reassuring is this rhythm of prophecy! The power of God
everywhere controlling with perfect ease the winds and waves in their wildest
uproar, so as for faith to produce harmony where the natural ear finds only
discord. Significant is it that in no other book of Scripture have we so much
of these numberings and divisions and proportionate series as we have in the
book of Revelation. The call of the cherubim at the opening of the first four
seals is also significant. It is to be noted that it is not addressed, as in
our common version, to John, but to the riders upon the horses, who then come
forth. It is not "Come and see," but "Come," as the R.V., with the editors in
general, now gives it. The living beings utter their call also in the order in
which they have been seen in the vision: for although in the first instance it
is said, "one of the four living beings," not "the first," yet in the case of
the other seals they are named in order - second, third, and fourth. And we
shall find a correspondence in each case between the living being and the one
who comes forth at his call.
We have seen that the cherubic figures
speak of the government of God, in the hands of those who are commissioned of
Him to exercise it. And thus the vail of the holiest, the type of the Lord in
manhood - " the vail, that is to say, His flesh" (Heb. x. 20)_was embroidered
with cherubim. To Him they have peculiar reference as the King of God's
appointment; and the four gospels, as has been seen by many, give in their
central features these cherubic characters in the Lord, and again in the order
in which the book of Revelation exhibits them. The Lion of Judah we find in
Matthew's gospel, where Christ is looked at as Son of David. Mark gives us, on
the other hand, the young bullock - the Servant's form. Luke meets us with the
dear and familiar features of manhood, - the "face of a man ;" while in John we
have the bird of heaven - the vision of incarnate Godhead. These aspects of the
Gospels I may assume to be familiar to my readers - here is not the place to
consider them.
Now Christ has been seen in heaven in a double
character: - the Lion of the tribe of Judah is the Lamb that was slain. It is
the title under which He takes everything, for it is that which shows Him as
the One who has bought every thing by His surrender of Himself unto death. He
is the "man" who, according to His own parable, having found in a field
hidden treasure, went and sold all that he had, and bought that field. "The
field," He says again Himself, "is the world."
But the Lord's death had
also another side to it. It was man's emphatic rejection of God in His dearest
gift to him, - just in his sweetest and most wonderful grace. While every
gospel has a different tale to tell of what Christ is, every gospel has also,
as an essential feature, the story of His rejection in that character. As Son
of David, as the gracious Minister to man's need, as God's true Man, or as the
only begotten Son from heaven, He is still the crucified One. Man has cast out
with insult the divine Saviour, - has refused utterly God's help and His
salvation. What must be the result? He must - if in spite of long-suffering
mercy he persist in this - remain unhelped and unsaved. He has cast out the Son
of God; and why? Because he was His. essential opposite: "the prince of this
world cometh, and hath nothing in Me." The world which rejects Christ as
finding nothing in Him naturally is the world which owns Satan as its prince.
He who rejects Christ is ready for Antichrist; and so He says to the Jews, "I
am come in My Father's name, and ye receive Me not: if another shall come in
his own name, him ye will receive."
Thus man's sin foreshadows the judgment
which must come upon him. This is no arbitrary thing. The law is the same
physically and morally, - "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
In the true sense here, man is the maker of his own destiny. And this will
prepare us to understand the cherubim call for judgment. If the living beings
represent characters of God's government, and characters also which are found
in Christ, we can find here a double reason why, Christ being rejected, the
judgments come forth at the cherubim's call. A rejected Saviour calls forth a
destroyer. The voice of the lion summons to his career the whitehorsed
conqueror.
This shows us, then, that it is not Christ who is thus
represented. Many have supposed so, naturally comparing with it the vision of
the nineteenth chapter, where Christ comes forth upon a white horse to the
judgment of the earth. But the comparison really proves the opposite. We have
not, certainly, under the first seal, already reached the time of Christ's
appearing. And the symbol of judgment is unsuited for the going forth of the
blessed gospel of peace. The gospel dispensation is over now, and the sheaves
of its golden harvest are gathered into the barn. Not peace is it now, but war.
Peace they would not have at His hands: its alternative they have no choice as
to receiving. Christ received would have been an enemy only to man's enemies.
Power would have been used on his behalf, and not against him: that rejected,
the foes that would have been put down rise up, and hold him captive.
This,
then, is the key to what we have under the first seal: a few words must suffice
for the present as to the other details.
The horse is noted in
Scripture for its strength, and as the instrument of war: other thoughts
believed to be associated with it seem scarcely to be sustained. It indicates,
therefore, aggressive power, and a white horse is well known as the symbol of
victory. In the rider, who of course governs the horse, there seems generally
indicated an agent of divine providence, though it may be not merely
unintentionally so, but even in spirit hostile. The rider here is not
characterized save by his acts. His bow is his weapon of offence, which speaks
not of hand-tohand conflict, but of wounds inflicted at a distance. The
crown given li/rn seems certainly to imply, as another has said, that he
obtains royal or imperial dignity as the fruit of his success, though by whom
the crown is given does not appear. Altogether we have but a slight sketch of
the one presented to us here, and one which might fit many of whom history
speaks; but this is divine history,and the person before us must have an
important connection with the purposes of God, to earn for him the leading
place which he, fills in the beginning of these visions of earthly
doom.
We naturally ask, Can we find no intimations elsewhere of this
conqueror? It appears to me we may; and I hope to give further on what I think
Scripture teaches as to it, not as pretending to dogmatize as to what is
obscure, but presenting simply the grounds of my own judgment for the
consideration of others. If it be not the exact truth, it may yet lead in the
direction of the truth.
Some preliminary points have, however, first to
be settled; and for the present it will be better to content ourselves with
noting the detail as to this first rider, and to pass on. The second living
creature is the patient ox. True figure of God's laborer, strength only used in
lowly toil for man, it speaks to us of Him who on God's part laboured to bring
man back to Him, and plough again the channels back to the forsaken source, so
that the perennial streams might fill them, and bring again to earth the old
fertility. Yet here the ox calls forth one to whom it is "given to take peace
from the earth, and that they should slay one another." Civil war is bidden
forth by that which is the type of love's patient ministry. Yes, and how fitly!
For just as if received, God having His place, all else would have its own; so,
rejected, all must be out of joint and in disorder. Man in rebellion against
God, the very beasts of the earth rebel in turn. Having cast off affection
where most natural, all natural affection withers. Man has initiated a disorder
which he cannot stop where he desires, but which will spread until all sweet
and holy ties are sundered, and love is turned (as it may be turned) to
deadliest opposition.
In the third seal the third living creature
calls: the one with the face of a man. At his call, famine comes. We see a
black horse, and he that sits on him has a pair of balances in his hand; and
there is heard in the midst of the living beings a voice which cries, "A
quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and
see thou hurt not the oil and the wine." A denarius, which was the ordinary
day's earnings of a laboring man, would usually buy eight quarts of wheat, one
of which would scarcely suffice for daily bread. It is evident, therefore, that
this implies great scarcity.
The congruity of this judgment with the
call of the living being is not so easy to be understood as in the former
cases. Were we permitted to spiritualise it, and think of what Amos proclaims,
"Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the words of the
Lord, such a famine would, on the other hand, suit well: for "the face of a
man" reminds us how God has met us in His love, and revealed Himself to us,
inviting our confidence, speaking in our familiar mother tongue, studying to be
understood and appreciated by us; and assuredly this familiar intercourse with
Him is what we want for heart satisfaction. "Lord, show us the Father, and it
sufficeth us," was not an unintelligent request so far as man's need is itself
concerned. The unintelligence was in what the Lord points out, "Have I been so
long time with you, and hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me
hath seen the Father."
Here, then, man's need is fully met. The hunger
of his soul is satisfied. The bread from heaven is what the Son of Man alone
gives, and it is meat that "endures to everlasting life." And this rejected, -
the true manna loathed and turned from, - what remains but a wilderness indeed,
a barren soil without a harvest?
But this gives only a hint of the real
connection: for this seal following the other two, seems evidently to give a
result of these. What more simple and natural than that after conquest and
civil war, - above all, the latter, - the untilled soil should leave men
destitute? Still more, that the oil and the wine, which do not need in the same
way man's continual care, remain on the whole uninjured?
An ordinary
famine seems to be intended, therefore; yet the connection has been hinted as
already said: for the natural is every where a type of the spiritual, and
depends on it, as the lesser upon the greater. Our common mercies are thus ours
through Christ alone. Take away the one, the other goes. A natural famine is
the due result of the rejection of the spiritual food. With the substance goes
the shadow also.
That the third living creature calls for famine, then,
may in this way be understood, and it shows how the greater the blessing lost,
the deeper the curse retained. Christ rejected strikes every natural
good.
And when we come to the fourth seal, and the flying eagle summons
forth the pale horse with its rider Death, Hades following with him to engulf
the souls of the slain, the same lesson is to be read, becoming only plainer.
John's is the gospel to which this flying eagle corresponds, - the gospel of
love and life and light, each fathomless, each a mystery, each divine. Blot
this out - reject, refuse it, what remains? What but the awful eternal
opposite, which the death here as from the wrath of God introduces to?
These initial judgments, then, are seen to speak of that which brings the
judgment. The day of harvest is beginning, and man is being called to reap what
he has sown. The darkness which begins to shut all in is the darkness not
merely of absent, but rejected light.
This, in its full dread reality, no
one that is Christ's can ever know. Yet before we leave it, it is well for us
to realize how far for us also rejected light may be, and must be, darkness. We
are in the kingdom of Christ, children of the light, delivered from the
authority of darkness. Around us are poured the blessed beams of gladdening and
enfranchising day. And yet this renders any real darkness in which we may be
practically the more solemn. It too is not a mere negative, not a mere absence
of light, but light shut out. And darkness itself is a kingdom, rebellious
indeed, yet subject to the god of this world. To shut out the light - any light
- is to shut in the darkness, and thus far to join the revolt against God and
good. And the necessary judgment follows, - for us, a Father's discipline, that
we may learn, in our self-chosen way, what evil is, but learn it, that at last
we may be what we must be, if we are to dwell with Him, "partakers of His
holiness." But will it not be loss, - aye, even eternal loss, to have had to
learn it so?
Who would force the love that yearns over us to chasten,
instead of comforting, - to minister sorrow, when it should and would bring
gladness only? THERE IS NO MERE NEGATIVE. In that in which we are not for
Christ, we are against Him. To shut Him out is a wrong and insult to Him. And
these quick-eyed cherubim, careful for the "holy, holy, holy God" they
celebrate, will they not, must they not, call forth the judgment answering to
the sin?
THE LAST THREE SEALS.
(Rev. vi. 9 - 17)
THE first four seals have thus shown to us
judgments poured out upon the earth, - judgments which are the necessary result
of the rejection of Christ, now completed by the refusal of the gospel for so
many centuries of divine long-suffering. The fifth opens to us a very different
scene: here are beheld "under the altar, the souls of them that were beheaded
for the word of God and for the testimony which they held." Persecution has
broken out against the people of God; for such there are still upon the earth,
though the saints of the present time are with the Lord in glory. Heaven being
filled, the Spirit of God has been at work to fill the earth with blessing; and
here, as we know, God's ancient people are the first subjects of His converting
grace. The remnant of that time could be fitly represented by those disciples
of the Lord to whom He addressed the great prophecy of His coming, Jewish as
they were still in conceptions and in heart; and to these, after such warnings
as had been fulfilled in the former seals, He says, "Then shall they deliver
you up to tribulation, and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated of all the
nations (the Gentiles) for My name's sake." The two passages agree with one
another and with nature.
Woe unto those who in a day of wrath upon the
world for the rejection of Christ go into it to insist upon His claim! And that
is what is meant by "the gospel of the kingdom" which the Lord tells us "shall
be preached in all the world for a witness to all the nations, and then shall
the end come" (Matt. xxiv. 14). "Glad tidings" though it may be that the
kingdom of righteousness at last is to be set up, and the King Himself is at
hand, - to those who reject Him, it is the announcement of their doom. And we
see under this fifth seal what will be the result. The Word of God will again
have its martyrs, but whose cry will not be with Stephen, "Lord, lay not this
sin to their charge!" but with the martyrs of the Old Testament, "The Lord look
upon it, and require it!" "And they cried with a loud voice, 'How long, 0 Lord,
holy and true, dost Thou not judge, and avenge our blood on them that dwell
upon the earth?"
The cry is now in place, as is the pleading for grace
in a day of grace. Judgment is indeed to come, and the time when God "maketh
inquisition for blood" (Ps. ix. 12); but though at hand, there is yet a certain
delay, for, alas! even yet, the measure of man's iniquity is not reached. "And
white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them that
they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants and their
brethren, who should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled."
Two
seasons of persecution seem to be marked here, though with no necessary
interval between them; though the crash that follows under the sixth seal, with
the terror thus (if but for awhile) produced, might well cause such a cessation
of persecution for the time being. Whether this be so or not, the two periods
are surely here distinguished. A much later passage (chap. xx. 4) similarly
distinguishes them, while it enables us to recognize the latter of these
periods as that of the beast under his last head: "And I saw thrones, and they
sat on them" - those already enthroned in chap. iv. and v., - "and the souls of
those that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God," -
those seen under the fifth seal, - "and such as had not worshipped the beast,
nor his image, and had not received his mark upon their foreheads or in their
hands"- here are their "brethren that were to be slain as they were"- "and they
lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."
The distinction
between these two periods proves the introductory character of the seals, at
least as far as we have gone. The time of the great tribulation is not come;
just as, in Matt. xxiv. the persecution prophesied of precedes it. Thus the
martyrs here, while owned and approved, have yet to wait for the answer to
their prayer. Sonic answer, it need not be doubted, the next seal gives; but
plainly, it cannot be the full one: there are decisive reasons for refusing the
thought entertained by many, that it is really the "great day of the Lamb's
wrath" which is come. Men's guilty consciences make them judge it to be this;
but that is only their interpretation, not the divine one.
A terrible
break-up of the existing state of things it is: "And I beheld when he had
opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great convulsion; and the sun became
as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood; and the stars of
heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig tree casteth her unripe figs when she is
shaken of a great wind. And the heaven was removed as a scroll when it is
rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of theiv places. And
the kings of the earth, and the princes, and the chief captains, and the
rich, and the strong, and every bondman and freeman, hid themselves in the
caves and in the rocks of the mountains; and they say to the mountains and to
the rocks, "Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the
throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of His wrath is come,
and who shall be able to stand?" Well may it seem to be so; and just such
physical signs are announced in Joel (ii. 31 and iii. '5) before "the great and
terrible day of the Lord shall come." Just so also the Lord speaks of what
shall take place after the tribulation: "Immediately after the tribulation of
those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,
and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be
shaken; and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; and then
shall the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming
in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matt. XXIV. 29, 30). The
sixth seal precedes the tribulation, however, as we have seen; except this
could occur between the fifth and sixth, and were passed silently over. This
would be a very violent supposition in view of what we have already seen, and
of what follows the sixth seal itself, as we may see presently. The rolling up
the heavens as a scroll, moreover, goes beyond the language of Joel or of the
Lord, carrying us on, indeed, to the passing away of the heaven and earth which
precedes the coming in of that "new heavens and earth in which dwelleth
righteousness" (2 Pet. iii. 13). But this is impossible to be thought of as
occurring in this place. The only other practicable interpretation, therefore,
must be the true one, - the language is figurative, and the signs are not
physical, though designedly given in terms which remind us of what indeed is
swiftly approaching, though not yet actually come.
And in this way the
general significance is not difficult to apprehend. The heavens in this way
represent the seat of authority. Nebuchadnezzar had to learn that the "heavens
rule" (Dan. iv. 26). And they represent figuratively rule also on the part of
man. In the Old Testament prophets, we have similar pictures to that before us
here (Isa. xiii. io; XXX1V. 4), where the context shows that national
convulsions are prophesied of. Here, it is evidently the collapse of
governments, the shaking of all that seemed most settled and secure. All
classes of men - high and low, rich and poor, are involved in the effect of it,
and their stricken consciences ascribe it as judgment to the wrath of God and
the Lamb. In their alarm, they imagine He is just about to appear; but He does
not, and the panic passes away. A new state of things is introduced, of which
the features unfold themselves.
When we might now expect the opening of
the seventh seal, we find instead the parenthetic visions of the seventh
chapter; and there is a similar interruption in exactly the same place in the
trumpet series: the vision of the little book and the two witnesses comes in
between the sixth and seventh trumpets. This exact correspondence claims our
attention. One result of it is to make the septenary series an octave, and to
give, therefore, to the last seal and the last trumpet the character of a
seventh and yet of an eighth division. Let us inquire for a moment into the
significance of these numbers in this connection.
The numbers are, in
their scriptural meaning, in some sense opposite to one another. "Seven" speaks
of completion, perfection, and so cessation. Seven notes give the whole compass
in music. On the seventh day God ended all His work which He had made, and
rested. The eighth day is the first of a new week, - a new beginning. The
eighth note is similarly a new beginning. The essential idea attaching to the
number in its symbolic use in Scripture is that of what is new, in contrast
with the old which is passed away, - as the new covenant, the new creation. As
outside the perfect seven, it adds no other thought?
Now if we will
remember the character of these seals, that they keep the book closed, it
follows of course that the seventh seal opened opens for the first time really
the book itself. This in fact introduces us therefore to what is a new thing.
We were up to this time in the porch or vestibule merely. Immediately the last
door is opened we are in the building itself. Does not this account for the
fact that on its opening there is simply a brief pause - " silence in heaven
for the space of half an hour," - and then come the trumpets? This is exactly
according to the seven-eight character of the closing seal. One period is over,
and with this we begin another. The last seal is open, and this discloses, not
a bit more introduction, but the book itself.
The seventh trumpet will
be found in these respects very like the seventh seal. It too is brief; and
while closing the trumpet series of judgment - in fact the three special woes,
- opens into another condition of things, not woe at all, but the time long
looked for, when "the kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord,
and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever" (chap. xi. 15). Thus
the seven-eight structure justifies itself in both series, of seals and
trumpets.
But before the seventh seal comes a parenthetic vision, which
is not a part of the seals really, but a disclosure of what is in the mind of
the Lord, His purpose of grace fulfilling steadfastly amid all the strife and
sorrow and sin which might seem to prevail every where. Let us now give it our
careful attention.
Chapter Five
THE
SEALED OF ISRAEL
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